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Read Hard
Read Hard: Five Years of Great Writing from the Believer
This volume collects the finest essays and articles from the four-time National Magazine Award–nominated Believer magazine. The book combines all the erudition and wit readers have come to expect from its pages: Jonathan Lethem on Nathanael West, William T. Vollmann on W. G. Sebald, Ben Ehrenreich on Brian Evenson, Paul La Farge on Dungeons & Dragons, and much, much more. It’s an essential anthology, collecting the best in creative nonfiction, the best in literary journalism, and the best writing in English from the beginning of the twenty-first century, from one of the smartest, weirdest, and funniest magazines in the country.
389 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2009
14 people are currently reading
327 people want to read
About the author
Heidi Julavits
119 books347 followersHeidi Suzanne Julavits is an American author and co-editor of The Believer magazine. She has been published in The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2, Esquire, Story, Zoetrope All-Story, and McSweeney's Quarterly. Her novels include The Mineral Palace (2000), The Effect of Living Backwards (2003) and The Uses of Enchantment (2006) and The Vanishers (2012).
She was born and grew up in Portland, Maine, before attending Dartmouth College. She later went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University.
She wrote the article "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!" (subtitled: "A Call For A New Era Of Experimentation, and a Book Culture That Will Support It") in the debut issue of The Believer, a publication which attempts to avoid snarkiness and "give people and books the benefit of the doubt."
In 2005, she told the New York Times culture writer A.O. Scott how'd she decided on The Believer's tone: "I really saw 'the end of the book' as originating in the way books are talked about now in our culture and especially in the most esteemed venues for book criticism. It seemed as though their irrelevance was a foregone conclusion, and we were just practicing this quaint exercise of pretending something mattered when of course everyone knew it didn't." She added her own aim as book critic would be "to endow something with importance, by treating it as an emotional experience."
She has also written short stories, such as "The Santosbrazzi Killer", which was published in Harper's Magazine.
Julavitz currently lives in Maine and Manhattan with her husband, the writer Ben Marcus, and their children
She was born and grew up in Portland, Maine, before attending Dartmouth College. She later went on to earn an MFA from Columbia University.
She wrote the article "Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard!" (subtitled: "A Call For A New Era Of Experimentation, and a Book Culture That Will Support It") in the debut issue of The Believer, a publication which attempts to avoid snarkiness and "give people and books the benefit of the doubt."
In 2005, she told the New York Times culture writer A.O. Scott how'd she decided on The Believer's tone: "I really saw 'the end of the book' as originating in the way books are talked about now in our culture and especially in the most esteemed venues for book criticism. It seemed as though their irrelevance was a foregone conclusion, and we were just practicing this quaint exercise of pretending something mattered when of course everyone knew it didn't." She added her own aim as book critic would be "to endow something with importance, by treating it as an emotional experience."
She has also written short stories, such as "The Santosbrazzi Killer", which was published in Harper's Magazine.
Julavitz currently lives in Maine and Manhattan with her husband, the writer Ben Marcus, and their children
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
April 25, 2010
Ah, yes. The Believer crew. Heidi Julavits, Rick Moody, Stephen Elliott, Ed Park, Daniel Handler, Dave Eggers and his wife, Vendela Vida, Nick Hornby, Franklin Bruno, Paul Collins, Sam Lipsyte, Ben Ehrenreich, Rich Cohen .... All the cool kids are here. With attitude. Because, one assumes they feel that there's strength in numbers.
They are so easy to hate en masse. They take themselves so seriously, for Christ's sake (with a few honorable exceptions). And they don't write nearly as well as they would have you believe. But mass rejection is not the appropriate response here. Because - no surprises - this anthology is like every other collection you've ever read, an entirely mixed bag. In with the many steaming turds are nestled more than a few nuggets.
