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.

Joe Biden is the fourth President to try to achieve peace in the Middle East and South Asia in the 21st century. There’s a lot of debate in Washington about what he should do—and whether the U.S. should simply pack up and pull out of the region.https://t.co/fy7NB9kGz2

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) April 11, 2021

George W Bush, noted peacemaker.

That Tweet’s mind-reading needs a fact check

We renewed our subscription back in November via a discount site (then-current sub was set to expire in January). Our last one was the one featuring the epic Lawrence Wright covid article, but since then ... nothing. The discount site assures us things are moving ahead but backed up, which I find plausible, but this is the longest we've gone without the New Yorker in years. Weirdly, doesn't really feel like we've missed anything!

Renewal is coming up here but even with discounts sites I'm not finding anything significantly under $100/year, which is way more than we've ever paid before.

"tried to achieve peace" -- these people really believe their own farts smell good don't they

I confess I have no idea how my subscription renews, where I got it from, or what it costs. It just keeps arriving, and has done so for 20 years. I'm even a little scared to find out.

Whenever anyone calls me on the phone or sends me something in the mail about it, I just ignore it. And the magazine keeps arriving.

Perhaps some day I'll get an enormous bill. Which I will, of course, ignore.

❤️

when you're an influencer people just send you things

i got so sick of getting it in the mail and putting it straight into the recycling that i emailed david remnick about it. it stopped coming after that.

you could have put it in a little free library, or given to a local medical waiting room, or just left them at a bus stop

Good magazines are not allowed in hospital waiting rooms. Some old executive order issued by Reagan I think

Good chance in all four scenarios (including the straight to recycling scenario) that it doesn’t end up getting recycled

Getting read is a better outcome than getting recycled

They both end up with dog shit all over the place

Borowitz isn't in every issue

What the hell with the McPhee piece this week

I have adored McPhee for a long time but his last few things were a bit rambling, and not in a fun way.

I stopped subscribing for the first time this year, as I barely have time to read enough to finish my degree with a one-year-old toddler, let alone the New Yorker.

I pulled out the articles I still wanna read from 2-3 years of archive, tossed the rest out, and now we have a nice, telephone-book-size pile of paper and staples for my daughter to play with.

Before the pandemic I took magazines that I had read or wasn't going to read to the fitness center at my workplace. Since the fitness center closed I've been saving these magazines in anticipation of the place reopening.

I really liked the McPhee piece, you all didn't? A real pleasure to read something not in the standard register, but that still sings. Then again, you could say the same about the short story in this issue whose strange energy appreciated but which I wasn't actually finding myself liking and haven't finished yet. I thought the piece about Native language in Maine was badly written and just kind of off, too bad because the subject is one I really wanted to read about. French tacos piece was fluff but I enjoyed it all the way through. Jack Handey v. good in the exact way he's always good, I've read enough of these for a lifetime but I endorse NYer running them because there are always new readers.

Oh, I forgot, the Missouri fraternity suicide article, that was also really good. Good issue!

Was this issue the one with Nathaniel Mackey, or was that last issue? I don't get it because its liberalism makes me nauseous, but sometimes the profiles of artists and writers I admire are great.

That was the last issue.

And that was a really interesting piece though I would say that for people like me who haven't read the poetry it doesn't convey any sense of what the poetry is (not for lack of trying), just the person.

i also let my subscription lapse this year. they're still coming due to the lag but any week could be the last. usually it updates without my knowing it but this year i had a new credit card and i haven't been reading enough to justify. i mainly read the poems tbh. anyone else like them? i feel like the current poetry editor kevin young is kinda great; the poems are really varied and sometimes have a fun almost slam vibe. couple recent ones i liked Remembering a City and a Sickness By Christian Wiman and My Empire By Kaveh Akbar. also i love the podcast, the recent one with margaret atwood was amazing. my memories of the poems under the former editor paul muldoon were super dull but i wasn't as into poetry then

Kevin Young is the poetry editor? I thought he was director of the African American museum at the Smithsonian now.

I won't comment on the poems.

Mackey is truly one of the great poets and poetic thinkers of our times. His work is really indispensable.

haha not surprised you aren't a fan :)

Kevin Young is the poetry editor? I thought he was director of the African American museum at the Smithsonian now.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, April 13, 2021 2:50 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

since 2017. i think he does both. he seems extremely prestigious

flopson, yeah, not my cuppa.

The last issue I received was April 5, so I can't comment on any of these more recent pieces. I thought Rachel Aviv's profile of Elizabeth Loftus was really good, though.

I also have a 700-page book by him (Kevin Young) on my shelf which looks really interesting but which I've been too intimidated to read so far

Bunk, right?

I actually think he's not a bad poet, though I prefer work around similar issues by some of his contemporaries.

flopson, yeah, not my cuppa.

― it's like edging for your mind (the table is the table), Tuesday, April 13, 2021 2:58 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

xp- any poetry magazine or website that you'd recommend?

Bunk is an interesting book. Not exactly what I hoped for when I bought it (I was looking for something more directly Luc Sante-meets-Ricky Jay, rather than a philosophical tome about why human beings are so easily suckered into bullshit), but I'm glad I read it and I keep it around as a potential reference.

i haven't read many of his poems, although i watched some videos of him reading on youtube and they were pretty killer. he gets really into it, iirc at the end of one he was visibly perspiring. it was powerful and mb not something that would necessarily hit the same "on the page." i also really like him on the new yorker poetry podcast. you can tell he was like, a really good student in poetry class at Harvard, which makes him a bit tedious, and he can be totally insufferable in combination with a pretentious guest. but he's overall really warm and fun

flopson, Poetry Magazine might interest you, as they have a wider range of styles and schools that they publish.

If you're in Canada, the Capilano Review is indispensable (I can't remember where you are, apologies).

Websites? Tbh I only know the ones that I read, but I think that the Poetry Project does a good job with The Recluse: https://www.poetryproject.org/publications/the-recluse

I also stan for Nomaterialism:
https://www.nomaterialism.com/

Black Sun Lit has a pretty robust online presence:
http://blacksunlit.com/

Tagvverk does more concrete poetry and experimental work:
https://tagvverk.info/

baest is one for the queers
https://www.baestjournal.com/

And I could keep going. But I think you'd do well to start at The Recluse. I also recommend everyone sign up for this, it's wide-ranging: https://poets.org/poem-a-day

If you haven't, also, flopson...you should definitely look up Tongo Eisen-Martin. I can't remember if we've discussed him elsewhere. He's amazing.

Back to New Yorker programming...

I will say that now that I can spend time at my parents' house again, I will probably be purloining back issues that interest me, much as I did before the pandemic.

thx!

i live in vancouver

Oh, then the Capilano Review should be quite easy for you to get a hold of. Please give a kiss to that city, I love it and have so many friends there.

:)

I also have Bunk on my shelf but have not read it yet.

Yep, Bunk is the book that sits unread like a pile of old New Yorkers, to keep the thread on-topic, but those who have read it do rekindle the likelihood of my picking it up at some point....

This was wild and weird:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/on-the-trail-of-a-mysterious-pseudonymous-author

that was cool

i did enjoy that although i wasn't sold on the books being good from what they could relay

this new ben taub story is riveting and confirms everything you might suspect about the austrian (inept, illiberal) and israeli (effective, amoral) intelligence apparatuses

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/20/how-a-syrian-war-criminal-and-double-agent-disappeared-in-europe

This is relevant to my interests, ty