New Reading

Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of Cabinet, a literary and arts magazine that I was not familiar with, until seeing it on the shelf of my local bookstore. It may be that I am the last person to find out about Cabinet, but nonetheless it is excellent. It is published in Brooklyn, NY and has run thirty-five issues (so far). It's published quarterly and runs about 110 pages! A subscription is surprisingly cheap at $32 USD per year.

The philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, said of Cabinet,

"[It is] my kind of magazine; ferociously intelligent, ridiculously funny, absurdly innovative, rapaciously curious. Cabinet's mission is to breathe life back into non-academic intellectual life. Compared to it, every other magazine is a walking zombie." (BoingBoing, September 2009)

I'm very pleased to have found such a magazine, particularly as magazine publishing is so dramatically on the wane. Due to its substantial size, excellent printing, and diversity of material, it doesn't seem like the sort of reading that would translate well to an e-Reader or other such device. I say this because most articles are about six to eight pages (letter size) long, much longer than many columns.

Given that it is nearly the length of a paperback book (200 or so pages, if you were to cut them to the size of a paperback), it isn't the sort of magazine you flick through. There are few advertisements, as Cabinet is a non-profit organization. The structure of the magazine is quite interesting, too.

If you're looking for something to put on your coffee table, and perhaps remove a sitcom or two from your nightly routine, I highly recommend it. Check out their current issue: Issue 35, Dust.