One thing needs to be clarified up front. I'm not sure what the blurb in the book description is referring to, but it's certainly not this particular anthology. There's nothing by Zadie Smith, murakami, or .. in this volume. To be clear, the correct list of contributors is:
Eula Biss (living in a "borderline" Chicago neighborhood)
Peter Lunenfeld (Gidget and the Austro-Hungarian empire)
Ed Park (on the writer Charles Portis, author of "True Grit")
Rick Moody (on obscure Christian rock band, the Danielson Family)
William T. Vollmann (on W.G. Sebald's book about postwar Germany)
Ben Ehrenreich (on Mormon writer Brian Evenson)
Ginger Strand (on aquariums)
Tom Bissell (on self-help books for writers)
Michelle Tea (40 pages about a transgender music festival in Michigan)
Franklin Bruno (on film critic Manny Farber)
Richard Powers (on genetic testing)
Rich Cohen ("The Sinatra Doctrine")
David Orr (on the poetry of Stevie Smith)
Tayari Jones (on Black History month)
Howard Hampton (on rock critic Lester Bangs)
Paul La Farge (on playing Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax)
Sam Lipsyte (a road trip with Michelle Houellebecq)
Scott Eden (The Whirl, a weekly paper of the black ghetto in St Louis)
Stephen Elliott (Strippers, kinky sex workers, and the new politics)
Jonathan Lethem (on the work of Nathanael West)
Joe Hagan (on songwriter Bill Fox)
My upfront prejudices? A fairly healthy loathing for the writing of Rick Moody and Rich Cohen, based on previous experience. The two pieces here only reinforce that loathing. Certain pieces (Tayari Jones, Scott Jones, Michelle Tea) smacked too much of enforced diversity for my liking; the 40-page piece by Michelle Tea pretty much begged to be put aside, so I did. Eula Biss, in contrast, showed that it is possible to write about race-related issues sensitively and without preachiness. David Orr and William T. Vollmann convinced me that the authors they wrote about were worth my consideration; Ed Park and Ben Ehrenreich did not, with Park's essay being particularly impenetrable. Tom Bissell, Ginger Strand, Sam Lipsyte, and Jonathan Lethem were charming, funny and articulate; the same cannot be said about Peter Lunenfeld, whose linkage of Gidget to Robert Musil was just a tad precious. Richard Powers had little of substance to contribute on the subject of genetic testing, though there was a lot of sound and fury. Stephen Elliott's contribution contains these lines:
"I lived in Amsterdam. It was 1992 and I was a barker for a live sex show called the Casa Rosso. I was dating a hooker from Australia and then Miriam, a Surinamese cabaret dancer whose husband was in jail for murder."
This will either set you to devouring the essay in question, or to running screaming into the night.
I have not read the remaining essays, nor do I intend to. It seems safe to assume that their primary appeal is to the demographic of snotty record store clerks described so well in Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity".
The piece by Rick Moody is simply atrocious.
They are so easy to hate en masse. They take themselves so seriously, for Christ's sake (with a few honorable exceptions). And they don't write nearly as well as they would have you believe. But mass rejection is not the appropriate response here. Because - no surprises - this anthology is like every other collection you've ever read, an entirely mixed bag. In with the many steaming turds are nestled more than a few nuggets.
