Literary magazines and I have not had good relations. We’ve tried short and passionate, slow and sustained. We’re just too different. I prefer book-length fiction from authors I already know. Picking up a journal for the sake of “discovery” leaves me feeling over-exerted, as if I’ve bought a hen to make an omelette. Breaking new talent and welcoming home the underappreciated author is why most literary magazines exist. Our purposes then crossed somewhere east of the shower in my master bathroom, where a stack of unread, unloved journals serves as a pedestal for the toilet plunger.

Why then did I leap to attention when Mr. Powazek asked for my thoughts on The Virginia Quarterly Review? I had read and loved their blog.

You heard me right. VQR has a blog which is updated with vigor by editor-in-chief Ted Genoways and his staff. While most journals warm to technology about as eagerly as Quakers warm to firearms (emperor of the genre The Paris Review didn’t feel it necessary to have a website until 2000), VQR seems to think there’s more than one way to interact with their publication. And more than one kind of reader in mind when a new issue goes to print.

It was in that spirit of openness that I eagerly thumbed through VQR’s Winter 2008 issue, cover illustration and reimagined masthead by graphic novelist Chris Ware. Coming in at 290 pages, many in full color and with binding slick as a turtle shell, it could, despite its earned claim of being “a National Journal of Literature and Discussion” have passed as a commercial Southern Lifestyle magazine or its parent university’s annual report.

Inside those adornments stepped aside. Deep white pages and tight print held photojournalism from Iraq and Afghanistan, a symposium on Polish intellectual Ryszard Kapuściński (featuring the star wattage of Salman Rushdie and Werner Herzog) an assessment of novelist Dennis Johnson and a dozen poems. Thematically, the issue centers the theme of torture as a method of exploring our civic and human obligations in the face of institutionalized evil. Poet Jane Hirshfield, in an essay around the volume’s midpoint, calls the hopeful result of this process “the heart shattered, from stone-adamance to open.”

There is more, much more and I’ll confess I didn’t read it all or this report would have arrived courtesy of the year 2016. But what I did was first rate: erudite yet plain-spoken, aggressively diverse and lined with the quiet confidence of masters at home in their craft. That the pieces keep to the theme yet live independently of it adds two benefits: The issue possesses a unity many magazines strive for yet refuse to admit matters only to them (most magazines aren’t read front to back or even completed) and that same unity makes the VQR feel like its supposed to be sat around in conversation, like a table, instead of read through alone, like a parchment scroll.

The Virginia Quarterly Review was founded in 1925 at the request of then University of Virginia President E. A. Alderman. Its early days were in large part devoted to showcasing southern literature (often overlooked by the New York publishing establishment) and adapting liberal policy positions on racial issues. Since 2003, it’s been edited by 35-year-old Ted Genoways, a Walt Whitman scholar largely credited with heaving the magazine over the wall of the 20th century into the courtyard of the 21st. The investigative reporting, comics and photo spreads may have been his idea but the VQR and its readers are the better for it. Far too many of this magazine’s compatriots see virtue in bargain basement design, default typesetting and cover illustrations that can best be described as from the High Graduate Intern Period. There isn’t any and VQR knows better. Its foresight has earned it two National Magazine Awards and ten nominations in the past 5 years.

I speak of my past failed relationships with literary magazines not as a spurned artist (I’ve never submitted anything to the Paris Review, Tin House, or their lesser known cousins) but a dejected consumer. Literary magazines are looking for readers who aren’t hungry agents or English graduates in the midst of a job search. I went looking for the refracted glory that comes from being a subscriber to both Entertainment Weekly and something with a name like Leafpile Review or Black Rock Wainscotting. I had my best face on when I attended the 2006 Associated Writing Programs conference (The Detroit Auto Show of university writing departments and the journals they produce) and swept a mass of potential mates into a free tote bag. Worried about the heavy flight home, I asked one booth minder, all of 22, if the journal she represented had any sample stories on their website I could try out before committing. “We don’t believe that’s necessary” she snapped back as if I’d asked for her opinion on waterboarding.

The Virginia Quarterly Review offers selections from every issue on their website for free. Subscribers get keys to the whole thing.

This is more than a crush. This could be love.

