In a previous life called high school, I devoured music magazines – Rolling Stone, Spin, even the little-known titles I’d chance upon at the magazine bins of Maces, a long-time outlet of Book Sale items in LB.
Since then, Rolling Stone has totally gone pop, Spin literally shrank, its founder Bob Guccione, Jr. nowhere to be found in its editorial box and I began to embrace the late Liz Tilberis’ editorship of (and Fabien Baron’s creativity at) Harper’s Bazaar, not to mention Grace Coddington’s ethereal fashion editorials at American Vogue.
So it was with great pleasure that I chanced upon my first back issue of Cabinet Magazine at the same store around two years ago. Aside from the fact that the title alludes to this blog’s name and raison d’etre, Cabinet, described as a journal of arts and culture, is a pandora’s box of illustrations, photo essays, conceptual art, critical essays, etc.
This issue, titled and themed “Bones,” is devoted to all things, well, bones, with features titled as “The Museum of the Dead” and “Congenital Human Baculum Deficiency” (on the generative bone of Genesis 2: 21-23). (You get the point.) It has regular thematical columns such as “Colors” (in this issue, mauve is the featured color), “A Minor History of” (in this issue, Odd Sympathy – go figure), “Ingestion” and “Inventory.” Like the literary journal The Paris Review, it has its own perforated bookmark, except that in place of a quote, it would have a wise-ass topic. A postcard could also be detached from the magazine as well, with its own topic, of course (and equally wise-ass).
Let me put it this way: Cabinet combines my love of the most obscure, most useless trivia, the language of academia and brilliant, yet clear (possibly at times impossible), writing. It may be highbrow to some, but for me it is the most entertaining but still thought-provoking journal I have ever encountered.
Let me, yet again, put it this way: I loved the magazine so much that I immediately looked at their official site to see if they took in interns. Yes, I was willing to fly to Brooklyn just to do manual work for them.
In a word, Cabinet Magazine resurrected my passion (and I am unabashed in using this term) for magazines and being in the magazine industry (not in this country, methinks).
I thought nothing could trump Cabinet until I saw this one:
Yes, Lola Virginia, I came across this magazine at – you guessed it – Maces. Just this afternoon, so the high of discovering it is still present. Gastronomica could well be the food counterpart of Cabinet. It shares most of the format content of Cabinet, but with a marked difference in terms of the variety of topics. The pieces in Gastronomica are a far stretch more familiar to readers. There would be a lesser likelihood that an essay on the food habits of 15th century ex-convicts in England would appear here. Then again, there is one piece in this issue on the the fate of three dinners in the Titanic. Hope you get the picture.
Magazines like Cabinet and Gastronomica are the reason why I continue to read, take pictures, make collages and research on subjects which have absolutely no function in the present moment. Their very presence in the magazine bins of Maces – in between O and Allure – never fail to elicit a leap in my heart.
www.cabinetmagazine.org
www.gastronomica.org
