(I own a Mk3 .22, they're fun!)
― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Saturday, 26 May 2012 22:43 (twelve years ago) link
i liked the jill lepore guns piece, too. i like her in general. seems absurd to say she sucks. i thought that piece drew the interpretive thread pretty finely: you might know all these things already, but they add up to we're no longer a civilian society.
― horseshoe, Saturday, 26 May 2012 22:51 (twelve years ago) link
yeah i dunno, not particularly taken by her style but the DONT U SEE stuff was a bit much to take
― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Sunday, 27 May 2012 00:02 (twelve years ago) link
Well it works like magic on us feebs.
― Captain Jean-Luc Godard (Leee), Sunday, 27 May 2012 00:03 (twelve years ago) link
oh i dont know i thought her ability to draw things together, create parallels, connect it w/ the trayvon martin case was really fine. and i definitely learned things. if u didnt buy the stylistic choices thats fine.
― max, Sunday, 27 May 2012 00:11 (twelve years ago) link
new david grann this week - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/28/120528fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all (havent read it yet)
― just sayin, Monday, May 21, 2012 9:18 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this was really good; someone needs to make a movie about this guy
― call all destroyer, Sunday, 27 May 2012 16:22 (twelve years ago) link
gun piece was pretty good for the most part, it's sort of too internet-age to identify parts one doesn't like & then say "she sucks" - much to like about that piece. however, k3vin otm that this
"I opened the door, and turned on the tap. TJ Lane had used a .22-caliber Mark III Target Rimfire pistol. For a long time, I let the water run."
sucks
― cosi fan whitford (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 27 May 2012 16:44 (twelve years ago) link
i'm going backwards to the travel/fashion issues now following the very meh gay white house issue and finding things of interest.That kenyan long distance runner story was already done more concisely and more pointedly by Sports Illustrated; would recommend trying that one instead.
― jump them into a gang - into the absurd (forksclovetofu), Sunday, 27 May 2012 21:46 (twelve years ago) link
richard brodys taste in movies contrasted w/the fact that he looks like http://www.newyorker.com/images/contributors/p154/contributor_richardbrodyphoto_p154_cropxrail.jpg and is NYER FILM GUY is so hilarious and baffling
― lag∞n, Sunday, 27 May 2012 22:03 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/05/wes-anderson-moonrise-kingdom.html
This week is the science fiction issue, I look forward to reading it in a month.
― Captain Jean-Luc Godard (Leee), Monday, 28 May 2012 17:33 (twelve years ago) link
I love Brody's enthusiasm. I'm tired of Denby (no surprise there) and Lane (increasingly) comparing every new mainstream comedy unfavourably with Howard Hawks or the Marx Brothers or whoever. Even worse are the blockbusters, which drive Lane to reach for his increasingly worn bag of jokes about fanboys and the tightness superhero outfits. I still think he's a terrific writer but he's been doing this for 20 years now and he can't conceal his boredom with anything that doesn't wow him. I don't know why Brody has to stay in his front-section ghetto.
― Get wolves (DL), Monday, 28 May 2012 18:55 (twelve years ago) link
gee, only took 5 pages of this raw milk article to get to the words "ron paul". smh these people
both that and wendell steavenson's (who i just figured out is female) piece were great
― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Monday, 28 May 2012 22:33 (twelve years ago) link
this is the 4/30 issue - i'm trying to catch all the way up before school starts next monday
― twittering spinster (k3vin k.), Monday, 28 May 2012 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
raw paul
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Monday, 28 May 2012 22:56 (twelve years ago) link
r.i.p. science fiction, heave needed a once disreptuable genre
― me so fat (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, 28 May 2012 23:30 (twelve years ago) link
i like brody too. even given his fanboyism, i love that somebody would name a movie as ornery and flawed as jlg's king lear as the greatest of all time. i feel like he's playing a very long game waiting for one of the regular back of book crits to quit/die.
― me so fat (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, 28 May 2012 23:33 (twelve years ago) link
anyone read last week's piece on genre fiction?
― go down on you in a thyatrr (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 01:00 (twelve years ago) link
Yes, I thought it was a bit flat. More of a history of highbrow authors who liked detective fiction than the how-we-read-now essay it seemed to be billed as. Couldn't help thinking what James Wood or Louis Menand might have done with that theme.
― Get wolves (DL), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 08:48 (twelve years ago) link
raw milk essay was great though. & the genre thing was a little flat, yeah - maybe in being too rigorously a history of anecdotes relating to it without really plumbing what it's like to read.
i like brody a bunch, though disagree with him pretty often. not that ive seen moonrise kingdom yet, but tbh it isn't that kind of thing that i'd really take issue with - it's nice that he's got a clutch of new filmmakers (like he really, kinda inexplicably repped hard for somewhere) who he's into as zealously as he is the old guys, it's more when he's finding gold in something new & obscure that's weird.
