Believer
In the new Believer, Nick Hornby writes that "writing, especially writing a column, is all about tone." My tone is definitely off key, because while TEKKA isn't half bad (and a new issue will be out soon!) it hasn't got David Mamet concocting a confectionary etymology of copacetic that involves a house dick and a piece of furniture. Nor does it have a two-page graphic spread on the recent spate of books on golems: who knew? And it doesn't have Hornby on The Classics:
There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you've got to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun. Persons of Letters have to read things like Candide or they're a few letters short of the whole alphabet; book lovers, meanwhile, can read whatever they fancy.
I picked up Candide because my publisher sent me a cute new edition, and though that in itself wouldn't have persuaded me, I flicked through it and discovered it was only ninety pages long. Ninety pages! Who knew, apart from all of you, and everybody else?
Oh, and there's a review of a new Carol Emshwiller collection. Something with David Sedaris. Oh, my.