The December/January 2006 issue of the Believer is our second-annual VISUAL ISSUE. It comes with the debut issue of Wholphin, a quarterly DVD magazine published by McSweeney's. Issue No. 1 features films by Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Miranda July, and Miguel Arteta, as well as appearances by David Byrne, Patton Oswalt, and many others.
The non-DVD part of the December/January issue includes an essay about a guy who hacks old Nintendo cartridges in order to make groundbreaking contemporary art;
Paul Collins on the death masks of famous dead people;
the extraordinary painter Eric Fischl on “eleven artists from everywhere,” presented in a sumptous art-heavy full-color section;
John Glassie on our weird uncle Thomas Eakins and the nudity and obsessive milk drinking that eventually led to the invention of cinema and the rebirth of American painting;
Dennis Lim on the best Malaysian film-essayist of all time;
Margot Mifflin on the history of tattoos in literature (which culminates with Shelley Jackson’s story “Skin,” written only as tattoos on 2,095 living bodies);
John Barth on the best first lines of all time;
Miranda July and Jockum Nordstrom in conversation, drawing deep inspiration from a tribe of female tourists in Manhattan;
and an interview with artist Matthew Ronay, probably the most sublime and ridiculous interview we’ve run in over thirty-five years.
Plus: Amy Sedaris, Javier Marías, Michael Kupperman, Wisdomleaf O’Sallystone’s Experimentalist Manifesto (note: not really), and an interview with the artist Layla Ali.
