A super-downbeat issue whose highlights include Kelefa Sanneh’s piece about the dysfunctional state of Arizona (though Democratic Senate candidate Richard Carmona sounds like a pretty good guy); Lorrie Moore’s short story, “Referential,” about the parents of a mysteriously disruptive kid; and Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s horrifying story about the dismayingly widespread phenomenon in South Africa of “corrective rape” of lesbians. Oy.
another eye opens 