With many eyes on McSweeney’s (who’s seen the Panorama??), it’s well to speculate that if 2008 was a great year for The Believer, and 2009 was even better??, than 2010 might be the best yet. (Indeed, if the January issue, featuring the best online full text content–an early frontrunner for essay of the year from Chris Bachelder and a novel, “anonymous” review by Justin Taylor–since at least July 2004?, is indicative…)
Well, 2008, when interviews introduced my brother (and then me) to my favorite storytellers of the 90s (Diane Williams for her three collections Selected in Excitability) and the 00s (Julie Hecht for the best novel / stories / nonfiction triptych in a single decade since–ever?) was a great year for the magazine with my other favorite managing editor (the Oberlin to Tyler’s Kenyon).
If 2009’s issues didn’t have the same individual impact, it’s only because I had started reading Jesse Ball (storyteller of the 10s?) just before finding Blake Butler’s review of The Way Through Doors, which I missed in May, for myself (thanks, Jacob; thanks, managing editor!), and because (thanks to the managing editor) I’d already re-re-reread every Gary Lutz sentence there is before re-re-rereading “The Sentence Is A Lonely Place” in the January issue.
Come to think of it, the best essay in 2008 also appeared in January (Leland de la Durantaye’s “Ghost Stories for the Very Adult”; I gotta get my hands on Theodor McDermott’s Meatyard piece in Jan 07). I can’t imagine another essay bettering Bachelder’s “Toward a Theory of Surprise,” unless he writes it (see Gabe Durham’s Bachelder roundup here), but it could be a great decade for the magazine even if they don’t top this issue.
Some highlights: John D’Agata’s chronicle of suicide (this bodes well paired with the Jan 09 review of Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody), John Domini on Gilbert Sorrentino, McCann v. Hemon, Alex Whybrow on T. Scott McMillin on Emerson, and four of their best reviews (and they have been great lately???): Justin Taylor’s “Anonymous” review is simply exemplary of great reviewing, Megan Doll manages to capture the final volume of Your Face Tomorrow in a page better than seems possible, Reviews Editor Meehan Crist’s???? “reread” of Lynn Sukenick’s chapbook Houdini leads perfectly into David Gorin’s perceptive take on Kiki Petrosino’s Fort Red Border (which, with Brett Eugene Ralph’sBlack Sabbatical, is the best first book from the wonderful Sarabande Books since Carrie St. George Comer’s The Unrequited), and the last line of Rae Armantrout’s frameworthy poem (spoiler alert / not online) says it all:
I can take it with me.
I did, and having reached the last page, I’m already looking forward to the February issue: Stanley Crawford in correspondence with Noy Holland, and a roundtable on translation with Daniel Alarc??n, Eduardo Halfon, and Santiago Vaquera.
It’s going to be a good year.
?I haven’t, tho I couldn’t wait to read Gideon Lewis-Kraus’ piece on the Camino (full text here); something about his prose makes me read longer pieces than I normally would online | ?see, for example his “In the Penthouse of the Ivory Tower” in said back issue.
??2009 month-by-month price-of-admission pieces: January’s Lish interview, the perfect complement to the Lutz; two great February conversations: (David Levine with Christian Hawkey (second only to Lutz’s essay) and Ashbery interviewed by Travis Nichols; Aaron Cutler on Jonas Mekas (March/April Film issue); Christine Schutt in correspondence with Deb Olin Unferth (May); Christian B??k interview(June); Justin Taylor on Actual Air (Jul/Aug Music issue); The Great Damion Searls (more on whom anon) on ;or, The Whale (September); full text Agnes Varda interview (October); Jack Pendarvis(whose “Musin’s and Thinkin’s” is the best new column anywhere) on Thoreau (Nov/Dec Art Issue) and Joshua Cohen’s Schema: Forensic Sketches of Literary Criminals (print only).
???And Just look at the authors reviewed in 09, in addition to Ball and Kimball: Amina Cain, Moya, and S. Yizhar (full text); (Nichols on) Spicer, (Daniel Handler! on) Beckman (beautiful), and David Lau’s debut luxe Virgil and the Mountain Cat (by Dominic Luxford?????), all full text; two artful reviews from Jim Ruland (Mary Miller and Matthew Simmons, both ft); and no less than three titles from TRANSLATION GIANT Open Letter Books (Elsa Morante, Jan Kj??rstad, and Ri??ardas Gavelis, the latter two on the longlist for Best Translated Book, more on which in a future post.)
????Does anyone make more with relatively limited review space (no reviews at all in the three double issues, meaning that the above and many more were in just six issues with no more than four reviews in each) than Crist?
?????Same goes for Luxford, poetry editor extraordinaire: Armantrout, Berman, _______ (forthcoming).