― blossom smulch (schlump), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 09:23 (twelve years ago) link
thought bruce sterling on sci fi was nice
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 09:49 (twelve years ago) link
I think because Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson are such easy targets, especially on ILX, as ambassadors of a mannered, moneyed faux-indie aesthetic, I like Brody's enthusiasm for them more.
― Get wolves (DL), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:32 (twelve years ago) link
i did like how the raw milk essay started off as having me being all "how OUTRAGEOUS that they are targeting these people" and by the end i was like "jesus, lock all these fools up before they feed more poisonous milk to babies"
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 14:42 (twelve years ago) link
It's my favourite kind of New Yorker food writing. Spare me the long profiles of the hot young chefs who have redefined Southern/Russian/Szechuan cuisine - show me the screwy libertarians who only eat roadkill. The story a while back about eating insects was fantastic.
Highlight of this piece was the phrase "freedom milk". In the UK you can buy raw milk at farmers' markets, no bother, but I haven't been tempted to sample it yet. Maybe it tastes even sweeter if there's a risk of the feds raiding your farm.
― Get wolves (DL), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:28 (twelve years ago) link
found most of the sci-fi stuff in the new issue pretty dull. i liked colson whitehead and karen russell's pieces but wasn't blown away by either. however, the sam lipsyte short story was fantastic.
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:50 (twelve years ago) link
pretty much every sci-fi personal history piece was exactly the same.
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 15:56 (twelve years ago) link
any reason why none of the fiction in the sci-fi issue was written by a sci-fi writer?
― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 17:33 (twelve years ago) link
those fuckers
i haven't read it. just the list of fiction authors.
I am officially dreading 'new yorker sci-fi issue'
― but he go's to a resturang and then die in a toilet (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 17:40 (twelve years ago) link
lethem is a sci-fi writer, or a former sci-fi writer at least
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 17:54 (twelve years ago) link
he sucks though
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 17:55 (twelve years ago) link
he is so totally not a sci-fi writer.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 17:58 (twelve years ago) link
i don't know if you're using some weird purist definition of sci-fi but:
Lethem’s first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, is a merging of science fiction and the Chandleresque detective story, which includes talking kangaroos, radical futuristic versions of the drug scene, and cryogenic prisons....He followed Gun, with Occasional Music in 1995 with Amnesia Moon. Partially inspired by Lethem's experiences hitchhiking cross-country,[8] this second novel uses a road narrative to explore a multi-post-apocalyptic future landscape rife with perception tricks. After publishing many of his early stories in a 1996 collection (The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye), Lethem's third novel, As She Climbed Across the Table, was published in 1997. The novel takes as its starting point a physics researcher who falls in love with an artificially generated spatial anomaly called "Lack", for whom she spurns her previous partner. Her ex-partner's comic struggle with this rejection, and with the anomaly constitute the majority of the narrative....His next book, published after his return to Brooklyn, was Girl in Landscape. In the novel, a young girl must endure puberty while also having to face a strange and new world populated by aliens known as Archbuilders.
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:00 (twelve years ago) link
he is an urban fabulist in the tradition of borges and calvino! i made that up. i've glanced at his pre-whatever he does now books and i never wanted to read them. same with the corrections dude's "sci-fi" books. nobody needs to read that stuff. its like telling a crime fiction fan to read motherless brooklyn. they would laugh and then set that book on fire.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:01 (twelve years ago) link
crappy genre fiction fanboys be not proud
― Mordy, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:02 (twelve years ago) link
ok so you're using some weird purist definition of sci-fi
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:02 (twelve years ago) link
in that case, i don't know why you would expect the new yorker to publish what you consider to be sci-fi
no flogging your shit to Analog for a nickel a word, no credibility
― Trey Imaginary Songz (WmC), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:04 (twelve years ago) link
^^^
― but he go's to a resturang and then die in a toilet (Jon Lewis), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
he talks about his inspiration at length here:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/228/the-art-of-fiction-no-177-jonathan-lethem
― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:07 (twelve years ago) link
and he mentions borges and calvino. it's all good. PoMo pastiche is cool. whatevs. no bigs. i was a kathy acker fan back in the day. can't read burroughs to save my life though. or pynchon.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:10 (twelve years ago) link
it is a bit weird for them to do a scifi issue with only 'literary' writers, i mean, not weird, it is the new yorker, but it would be cooler if they asked ben bova or something (never actually read anything by that guy) to do a story
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:12 (twelve years ago) link
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, May 29, 2012 5:54 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
RONG
― Mr. Que, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:13 (twelve years ago) link
oh cool now this thread is about authenticity
― max, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:14 (twelve years ago) link
nerds are the worst
― Mordy, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:15 (twelve years ago) link
im staying out of that argument but i do think it would be cool if they went pulpy.
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:16 (twelve years ago) link
we all loved blade runner.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:16 (twelve years ago) link
who would've thought the new yorker thread would get mired in arguments about writing and class distinction
― jump them into a gang - into the absurd (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:24 (twelve years ago) link
lol at "mired" - it's been like 20 posts over an hour
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 29 May 2012 18:27 (twelve years ago) link