Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, by Vendela Vida. Ecco, 226 pages, $23.95.
The impulse to lump these two novels together is understandable, since Heidi Julavits and Vendela Vida are co-founders of The Believer (a literary journal I’ve written for—just once.) But there’s actually very little evidence to support the notion of a Read More
Remember when literary criticism was a frightening discipline, austere and combative? Its devotees were in the grip of implacable theory, or buried deep in the “text”—that sunless realm where books are forgotten, readers irrelevant and authors dead. Split into feuding factions, the high priests of lit crit were imposing figures who spoke in tongues, made Read More
Because no caption accompanied the photo with Heidi Julavits’ essay on hot-tubbing it in Northern California yesterday in the New York Times‘ T magazine, The Transom wondered: who are these nubile young literary folk depicted in the buff?
Apparently it was supposed to go unnoted that some of the nude party animals were Read More
If there were gay marriage, the gang that publishes The Believer could pass for the adorable adopted Malaysian children of Kurt Vonnegut and Garrison Keillor. Well, almost. True if Mr. Vonnegut had never seen war; I imagine the only war to penetrate the Believers’ middle-class upbringings was the nightly assault of Three’s Company and Alice Read More
Heidi Julavits, the 35-year-old co-editor of The Believer , the new Dave Eggers–sponsored literary magazine, arrived for her interview dressed in a style that might be called haute zoologist: angular tortoise-shell glasses, khaki zip-front jacket over a white polo shirt, and a denim skirt. And on Friday, May 2, Ms.Julavits acted like she was stepping Read More
