New Yorker magazine alert thread

crazy how the anti health care lobby are still using the same play book from 70 years ago, socialized medicine! what assholes

At the event, Cooperman handed the President two copies of “Inspired: My Life (So Far) in Poems,” a self-published book written by Courtney Cooperman, his fourteen-year-old granddaughter.

loool

Cooperman was surprised that the President didn't send him a thank-you note or that Malia and Sasha Obama, for whom the books were intended as a gift and to whom Courtney wrote a separate letter, didn't write to Courtney. (After Cooperman grumbled to a few friends, including Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, Michelle Obama did write. Booker, who was also a recipient of Courtney's book, promptly wrote her "a very nice note," Cooperman said.)

I hate to do this mr cooperman its really not my style but sir please up against the wall

If you give a gift expecting some sort of roi then it isn't really a gift.

(so far)

this is the 2nd Butthurt Billionaires piece in a few weeks

America

Free, united,
Helping, working, playing,
The best country ever,
U.S.A.

feel like the Romney piece in last week's issue could be inserted into Richard Yates' Collected Stories without anyone noticing

needed some alcohol

Couple recent blog posts that I like:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/10/amanda-palmers-kickstarter-scandal.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/10/uncle-pervys-k-pop-playlist.html (mostly for the title)

http://randomcartoon.s3.amazonaws.com/126586.JPG

haha

that joe girardi profile was one of the worst articles i've ever read in the magazine btw. it read like so many of the short baseball books i used to devour in my school library when i was a kid - short, choppy paragraph -> quote -> repeat. i loved those books at the time, but i was seven then. i don't throw this word around lightly but it was probably the most meaningless thing (of moderate length) i've read in a long time.

the author's obsession with batting average, home runs, and RBI didn't really endear the piece to me either

i liked when they found the guy who threw gerardi the ball when he was a kid and he didnt know it was gerardi but he remembered him

i liked the short fiction piece about girls on a wire

I didn't love it, but the Joe Girardi profile was written by Gay Talese!

I mean, he's no hack.

yeah it was pretty bad! even gay talese can write a bad article now and then.

i liked it

yeah the girardi piece seemed to hover around sons becoming fathers and how baseball ties into this but never went big picture cuz really, everybody knows that tradition and specifically this kind of tradition and continuity is a big part of whatever appeal baseball has left. ultimately not much more than yr standard sports human interest type profile raised to nyer profile level cuz it was gay talese writing it and not rick reilly.

"Kim helped reconcile him to the move, however, telling him again and again, "This is God's plan." She resigned from her teaching job and headed to Denver, where she bought a pair of cowboy boots and rented an apartment."

embarrassingly i've never heard of this talese guy before - he seems like a big deal, and i'm definitely gonna read his famous joe d piece. but the whole piece was kind of relentlessly stupid and unsatisfying

he's pretty old now in fairness

he's a big deal

yeah i was being serious about the big deal thing!

i felt like i got to know gerardi through the article and he is boring

yeah he's no don zimmer

Skimmed through the last few issues real quick.

Story about the hitman was amazing. Waiting for that movie to come out. Maybe David Simon will write/direct.

Also really into new issue story about bacteria. Makes a lot of sense.

agree abt the bacteria article, well written & v interesting topic

looking forward to reading that one of my current fav topics

yeah hitman article was cool

reading the sandusky piece now

just a little thing but i thought it was weird that in the parks and rec piece this week, nussbaum says that "arrested development" used a faux-reality show/mockumentary format like "the office." i never felt like AD was supposed to be a documentary or reality show.

The characters in AD were aware of the camera, but I'm not sure it was ever spelled out that it was a reality show or something. Seemed more like a meta- thing than anything specific.

Idk isnt there that part in the court where they make the camera ppl leave?

Maybe so. But at the same time, the camera often knows/shows information that the characters don't know -- like when George is living in the attic -- so it felt more like an undefined, free-form thing. Played for laughs when useful, ignored other times.

huh yeah i guess so, good point (xpost). though i thought of that more as a weird meta joke than anything else. the narration is not very "reality show" and the characters don't seem particularly aware of the cameras to me.

wait, how were the characters in AD aware of the camera?

oh heh next post. just a one-time joke iirc

I have memories of Jason Batemen giving a knowing/pained look to the camera i.e. Jim from the Office at least a few times.

good issue so far-- the George Packer article about the Biden staffer was riveting, even though not much happened.

that one was tl;dr for me. characteristically my favorite article was the one about the battling contingents on sark, the weird feudal island in the english channel.

that sounds good, & i'm psyched for this issue, but how simultaneously good & long-term reorientingly depressing the last couple of big packer articles have been fills me w/dread

really enjoyed the last issue; lots of solid content top to bottom

I really don't like Nussbamum that much. I want to say this is the second or third piece she's written that just seems like a long list of shows she likes better than some show she mentioned at the beginning. Definitely the NYorker writer most likely to use the placeholder "like" in a piece, if, like, she hasn't already.

i am crazy behind on my new yorkers but omg that larissa macfarquhar profile of hilary mantel from a few issues back was amazing! it made me want to read everything mantel ever wrote.

if you haven't already, def read mantel. one of the few contemporary novelists i rate (obv wolf hall is gonna be the big one now, but i loved the one about the medium).

i am obsessed with her and want to write a novel about her now. (probably macfarguhar would do a better job of that.)

i want to read the one about the french revolution

i know i am very very late on mantel and i have no time to read gigantic novels but whatever

where is max

the best part about gigantic novels is that there's no time for them. You just start them and finish them 1-7 years later