It's funny how, shortly before Talk was scheduled to hit newsstands, quotes from its inaugural issue's interview with Hillary Clinton turned up in the press as if they were news. It's also funny how some commentators were brought in to discuss the implications of such quotes as, "He is a very, very good man" and "It was a sin of weakness" as if they had some unexpected relevance, as if they couldn't be expected, and as if Hillary Clinton, in the midst of a campaign, had actually let her guard down in an uncalculated moment. The faux-juicy excerpts were, of course, meant to call attention—as if more were needed—to Talk, the fledgling publication of editor Tina Brown in collaboration with Miramax. After a start in the tabloids, Brown came to prominence by reviving Vanity Fair before moving on to an even higher-profile gig at The New Yorker. Having proven a talent for breathing life into others' creations, Brown now has to prove that she can build something from the ground up. But can she? And what exactly is Talk? It would seem to be a publication in the grips of a profound identity crisis. The celebrity pictorials are reminiscent of Vanity Fair's less inspired moments (cover star and Miramax favorite Gwyneth Paltrow looks more uncomfortable than sexy in bondage gear), the cover resembles an issue of Us, and the opening pictorial, "Fight Style!: What Do You Wear To The Big Fight" is, to say the least, unpromising. Furthermore, the much-trumpeted Clinton profile by Clinton friend Lucinda Franks turns out to be a love letter in disguise: It's softball, subjective journalism at its worst, closing with the following emetic in prose form: "Mrs. [Elie] Wiesel reopens the door a moment later and happens to catch sight of the couple with no one else around, walking down the hall to their bedroom, hand in hand." (Was Franks waiting in the hallway, watching for Wiesel to unexpectedly poke her head out? Was the sight such a surprise that Wiesel felt the need to report it?) Fortunately, Talk's glossier elements ultimately seem a bit like a Trojan horse, a shell for much more substantive material. Making Talk's lack of identity a virtue, Brown is free to include a wide variety of worthwhile pieces. Tales of literary lives (how poet Laura Riding destroyed an apparently happy home, Tom Stoppard's account of rediscovering his Jewish ancestry) appear alongside disturbing international pieces (Saddam Hussein's military capacity, a firsthand account of the massacre of tourists in Uganda, a chilling look at the deaths of young women in Juarez, Mexico). Maybe Talk is best viewed as a battleground for style and substance, a place where pictures of Angelina Jolie smoking alluringly and what reads like a rewritten Queen Latifah press release vie for space alongside Eddie Dean's enlightening and sympathetic (in large part because he lives there) report from a bottom-rung trailer park. Whether one will ultimately win out over the other, or whether Brown will be able to find a balance, remains to be seen.