I can’t stay still. I fidget, I travel, I move often. Until I attain my live-in librarian dream, I’m always looking out for that nearly perfect living gig, whether it’s caretaking an Odd Fellows Hall in Seattle, housesitting the big Victorian in Vermont until my landlady returns from the Peace Corps, or being a vacation catsitter on the coast of Maine. Different people, different places. The Caretaker Gazette is the one print place to get you going, going, gone.

Gary Dunn and his family have been doing this for twenty-six years. Their dog Lincoln is on the masthead as “envelope sealer.” The cover price – $6 single issue, $29.95 one year subscription; you can pay in unused postage stamps – had kept me from subscribing in the past but I’d always check out the website and dream little dreams about living in a castle in Scotland or an island off the coast of Maine. They added a blog last year.

A few sample headlines from the 150th issue, November/December 2007:

• Experienced motel managers needed for a 14-unit mountain motel.
• Interested in becoming a hermit? A community of hermits is now forming.
• Ranch manager needed in Marble Falls, 50 miles west of Austin.

Ten years ago, a youthful indiscretion left me with some property that needed attention while I was on the wrong coast. I bought an issue and placed an ad. Over the next few weeks, my mailbox filled with letters and resumes and photos and promises. I stopped counting at thirty. I ruled out almost everyone without an email address. I wound up with someone whose coast to coast travels mirrored mine, who stayed in my Vermont cabin over the next two winters, keeping it warm, keeping me sane. My total investment: $6 for the issue, $15 for the ad.

Each bimonthly issue is sixteen pages of black and white and green all over newsprint featuring caretaker opportunities and “situations wanted” ads. The first page displays a high-tech map-with-dots graphic showing you where in the world you could go. There are a few display ads and letters to the editor and one caretaker profile article. This issue features lighthouse keepers turned Appalachian Trail maintainers Harry and Lawrene Denkers happily living their semi-itinerant lifestyle. The newsletter is hard to read back-to-front because I always catch myself staring out the window envisioning my future life overseeing a trout farm in Montana or a perhaps a pet sanctuary somewhere in California.

Their letters section says that they offer a thousand rent-free living opportunities every year. Surely one would be good for you.

When I first heard about Light Leaks, I was thrilled. Finally a magazine devoted to one of my favorite things: toy cameras! Having fooled around with Holgas and various other plastic cameras for years, I opened up Issue 8: Almost Perfect with great anticipation.

The photography in the magazine is absolutely beautiful and very inspiring. It certainly made me get the old toy cameras out and stock up on medium format film. This issue also has a comparative review of the old Diana camera and the re-make, an article on painting your Holga, a couple of short interviews, mini-profiles of featured photographers, and a few other short articles. Unfortunately, the writing falls a little flat. It’s a very thin magazine, which in itself is not a bad thing (if you take away the many full page ads in most mainstream publications, you are left with very little content anyway), but it did feel like there was too little meat on these bones. I think it would help to have longer, more in-depth and focused content, possibly basing each issue on a theme. It’s not that the writing is bad, it just left me wanting more.

It doesn’t help that the typography looks a little on the home-made side. Serif, sans-serif and “handwritten” fonts are mixed together, margins jump back and forth, and overall it looks like Light Leaks doesn’t have any particular layout style.

Light Leaks is sold for $15 in stores, which is a lot of money for something this small. Publishing magazines is a high-cost business, and I am sure they’d sell it cheaper if they could. But I probably wouldn’t spend that kind of money on a magazine this tiny, no matter how nice the photography was and how much I’d like to support the good cause. The alternative is to subscribe, which does lower the price considerably, but after having read through it, I am just not convinced.

I am very torn by Light Leaks. It feels like it has great potential, the photography really is very good, the paper and print quality is nice and what little content there is, is not lost in advertisement hell. I really wanted to love everything about it, but as it is, I am just not as impressed as I’d hoped to be. I will keep an eye on Light Leaks and flick through it whenever I get the chance (I am lucky enough that they sell it at my local camera store), and I’ll keep hoping it will improve enough for me to start subscribing.

Further Reading: Light Leaks has a website where you can view PDFs of back issues and subscribe.