One thing needs to be clarified up front. I'm not sure what the blurb in the book description is referring to, but it's certainly not this particular anthology. There's nothing by Zadie Smith, murakami, or .. in this volume. To be clear, the correct list of contributors is:
Eula Biss (living in a "borderline" Chicago neighborhood)
Peter Lunenfeld (Gidget and the Austro-Hungarian empire)
Ed Park (on the writer Charles Portis, author of "True Grit")
Rick Moody (on obscure Christian rock band, the Danielson Family)
William T. Vollmann (on W.G. Sebald's book about postwar Germany)
Ben Ehrenreich (on Mormon writer Brian Evenson)
Ginger Strand (on aquariums)
Tom Bissell (on self-help books for writers)
Michelle Tea (40 pages about a transgender music festival in Michigan)
Franklin Bruno (on film critic Manny Farber)
Richard Powers (on genetic testing)
Rich Cohen ("The Sinatra Doctrine")
David Orr (on the poetry of Stevie Smith)
Tayari Jones (on Black History month)
Howard Hampton (on rock critic Lester Bangs)
Paul La Farge (on playing Dungeons & Dragons with Gary Gygax)
Sam Lipsyte (a road trip with Michelle Houellebecq)
Scott Eden (The Whirl, a weekly paper of the black ghetto in St Louis)
Stephen Elliott (Strippers, kinky sex workers, and the new politics)
Jonathan Lethem (on the work of Nathanael West)
Joe Hagan (on songwriter Bill Fox)
My upfront prejudices? A fairly healthy loathing for the writing of Rick Moody and Rich Cohen, based on previous experience. The two pieces here only reinforce that loathing. Certain pieces (Tayari Jones, Scott Jones, Michelle Tea) smacked too much of enforced diversity for my liking; the 40-page piece by Michelle Tea pretty much begged to be put aside, so I did. Eula Biss, in contrast, showed that it is possible to write about race-related issues sensitively and without preachiness. David Orr and William T. Vollmann convinced me that the authors they wrote about were worth my consideration; Ed Park and Ben Ehrenreich did not, with Park's essay being particularly impenetrable. Tom Bissell, Ginger Strand, Sam Lipsyte, and Jonathan Lethem were charming, funny and articulate; the same cannot be said about Peter Lunenfeld, whose linkage of Gidget to Robert Musil was just a tad precious. Richard Powers had little of substance to contribute on the subject of genetic testing, though there was a lot of sound and fury. Stephen Elliott's contribution contains these lines:
"I lived in Amsterdam. It was 1992 and I was a barker for a live sex show called the Casa Rosso. I was dating a hooker from Australia and then Miriam, a Surinamese cabaret dancer whose husband was in jail for murder."
This will either set you to devouring the essay in question, or to running screaming into the night.
I have not read the remaining essays, nor do I intend to. It seems safe to assume that their primary appeal is to the demographic of snotty record store clerks described so well in Nick Hornby's "High Fidelity".
The piece by Rick Moody is simply atrocious.
May 2, 2012
I didn't finish this, got to about page 100 or so. The writing is good, but it wasn't what I thought it would be. The topics didn't appeal to me either.
May 25, 2011
Interesting miscellany. Michelle Tea's essay has a particularly good voice.
Read
August 4, 2011the fun size Believer, without the guilt ridden pile of unread magazines.
April 18, 2020
Sorry, but getting through this book was a chore at times. "Read Hard," if anything, was an advertisement for me NOT to subscribe to "The Believer." I'm generally a big fan of anything associated with "McSweeney's," which is why I picked up this book in the first place, but it was filled with some disappointing essays and some downright bad ones. First, the good: Eula Biss's piece, combining Laura Ingalls Wilder history with Biss's own neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, was a promising start to the collection. Rick Moody wrote a thought-provoking essay about being a Christian artist. William Vollmann examined Sebald's writing on WWII Germany. Rich Cohen wrote an interesting essay on Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra that made me want to learn more about the Brat Pack. Likewise, David Orr wrote an essay on Stevie Smith that made me want to explore Smith's poetry. This should be the point of such essays: to send the reader off in pursuit of new interests. Paul La Farge wrote a compelling piece about Dungeons & Dragons--how it started and how it has managed to survive over the years. But the two standouts in the collection came near the end, and I'd read them before. Joe Hagan's essay on the songwriter Bill Fox was outstanding. Perhaps the only essay with any heart and humor was my favorite, a profile of Michel Houellebecq by Sam Lipsyte. Interestingly, neither of these writers found out a great deal about their subjects, but even the not-knowing was depicted in a really artistic manner. Okay, so there's a lot in "Read Hard" to recommend. But I'd say that the essays I've mentioned (with the exceptions of Lipsyte's and Hagan's) were good, not great. Add to those a lot of okay but mostly forgettable essays. Some of the pieces assume a really brainy, academic tone. How do you make an essay about Charles Portis dull? Ed Park manages to do so. I felt like I was in grad school again. Michelle Tea's essay about competing lesbian and transsexual festivals in Michigan began promising enough. Her casual, participatory tone was refreshing. But the essay dragged on about ten pages too long. Where was her editor? Along these same lines, Richard Powers and Tayari Jones wrote intriguing essays, but they were too short to be truly compelling. And then there's the downright ugly. Franklin Bruno wrote a profile of film critic Manny Farber that was so full of inside references you'd have to be a film scholar to digest it. Howard Hampton did the same in profiling Lester Bangs, but Hampton's essay was so convoluted as to become incomprehensible. He was maybe trying to emulate Bangs' writing? But name-dropping people that were semi-obscure 40 years ago is not overly effective. Some of these authors seem to be writing for an audience of one--themselves. Jonathan Lethem disappointingly delivered lackluster results in writing about Nathanael West. His essay was dense but ended up delivering almost no new critical insights. Then there was the essay by Stephen Elliott that wasn't about anything other than, well, himself. It was unfocused, organized around events from Elliott's life that he presumably thought the writer would find titillating or shocking. It was therapy writing, perhaps interesting to the late teens/early twenties reader on a steady diet of Bret Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski, but it wasn't artful or illuminating. It was tiresome. Frankly, it seemed out of place in this collection. "The Believer" is ostensibly focused on the act of reading. I know Elliott is a favorite of the McSweeney's crowd, but I'm still a little bit disappointed the editors chose his not once but twice for inclusion in one of their publications. In general, I think the editors are giving wide leeway to their authors but little thought to the readers. The tone and subject matter of the pieces is so scattershot that I can't imagine anyone picking up this collection (or an issue of "The Believer") and loving every single essay.
July 8, 2017
I liked the book and found most of the essays/articles interesting.
On to Read Harder.
On to Read Harder.
December 22, 2018
Ups and downs
Remember the article about the women's music festival and transgender people.
Also the piece about Dungeons and Dragons
Remember the article about the women's music festival and transgender people.
Also the piece about Dungeons and Dragons
July 16, 2022
I didn't finish this
September 22, 2011
I enjoyed almost all of the selections from Read Hard, a collection of five years of writing from The Believer journal. I mostly skipped around and read the pieces that I thought sounded most interesting to me, but I was surprised by a few as well. There were only a few articles that I skipped, which was mostly because the particular subjects of the writing didn’t interest me much as other subjects. My favorite essays are: “No Man’s Land,” a powerful piece that manages to connect “bad” neighborhoods with Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Eula Bliss, “Like Cormac McCarthy, But Funny,” an essay about the under appreciated and personal favorite author Charles Portis, by Ed Park, “In Praise Of Termites,” an essay about the film critic Manny Faber, by Franklin Bruno (author of Armed Forces one of my favorites in the 33 1/3 series), “Let Us Now Kill White Elephants,” about seminal rock critic Lester Bangs, by Howard Hampton, “Waiting For Bad Things To Happen,” about the French bad boy writer Michel Houllenbecq’s book tour in America, by Sam Lipstye, and “The American Vicarious,” about Nathaniel West’s forward looking novels, by Jonathan Lethem. However, there were several other essays of interest including: “Gidget on the Couch” by Pete Lunenfeld, “And Suppress The Unpleasant Things” by William T. Vollman, “Transit Byzantium” by Joe Hagan, “The Sinatra Doctrine” by Rich Cohen, “Symbolism And Cynicism” by Tayari Jones, and the frightening “The Score” by Stephen Elliott-READ WITH CAUTION, but read hard.
September 19, 2014
Most anthologies of essays (containing works by multiple authors) are a mixed bag to me.
The collection contained 4 essays about music (all of which except for the "Sinatra Doctrine" bored me within the first page, so I skipped them). There was an equally obtuse piece on the films of someone named Manny Faber which I also skipped. I think the inclusion of too many music essays is probably why I would never subscribe to The Believer Magazine. Other pieces seem narcissistic (Stephen Elliot's "The Score"), or I found their subject interesting but the author full of him/herself and their own opinion ("Why Look At Fish" by Ginger Strand).
