New Yorker magazine alert thread

i used to read the main articles in every issue but let most of my 2010 issues pile up without reading anything.

if you read something good in a new issue of the New Yorker, post about it here.

The review of the new Mao biographies.

Denby's Joan Crawford essay.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

Man I've thought abt starting this thread a few times

this is why i don't have a subscription

Subscription to the print version: $39.95
Subscription to the iPad version: $234.53

http://runawayjuno.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/thumbs-up-low-res.jpg

AYYYY WE MAKING INTERNET MONEY

http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/490177_o.gif

alright enough

Anything related to Mexico in the past year's issues has been pretty compelling, mostly by William Finnegan and Alec Wilkinson. The Jane Mayer article about the Koch brothers and the discreet establishment of the tea party is definitely worth reading. This week's Gopnik piece on postmodern desserts is a good read, too.

Date and month/description of the cover of the issues you're referring to would be helpful!

George Packer's essay on the decadence of the Senate was illuminating.

Oh, and, both from around August, the profiles of Gil-Scott Heron and John Lurie.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 31, 2010 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^otm

links would be nice too

recent fire:

Joyce Carol Oates, Personal History, “A Widow’s Story,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2010, p. 70

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

only abstracts are online for nonsubscribers for those i think

Some articles are popular enough to remain accessible to all (e.g. the Packer article on the Senate to which I linked above).

here's the one abt the koch bros - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

A thread like this for all (literary/current event) magazines would be pretty cool.

Joyce Carol Oates article devastated me.

John Lurie article blew my mind.

dessert article was excellent, thanks for the recc

so john lurie is insane huh

The review of the new Mao biographies.

seconded

Gopnik's desserts article was like a magazine version of the No Reservations episode in Spain.

Which is not meant as a negative at all! They make good companion pieces.

dessert article was good but gtf outta here w/ this

Finally, the server arrives with the Messi dessert, as Jordi fusses anxiously in the background. He presents half of a soccer ball, covered with artificial grass; the smell of grass perfumes the air. On the “grass” is a kind of delicately balanced, S-shaped, transparent plastic teeter-totter—like a French curve—with three small meringues on it, and a larger white-chocolate soccer ball balancing them on a protruding platform at the very end. A white candy netting lies on the grass near the white-chocolate ball.

Then, with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile, the server puts a small MP3 player with a speaker on the table. He turns it on and nods.

An announcer’s voice, excited and frantic, explodes. Messi is on the move. “Messi turns and spins!” the announcer cries, and the roar of the crowd at the Bernabéu stadium, in Madrid, fills the table. The server nods, eyes intent. At the signal, you eat the first meringue.

“Messi is alone on goal!” the announcer cries. Another nod, you eat the next scented meringue. “Messi shoots!” A third nod, you eat the last meringue, and, as you do, the entire plastic S-curve, now unbalanced, flips up and over, like a spring, and the white-chocolate soccer ball at the end is released and propelled into the air, high above the white-candy netting.

“MESSI! GOOOOOAL!” The announcer’s voice reaches a hysterical peak and, as it does, the white-chocolate soccer ball drops, strikes, and breaks through the candy netting into the goal beneath it, and, as the ball hits the bottom of a little pit below, a fierce jet of passion-fruit cream and powdered mint leaves is released into your mouth, with a trail of small chocolate pop rocks rising in its wake. Then the passion-fruit cream settles, and you eat it all, with the white-chocolate ball, now broken, in bits within it.

You feel . . . something of what Messi must feel: first, the overwhelming presence of the grass beneath his feet (he’s a short player); then the tentative elegance of acquired skill, represented by the stepladder of the perfumed meringues; and, finally, the infantile joy, the childlike release, of scoring, represented by the passion-fruit cream and the candy-store pop rocks. I saw Jordi watching us from the kitchen entrance. He had the anxious-shading-into-delighted look that marks the artist.