Recently I read a New Yorker profile of Kim Hastreiter, the founder and editor of Paper and decided, after just three paragraphs, that she’s led the world’s most charmed life. A downtown boho in the 1970s who now carefully tends her pop culture periodical as carefully as a master arbourist would an orchard, Hastreiter and Paper seem the living incarnation of how I imagine the Paris Review under George Plimpton – a rowdy blurring of work and play, of high-minded cultural curation and shuffling into work at noon. Editors like Graydon Carter and Tina Brown seem to be working hard to pull the fabulous into their orbit. New Yorker author Dana Goodyear called the staff and friends of Paper “a freewheeling, kitschy, Munsters-like family, but a happy and highly functional one” made of writers, designers musicians and artists, many of whom call Hastreiter “aunty.” It makes her and her magazine seem both unattainably hip and nice at the same time.

I wanted Paper to be my best friend, and I’d never read a single issue. So when I emailed their New York office asking for a sample issue and Associate editor Alexis Swerdloff wrote back with “how many do you need?”, my expectations were high. Now they are highly satisfied.

Paper traffics in cultural fabulousness. The magazine profiles and reviews the artists, filmmakers, musicians, authors, and celebrities that you should know more about. Best I can tell, their taste leans forward yet accessible. They’re not trying to impress you with obscurity and, while there were at least a half-dozen new-to-me’s in the three issues I read, a more-obsessive friend might find their choices a bit safe. Whatever. I don’t complain when a magazine needs to put Andy Samberg on the cover to draw advertisers and newsstand sales. I can find the table of contents and jet off from there.

Paper’s simple taxonomy can be summarized as What to Look Out for (Paperview: One page profiles of lesser-known creatives), What You Probably Already Know About (longer articles and photo spreads of designers and the bit-more-famous) and What We Think About What’s Already Out There (Paper of the Month: Reviews of new movies, music and books that they cleverly outsource to other fabulous people). There’s a smattering of columns on politics, movies and (in keeping with a rather dated view of pop culture geography) Los Angeles, as well as a throwaway spread of nightlife and party photos. Those feel obligatory. I concluded subscribers really signed up for a primer on what to read, listen to, and watch next.

Paper’s design feels almost 60s minimalist, bare white backgrounds, blocky text, a single photo predominates. With the exception of a name columnist like Cintra Wilson (whose take-downs of fame read like boa-clad performance art), the writing is understated, purposeful. Paper seems less a talent show for journalists or a boast about access to famous people and more like an act of curation. Paper is your outsource buddy (what I call a friend with excellent taste whom you rely on for some area of your cultural consumption) in print form. And although I didn’t spend a lot of time on their rather dense web presence (blogs, shopping, Paper TV, the works), what I saw felt like leftovers from traditional celebrity journalism. It’s telling that Paper only does online what US Weekly considers its reason for existence.

Paper has been around since 1984 and some say it invented the pop culture periodical. I’m not sure what it says that it now appears to stand alone. Pop journalism today is either fawning (Entertainment Weekly), snarky (Radar), a stand-in for fashion (Interview, Black Book) or politely condescending (The New Yorker). We can’t talk about movies, music, television and books without immediately passing judgement on pop itself. Paper, like any good friend, doesn’t demand tat you be impressed by it or dare you to disagree, but rather the rarest of qualities in a magazine: to sit with it and listen.

Stop Smiling, “the magazine for high-minded lowlifes,” just published its second annual interview issue. The lineup is stellar. Some of the more well-known interviewees include Jay-Z, David Cronenberg, Paul Verhoeven, Lee Hazlewood and Nigella Lawson. While some of the interview subjects might be unknown to the average reader, the interviews are insightful enough to make readers want to dive in.

The writing in Stop Smiling is consistently high quality, though few of its contributors were immediately familiar to me. The magazine does seem to be attracting the attention of some more well-known writers. The most recent issue has contributions from renowned hip hop writer Dave Tompkins and New Yorker television critic Nancy Franklin.

