The Believer October 2004

The Insurgency in Iraq—A Tutorial in Four Ordnance-Filled Lessons
by Charles Duhigg
A journalist’s brushes with the Iraqi insurgency inspire a primer in the science of guerrilla warfare.

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Let There Be Darkness
by William Giraldi
In which the phrase “read it and weep” is transformed from blithe sarcasm to earnest advice.

H. P. Lovecraft: Against Nature, Against Life
by Michel Houellebecq
The first appearance in English of Houellebecq’s appreciation of Lovecraft, “the supreme antidote against all forms of reason.”

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A Soldier Upon a Hard Campaign
by Chris Bachelder
On satire, Upton Sinclair’s astonishing deployment of exclamation points, and the possibilities of politically engaged writing.

The Gloriously Irresponsible Career of Scott Bradfield
by Benjamin Strong
Scott Bradfield’s psychotic child prodigies and malaise-

ridden dogs have something to tell us about the narcotizing ordinariness of modern life.

John Kerry
interviewed by ZZ Packer
The candidate on improving health care, education, the tax code, the unemployment rate, the prison system, and the rest of the world, too.

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Michael Bell
interviewed by Matthew Derby
Goths at the mall and Dracula aren’t vampires. Vampires are just rotting corpses who kill their kin while still lying inside their coffins.

Janet Malcolm
interviewed by Daphne Beal
The author of The Journalist and the Murderer on the rhetoric of email and the betrayal of the interview subject.