New Yorker magazine alert thread

It's either an attempt to validate her own views, or it has a specific goal in mind (telling spouse not to travel).

Since I just wrote something that a bunch of people are reading I thought it might be a good time to do a 🧵explaining my approach to public writing.

TL; DR: it's Socratic.

— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) June 24, 2023

centrist jordan peterson

YMP OTFM

I was about to write out what's probably a repost about my friend who would do these socratic-style debates for fun with his friend at home in the late evening while they were in college, with the kicker that both were very stoned

and this appears to be that type of socratic debate

if tourism is dumb and tourists do things that are nonsensical to you then do the things that make sense to you

that anecdote about going to a falconry thing because she was told that was "what people do" is very funny

Reading Callard you understand why Socrates had to be killed.

So-crap-tic

that friend I mentioned also had a tattoo of socrates drinking hemlock iirc

This was a wince inducing read. Never considered it before and am in the definitely not camp after reading this. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/03/the-perils-and-promises-of-penis-enlargement-surgery

Don't know anything about this person, but I thought this was a good response to that travel article:

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/think-less-agnes

Ha Ha the less you know about him the better

oh boooooooy

https://www.discogs.com/release/1045737-P-Br%C3%B6tzmann-Group-Fuck-De-Boere-Dedicated-To-Johnny-Dyani/image/SW1hZ2U6NTcxNTUwMA==

I imagine many of these insufferable professional thinkers are as full of baggage as they are full of shit, but yeah, I'm the first to admit I don't know who many of them are! One person's academic/intellectual boogeyman is another person's, I dunno, Snuffleupagus.

DeBoer's had confrontations with several ILXers over the years.

Ah! Doesn't surprise me, lol. I'm sure I've stumbled across them, I just can't remember. Someone should compile an ILX canon doc.

read that penis enlargement article Dan posted earlier this week. harrowing, I’ve seen several complications from similar procedures. these people are barely doctors

The combination of the unapologetically opinionated Agnes Callard piece, and the unapologetically opinionated Freddie response piece, reminds me a bit of Hamilton Nolan's anti-exercise-equipment piece:

https://variety-spot.com/weve-been-led-to-believe-something-weird-about-exercise-hamilton-nolan/

...a presumably cathartic piece that just was probably fun to write but basically just states a point of view, and unapologetically waves its metaphorical penis at everybody who might disagree.

If this is the current and/or future state of opinion writing, I am for it. Not because I will always agree, but because I like people just going ahead and saying what they mean.

counterpoint: ppl shd hang back and then obfuscate

A lot of these think pieces seem to be about metaphorical penis enlargement.

I will never click on a FdB article and that's my vow

(unless it's really funny in a cringe way)

mark s., I look forward to your forthcoming literary magazine, in which half the issues' content involves people refraining from saying what they mean, and the other half contains people obuscating about what they might have said, but decided to refrain from.

what would be his influences

think pieces where the writer comes off as a serious dick without meaning to

xxxp

on second thought, FdB writing about Agnes is probably good because most of his work is in the "inventing a type of guy to be mad at" genre

If Agnes Callard did not exist Freddie de Boer would have to invent her

and then accuse her of rape

I’ve never made any case against unions. I made a case for persuasion, in which I expressed doubts about whether I could justify canceling my class in response to the strike. I was asking for an argument, so I held an event in which a union organizer explained that argument. 1/2

— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) July 11, 2023

Man, she's the king of "I'm just asking questions ... "

god, what a tiresome person

on the topic of labour strikes, i thought this piece on Orange Is the New Black really drove home how much streaming has screwed over working actors in Hollywood (and minority actors in particular). really depressing read.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/notes-on-hollywood/orange-is-the-new-black-signalled-the-rot-inside-the-streaming-economy

Traditional broadcast series pay residuals for each re-airing, calculated as a percentage of the actor’s salary. The 2012 New Media Agreement entitled Myles to residuals only after the first fifty-two weeks the show was on the platform; the amount was based not on how many times each episode was watched but on a percentage of the licensing fee that Netflix paid Lionsgate to distribute the show. (If this sounds confusing, don’t worry—the actors also find it baffling.) Myles still gets around six hundred dollars a year for a handful of guest spots on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” stretching back to 2004, but her residuals this year for “Orange” have come to around twenty bucks.

...

