The Believer, Issue 100

The Believer #100

by Vendela Vida (Editor), Heidi Julavits (Editor), Andrew Leland (Editor)

The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. It features long articles, interviews, and book reviews, as well as poems, comics, and a two-page vertically-oriented Schema spread, more or less unreproduceable on the web. The common thread in all these facets is that the Believer gives people and books the benefit of the doubt (the working title of this magazine was the Optimist).

On each issue, Charles Burns's beautiful illustrations adorn the cover; our regular raft of writers, artists, and photographers fill the pages; and the feel of the Westcan Printing Group’s gorgeous “Roland Enviro 100 Natural” recycled acid-free heavy stock paper warms your heart.

80 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2013

About the author

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of four books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers, and a founding editor of The Believer magazine. She is also the co-editor of Always Apprentices, a collection of interviews with writers, and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. As a fellow at the Sundance Labs, she developed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name into a script, which received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children, and since 2002 has served on the board of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring lab for youth.

Reviews

[Jane Yu · Rating 4 out of 5]

notes:
-Emory Cook: leader and primary symbol of the high-fidelity craze (selective hearing) - "the world of the ear."

-interview w/feist:
John Baldessari homework: "I will not make any more boring art."
3 tips for art-making: 1) talent is cheap 2) you have to be in the right place at the right time 3) you have to be possessed
"there are some happy songs out there, but aren't the bulk of songs about some state of desire and the thing you're not sure about, the horizon? Happy songs are sort of Jack Johnson and not as compelling. Just everything feeling fine. That's what's on the radio."
-with the repetition of anything, you're not looking at the thing anymore, you're looking at the variations on the theme.
-feist on steinbeck's "eighty records": "With albums, you want to evoke a feeling, and maybe have it be homogeneous enough that you have a story arc to it. I'm kind of an album-liker[...] Steinbeck, the way he begins so many of his chapters is he pulls way back, and he tells you about the one-hundred-mile long valley, and it reaches those mountains, and then it reaches the ocean, and then he zooms in and talks about one bee on one blade of grass"

[Hans · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually prefer the "regular" issues rather than the "special" issues like the 2013 Music Issue, but this had a stack of great articles:
--Casey Jarman writing about Buzz Martin, "The Singing Logger"
--Tony Scherman writing about C.L. Franklin preacher (who also happens to be Aretha's dad)
--Nicole Pasulka writing about the Village People
--Joshua Jelly-Shapiro writing about Emory Cook, recorder of high-fidelity sounds

The magazine hasn't been coming out as often, so hopefully 2016 is my year to catch up again. On to issue 101. (Look out issue 113, I have you in my sights.)

[Sara Habein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love The Believer's music issues. They almost always have a mix of music I like and stuff I'm about to like.