The Winter 2007 VQR.
The Winter 2007 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review hit subscribers’ mailboxes last week, and I just got done getting the content up on the website. This issue has got to be my favorite of those released in the fourteen months that I’ve been at VQR. Of the pieces that are available to non-subscribers, I particularly recommend:
- Charles Burns’ “One Eye.” Burns is known as a comic artist — illustrator for RAW and Sub Pop, and Harvey-winning creator of “Black Hole.” (Failing that, you might know his portrait illustrations for The Believer or his OK Soda can artwork.) As it turns out, he’s also a heck of a photographer. We’ve published twenty of his paired photos, images stacked vertically to create a new image. They’re really striking; it’s easy to forget that each pair isn’t a single image. I even put up embiggenable versions, because the little web images just don’t do them justice. Cooler still, Burns fan Chris Ware provides the introductory text.
- J. Hoberman’s “Laugh, Cry, Believe: Spielbergization and Its Discontents.” The Village Voice’s film critic looks at Hollywood’s self-assigned social mission and concludes that Steven Spielberg has provided a great deal of cover for President Bush with his recent films.
- David J. Morris’ “The Big Suck: Notes from the Jarhead Underground.” This piece, as I mentioned recently, provides a engaging look at Marines in Iraq, with striking photos by Reynaldo Leal. Morris sets aside the abstract issues of our engagement in Iraq and shows simply what it’s like to serve there.
- J. Malcolm Garcia’s “African Promise: Chad, August-September 2006.” Garcia visited N’Djamena and learned about the overlap between oil, politics, and war. In Chad, the most corrupt country in the world, it seems they’re all the same thing. This is one of several pieces that comprise the issue’s Oil in Africa portfolio.
There’s lots of other good stuff, but if you’re just going to read four, those are probably the four to read.
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