How leftist intellectuals once approached bifurcated Berlin

In 1982, the leftist intellectual journal Semiotext(e) published the German Issue, more than 300 pages dedicated to the then-split nation. Now, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the journal is reissuing it with two new introductory pieces: a preface by founding editor Sylvère Lotringer and a conversation between Lotringer and German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff.

The 300-page, 50-plus-contributor German Issue, which followed the journal's Italy Issue, was two years in the making. It is fascinating not just for its content -- it includes pieces by Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Heiner Müller, Cristo, Jean Baudrillard and William Burroughs -- but also for its nature as an artifact. It is suffused with the leftist idea of political revolution, envisioning a Marxist/socialist idyll over exploitative capitalism, which seems now to have dominated intellectual discussions during the Cold War. Even as contributors wrote about the troubling issues of  surveillance and control, there is a sense that a communist state was to be desired. "In the late seventies and early eighties, a number of innovative political experiments were being carried out, especially in Italy and Germany," Lotringer writes in his new preface. "Both [the Italy and Germany issues] were meant to investigate the future of politics in late capitalism ('post-political politics')."

The underlying assumptions are exposed in the conversation between Lotringer and Schlöndorff, which took place in June this year. "The German Left in general," Schlöndorff says, "always suspected that what was on the other side of the wall, in East Germany or in all the socialist countries for that matter, was not really socialism.... 'If you are not happy here, why don't you go to the other side?' the conservative and bourgeois press kept asking them. And I must say, in retrospect, that it was a very valid argument.... But the Left would not accept the argument. There was a complete blindness, especially in West Berlin, on the true nature of the system in the East." After the wall fell, Schlöndorff  went to East Germany to lead UFA, a once-famous film studio that had languished for decades. "I came to realize that this socialism that we had dreamt of not only had destroyed the economy, the habitat and the environment -- it had really destroyed the people; it had broken their back, their sense of initiative, of individual responsibility."

Many people are using the anniversary of the fall of the wall to look back at Germany in the Cold War era. In today's paper, Carlin Romano looks at four books that reevaluate that history, all of which point out things that have been missed, glossed over or misinterpreted. This is what makes history worth reading -- and what makes looking at Semiotext(e)'s German Issue interesting. Our 20-year vantage reveals what burdened the arguments of some of the world's most interesting thinkers, and shines a light on their blind spots.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: East German border guards watch the Berlin Wall being taken apart on Nov. 11, 1989. Credit: Gerard Malie / AFP

Philip Gourevitch to leave Paris Review

Philip Gourevitch will leave his position as editor of the Paris Review in April, the magazine announced today. Gourevitch, a former New Yorker staff writer who won the L.A. Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1998 book "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda," plans to return to writing full time. He has been editor of the Paris Review for five years.

During Gourevitch's tenure, the Paris Review, one of the nation's leading literary journals, increased circulation and advertising revenue. It gave more attention to nonfiction pieces and to photography, while changing format slightly (it got taller). Gourevitch edited the magazine's series of books of its interviews with writers, now on its fourth volume. And the Paris Review also developed a genuine Web presence, putting piles of content online, including new stories, literary events, video and rich archives.  

"It has been a great honor -- and great fun -- to have relaunched this wonderful magazine," Gourevitch said in the press release. "I published my own first stories and reportage in quarterlies, and it’s thrilling to have been able to give a comparable opportunity to a host of uncommonly gifted new writers, who have appeared in the Review and are going on to forge the literature of our time. I’m forever grateful to the board of directors that entrusted me with this essential magazine -- and to the brilliant staff who have joined me in this labor of love."

The Paris Review was founded in 1953 by George Plimpton, William Pène du Bois, Thomas H. Guinzburg, Harold L. Humes and Peter Matthiessen. Plimpton was editor until his death in 2003; Matthiessen, who won the 2008 National Book Award for "Shadow Country," will lead the search committee for a new editor.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Philip Gourevitch in 2008. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Vibe Mag returns with Chris Brown on the cover

When Vibe Magazine closed its doors in June, there was a chorus of sadness -- for that magazine's coverage of hip-hop and other music, and for music magazines in general. Two months later, a group of investors stepped in with plans to revive it, both online and in print.

The first edition of the new print Vibe is due to hit stands Dec. 8, and it's bound to stir up controversy. The cover will feature Chris Brown, who pleaded not guilty to assaulting Rihanna in August and has been on tour this fall. Actually, that's half the print run -- the other half will feature rapper Drake. But for all Drake's visibility, Brown's notoriety is already drawing attention.

Advertising Age observes:

If the choice [of Brown] succeeds in generating the buzz that's intended, Vibe's cover will show off the power that print can still wield. Putting a feature about the tarnished pop star online alone, by contrast, probably wouldn't stand to get the same attention.

The new Vibe will print just four times a year; Vibe.com, the new owners insist, is the hub. "Whether it's the magazine, or we decide to do some kind of TV programming down the line," editor in chief Jermaine Hall told Advertising Age, "everything needs to come back to Vibe.com."

Meanwhile, the often snarky Village Voice is pulling for Vibe, in whatever forms it takes.