A few highlights in this issue:

• Gary McMahon’s heartfelt tribute to Factory Records founder Tony Wilson.
• A beautiful collection of Neil Leifer’s sports photography.
• Michael A. Gonzales’ interview with Jay-Z, where he gets Shawn Carter to talk about his childhood in the Marcy Projects and African-American culture’s fascination with gangster movies.
• James Hughes’ interviews with director and screenwriter Paul Verhoeven and author Tim Weiner, who talks about the failings of the CIA.
• Patrick Z. McGavin’s interview with director Todd Haynes about his Bob Dylan sort-of-biopic, “I’m Not There,” which works as an excellent supplement to understanding the film.
• Damon Locks’ brief but great interview with Bad Brains’ bassist Daryl Jennifer on his influences and his opinion of the Afro-Punk movement.

There are a few weak points as well. The Nigella Lawson interview is really a profile. Nancy Franklin’s talk with author A.M. Holmes had potential to be interesting but felt a bit like filler. Overall, this is an excellent issue with only a few weak spots. Let’s hope the third annual interview issue of Stop Smiling is as good as the first two.

The Chicago-based magazine is available at several independent bookstores and record shops (a full list here). Subscriptions are available for up to two years, with nice bonuses, including limited edition 7′ records, CDs and DVDs. They can be ordered online at the Stop Smiling online store. They also maintain a well-designed website for the magazine, along with a blog and several online exclusives.

I glared at the seat-back pocket. “It’s just me and you.” I opened up the January 2008 issue of Southwest Airlines Spirit magazine with low expectations. It was that or Sky Mall.

Seat-back airline magazines are generally on the crap end of the magazine spectrum, somewhere below ancient doctor’s office magazines (“What to Eat in 2004!”), but above the local Pennysaver.

And, at first, Spirit matched my expectations. The usual suspects were all there. My horoscope advised me to get moving “at NASCAR speed.” The crossword puzzle was done already, mostly correctly, thanks to a previous reader. And the front of the book was flush with cutesy fare (“No more than 22% of your office knick-knacks should be personal.” Noted.)

And the ads. Oy, the ads. Look, I know that seat-back mags are for local advertisers and smalltime marketers, but the overwhelming amount of ads, coupled with their lack of production values, can make even the most professional magazine look like a bathroom stall billboard.

But once you get past all that, Spirit is actually a pretty good read. The features are not just the usual “what to see where” fare. This issue was an eclectic mix of fun stories. Some standouts:

• “High Rollers” by Tom Wilmes on the resurgence of roller derby and the little shop, Sin City Skates, that helped kick it off. One thing I learned: Skaters all have unique names, registered with The International Skatergirls’ Master Roster. Favorites from the article: Robin Drugstores, Ivanna S. Pankin, Darth Hater.
• Shiela Lowe’s story on graphology. Bonus points to Southwest’s president Colleen Barrett for volunteering a writing sample for analysis. The verdict: She plans ahead, values her privacy, and is conventional but straightforward.
• This issue saw Spirit’s first “Your Adventure In” feature, a combination of personality test and travel info. Start by answering a few personal preference questions (“What’s your favorite Tom Cruise movie?” Unfortunately, none of the above that guy’s a whackjob wasn’t one of the options), then, depending on your answers, you’re directed to one of four stories about you’d like in Dallas Fort Worth. Cute.
• The inevitable story about hot new gadgets was made entertainingly surreal by photos of a little puppet dude using them without explanation. (This made me miss Greg The Bunny intensely.)
• My favorite story in the issue was “Sure Played a Mean Pinball” by Spirit editor Jay Heinrichs. It was part personal confessional, part history of the game, part review of the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, and part interview with the iconoclastic proprietor of the museum. Very entertaining with an elegant NY Times Magazine-style design.

Before I knew it, we were touching down and I’d never opened my laptop. In the end, isn’t that what a seat-back magazine is for?

Oh, and, Grandma Powazek is doing okay.

As a charter subscriber and a longtime admirer of Tyler Brûlé’s audacity, I’ve been pulling for Monocle Magazine. But with all nine issues now sitting in my living room, I’m sad to say my final verdict comes back in the negative. At £75 annually, I simply don’t feel that my subscription delivers sufficient value for me to want to renew it. But there’s more to it than that.

