ISSUE 7 | AUG 2011

LIES

The cookie has a novelty laser print on it - docusoap - two varieties of the reality show fantasy - entirely aware of the artifice - a doppelganger world - people who still believe entirely in reality TV - something unsettling - Santa is an okay thing for society - a moment of entertainment, or maybe even of inspiration

Avi Garelick

God for the Perplexed

two dangerous works of Jewish heresy - the Dominican intervention - the study of systematic theology - God in terms of reason - His strong hand, His outstretched arm, His face - a philosopher’s predilections - the tenets of negative theology - disdain for spiritual intuition - an ideal category, a conceptual defect, or a failure of practice? - why ask an expert when you could ask a book? - « if I am greater than he »

Daniel Mizrahi

Lies and Method

instability, defense, obviousness - which are closer to obituaries for his prior texts - a transformation of the closest phenomena - the possibility that thought may be methodological at all - whether defense demands the lie - risk and method - truth and method - lies or method

Noah Kumin

Spies, Damned Spies, and Status Seekers: The Lonely Life of a Soviet Socialite

a dinner party - a dowdy woman with her skirt hiked up - a commission from Stalin - a controversialist, a playboy, and a pain in the ass - « the majority of this country's most polished sons are pederasts » - a business trip to the Citadel - tricked by the Soviets - « one of the few Old Etonians who wear an Old Etonian bow-tie » - Burgess in Moscow - a chummy dialogue - Everyman, that ubiquitous Soviet hero - « the feather-bed after the chaise-longue » - duped along with the rest - no more double lives

Cat Pierro

The Only Good Elephant

« I have always been a liar » - the stink of falsity - the elephant, blinking and sweating - let’s make him wince a little - « But fellows, it’s true! » - the air clears

Courtney Chatellier

On Giving the Lie

« I don’t have an iPhone » - the artistry and etiquette of lying - a performative, a kind of gauntlet-throwing - sovereignty and the Word - the special impotence of speechlessness - « to say he Lies, tho' but in Jest, is an Affront that nothing but Blood can expiate » - 1.) once; 2.) in time; and 3.) unmistakably - thunderclap—echo - authorship or ownership of the lie

Samantha Demby

Shed Skin

I am going to kill this philosopher - « unreason... into the light like a worm » - the wrong context - a core of subjective sightlessness - what a good truth conceals - the « feeling of real » - spasms of pesky necessity - hormones and weather and degrees of caffeination - skin-shedding

Elizabeth Bidwell Goetz

Cherchez la Femme

nice, thick, colored markers - the first time he bought his mother dinner - parading attempts at cool - misquoted Tolstoy - a middle-aged host in a movie - two types of secrets - stories to brag about - supposed to be a hippie - none of her own

Jaclyn Backhaus

There Lies London, an Escapade

does not equal, does not exist - thinly veiled and oft-pointed pseudonyms - a Cornhusker with a heart of Great Plainsy Gold - a whole chunk of wasabi paste - two suburban suffixual ‘wests - bubbled and simmered and kept me hungry - the act of togethering - I did not upchuck, but did I want to? - God, make me faster! - a kingdom united - is this a love that works? - the Rosetta Stone - beans on toast - the desert mouse

Alex Rothbard

The Architecture of Conspiracy Theories

a disgust, a disdain - birtherism - « death panels » - by no means the province of a completely isolated fringe - not defined either by their substance, nor by their adherents - the style of the conspiratorial imagination - new evidence is folded in - a story buried in the back of a small town newspaper - « There's nothing theoretical in what we talk about » - cui bono - a comprehensible soap opera - cognitive infiltration