THE BELIEVER FEBRUARY 2014

$16.00 $8.00


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.

Table of Contents:

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Acting out pain until that pain becomes real, for $13.50 an hour.

Everything Is Going to Be OK, Michael Schulman
In 1994, the Coca-Cola Company created an apathetic soda brand to win the hearts of Generation X. It didn’t work.

On the Open Polar Sea by Colin Dickey
Near the North Pole, discredited science makes for great science fiction.

Lydia Millet interviewed by Colin Winnette
The novelist discusses her early-’90s stint working as a copy editor” at Hustler magazine.

What the Swedes Read by Daniel Handler

“Comics,” edited by Alvin Buenaventura

Schema: Literary Technoprognosticators, Michael Barron
Tracing many of life’s modern conveniences back to novels and short stories.

Reviews
Stephen Burt on the melodica, Nathan Jandl on Ted Leeson, Mark Susman on Daniel Spoerri

Pillow of Air by Lawrence Weschler

Diana Reiss interviewed by Meehan Crist
The animal-cognition researcher explains explains how dolphins are a little like human children and a lot like aliens.

Donald Antrim interviewed by Drew Smith
“I mainly feel that I’m not up to the job, but that I’m going to go ahead and do it. I’m quite serious when I say that.”

“H-Bomb”: a new poem by Tyler Mills

Real Life Rock Top Ten, by Greil Marcus

Patrice Wilson interviewed by John Semley
The songwriter/producer/viral-video mastermind on the haters and on rhyming broccoli with Monopoly.

Stuff I’ve Been Reading by Nick Hornby<