in every 'new yorker' short story ever...

didn't know, but appreciate

28) scene at an empty Atlantic beach in midwinter

29) protagonists subconsciously haunted by 9/11

30) minor act of passing kindness on final page miraculously restores protagonist's faith in humanity

31) second home/vacation home

although, in every TWENTIETH story, trailer or ghetto rowhouse

32) Someone makes cultural or grammatical mistake in a charming way on final page miraculously restores protagonist's faith in humanity

I rarely feel like the protagonist of a NY story has the balls either to renounce or regain faith in humanity

@ 30: 'for there, on her desk, lay Nai Nai's jade bracelet, polished and gleaming proud for the first time the events of Nanking seventy years prior.'

first time since

33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.

34) people haunted by something

34a) haunted by death of family member

35) Dude pops boner, feels bad about it

36) adultery

there are frequent short stories in the new yorker these days that don't conform to stereotype, to be fair.

still, lol at "Claymer."

I never really saw anybody use "anhedonia" except when referring to the original title of Annie Hall.

Does anyone remember a television commercial where there was a redneck in a hunting outfit with a shotgun walking in the woods and saying "They say a revenuer come up in the these parts, he might get better but he never get well"? You couldn't figure exactly what it was a commercial for until the very end when the Yankee (or Midwestern) voiceover man said "from the story 'Moonshine' in the January New Yorker." Like they were trying to change it up, get the naysayers to lose the scent of their trail.

2) effete professor mulls lustily over graduate student and her lovely paper on Kafka.

Recommendations for actual similar stories, plz

See: whatever story of Philip Roth's became The Ghost Writer.

Although I think that was in The Atlantic.

33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.

-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:42 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

as opposed to ilx poster remy bean who saw his buddies die face down in the muck at da nang

Mark it a zero, Smokey.

"I never really saw anybody use "anhedonia" except when referring to the original title of Annie Hall."

i think of jarboe too. ex-swans artiste. she had an album called *Anhedoniac*.

sadly, if it isn't by lorrie moore or alice munro, i don't read ANY short stories in the new yorker. i glance at them in every issue. my suspicions (usually) confirmed that i don't want to read whatever it is. and i LOVE short stories.

I like the Jonathan Lethem ones that have run recently, although they don't exactly buck the NY genre.

33) desultory and minimal knowledge of Important Historical Event gleaned from wikipedia and a high school textbook.

-- remy bean, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:42 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

as opposed to ilx poster remy bean who saw his buddies die face down in the muck at da nang

-- and what, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:53 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

wrong, confrontation douchebag. as opposed to considered research.

Looks like voiceover man said "'Moonshine' by Alec Wilkinson, in the August New Yorker."

37) Judgmental pet.

38) Sex as evidence of character's patheticness.

39) Someone running their hands through their hair.

40) Body image issues.

41) The Unbridgeable Gulf of Class Difference

42) Young parent looks at her child and realizes she has already failed to be the mother she promised herself she would be.

43) Aging sculptor looks at a recent work and realizes he has ultimately failed to become the artist he promised himself he would be.

Ha, all of this reminds me that Gilbert Sorrentino is sort of the anti-New Yorker writer.

In that he kind of covers the same material but with an additional cruel and mocking godlike Fassbinderesque p.o.v that provides comic "relief."

44) Particular form of reticence typical of character's region/ ethnicity/ gender/ generation is presented, vaguely frowned upon.

I have never read a New Yorker short story, and yet, after reading this thread, it is as if I had read them all.

In this interview Gil S. mentions the New Yorker briefly in Item 11, but also talks about similar writing elsewhere, especially item 6.

nuance masquerading as epiphany, epiphany masquerading as peripety

there are frequent short stories in the new yorker these days that don't conform to stereotype, to be fair.

I was going to say this in a ruder, bitchier, more self-aggrandizing way

good restraint

Well yeah, that's partly what I meant by this (xpost):

usually think of The New Yorker Short Story as a genre that includes the ones by lesser writers but from which the better ones are exempt

-- Hurting 2, Monday, January 21, 2008 1:14 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Link

What, you got a story in there, nabisco?

I guess it's time to link to this relevant thread.

45) character quietly repeats meaningless phrase to himself under his breath, as if it mattered, but he knew it did not

That sounds more like something from The Twilight Zone

Actually all of work pretty well when considered as fragments of Twilight Zone episodes.

Cold War sci-fi paranoia preferable to unnameable ennui. Especially when enacted by future sitcom stars.

what the fuck are you talking about?

"10) over-developed "ethnic" backstory closely mirroring writer's own"

i swear this is a plot to get me to never read international fiction. cuz i see those stories and my eyes glaze over and i reach for a slim volume of ring lardner.

racist