THE BELIEVER MAY 2011

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:

FULL TEXT: The Believer Book Award, The Believer Poetry Award, and The Reader Survey
by The Editors

Memento Mori by Dimiter Kenarov
In Bulgaria, street obituaries called “necrologues” collapse the boundary between the city and the cemetery, tradition and modernity.*

FULL TEXT: The Immortal Horizon by Leslie Jamison
With an elevation gain twice that of Everest and a host of outsize wildlife, the Barkley Marathons may be the world’s most difficult race.

The Person Attached to the Limb by Asti Hustvedt
What did Jean-Martin Charcot, the nineteenth century’s “Napoleon of Neurosis,” really capture in his iconic portraits of hysterics?

Red Eden by Nathaniel Rich
Our ideas about Mars—from libertarian frontier to socialist utopia-reveal much more about us than they do about our neighboring planet.

Terms of Art: New Language from Contemporary Architecture by Scott Geiger

Unisex Omnisexual Purity Test reviewed by Stephen Burt

FULL TEXT: Lars Iyer’s Spurious reviewed by Casey Walker

FULL TEXT: Fabolous’s “I’m Raw” reviewed by Daniel Levin Becker

Charles Bukowski’s “Cacoethes Scribendi” reviewed by Andrew Madigan

The U.S. Census Bureau’s U.S. Census of 2010 reviewed by Jeremy Schmidt

FULL TEXT: Eyal Weizman microinterviewed by Alex Carp

Victor LaValleinterviewed by Kaitlyn Greenidge

Jenny Davidson in conversation with Cintra Wilson

Darren O’Donnell interviewed by Sheil Heti

What the Swedes Read, A new monthly column by Daniel Handler

Musin’s and Thinkin’s by Jack Pendarvis

Sedaratives with guest columnist Anthony Jeselnik

Real Life Rock Top Ten by Greil Marcus

Stuff I’ve Been Reading by Nick Hornby

“Autobiography (Pink Remix)” a new poem by Joanna Fuhrman

“Legend” A new poem by Henri Cole

Schema: Accidental Themes in Pangrams by Jude Stewart

“Comics” edited by Alvin Buenaventura