On the other hand I was introduced (in well written gems) to a new author (Brian Evenson) and to an obscure bit or two of fascinating cultural history (most notably in "Whirl" by Scot Eden which considers the strange history of a eight-page weekly paper covering crime and scandal in St. Louis's black neighborhoods for over 50 years).
Finally, there was an absolutely brilliant piece by Eula Biss which connects the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder and gentrification in Chicago. It made me run out and purchase her newest essay collection, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays.
The collection contained 4 essays about music (all of which except for the "Sinatra Doctrine" bored me within the first page, so I skipped them). There was an equally obtuse piece on the films of someone named Manny Faber which I also skipped. I think the inclusion of too many music essays is probably why I would never subscribe to The Believer Magazine. Other pieces seem narcissistic (Stephen Elliot's "The Score"), or I found their subject interesting but the author full of him/herself and their own opinion ("Why Look At Fish" by Ginger Strand).
On the other hand I was introduced (in well written gems) to a new author (Brian Evenson) and to an obscure bit or two of fascinating cultural history (most notably in "Whirl" by Scot Eden which considers the strange history of a eight-page weekly paper covering crime and scandal in St. Louis's black neighborhoods for over 50 years).
Finally, there was an absolutely brilliant piece by Eula Biss which connects the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder and gentrification in Chicago. It made me run out and purchase her newest essay collection, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays.
March 15, 2011
I originally purchased this to decide whether or not I was going to subscribe to The Believer. I'm a fan of long form criticism, and there isn't enough of it to go around. The Believer still holds onto the idea that long form criticism is important. I'm glad that someone does.
What I found in these pages were essays that ranged from good to great. There wasn't a bad essay here, though some are more memorable than others. "Like Cormac McCarthy, but Funny" by Ed Park has convinced me to give Charles Portis a try. "The Bad Mormon" by Ben Ehrenreich was also fascinating. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of Rick Moody or not, but is essay "How to Be a Christian Artist" was decently written and interesting. Tom Bissel's discussion of books aimed at writers, "Sir, Permission to Go AWOL from the Interesting, Sir" has convinced me to stop reading those damn things(mostly). "Waiting for a Bad Thing" by Sam Lipsyte gave me the instant desire to find out more about Michel Houellebecq. The essay that stayed with me the most was "Transmissions from Camp Trans" by Michelle Tea.
All in all, it's a great collection. It's convinced me that I have to be a subscriber to The Believer. My only problem now is what do I read next? It's pretty hard to find quality essay work like this.
If anyone has any suggestions for collections of long form criticism, I'm all ears!
What I found in these pages were essays that ranged from good to great. There wasn't a bad essay here, though some are more memorable than others. "Like Cormac McCarthy, but Funny" by Ed Park has convinced me to give Charles Portis a try. "The Bad Mormon" by Ben Ehrenreich was also fascinating. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of Rick Moody or not, but is essay "How to Be a Christian Artist" was decently written and interesting. Tom Bissel's discussion of books aimed at writers, "Sir, Permission to Go AWOL from the Interesting, Sir" has convinced me to stop reading those damn things(mostly). "Waiting for a Bad Thing" by Sam Lipsyte gave me the instant desire to find out more about Michel Houellebecq. The essay that stayed with me the most was "Transmissions from Camp Trans" by Michelle Tea.
All in all, it's a great collection. It's convinced me that I have to be a subscriber to The Believer. My only problem now is what do I read next? It's pretty hard to find quality essay work like this.
If anyone has any suggestions for collections of long form criticism, I'm all ears!
December 20, 2014
This is a good collection of essays ranging all over the place by various authors. Frank Sinatra and Camp Trans and Bill Fox and and and.
None of the essays are bad, but some of them will invariably be not-your-cup-of-tea.
