Debut Issue

FRED ASTAIRE
"Can't act, can't sing, balding. Dances a little." Yeah, right!

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN
Anti-antidepressants for people who slow down sadness to pursue happiness.

THOMAS BERGER
His novels can be nasty, brutish, and short—and addictive.

BOOK BARN (Hillsdale, New York)
It is what it is: a barn filled with books.

BRIEF LIVES
By John Aubrey
Enigmatic and idiosyncratic biographical sketches. My copy smells of damp.

DENNIS COOPER
Each sentence groans under the weight of the following sentence.

E-MAIL
How did we live without it? Well, we wrote letters.

AGOTA KRISTOF
Makes you wonder what you're doing in an alternate reality.

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW
It's like a tuning fork made of gold. See it.

TRUNG NGUYEN
Strangely potent Vietnamese coffee. Hard-to-decipher ingredients suggest carcinogens.