Despite the Beatlemania-like fame, many cast members had to keep their day jobs for multiple seasons. They were waiting tables, bartending. DeLaria continued doing live gigs to keep up with her rent. Diane Guerrero, who played the fashionable inmate Maritza Ramos, worked at a bar, where patrons would recognize her. “How could you tell this complete stranger how much you’re getting paid for being on a television show?” she asked. “Because everyone’s reaction would be, like, ‘Oh, my God, I love you on that show! But also, what are you doing here?’ It was this incredulity that was teetering on offensive.” Myles was working in a basement for a financial firm, acting in live simulations for aspiring financial planners. One day, one of the candidates paused on the phone and said, “You sound exactly like the Amish meth head on ‘Orange Is the New Black.’ Has anyone ever told you that?”

I hope you guys are ready bc my next essay is about sex

— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) July 15, 2023

Sex rule #1: Stay away from scabs

"FHM have only gone and done a bloody 'Sex issue'!"

I’m ready for Agnes to make me feel exasperated by the idea of having sex

never been so thankful to be paywalled

WSJ editor: find me five people with a really normal understanding of sex

Second WSJ editor: you got it, boss pic.twitter.com/inQ4BjIYbc

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) July 28, 2023

agreed, too much

Hey, I have a post that's not about Agnes Callard!

Anyone else shook by Goings On About Town getting slashed from 6 pages to 2 (and dropping "About Town" in the process)? I do think it made sense to refresh that section: As much as I liked that its movie coverage had become a place to put recommended streaming titles (originally a pandemic pivot, but one that proved worth keeping), it did sort of raise the question of what Goings On About Town was for. Same goes for the occasional podcast reviews. But the location-specific events that were the meat of the section were also arguably irrelevant to a great portion of the magazine's readers (those who do not live in New York).

That said, the 2-page spread feels kind of flimsy for a section that's been such a mainstay of the magazine. And it's a bummer that Matos's byline (and those of other freelancers) will no longer appear:

After this week, Goings on About Town will shrink from six pages to two and be written entirely by staff.

— Michaelangelo Matos (@matoswk75) July 22, 2023

Also, despite the fact that Tables for Two remains in this week's issue, it seems like it might be evolving as well.

This week's TFT is by Helen Rosner, who announced that she has a new New Yorker newsletter that will sometimes appear in print:

Psyched to launch my @NewYorker column, The Food Scene — a newsletter (also on the web! sometimes in print!) about what, where, & how to eat. Sort of reviews, sort of vibes, sort of a weird 00’s blog.

First up: the strange & clever & super fun Café Mars https://t.co/l1sHcWCmqo

— Helen Rosner (@hels) July 31, 2023

And I noticed that Hannah Goldfield's bio was quietly updated. Until a few days ago, the first line read:

"Hannah Goldfield is The New Yorker’s food critic and writes the weekly Tables for Two restaurant column in the Goings On About Town section of the magazine, as well as essays and reported stories."

Now it says: "Hannah Goldfield is a staff writer at The New Yorker, covering restaurants and food culture."

I like both Goldfield and Rosner a lot, so if the change means that they will share that space in the magazine, I won't be too disappointed. But I am curious.

I can't speak for the popularity of the section but I've always loved "Goings On," especially during the majority of my life that I haven't lived in NYC. I like knowing what's going on! The same way I loved to read weeks-old Voice calendar listings on newsstands when I was a teenager. For all the other legitimate contenders, New York is still the cultural capital of the country, that's some of the most interesting stuff to me.

I used to absolutely inhale the live music and art listings. A really special section, with very impactful capsule reviews.

And there was no way I’d get to see these shows in that city! But it didn’t matter.

(When I started writing capsule shoe previews for alt weeklies, the New Yorker model was definitely in mind.)

Definitely a model. When I started a weekly calendar newsletter with some friends here last year, one of the things I said was "Sort of like Goings On About Town ..."

I have spent approximately fifty years reading this magazine while not living in its titular city.

There was almost zero chance of me going to a show it reviewed, or eating in a restaurant it described.

It will do what it wishes, I guess. Shrug. I will still subscribe out of sheer habit.

That section has actually been a really valuable research tool for me — as many ILXors know, I'm currently writing a biography of Cecil Taylor, and the New Yorker included his performances in Goings On About Town from the moment he appeared on the NYC scene in the mid 50s and never stopped listing him, even when the writer clearly didn't like his music or wanted to make fun of him, so there are all kinds of amazingly sarcastic descriptions of his work in those pages.

They are ending the kindle version, which I’ve had for years. Guess I’ll be going back to print.

Just seeing this and reading the Bklyn Sounds Dada Strain substack about the reduction in size and dropping of freelance contributors to the Goings On Around Town section . Ugh . One page in print now w/ 1 pop music event, one classical, one dance, one show is disappointing

iirc alex in nyc was a longtime contributor to Goings On About Town

yeah, before they gave out bylines