Rolling Stone - Issue 1110 (August 5, 2010)

Cover – Leonardo DiCaprio – “Hanging with Leo”

The cover article about Leonardo DiCaprio, by Brian Hyatt, was well put together without necessarily breaking any new ground as journalism. Hyatt manages to outline the daily life of the actor – far from typical or routine – without gushing about his celebrity status. The piece also includes a little background information about DiCaprio’s career, as well as discussing what keeps him relevant in the film industry (mainly, being Martin Scorsese’s new golden boy).

Considering the great pieces they’ve put out so far, I was very disappointed in this issue’s “National Affairs” article. Tim Dickinson’s coverage of the Obama administration’s failure to pass an effective climate control bill felt very forced and hollow, lacking any meaningful detail. It almost read like a piece that had been written earlier, with a few names and dates filled in to fit the occasion.

This is especially evident compared to Jeff Goodell’s article “The Poisoning,” which is much better journalism. Goodell’s article explains how BP, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, chose the cheapest method of breaking up the oil – chemical dispersants. This choice was made regardless of the fact that the dispersants do not actually clean up the oil, but merely break it into separate chemicals which are just as dangerous to the ocean’s ecosystems as the oil itself. The article reveals that although the oil may be disappearing from view, the effects of the oil will be long-term and devastating.

Other articles (this was an especially feature-rich issue, for some reason) included a nice piece on M.I.A.’s career and a background piece on the personal histories of the “people” on MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” (I put “people” in quotations because it was surprising to see how many of them are college educated – one with a degree in business marketing – which makes me suspicious about how much of their personalities are really personas.)

The Reviews section was short and weak, with the new Arcade Fire album “The Suburbs” getting one of the best reviews while Bret Michaels’s “Custom Built” got one of the worst.

The Believer - Seventy-First Issue: Odradek (May 2010)

I’ve got a bit of catching up to do on “The Believer,” both in terms of “reading of” the magazine and “writing about” the magazine. So, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Highlights included:

Stephen Phelan’s “Ninjas I Have Known” discusses how, exactly, one might go about becoming a ninja. Phelan discusses this process despite openly comparing ninjas in Japan to Robin Hood of England – more folk myth than true story. Yet, because there is such a demand for ninja paraphernalia, a rich fake-cultural market for ninjas exists.

“A Glimpse of the Unplumbed Depths” discusses Annie Julia Wyman’s interest in an anachronistic book of literary theory. Perhaps the most charming article in the issue, Wyman’s writing is witty enough to stay light while at the same time discussing complex issues of the depths of knowledge and the potential to ever know all there is to know about a specific subject.

The Believer interview with Daniel Clowes – underground comics legend and creator of “Ghost World” – was thoroughly enjoyable. I was surprised (though I probably shouldn’t have been) at how artistically and intellectually he was able to discuss the comics industry.

Weak points included:

Lev Grossman’s “The Death of a Civil Servant” discusses how Leonard Woolf (eventual husband of modernism pioneer Virginia Woolf) met up in Ceylon with another British man who wrote early fantasy fiction. The article would have been good, despite its massive length, if it didn’t feel so darned long.

In “A Sunburst Above a Receding Road: How I Ruined Lolita for Myself,” Namwali Serpell parallels her repeated readings of the book with the different phases of her love life. Although well-written, the main idea behind it – interpretations of a book changing with life experiences – isn’t terribly original, and so the whole thing rang just a bit hollow by the end.

Other notes:

I was happy that Nick Hornby returned to his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column, but the column itself did not totally live up to my expectations.

Maureen Howard’s conversation with Joanna Scott was completely incomprehensible to me. I literally have no context for either author or the cultural capital to know half of what they were talking about.