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

Would not recommend this one! People have been arguing about Jevon's Paradox for a century now, and the article doesn't really advance any significant new ideas. As a primer on the "debate" around energy efficiency, however, it's alright.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

^ totally recommend that

yeah i read that one the other day, great stuff

it was interesting, lol scientists

i liked this one, seemed like a great premise for movie: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_collins

Haven't finished it yet, but I'm digging the Freud, psychiatry, and mental health in China article (subscription needed): http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_osnos

The Patel story was amazing.

yeah needs a good 3rd act tho.

he only contributed a couple of articles this year but i always enjoy atul gawande's stuff: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande is probably his best piece this year

if anyone subscribes then feel free to webmail me the china/freud article kthx

I would, but I can't figure out how to turn it into a pdf or another webmail suitable file.

just copy and paste the text? or is it a different viewer thing.....no worries if that's the case

the lehrer article is indeed pretty good and supplies ~evidence~ for my distrust of falsificationism and the inability of some ppl to think of scienctific 'knowledge' subjunctively, tho it does show science self-correcting so i don't read it as a total excoriation of the method

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

The recent one on the Vatican Library was pretty sweet: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/03/110103fa_fact_mendelsohn

I really like Toobin's diptych on JP Stevens and... the other guy.

nakhchivan, FYI, digital subscription gives you access to this weird applet-y, un-C&P text.

Oh, and that review of the new biography on Sergei Diaghilev was A+++++++ and really wish it was available to all humans: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/09/20/100920crbo_books_acocella

you can c+p articles from an library institutional subscription, but the evan osnos china thing is from the jan 10 issue which is not on the library wires yet. if you can't get it nakh, bump this thread in a week or two and i'm sure someone from what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff will help you out.

Lamp, thanks for the Gawande link.

ive been using a friends login for the subscriber stuff for a while and the interface is just so poor i dont usually bother to fuck w/it - seems theyd much rather you read the actual magazine - lol

^agreed. kind of why i started this thread so i knew which actual magazine to pick up and start reading.

p interesting follow-up of sorts on the recent duchenne muscular dystrophy activism article -- they just had a spot f/ clay matthews sponsored by cadillac during the orange bowl

OK a TA I had in college had a poem published a few issues ago, woah.

the whole Jan. 11 issue is worth picking up, the aforementioned freud in china article is amazing and hilarious, and it also has decent articles about belgium and why stieg larsson is so fucking popular

i know the concept of 'worth picking up' is still valid, even for subscribers, in translating to 'worth retrieving from the well-intentioned pile of unread NYers', BUT in general it's still worth remembering how insanely valuable subscribing to the magazine is when compared to buying a newsstand copy. like forty bucks, for a year, for it to be mailed to your house, which is the cost of like seven newsstand issues.

Molly Ringwald reminisces on working with Godard on King Lear.

that was a good one. what a weirdo

Watching Burgess Meredith drink wine was my favorite part.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/the-repressive-politics-of-emotional-intelligence

So many stories about Burgess Meredith, didn’t know what to expect in the Molly Ringwald thing.

It's not like I have much faith in liberal journalists but it's truly astonishing to see this passage in the New Yorker. What year is this? pic.twitter.com/WvXUUMJWWT

— Erik Baker (@erikmbaker) December 29, 2022

It's unfortunate to see some of the most respected venues in journalism taking this turn—exceptionalizing individuals and groups who advocate for greater public health protections and portraying them as deviant, immature, countercultural, Marxists, etc. 1/https://t.co/eqqA8x6YOY

— Martha Lincoln (@heavyredaction) December 28, 2022

That headline is awful.

the headline seems designed to be hate read bait for the right, whereas the contents are not. and sure enough ian cheong is tweeting it and musk replying. congrats to the new yorker.

The problem with creating hate read bait for the right is that the right doesn’t read.

if this is in reference to the emma green article, I haven’t read it and am not terribly interested to do so, I’m not a stan or anything for the new yorker but there is a certain… standard that she consistently falls below, just a very odd fit for the institution. her heterodox bumpkin david brooks-citing approach seemed more suited for the atlantic, where she was previously

an editorial failure I suppose

yes

One to skip

I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this with a Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro in Hebron. I can't stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it. pic.twitter.com/Qrsa1UJsfA

— Lawrence Wright (@lawrence_wright) February 13, 2023

amazing tweet

…

Man. (At the tweet, the video, the responses.)

Wright also had a very, very long story about Austin, Texas and how it’s changing in the latest issue.