• The magazine just never felt essential to me. That is what Tyler promised and that, above all, is what I wanted it to be: a crisp, concise, deeply clued-in briefing on the state of global play – not bemused dispatches on the lives of Danish fishermen (issue 7) and vintners in the remote Chinese west (issue 4). Not all weak signals are portents of things to come. In the context of Monocle’s value proposition, the desire to report on the unheralded is only as laudable as the degree to which the subjects of these reports eventually signify. Otherwise it’s nothing but whimsy and window-dressing.
• Tyler’s persistent and intrusive Nippophilia has always been a bit much – especially, perhaps, for those of us with some actual experience living as foreigners in Japan. My personal tipping point may have been that one paean too many to Tokyo governor, notorious immigrant-basher, and avowed “fascist” Ishihara Shintaro. There are plenty of things to admire about Japan, but calling things Japanese out for higher praise than you would grant the directly-equivalent Western item isn’t appreciation, it’s fetishism.
• Monocle consistently lacks anything resembling a critical voice. At times it plays at being serious, raising ethical questions about Chinese stem-cell research (issue 8), only to accept an interviewee’s dicier assertions without comment. At others, it simply fails to engage the ethical dimensions of what it chooses to report on (the newly-resurgent Japanese military, issue 0; Abu Dhabi’s biennial IDEX arms fair, issue 2; the Christian retail industry, issue 6). The magazine’s relentless focus on high-end consumption as a literal way of life is itself a major ethical stumbling point.
• Monocle blurs, like no Western magazine I’ve seen, the boundary between advertising and editorial. Advertiser products and services are frequently mentioned in features, reviews and articles, without any indication that there is a business relationship involved. In almost every issue, cross-branded “advertorial” is delivered in the house design vocabulary, typeface, and copy voice. The product placement even extends to the (awful) manga, where it stands out like an orangutan with an erection at the office Christmas party.
• Over the course of its first year, Monocle turned to surprisingly hackneyed “usual suspects” when looking for insight. I had hoped that a magazine predicated on its ability to deliver a certain novelty of insight would acknowledge a generational turn in the wellsprings of expertise. This hasn’t been the case.
• Monocle suffers from serious confusion in the way it positions itself. The book comes across as cloying, precious, and auto-parodizing, not at all, as one recent reviewer would have it, “ultra-stylish and ultra-global.” This is in part for its comically disproportionate attention to things Japanese, in part for its willful hipster-doofus obscurity, and in very large part, because I find thick lashings of name-brand luxury the sure mark of a pathetic arriviste, and not anything to be aspired to.

When I recieved my first copy of Monocle, I held it proudly cover-outward for all to see as I walked down the street. I, too, wanted to participate in its fantasy of discernment, global reach, and access. (OK, I’m sad that way.) But here’s the thing: I no longer wish to do so.

In a mere ten months and ten issues, Tyler Brûlé has, without question, succeeded in one of the most daunting tasks faced by contemporary enterprise, that of establishing a resonant brand. The trouble is that the brand he brought into being says all the wrong things about what I value.

Tyler’s to be applauded for trying something distinctive, personal and new in the first place; for paying painstakingly close attention to type, paper weight and texture; for pumping new life into one of my favorite words in the English language, “bespoke”; for commissioning pieces that, whatever their ultimate value, undeniably do not tread the usual path; and above all for believing, as I do, that in any consideration of the material, hard-to-quantify things like provenance finally do tell.

These are all wonderful qualities, but they’re not enough to build a business. If I’ve come to feel this way – as one of a mere 5,000 charter subscribers and as someone in the center of the Monocle demographic in terms of taste, vocation, and air miles – then something’s wrong. Monocle is so far from what it could have been, and my world is the lesser for that.

This post originally appeared on Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird.

Vice is getting a lot of attention lately for VBS.tv, its new video site, and of course its requisite blog. But this is The Magazineer, and we like magazines, so when I saw a new stack appear outside of Villains on Haight Street, I grabbed a copy.

Their latest issue (volume 14, number 12) was their Second Annual Fiction Issue, and it’s a doozy. Almost 200 pages printed on heavy matte stock. The stories are wild, as always, and some seem more like true personal narrative than straight-up fiction. (Tao Lin’s “Shoplifting from American Aparel” would have fit in quite nicely in Fray’s upcoming Busted issue, but I digress.)

