New Yorker magazine alert thread

3.5 is NOTHING! I have, like, 3.5 DOZEN waiting in the wings.

13 here

you know what would make the New Yorker even better?

crosswords

omg you're blowing my mind over here

that's what harper's tries to be

true but half of Harper's pieces are dire leftist jeremiads which I don't need much of in my life.

harpers word thingies are like way too hard

wow the gopnik thing on nostalgia is just

I thought of like 20 counter-examples to his *theory* in the time it took me to read it.

but just imagine the aughts without the arctic monkeys

hope they're still alive to reap the rewards in 40 years

the wave of arctic monkeys-pastiche bands

Remember the vogue for depression nostalgia in the 1970s?

sheesh that wolcott takedown is endless. like bashing someone in the head long after they are dead.

yessss

that gopnik 40 year thing...i just couldn't even penetrate the levels of incomprehensibility. i kept staring at random paragraphs and couldn't bring myself to start at the beginning and read it all the way through. i felt like a puzzled arctic monkey sniffing a rotten banana. i kinda want to pick it up....but no it's terrible don't do it!

otoh i am 40 and the spinners are grebt, so

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/02/120402fa_fact_sedaris

really enjoyed this brief essay by david sedaris - kind of an andy rooney-like recounting of his experience with french health care that politely mocks the things we are used to and expect from our doctors and our health care system here.

I mean Shanana appeared at Woodstock. Happy Days ran from the mid 70s to the mid 80s. Bell-bottomed jeans made a comeback in the early 90s. Retro 80s stuff has been big for the last 10 years or so. Etc.

gonna dive into the long LBJ essay now

This infidel is really enjoying this paywalled piece on the Hajj/Mecca: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/16/120416fa_fact_peer

This bit in particular is o_O:

In 1924, days after the soldiers of al-Saud, inspired by the teachings of the puritanical preacher Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, conquered Mecca, the destruction of buildings associated with the life of the Prophet and his companions began. Wahhabis believe that revering structures with ties to the Prophet can lead to idolatrous practices. The house of Muhammad's wife Khadijah was destroyed, and the Saudis used the Prophet's birthplace as a cattle market before it was turned into a library, in the early nineteen-fifties. [...] The house of Abu Bakr, the closest companion of the Prophet and the first caliph, was buried under a Hilton hotel.

Remember the vogue for depression nostalgia in the 1970s?

There actually was one, with The Sting; Paper Moon; and the various post-Bonnie and Clyde films like Boxcar Bertha etc.

gun control piece was my fave this week

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, April 18, 2012 10:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought it was ok but could have been done better. The stuff on the history of the second amendment, the NRA etc. is very well done, but I thought she could have made the case for gun control a little better than "here are some examples of shootings." Some of the descriptions of guns were also so martian-visiting-earth that I pictured a conservative gun advocate reading them and laughing.

I mean I didn't think even the New Yorker's key demographic need explanations like this: "
A revolver holds a number of bullets in a revolving chamber, but didn’t become common until Samuel Colt patented his model in 1836."

I thought some of the subtle cues were well-done like letting the faucet run for a long time after shooting etc.

i don't really know much about guns or gun control so ymmv i guess. but mainly i liked the stylistic mix of really dry factual/historical writing with the occasional writerly line, it was a very readable piece.

> like letting the faucet run for a long time after shooting etc.

I thought that was not subtle at all, actually.

The parts about gun ownership as a percentage of individuals declining (from 50% to 20%) over time while the number of guns in circulation increased was interesting. Also, the part about Yemen having the second highest rate of gun ownership -- and that rate being 1/2 of the US -- kinda blew my mind.

I would have thought there could be more to say about the influence gun industry in the NRA than the decrease from that of otherwise reasonable sportsmen. Seems to me that the NRA has become a marketing/propaganda/scare group instead of actual gun owners. Like, despite all indications otherwise, the line has become "the government is going to take away your gun -- you must buy more." Mass marketing to paranoid, anti-government types seems like a really bad idea, but I guess if you're livelihood depends on it, you gotta do what you gotta do.

yeah I think the fact that gun ownership is more and more a crazy old white guy thing is important

the raw milk article has me wondering if it's the 1st time the phrase "bathtub cheese" has been printed in the nyer

i keep thinking abt how that guys say raw milk and blood tastes just like ice cream

that is a startling fact

Two sort of complimentary things I learned from recent New Yorker articles that I probably should have known but did not:

1) The ANC's struggle to end apartheid was extremely violent, and
2) Bob Marley's appeals to love and peace were backed up by his actual political peacemaking, unlike the frat guys who sing redemption song on their stoops

well sometimes they make peace w/ other frats

and nerds

i watched part of marley last night

would watch, based on that review

its p good, cool facts

rita marley i like

the new yorker comments on its use of the diaeresis:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html
(more like diarrhesis, am i right, guys?)

wasn't jose canseco recently asking about diaeresis?

ends with an esis...

Elif Batuman alert!

the women's boxing article was great

Feel like a bad Jew for getting drowsy every time I see another "Obscure Jews of X" article

you're not alone. in fact: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/press_box/2009/12/jewspotting.html

haha

and to be fair, it's mostly Jews responsible for all the Jewspotting. My dad is an incorrigible Jewspotter!

I was pretty surprised about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_China

the women's boxing article was great

Yeah. Nice to see Ariel Levy get to report on something that afforded her the opportunity to exercise some nice prose styling, too.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/CVC_TNY_05_21_12_no_date.jpg

(http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/05/cover-story-spectrum-of-light.html)

Really liked the piece on the (possibly) hidden Indian palace treasure. Also liked the surprisingly lite piece on drones, which approached the subject with a note of absurdity tempering the awe.