New Yorker magazine alert thread

"At my magazine, The New Yorker, no one wastes words, but no one assails his listener like a jackhammer, either. It isn't dignified. Soon after the phone conversation with my friend, I thought back over the previous few months. I remembered ranting on and on at a party. No one interrupted, but no one commented, either. They were waiting for the storm to pass. Cowed, they sighed and rolled their eyes as if I were trying to impress them, when from my point of view, I was just trying to get it all in. What was causing the rush?"

"At my magazine, The New Yorker, no one wastes words..." (proceeds to waste words)

is that a real quote?

is that an excerpt from a Donald Barthelme story?

lol

man people put up with your shit if you write for the NYer

"I didn't break down, or stop working. A shipshape magazine like The New Yorker doesn't let its writers fall into the sea. Good words must be written, and I wrote some of them. But there was a gathering heaviness in my chest and a feeling of forlornness, as if the roof had come flying off my head. Over that year of 1999, it came off piece by piece, as in a slow-motion movie of a storm, first the corners flapping and rising, and then the shingles lifting, a few at a time, then a few more, and then the whole thing violently tearing away in a gale. I was in love with my wife, novelist Cathleen Schine, and proud of the marriage, too, which seemed to me an astounding yet permanent fact in the world, like some comet that kept flying forever. It had lasted for eighteen years, and I couldn't believe it was over. I couldn't take it in; I was sure there had to be some mistake, some error, something we had forgotten, some place in the past we could go back to-a niche, a landing where we could reassemble and start again."

poor novelist cathleen schine.

r.i.p. catherine, too brazen for this life

sorry i don't mean to make light of denby's shingles problem

crash is like one of the worst movies i've almost watched a third of

"Talk was the center; we used to talk over everything, endlessly. But in those bad years a polite silence had descended on the marriage, darkened on my side with foreboding and on hers with unhappiness. She was increasingly depressed. Dark circles appeared under her eyes, she became immobile-the bed was her home, her fortress. And then she wanted to get away. "If you really loved me, you would want me to be happy," she said on the day in 1999 when she first said she wanted to leave, a sentence that no lover ever wants to hear. She was sitting in bed, miserable. I was pacing around the bedroom, in a sweat."

in other words: OH GOD PLEASE STOP TALKING.

crash was one of the last movies i've been to where i lol'd in the theater and was shushed by those around me

yeah, i'm still trying to figure out why he had a roof on his head.

I was pacing around the bedroom, in a sweat

^^^ a dandy summation of his prose style.

i know i saw mystic river but all i remember about it was sean penn crying

maybe the shingles thing was an extended metaphor for male pattern baldness

i know i saw mystic river but all i remember about it was sean penn crying

dude you don't remember Jack Nicholson making rat noises and Alec Baldwin telling awesome jokes?

i must've been getting popcorn

i was gonna say this is the most overwrought way of saying that someone broke up with you because you're a crashing bore that i've ever read but that probably isn't true

seriously though, denby, get a livejournal already

dude you don't remember Jack Nicholson making rat noises and Alec Baldwin telling awesome jokes?

um

"The Internet is always spoken of as a medium of connection, but it is also a medium of isolation that surfs the user and breaks him into separate waves going nowhere. There was the movie hunger, and the lust hunger, and the early stirrings of the money hunger. But where was the core, reconciling and joining the many elements together? In the tomes above the computer? My book about the classics was devoted to Columbia's version of the "core curriculum." That's why the big boys were up there, in the shelves above the monitor. What would they have said? Plato, observing a man staring at shadows in a cave, would not have been in the least surprised. But Hegel, I imagined, would have been dismayed by the passivity of erotic contemplation, just as he was dismayed by the passivity of religious contemplation, and Nietzsche, I was sure, would have been disgusted by the absence of vigorous, joyful activity -fighting, dancing, revelry, lovemaking - even though Nietzsche, poor crazy bastard, was as terrified of women as any man who ever lived."

the internet surfs the user!! wow, man, mind...is...blown.

a joke, dan

xpost

this is classic

http://wonkette.com/405905/the-wonkette-part-of-david-denbys-book-really-just-major-if-not-libelous-errors

But Hegel, I imagined, would have been dismayed by the passivity of erotic contemplation

yes yes I imagine he would have been dismayed.

"Nietzsche that dumb fucking idiot..."

lol I was 50/50 "I think he's kidding but that is delivered really really convincingly"

"hegel that sick motherfucker..."

also hegel might disapprove cause he was very religious but u kno historical context...

that wonkette article--jeez! Denby is steady trollin' Coulter style.

the wonkette article about chelsea clinton is pretty shit though

yeah, nobody comes off good in that arghicle

At the New Yorker, no one assails his listener like a jackhammer.

Unlike at, say, Club.

"The Internet is always spoken of as a medium of connection, but it is also a medium of isolation that surfs the user and breaks him into separate waves going nowhere. There was the movie hunger, and the lust hunger, and the early stirrings of the money hunger. But where was the core, reconciling and joining the many elements together? In the tomes above the computer? My book about the classics was devoted to Columbia's version of the "core curriculum." That's why the big boys were up there, in the shelves above the monitor. What would they have said? Plato, observing a man staring at shadows in a cave, would not have been in the least surprised. But Hegel, I imagined, would have been dismayed by the passivity of erotic contemplation, just as he was dismayed by the passivity of religious contemplation, and Nietzsche, I was sure, would have been disgusted by the absence of vigorous, joyful activity -fighting, dancing, revelry, lovemaking - even though Nietzsche, poor crazy bastard, was as terrified of women as any man who ever lived."

― scott seward, Thursday, 23 June 2011 20:57 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the internet surfs the user!! wow, man, mind...is...blown.

― scott seward, Thursday, 23 June 2011 20:58 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Sounds like he's using that Soviet Russian Internet.

huh? whats shit about the chelsea clinton post? jim even _explains_ it in the post on denby

it requires an explanation
it is snarky without a point
it isn't funny

look at david denby over here

it doesnt require an explanation if you are vaguely familiar with the very famous film "the miracle worker"
its point (as jim explains) is that the original article is shocked that an accomplished, stanford-educated 28-year-old woman is being "allowed" to speak for her mother at campaign events
it makes that point by humorously contrasting chelsea clinton with helen keller

Just out of curiosity, what/where is the "original article" that post was responding to?

sorry I misread jims post there is no one specific "original article"

Rick Moody on that John Lurie profile:

http://therumpus.net/2011/06/swinging-modern-sounds-30-what-is-and-is-not-masculine/

Also from DD this week:

"In regular movies, representation is obviously more intimately joined to physical reality than, say, books or paintings are."

I guess this one should be put on his editor but still...in movies, books are not as close to reality as representation is...?

hmm. i'm not sure your rearranging of the original sentence is accurate. the original makes sense to me.

no, hadrian's right... to get denby's meaning the sentence should read

"In regular movies, representation is obviously more intimately joined to physical reality than in, say, books or paintings."

or, preferably

"Representation is obviously more intimately joined to physical reality in regular movies, than in, say, books or paintings."

without the first comma tho

guys, its never gonna make sense

oh wait, yeah, i see it now. it's like a magic eye poster, but way less satisfying!

because the satisfaction of seeing that 3D dolphin is fucking untouchable