New Yorker magazine alert thread

i used to read the main articles in every issue but let most of my 2010 issues pile up without reading anything.

if you read something good in a new issue of the New Yorker, post about it here.

The review of the new Mao biographies.

Denby's Joan Crawford essay.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

Man I've thought abt starting this thread a few times

this is why i don't have a subscription

Subscription to the print version: $39.95
Subscription to the iPad version: $234.53

http://runawayjuno.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/thumbs-up-low-res.jpg

AYYYY WE MAKING INTERNET MONEY

http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/490177_o.gif

alright enough

Anything related to Mexico in the past year's issues has been pretty compelling, mostly by William Finnegan and Alec Wilkinson. The Jane Mayer article about the Koch brothers and the discreet establishment of the tea party is definitely worth reading. This week's Gopnik piece on postmodern desserts is a good read, too.

Date and month/description of the cover of the issues you're referring to would be helpful!

George Packer's essay on the decadence of the Senate was illuminating.

Oh, and, both from around August, the profiles of Gil-Scott Heron and John Lurie.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 31, 2010 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^otm

links would be nice too

recent fire:

Joyce Carol Oates, Personal History, “A Widow’s Story,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2010, p. 70

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

only abstracts are online for nonsubscribers for those i think

Some articles are popular enough to remain accessible to all (e.g. the Packer article on the Senate to which I linked above).

here's the one abt the koch bros - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

A thread like this for all (literary/current event) magazines would be pretty cool.

Joyce Carol Oates article devastated me.

John Lurie article blew my mind.

dessert article was excellent, thanks for the recc

so john lurie is insane huh

The review of the new Mao biographies.

seconded

Gopnik's desserts article was like a magazine version of the No Reservations episode in Spain.

Which is not meant as a negative at all! They make good companion pieces.

dessert article was good but gtf outta here w/ this

Finally, the server arrives with the Messi dessert, as Jordi fusses anxiously in the background. He presents half of a soccer ball, covered with artificial grass; the smell of grass perfumes the air. On the “grass” is a kind of delicately balanced, S-shaped, transparent plastic teeter-totter—like a French curve—with three small meringues on it, and a larger white-chocolate soccer ball balancing them on a protruding platform at the very end. A white candy netting lies on the grass near the white-chocolate ball.

Then, with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile, the server puts a small MP3 player with a speaker on the table. He turns it on and nods.

An announcer’s voice, excited and frantic, explodes. Messi is on the move. “Messi turns and spins!” the announcer cries, and the roar of the crowd at the Bernabéu stadium, in Madrid, fills the table. The server nods, eyes intent. At the signal, you eat the first meringue.

“Messi is alone on goal!” the announcer cries. Another nod, you eat the next scented meringue. “Messi shoots!” A third nod, you eat the last meringue, and, as you do, the entire plastic S-curve, now unbalanced, flips up and over, like a spring, and the white-chocolate soccer ball at the end is released and propelled into the air, high above the white-candy netting.

“MESSI! GOOOOOAL!” The announcer’s voice reaches a hysterical peak and, as it does, the white-chocolate soccer ball drops, strikes, and breaks through the candy netting into the goal beneath it, and, as the ball hits the bottom of a little pit below, a fierce jet of passion-fruit cream and powdered mint leaves is released into your mouth, with a trail of small chocolate pop rocks rising in its wake. Then the passion-fruit cream settles, and you eat it all, with the white-chocolate ball, now broken, in bits within it.

You feel . . . something of what Messi must feel: first, the overwhelming presence of the grass beneath his feet (he’s a short player); then the tentative elegance of acquired skill, represented by the stepladder of the perfumed meringues; and, finally, the infantile joy, the childlike release, of scoring, represented by the passion-fruit cream and the candy-store pop rocks. I saw Jordi watching us from the kitchen entrance. He had the anxious-shading-into-delighted look that marks the artist.

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

Would not recommend this one! People have been arguing about Jevon's Paradox for a century now, and the article doesn't really advance any significant new ideas. As a primer on the "debate" around energy efficiency, however, it's alright.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

^ totally recommend that

yeah i read that one the other day, great stuff

it was interesting, lol scientists

i liked this one, seemed like a great premise for movie: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_collins

Haven't finished it yet, but I'm digging the Freud, psychiatry, and mental health in China article (subscription needed): http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_osnos

The Patel story was amazing.

yeah needs a good 3rd act tho.

he only contributed a couple of articles this year but i always enjoy atul gawande's stuff: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande is probably his best piece this year

if anyone subscribes then feel free to webmail me the china/freud article kthx

I would, but I can't figure out how to turn it into a pdf or another webmail suitable file.

just copy and paste the text? or is it a different viewer thing.....no worries if that's the case

the lehrer article is indeed pretty good and supplies ~evidence~ for my distrust of falsificationism and the inability of some ppl to think of scienctific 'knowledge' subjunctively, tho it does show science self-correcting so i don't read it as a total excoriation of the method

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

The recent one on the Vatican Library was pretty sweet: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/03/110103fa_fact_mendelsohn

I really like Toobin's diptych on JP Stevens and... the other guy.

nakhchivan, FYI, digital subscription gives you access to this weird applet-y, un-C&P text.

