The Believer

A quarterly literature, arts, and culture magazine.

[The Believer @believermag]

Our summer issue is headed to the printer!

To celebrate, print subscriptions are 25% off through Monday. Each subscription includes full digital access to our twenty-year archive and new web exclusives. Link in bio.

[The Believer @believermag]

“The scariest possible thing... is this very basic human connection where you say, ‘I feel this way,’ or ‘I am scared,’ and his worldview was: that’s what has to win; that’s how people should write.”

—Michael Schur on David Foster Wallace (Issue 113)

https://t.co/tF87VdiMzF

[The Believer @believermag]

In the days after Juneteenth, a critic meditates on seasonal language, justice delayed, and what gets lost in the process of periodization.
https://t.co/byVawmT5xk

[The Believer @believermag]

Schizophrenia’s effects are often discussed in metaphors. What is it like to live with those metaphors?
https://t.co/56YRZN8clg

[The Believer @believermag]

"There are moments when we recognize our inner selves in novels. It might be why we read them: to feel that we’re not floundering alone in the indifferent, midnight murk of the universe, for here is the lifeline of a kindred voice."
https://t.co/GwWHYXZDyc

[The Believer @believermag]

@John_Wray on The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years: https://t.co/ngHJCDanno

[The Believer @believermag]

"He offers his mother a drink, lets out a cackle of unadulterated suffering, and announces, with a toothy all-American smile: 'I'm a happy camper.' Then he lets himself disappear into the pool."

[The Believer @believermag]

"I had this three-minute rule that if you just shut up and let someone talk, within three minutes they will show you how crazy they really are. And it has happened time and time and time again."

—@errolmorris, in conversation with Werner Herzog

https://t.co/rm6f0FZp41

[The Believer @believermag]

Emma Copley Eisenberg on Eastwick, Philadelphia, from her contribution to the Sacrifice Zone guest column:
https://t.co/rCotnbfIlU

[The Believer @believermag]

"Eastwick, I’m seeing, is now a place where things are moved and sold, stored and forgotten. But it was not always this way. In order for something to be sacrificed, it must first be precious."

[The Believer @believermag]

“What terrifies me is not death, but life, and the ego driven by desire.”

—Ahmed Naji, interviewed by Anna DeForest for their new web column on mortality

https://t.co/pkcQiMr8g8

[The Believer @believermag]

Kristin Keane confronts death through the eye of the animal cam: https://t.co/askCUpst53

[The Believer @believermag]

"I find it crazy that people accept and believe in things like modern psychology, nationalities as true identities, dying for pieces of cloth called flags, but they will doubt the idea of existing after death."

—Ahmed Naji, interviewed for A Good Exit

https://t.co/wJyepiQPnS

[The Believer @believermag]

From “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” an essay by @ThatAtkinson: https://t.co/rlhDAk4nVE

[The Believer @believermag]

“Clearly, I was the monster-­culture equivalent of the gay Midwestern kid who feels a ­bajillion miles away from Broadway, or the Mormon youngster who feels imprisoned until he reads Naked Lunch. The midcentury was chockablock with our kind, I know now.”

[The Believer @believermag]

DISCUSSED: Nice Girls Who Like Stuff, Abercrombie and Fitch, One-Armed Pushups, California Adolescence, Weed, The Redemptive Quality of Sensory Exploration
https://t.co/2BvA17DUpe

[The Believer @believermag]

"I can’t handle the cult of the chef as the tortured genius. At this point, it’s a disease in the restaurant world. You didn’t invent anything. You pushed some stuff together and you made it taste good."

—Brooks Headley, interviewed by @waxingthecurb

https://t.co/cbHZHTlgnr

[The Believer @believermag]

"I’d been told to say we didn’t carry any of the author’s books. This was true. It wasn’t about censorship but, evidently, taste. The books, it seemed, just weren’t that good. I wouldn’t share with the paper that I gravitated toward the tasteless."

https://t.co/OQAKn25U7h

[The Believer @believermag]

From “How to Walk Around New York,” an essay by Amy Fusselman: https://t.co/syMWK07JYd

[The Believer @believermag]

“It would be like thinking about if you never met your partner, you know? It’s like that kind of dread.”

—filmmaker @howtojohnwilson on the fear of missing a particular shot

[The Believer @believermag]

“When you have the right book, you have not only a companion but a seductress at your side. When you pick the wrong book, you have a nuisance, a chatterbox, the wrong friend for the ride.”

Twenty-three writers on a past disillusionment with reading:
https://t.co/9YgVeaPnpV