That Austin piece was a rare example of a New Yorker article that seemed like it should be a book (in the vein of Sam Anderson's Boom Town, about Oklahoma City), rather than the reverse.

I mean, he's not wrong about the dehumanizing effect on soldiers but ...

I am currently irritated with the NYer because it feels like they are doing “double” issues way more than they used to.

That Austin piece was kinda irritating, too.

That Austin piece was a rare example of a New Yorker article that seemed like it should be a book

He already wrote a big book about Texas, "God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State."

Hope it was better than his novel, which was a pile of shit.

Scientology book was ok, but fell short of being the definitive outlier text

that tweet phrasing is abominable

should i read the agnes callard thing

i mean i love a trainwreck as much as the next person but possibly it will be too depressing

i read it and just kind of shrugged but she seems like she sucks

Yet another pseudo-intellectual justifying their fucking around with bullshit, this stuff should have died with the Fabian Society.

seems like she's surrounded by people who like her for some reasons and just kind of let her do whatever because it's not worth disagreeing

I did see some reactions on twitter from the guy she co-hosts a podcast with and he was kind of brutal!

A few years ago, I wrote an essay that, in passing, questioned faculty solidarity with unionizing graduate students. I had not realized how sensitive that topic was, and I was inundated with angry and hateful messages and a few threats online.

https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1240w,f_auto,q_auto:best/ap/06990af2-6d7a-4d62-b9c3-1ddcf771b5e5.jpg

that bad stance still far outweighs the weird and bad relationship hijinks

JCO multiple-driveby for those who celebrate

(excerpt from an uncompleted novel of Iris Murdoch focusing intensely, one might say hysterically-minuscule-ly, upon banal-stereotypical notions dressed up in philosophy-speak is no departure for the deceased novelist but her usual fatuous characters are here unleavened by wit.) https://t.co/YLvTL4SYdS

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) March 8, 2023

damn

Thought JCO would like her for throwing out her kids' Halloween candy

JCO = out there everyday, proving what a power user she is.

I read 2/3rds. Veered between "that's the piece I would point ppl to if they wanted an answer to "what is philosophy for?" question to juvenile giggling at stuff like this:

After seven years of marriage, they watched Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage,” a portrait of a couple as they struggle to understand the limits and possibilities of their relationship in the course of a decade. “It’s extraordinary that two people can live a whole life together without—” the wife’s mother says. “Without touching,” the wife answers.

you've got to read to the end to get the final story twists

It turns out she is...a cat person

the proposed book title "Marriage is a Preparation for Divorce" is like an alternate world Lana del Rey album title

sorry, song title

She wondered what it would look like if she and Arnold integrated new romantic relationships into their marriage. They would all keep talking about philosophy, but with fresh ideas in the mix. They asked each other whether it would violate the terms of their marriage if they became romantically involved with other people. “We didn’t think there was any good reason other than the usual conventions of marriage to answer that question with a yes,” she said. They referred to their new agreement as the Variation.

university of chicago philosophy geniuses, and they arrive at being poly

After our conversation in Pennsylvania, Agnes said Arnold worried that they’d given me the impression that their marriage was a success story.

as much as you can quantify marriage on a success/failure scale, no

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-barney-frank-went-to-work-for-signature-bank
nice one from chotiner, again

Heard Frank on NPR the other day, and he sounded like a raving lunatic.

Abusive romantic relations between faculty and students are a genuine problem, it is irresponsible to willfully exacerbate this problem because you want an outlet for some negative energy towards me.

— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) March 16, 2023

Tfw analytical philosophy does not equip you with the tools to survive online.

https://media.tenor.com/6to6rc8LRLoAAAAC/oddball-negative-waves.gif

the article about "hache carrillo" was great, they should be required to have an in-depth deconstruction of a literary fraud in every issue

Before it's deleted

okay i've had just about enough of this shit. in our society, you can pretty much do whatever you like short of crimes. (you can also often get away with crimes.) have two boyfriends or whatever, that is your business. if you publicize your life, no matter how dull, https://t.co/0EeGDsYk9R

— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) March 17, 2023

I liked Frank or at least admired him for a while because he was good at invective and took no shit. How reassuring to know he's brought these same virtues to corporate banking.

a good liberal!