We wish them luck--may they make enough money to employ all those they once laid off and perhaps, along the way, revive a magazine that was almost always essential, even at the very end.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Chris Brown performs in October 2009. Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Take Proust's questionnaire, rub shoulders with literati

It is said that when Proust was 13, he answered an English-language questionnaire, and at age 20 another one in French. These were kind of a parlor game, which he eventually popularized, asking guests and acquaintances about heroes and fears and their idea of perfect happiness, trying to get at the true nature of one's character.

Since 1993, Vanity Fair has been posing its own version of Proust's questionnaire to celebrities, literary and otherwise. It's gathered the answers from 101 of them in a new book, the aptly titled "Vanity Fair's Proust's Questionnaire," hitting shelves next week. It includes writers Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr., Gore Vidal and Salman Rushdie, alongside David Bowie, Johnny Cash, James Brown, Hedy Lamarr, Keith Richards and Shirley MacLaine.

But that's not all: On its website, Vanity Fair has posted an interactive questionnaire for the rest of us. Fill in your answers, and it tells you which celebrity your answers are the most like.

Me, I'm more than 93% David Mamet. Wow. Not too shabby.

OK, I wasn't writing Mamet-like sentences -- as far as I can tell, the match was made because I answered one question exactly the same as he had. So it may not be entirely scientific, this online version, but it is rather flattering.

Vanity Fair has posted recent answers online -- as well as Proust's from 1891, when he was 20. When asked how he would like to die, he answered, "A better man than I am, and much beloved." And so he did.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Norman Mailer. Credit: Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times

Gourmet magazine will close, report says

Magazine empire Conde Nast, home of Vogue and the New Yorker, will announce the closure of Gourmet this morning, according to a report in the New York Times, which calls the move "startling."

Like many other media companies, Conde Nast is facing difficult times. In the not-so-distant past, it shuttered shopping magazine Domino and folded Men's Vogue into a twice-yearly supplement to Vogue. But so far, victims of its contractions have been newer titles.

With Gourmet apparently at the end of its run, that has changed. The magazine has been published since 1940 and is edited by the popular food writer Ruth Reichl (former restaurant critic and Food editor for the L.A. Times). It's also given Pulitzer Prize-winner Jonathan Gold, who has celebrated L.A.'s diverse low-end restaurants, a different kind of platform for his writing. Gourmet may have been seen as more prestigious than sibling magazine Bon Appetit -- founded by Pillsbury 15 years later -- but Bon Appetit will be the one that continues to publish.

Other Conde Nast magazines headed to extinction are Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride (fear not, engaged ladies, Bride itself has survived). 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: SuperFantastic via Flickr

Lit geek fun: the New Yorker begins blogging its archives

When the New Yorker made its complete archives available via DVD, I was thrilled to get the set. Sometimes I'd pop a DVD in and page through the earliest copies. Once I read everything Pauline Kael had ever published with the magazine. If I could immerse myself in seven-plus decades of archives, I just might.

Apparently, some people immerse themselves in archives for a living -- like the New Yorker's librarians. Today, the magazine launched a new blog, Back Issues, which will be steered by its two librarians.

We’ll plumb the archive for Profiles of people making news now, look into previous coverage of long-standing issues, and seek out notable pieces that feel as relevant today as when they were first published.

We also intend to create a forum in which our readers can participate. We’ll want to hear from you about your favorite New Yorker pieces, and we’ll be bringing the Ask the Librarianscolumn from its original home on Emdashes to answer your questions about the magazine’s history.

Although it hasn't yet posted much, it's an outgrowth of a series of posts from the magazine's Newsdesk blog that began in January. There, they've posted pieces of a 1969 account of watching the moon landing in Central Park and Lou Gehrig's first appearance in their pages, in 1927. Which is great for those of us who aren't supposed to be getting lost in the depths of those DVDs.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: U.S. National Archives, 1950, via Flickr.

Vibe magazine is heading back to screens, then stands

Vibe magazine, which folded at the end of June, is being resuscitated by a group of investors, according to an Aug. 12 report by the Wall Street Journal. Although details of the deal are sketchy, AdAge reports that former Vibe Group publisher Leonard Burnett Jr. seems to be in the mix.

News of Vibe's closure, announced suddenly in June, was met with surprise, sighs and regret. Surprise because, with more than 16 years of publishing behind it, Vibe seemed a pretty solid bet. Sighs because a 40% dropoff in ad revenue this year -- industry-wide drops averaged a "mere" 28% -- showed it could teeter pretty quickly. And regret because Vibe gave special attention to African American artists, one of the earliest major music magazines to do so.

"As former Editorial intern at Vibe/Vibe Vixen Magazine," Deja Gilmore wrote in Jacket Copy's comments, "I truly am saddened by the sudden downfall of the magazine. Vibe Magazine has been such a staple in music culture that its hard to see it go. Danyel Smith is an amazing EIC and I know that the staff there, which are of a very diverse variety, worked hard on every issue."

