apr 12
2009

Wag's Revue

Here's a relatively new something in lit land: Wag's Revue. It's an online literary magazine (a portmanteau of "web" and "mag," it says). The format sucks (scanned pages, no printing), but the interviews with Dave Eggers and n+1's Mark Greif are good. And there's also On Douchebags. [via]

7 comments

I'd say that "the format sucks" is an understatement. This is exactly the sort of longer-form reading that I'd like to do away from my computer, and they're going way out of their way to make it hard for me.

Putting aside the dozen reasons why sticking your type into images is a bad idea, they've failed in the one way in can be good -- it looks terrible. They screwed up the anti-aliasing or something, but the letters are harder to read then regular text.

This looks _exactly_ like something that clueless but well-intentioned people would put online to replicate a print publication they were really really proud of, so the "never meant to be printed" manifesto leaves me scratching my head.

Whereas the fact that they think this format will somehow facilitate readers' trust leaves me chuckling.

I'm allowing myself one per year, and here it is for 2009:

FAIL!

posted by alesh at 6:19 PM on April 12, 2009

testinf

posted by katiebakes at 7:49 PM on April 12, 2009

I dunno, contra the random person who took the time to write somethink v me and then decided not to, i'm afeared to do the whole whatever BUT rex i appreciate that you did all this, etc etc. am too drunk to sanctify. xoxo

posted by katiebakes at 8:07 PM on April 12, 2009

You're drunk on Easter Sunday at 8p?

BAKES!

posted by Rex at 8:10 PM on April 12, 2009

OMG!! via carles, i am s000 embarrassed...!!!1!

posted by katiebakes at 9:09 PM on April 12, 2009

after reading his ruminations here on daria and vh1 (as well as his earlier screed against mad men in the LRB), i've decided that mark greif would probably prefer changing gore vidal's colostomy bag* to unselfconsciously watching american primetime TV.

* figuratively, of course**
** because if he literally did do that (or, did "doodoo" it), then that would probably lead him to to write a posthuman manifesto entitled "against digestion," which would argue that, contrary to what you may believe, the process of digestion is actually an affront to the fundaments of the american democratic system (w/r/t to both the historically unfair and unequal rates at which different "breeds" of foodstuffs are broken down and passed through the striations of the ascending colon*** AND the affront to basic human rights that the expulsion of noxious intestinal gas causes, perhaps in an inspired bit of rhetorical gamesmanship comparing these "silent but deadly" attacks to the use of tear gas to break up anti-WTO protests) and would conclude that this process of digestion should be stopped immediately by anyone and everyone who truly cares about living a virtuous and intellectual life.
*** that's really gross, i'm sorry.

posted by sabf at 10:19 PM on April 12, 2009

In much the same way I have written in a notebook somewhere that I'll read Ulysses one day, I have added this to my bookmarks.

Seriously, how am I gonna' remember to read this w/out RSS? Am I just insane? Who still clicks over to sites on a regular basis?

posted by Nav at 11:00 PM on April 12, 2009




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