Excellent new issue of the Believer, featuring an obit of obits on Susan Sontag
First, go Tufts Boston Marathon team! Today is the greatest day of the year in Boston—half the city has the day off work for Patriots Day, the Red Sox play an 11am game (4-4, end of the sixth, the offense is starting to come around), and someone you know is running the Boston Marathon.
I’m about to head down to Copley to the finish line but wanted to give a quick plug to the top-flight April issue of the Believer. The evaluation of Susan Sontag obituaries—many of them snide, prejudiced, and generally unusually critical—offered a fantastic look into how America deals with its female intellectuals (the short version: not all our smart women are as self-effacing as, say, guy’s gal Doris Kearns Goodwin, and even she didn’t get cut the slack David McCullogh did after their footnoting blow-ups).
The Believer also published a partial transcript of Adam Curtis’ The Power of Nightmares, a documentary that traces the power of ideas—and the persons they’re connected through. The transcript comes from the first episode, which traces the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” straight on through to 9/11—and it actually makes a bit of sense, scarily enough.
And as always, kudos to the Believer for producing the most distinctive and lovely design in literary journalism.