The new owners have confirmed that Vibe.com will return in the next few weeks; Tuesday night, the site  displayed a purple-and-gold banner declaring, "Vibe Under New Management: Updates Coming Soon." Plans are to bring a print Vibe back around the end of the year, and then produce it quarterly in 2010.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Vibe

RELATED: June 30, 2009: Vibe Magazine shuts doors, sends Gawker a goodbye note

Long-lost Graham Greene work to be serialized in the Strand

The first lines Graham Greene uttered in the literary universe are these, from his 1929 novel "The Man Within":

He came over the top of the down as the last light failed and could almost have cried with relief at sight of the wood below. He longed to fling himself down on the short stubbly grass and stare at it, the dark comforting shadow which he had hardly hoped to see...

We're introduced to the character of Andrews, who in the course of the novel attempts to flee smugglers he has betrayed. Future biographies, however, may need to replace those first lines with these:

Alice Lady Perriham had overloaded her piece of toast. She had done so in pure abundance of spirit, because the winter sun streamed in a crisp yellow glow across the breakfast table, and because everyone around her was happy.

This comes from an unpublished, unfinished novel Greene wrote when he was 22. The Strand Magazine is taking the five chapters of the manuscript and will publish them as a serial, starting with its forthcoming July issue.

"To me what is wonderful about all of this is that Greene published a few short stories in the old Strand," said Andrew Gulli, the Strand’s managing editor, "so I feel we’re continuing the tradition."

According to Gulli, the manuscript was discovered by Greene scholar Francois Gallix at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin.

"Gallix set up a team of people and transcribed the handwritten material," he said.

Gulli gave Jacket Copy a preview of this first chapter, which is titled "The Empty Chair." One’s initial reaction is that the novelist who wrote this is (understandably) a far cry from the one who went on to produce "The Third Man," "The Power and the Glory" and "The Human Factor."

How so? That's after the jump.

Should John Wray be less fashionable?

Writer John Wray's third novel, "Lowboy," came out this year to high praise. In the book, a paranoid schizophrenic teen rides the New York subways as, in a parallel narrative, a missing person's specialist tries to find him. Our reviewer Akiva Gottlieb compared the book to iconic novels by Paul Auster and Jonathan Lethem, concluding:

Wray fully envelops the reader in both the existential and quotidian concerns of his afflicted protagonist. Lowboy's hero-projections and hormonal overdrive are, in this author's hands, tragically epic expressions of an ordinary teenage fatalism. "The world is inside of me," Lowboy warns, and the author does not mean to contradict him. This poetic, stirringly strange novel offers an empathic reminder that, for many, the light at the end of the tunnel can be taken for a harbinger of doom.

Wray's first book, "The Right Hand of Sleep," earned him a prestigious Whiting Award, and he was named one of America's best young novelists by Granta in 2007. In a profile this spring, New York Magazine called him "a phenomenally versatile writer."

He's a writer with serious literary credentials, one who, by all accounts, is due for more attention than before. So why wouldn't Esquire ask him to write some short-short fictions to accompany a fashion spread? And why, like any writer who needs to make a living, wouldn't Wray say yes?

The result, Esquire's Collected Short Stories of Summer Style, shows that sometimes it might be better to make like Nancy Reagan and just say no.

The four pieces by Wray are inelegantly written and belabor the obvious: Objects in fashion photos are sexualized, or they're meant as signals for sex. Fashion photos are carefully created to tell stories -- yes, pants hanging on a wall imply that someone is, sexily, pantsless -- and in each instance, Wray fails to tell a better story than the photographer and stylist did in the first place.

Clearly, Wray is a gifted writer, one who is willing to experiment with his writing. Which means now and then an experiment is going to go wrong.

Or did it? Take a look and tell us whether you think Wray should skip the fashion next time.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: John Wray. Credit: Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press

Vibe magazine closing

Vibe magazine will cease publication, according to a report on the AOL-owned site Daily Finance.

Founded in 1993 by Quincy Jones and Time Warner, Vibe has been a general interest music magazine that covered politics and current events as well as hip-hop and soul. Called by some -- well, Wikipedia -- "the black Rolling Stone," Vibe was bought by the Wicks Group in 2006. Its circulation, reported to advertisers at 818,000 earlier late last year, had fallen to 600,000, the New York Times reports.

Although the magazine had already implemented cost-cutting measures, including layoffs and a four-day work week, staff today were told that its run was over. Editor Danyel Smith sent this sad note to Gawker:

On behalf the VIBE CONTENT staff (the best in this business), it is with great sadness, and with heads held high, that we leave the building today. We were assigning and editing a Michael Jackson tribute issue when we got the news. It's a tragic week in overall, but as the doors of VIBE Media Group close, on the eve of the magazine's sixteenth anniversary, it's a sad day for music, for hip hop in particular, and for the millions of readers and users who have loved and who continue to love the VIBE brand. We thank you, we have served you with joy, pride and excellence, and we will miss you.

Danyel Smith
the former Chief Content Officer VIBE Media Group
& Editor in Chief, VIBE

Gawker speculated that Vibe may have had the most demographically diverse readership of any music magazine. Will those readers find a place to gather -- say, at  the Source or HiphopDX? Or is it more likely that they'll scatter to smaller music venues? Can publishing sustain a general interest music magazine anymore?

-- Carolyn Kellogg