The most enjoyable & informative pieces for me were "Transmissions from Camp Trans" (by Michelle Tea and a fantastic primer for the issues surrounding transgender folks), "The Sinatra Doctrine" (by Rich Cohen and a quite-telling history of Frank Sinatra singing Paul Anka's "My Way"), and "How Far Can You Press a Poet" (by David Orr and a powerful push to read more Stevie Smith).
On many of the other pages there are little observations, facts, and deeper truths which speak in the shared voice of doubting, wondering, looking, and reporting from the strange pieces of the world we all get pulled into. Whether they be personal, political, artistic, or whatever else, the curiosity necessary to delve down to the depths and report back to those of us on "standing outside the entrance to a dark and gloomy cave".
Though, in these cases, the dark and gloomy caves are not about the darkness or gloom- they are about poking around in the mucky-muck to see who else is out there in the oddly familiar lack of fully answerable queries.
None of the essays are bad, but some of them will invariably be not-your-cup-of-tea.
The most enjoyable & informative pieces for me were "Transmissions from Camp Trans" (by Michelle Tea and a fantastic primer for the issues surrounding transgender folks), "The Sinatra Doctrine" (by Rich Cohen and a quite-telling history of Frank Sinatra singing Paul Anka's "My Way"), and "How Far Can You Press a Poet" (by David Orr and a powerful push to read more Stevie Smith).
On many of the other pages there are little observations, facts, and deeper truths which speak in the shared voice of doubting, wondering, looking, and reporting from the strange pieces of the world we all get pulled into. Whether they be personal, political, artistic, or whatever else, the curiosity necessary to delve down to the depths and report back to those of us on "standing outside the entrance to a dark and gloomy cave".
Though, in these cases, the dark and gloomy caves are not about the darkness or gloom- they are about poking around in the mucky-muck to see who else is out there in the oddly familiar lack of fully answerable queries.
Want to read
May 29, 2011My plan is to take some time and read one essay a day...which means that this should take me about a month to read. We'll see how it goes.
12/28/10 Update: Have currently only read one. But that one was awesome.
4/5/11: Update: Number of essays read is still one. Fail. But I have been reading essays in the actual Believer magazine each month...does that count for anything?
12/28/10 Update: Have currently only read one. But that one was awesome.
4/5/11: Update: Number of essays read is still one. Fail. But I have been reading essays in the actual Believer magazine each month...does that count for anything?
September 25, 2009
I read about 3/4 of this book. While some of the essays are interesting occasionally, I think the fact that it claims to be the best writing from 5 years of 'The Believer' is more testament to that magazine's mediocrity than anything else.
January 5, 2013
Fun and intriguing critical essays related at least marginally to various works of fiction. This is what you write if you major in American Studies, and it's quite enjoyable when done well. The music & film critics are all but incomprehensible at times.
August 7, 2011
This is a collection of stories from the Believer. Skipped some stories, while others were great. I feel like I need to live in a world where everyone gets PhDs in poetry and literature to really be into some of these, but I enjoyed a few of the stories here.
June 25, 2011
I think I need to start subscribing to The Believer. While I didn't read every essay contained here, I was blown away by how good Transmission from Trans Camp was and completely enchanted with the essay on, of all things, Paul Anka. Lots of good stuff in here!
April 18, 2016
This collection is a good way to find new writers you may have never read before. Some of the essays were excellent and some I just skipped after the first page because I had no interest in the style or topic.
The pieces by Rich Coen, Paul La Farge, and Scott Eden were my favorites.
The pieces by Rich Coen, Paul La Farge, and Scott Eden were my favorites.
May 9, 2017
Incredibly uneven-- not surprising for a collection of essays. There are half a dozen things in here that are brilliant, half a dozen that are so awful that they are more or less unreadable, and the rest fall someplace in the middle.
July 5, 2012
It only took a year and two states to finally read this book, obtained from a library of a city I used to live in. Some truly gorgeous writing. Aquariums, memoir, Sinatra and much, much, more.
April 30, 2020
convinced me to subscribe
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews