New Yorker magazine alert thread

thanks; will maybe slip onto something else of hers (the psychotherapy one?) after.

I'd check out the book version, actually -- it's considerably longer, but still short (and not at all padded out).

If you want a detour from the investigative stuff, her book on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas is also pretty terrific and (just about) doesn't really require any prior Stein reading.

Enjoyed the Louis Menand piece on Dwight MacDonald and middlebrow. He's such a sleek, wry writer - he doesn't bulldoze MacDonald with his own opinions.

― Science, you guys. Science. (DL), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 5:49 AM (1 week ago)

^^yeah this is excellent!

wait you like louis menand, kevin? this does ... does not sync with what i know about you.

this sentence seems posed to give you hives:

But judging from my recent conversations with a handful of literary and intellectual types -- the heirs, you could say, to the Macdonald/Greenberg tradition -- we live, today, in a pleasingly hierarchy-free, almost utopian cultural world. Most people I know share my disparate taste, enjoying "South Park" alongside Franz Schubert, the crisply plotted novels of James M. Cain as well as the philosophically searching films of Antonioni.

packer's 'state of the nation after 9/11' was suitably despairing (and a nice juxtaposition to gopnik's 'what me decline' piece) but managed to conveniently avoid a couple things:

a) despite congenially tearing walter russell mead a new one, did not mention that he himself supported the iraq war

b) no doubt beyond the article's scope, but maybe make a pass at why surry county, north carolina would continue to vote against its own economic interests

i never really cared for menand. macdonald was good though.

The Metaphysical Club is as good as searching "popular" criticism gets.

I quite liked Packer's essay though but then again I often do.

the menand piece that sticks in my mind is the one about orwell, which was headlined something like 'honest, decent, wrong.' it sticks in my mind mainly because menand never seemed to get around to explaining precisely how orwell was 'wrong,' other than the fact that the world today is not literally the world of '1984.'

The best Orwell essay I've read recently is James Wood's, also published in the NY, and in the 2010 Best series.

i remember the menand orwell piece! we never got stuck with equal and opposed totalitarian empires, i think was the main point.

I just started Malcolm's Two Lives. I love her meta-biographies, especially the Chekhov one.

Couple from the vault that I read and liked this week:
Ben McGrath on Tim Wakefield
Susan Orlean on a lost doggy

menand follows up his macdonald piece with another good one on ts eliot

btw remy i never figured out what i was supposed to dislike about that sentence you reprinted last week

Eliot is as much a part of my own formation as a writer and person as he was for his immediate successors -- I too experienced a thrilled shock unlike anything I've experienced before or since when in high school I played hooky from homework and read "The Waste Land" with Cliff Notes handy. It's hard to write something fresh about him. Menand's essay isn't fresh so much as a superb attempt to integrate what he's learned with the received wisdom.

he also reminds us of how much the English curriculum is indebted to the New Critics; certainly when I was in college the Close Reading of the Text was still rather sacred.

what is that in response to, alfred?

menand follows up his macdonald piece with another good one on ts eliot

― k3vin k., Tuesday, September 20, 2011

I need to splunk down for a subscript

newest issue is really arts-focused, with pieces touching on jean-paul gaultier, alexander mcqueen, steven sondheim and the gershwins, and some famous photographer, but the best article in the whole issue is the one about a pharmacist working in a remote area of colorado

http://www.myabandonware.com/media/captures/F/freddy-pharkas-frontier-pharmacist/freddy-pharkas-frontier-pharmacist_2.gif

ha i'll read that one for sure then

yeah that article's great. was trying to remember if the last time, if ever, the nyer did a profile on a random guy like like that.

but the best article in the whole issue is the one about a pharmacist working in a remote area of colorado

this was really fantastic

god, that old guy w/ the unsent letters asking friends to introduce him to 'men who are like him' just killed me

i want to go to nucla

lol @ this "dude court" cartoon

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lru4hg6riz1qav5oho1_500.png

that's pretty good

yet i hate to see such a promising young man ruined by appreciation of nyer cartoons at such an early age

menand follows up his macdonald piece with another good one on ts eliot

Yeah, most I thought about TOILETS since I was a lower classman.

mailing in a sub renewal today after about five years off

btw, have decided that Gopnik is the all-purpose Gladwell: glib, reductionist.

Like everyone else, I have a huge stack of back issues to complete, so I was thankful for the 9/11 issue, which I just couldn't read. Though of course, if anyone is allowed to put out a 9/11 issue, it might as well be the New Yorker. I want to say I did read the Gopnik piece, though, which I found very erudite and perceptive.

my 9/11 issue was delivered a week late, which was just as well

I want to say I did read the Gopnik piece, though, which I found very erudite and perceptive.

Actually, that's the article that's soured me on him; it felt very superficial.

Hmm, I can see that criticism. I just think he juggled lots of ideas well, even if they were superficial ideas.

And, yeah, my 9/11 issue was a week late, too.

Were those late issues all about 7 WTC or what.

but the best article in the whole issue is the one about a pharmacist working in a remote area of colorado

this was really fantastic

― sleep \lim: $\lim_(x\to\infty) over (Lamp), Thursday, 22 September 2011 06:20 (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

god, that old guy w/ the unsent letters asking friends to introduce him to 'men who are like him' just killed me

― iatee, Friday, 23 September 2011 18:00 (2 days ago) Bookmark

god this was wonderful. i started off reading it & thinking it'd just be great like trillin's shopsin's profile, but it was so stunning, picking up the rest of the town & the few repeat themes that the guy wouldn't necessarily unify. stuff like 'it is an hour and a half from the nearest traffic light' was excellent.

yeah i loved that article, and that guy, predictably

Story had this really pronounced gay subtext - his gay brother, his enthusiastic treatment of the 4 transgendered patients, the mysterious drifter at the end who also turns out to be gay. Not sure what to make of that, but it was a fascinating and beautifully written piece. Could be adapted into a TV show or movie.

I don't think there has to be anything made of that beyond 'sometimes people are gay, also in rural areas'

that janet macolm thing on the photographer didnt seem v new yorkerish, the way she put herself in the article

I don't think there has to be anything made of that beyond 'sometimes people are gay, also in rural areas'

i think it was more than this, because it was specifically exploring the fact that the people who are gay, in rural areas, are in some cases dealing with having to hide this from family or society or themselves, or whatever else. & the fact that this elicited the guy's compassion, & figured in the changing narrative of his life, having previously been cagey around his brother, made it a part of the portrait of him, too.

also it is one of the articles you can just read on the website in case anyone wants to send it around to friends, etc. it was really stunning.

half way through the malcolm/struth thing - narrator hasn't become intrusive yet, it is quite a 'bold', 'personal' profile of everyone involved though i think.

i wouldnt say she's necessarily intrusive, its just that usually they seem to sort of go out of their way to not personalise the profiles?

just hunted down the pharmacist article - it's here http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/09/26/110926fa_fact_hessler?currentPage=all and it's really beautiful

when i think of the platonic new yorker article i think of at least one paragraph where the writer describes driving through the small town, stopping at the local pharmacy/gas station/petting zoo and having an off-the-cuff conversation with the pharmacist/gas station attendant/goat wrangler about the topic of the article