I loved how many of the stories had a personal preface by the author. They ranged from self-depreciating (“‘Does this story make you hate and want to kill me?’”) to serious (“I have been working on this novel for more than ten years.”) but they all set a personal tone to even the weirdest fiction.

Of interest to my fellow Magazineers would be the interview with Gary Fisketjon on editing famous writers like Raymond Carver and Bret Easton Ellis, and the interview with Dennis Cooper on Little Caesar, a groundbreaking literary journal that started in ‘76. I also loved the interviews with the Asssscat improv group (many of whom you’d recognize from 30 Rock and SNL).

If I had to scrape up something negative to say, it’d be that the cover feels phoned-in. It’s just black type on white, a simple listing of all the contributor names in the issue. It’s nice to give cred to the people in the issue, but combined with the width of the issue, it just makes it look like a large-type phone book with the cover missing.

The issue is packed with ads, as usual, but it seems like a fair trade, given the cover price (free). The advertisers are all targeted, too, which helps. There are also some goodies (a poster from Rock Band and some weird faux hair from Scion) which are novel but impede the page-flipping.

Those are small quibbles with a book that I can tell already will live on my coffee table for a good long time.

Further Reading: You can see more photos or read some of the stories from this issue, or download PDFs of previous issues. Wikipedia has a brief summation of the history of Vice Magazine, natch. You can also subscribe here.

The writing is on the wall for print advertising. Print media buys go down every year, while online ad buys double. That’s why it’s surprising that “don’t call it a phone” handset manufacturer and phone network Helio has decided to launch its own magazine. Even more surprising is that it’s pretty good.

Helio Magazine is 6×9, about 56 pages, and beautifully printed on matte paper. It focuses on entertainment, art, music, and movies, with a decidedly hipster vibe. Many projects like this would feel inauthentic – middle aged ad execs trying to talk like tweeners. But Helio’s triumph is that they pull it off. Credit probably goes to the magazine’s LA-based publisher, StreetVirus.

The magazine is distributed free, and you can’t subscribe, so you just have to luck into it. I recently found issue 6 (Fall 2007) in a local cafe in San Francisco. The cover by artist Mark Ryden immediately grabbed me, and the interview with him was a highlight of the issue for me.

But it’s hard to think about Helio Magazine without thinking about advertising. This issue has no advertisements (past issues have, which felt weird). Indeed, the whole magazine is an advertisement for Helio. But it’s subtle. The articles don’t ever mention Helio directly – a good thing, too, because I’d have thrown the thing away the moment they asked Ryden, “So, what do you love about your Helio?”

The issue is peppered with art – some really incredible, some just meh – by Otis School of Design students in what the magazine describes as an “art/ad collaboration.” It is only in these pieces that the Helio logo even appears. A pessimist would call this sneaky, but I found it playful. Most brands would not allow their logo to appear in the eye holes of a skull, or as a set of pasties on a fluorescent nude.

Low points in this issue: a story on Katamari Damacy which is about three years past its prime; a story on emoticons that reads like a high school final (the lede: “The 21st Century has been marked, perhaps most resonantly, by the incestuous intertwining of social communi….” Zzzzz.); and a photo essay that screams out “what were they thinking?” even in the bizarre world of fashion.

Even with its flaws, Helio Magazine is an interesting experiment. It shows what can happen when a company loves its audience more than its logo. If nothing else, it’s a beautiful page-flipper, and worth exactly as much as you paid for it.

Further Reading: Check out more photos of Helio Magazine Issue 6 or download PDFs of issues 4 and 5.

Me Magazine is a fantastic concept. Each issue is devoted to one individual. All the stories are interviews with friends and family of that person, about that person. By the end of the issue, you know this random stranger in an entirely new way. Or, at least, you should.

Issue 13 was about Ryan Donowho, an actor and musician that I’d never heard of. And, sadly, this issue shows the weakness of the concept. Because when the central character is weak, the whole issue is weak. Even after reading it, I still feel like I don’t know Ryan Donowho … and don’t really care.

Still, I love the concept of the magazine and the potential is great. Imagine the stories intersecting with each other, the same way our lives do. I have high hopes for the next issue.

Further Reading: Me Magazine is, naturally, on the MySpace as is Ryan DonoWho.