THE BELIEVER APRIL 2005

$16.00 $8.00
ISBN : 1543-6101


After a half decade away The Believer has returned home to McSweeney’s. To celebrate the momentous occasion, we’ve dug through our archives and found an extremely limited number of classic and timeless issues for your purchasing pleasure. Once these are gone, they’re gone forever.

Crimes Against the Reader
by Rick Moody
Looking back on the National Book Award and the ire it inspired.

“I Do Not Expect You to Like It”
by Stephen Burt
The passionate, tormented, propulsive, exhilarating, stagy, ambitious, profound, intuitive, and New Zealish poetry of James K. Baxter.

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How Far Can You Press a Poet?
by David Orr
Stevie Smith’s clowning rhythms, throwaway jottings, and ludicrous asides adorned her desperate, nakedly lyrical poetry.

Magical Passes
by Suzanne Snider
New Age author Carlos Castaneda is dead, but the sorcery of Don Juan Matus is alive and well in a dance studio in TriBeCa.

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Dr. Thompson’s Wars
by J. M. Tyree
An appreciation of the late Hunter S. Thompson, relentless opponent of the Nixonian mind-set—still very much with us today in Iraq.

Jacques Bailly
interviewed by Josh Fischel
The National Spelling Bee’s official pronouncer shares a few of his favorite words. And no, “geeldikkop” is not one of them.

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China Miéville
interviewed by Lou Anders
Are westerns inherently gay? Do political thrillers need monsters? Was Frankenstein really a golem? China Miéville has the answers.

Sarah Jones
interviewed by Miles Marshall Lewis
The poetry wunderkind takes on racism, autobiographical fiction, and the perks of being a spoken-word rock star.

Mick Napier
interviewed by Peter Grosz
If a man repeatedly dropping a peanut for no apparent reason makes you laugh, then improv director Mick Napier wants to be your friend.

Underway
by Various

Mannequin Appropriation Project: Sweater Over Untucked Dress Shirt
by Chuck Klosterman

Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s The Orchard
reviewed by Sarah Manguso

Peter Rushforth’s Pinkerton’s Sister
reviewed by Dan Johnson

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Petros Abatzoglou’s What Does Mrs. Freeman Want?
reviewed by Darren Reidy

Keith Lee Morris’s The Best Seats In The House
reviewed by William Giraldi

Miriam Toews’s A Complicated Kindness
reviewed by Kevin Sampsell

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Michael Palmer’s Company Of Moths
reviewed by Milton L. Welch

Large Books, Small Room
by Ray Bradbury

La Zona Fantasma
by Javier Marías

Stuff I’ve Been Reading
by Nick Hornby

Letter from the Mountains: A Poem
by James K. Baxter

Enough: a new poem
by Jenn Habel

Schema: Donor Categories
by Brian McMullen & Leah Beeferman

Four-Color Comics: “Picasso: His Astonishing Life, Narrated by a Hamburger”
by Michael Kupperman