I went hunting for a single word to describe The Believer, in order to impart its fundamental nature as, um, indescribable. A self-assigned game of word association and I was thumbing to "freak" in the thesaurus. It's not that The Believer strays far from the beaten path of literature, music, art, and intriguing ephemera. It doesn't. But oh how it travels! The interviews are deep and often both sides of the exchange have very smart things to say. The articles are varied, and the regular features are unlike any you've ever seen (my favorite is Underway, where writers share what they're working on). The website has some exclusive content, but for the full experience, which offers the most beautiful magazine design I've ever seen, you'll need to scoop an actual copy. Back to the thesaurus: I didn't find any one word to describe the magazine, but after perusing the freak-related entries -- oddity, folly, non-conformist, enthusiast, and, yes, believer -- I knew I was in the right neighborhood.

Harold Check