Oh, and that review of the new biography on Sergei Diaghilev was A+++++++ and really wish it was available to all humans: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/09/20/100920crbo_books_acocella

you can c+p articles from an library institutional subscription, but the evan osnos china thing is from the jan 10 issue which is not on the library wires yet. if you can't get it nakh, bump this thread in a week or two and i'm sure someone from what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff will help you out.

Lamp, thanks for the Gawande link.

ive been using a friends login for the subscriber stuff for a while and the interface is just so poor i dont usually bother to fuck w/it - seems theyd much rather you read the actual magazine - lol

^agreed. kind of why i started this thread so i knew which actual magazine to pick up and start reading.

p interesting follow-up of sorts on the recent duchenne muscular dystrophy activism article -- they just had a spot f/ clay matthews sponsored by cadillac during the orange bowl

OK a TA I had in college had a poem published a few issues ago, woah.

the whole Jan. 11 issue is worth picking up, the aforementioned freud in china article is amazing and hilarious, and it also has decent articles about belgium and why stieg larsson is so fucking popular

i know the concept of 'worth picking up' is still valid, even for subscribers, in translating to 'worth retrieving from the well-intentioned pile of unread NYers', BUT in general it's still worth remembering how insanely valuable subscribing to the magazine is when compared to buying a newsstand copy. like forty bucks, for a year, for it to be mailed to your house, which is the cost of like seven newsstand issues.

Thanks

yeah that was a good read

On a lighter note — Shuffalo, the new anagramming game, might be a fun addition to my daily morning games. But today's took me just under 13 minutes, and I don't see giving that much time to it every day.

the article in the recent issue about the irish drug kingpin living in dubai was a really fun read for those of us into such things

yeah that was great

https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/the-ban

At 11:50. Fooled by Chris Morris 30 years after the event? Or is this a slipped in in-joke?

Just read the guy who made it claim he put it in deliberately. Without any context. Next to a similar news bulletin. Hmmm. *Chinny reckon*

the article in the recent issue about the irish drug kingpin living in dubai was a really fun read for those of us into such things

being Irish, had read a fair bit about him, but this really combined a lot and got some new stuff also. I'd heard it before but I love the stuff about him idly reviewing sandwiches or cafes on Google Maps.

a friend of mine's father in law went to the same school as the father of the family mentioned in the piece, and apparently he turned up at their thirty year reunion, stuck a big big bar tab on, and left.

xpost – I saw the doc! So good. To me it clearly reads that they knew that this was a joke... Did people used to believe The Day Today was real when it was aired? I mean, it's a helium voice!

also took the opportunity to read this story from 2008 by Nick Paumgarten, which was revisited in last week's issue. it's a lot of fun

story about elevators and a guy who got stuck in one for 2 days, I should say

that is one of the all-time best new yorker pieces imo

the way it shifts between one man's plight and the expansive history of elevators is just short of masterful

exactly, the structure is daring but absolutely perfect!

I think of that article every time I’m on an elevator

yes, all time classic! I always pair it with The Itch in my mind https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/30/the-itch?currentPage=1

that's the article where the doctor rushed to catch an elevator, got decapitated and a nurse got stuck with his head in the elevator?

Kael and Roger Angell excepted, I've read about (and seen films related to) The New Yorker more than I've read the magazin itself, so I'm not the most qualified person to comment on the documentary. Anyway, I thought it was okay. Not enough Kael, and Robert Gottleib gets all of a sentence. (Don't think Angell was mentioned even once.) Richard Brody reminded me of what I though Harry Smith would be like...although he's a pretty happy guy, and Smith from all accounts was kind of nasty.

(I'm ashamed to see a typo in my post about the New Yorker documentary...speaking of which, they should have worked in a clip of the Bright Lights, Big City movie.)

i enjoyed it, but found the historical overview of the magazine and its significance to be an awkward fit with the contemporary behind-the-scenes stuff. i would have preferred more of the latter, since i already know the history pretty well and it just gets reduced in this format to a few key signposts like "hiroshima" and "silent spring." lillian ross is arguably more important to the magazine's history than pauline kael, and she was also ignored. but give me more segments where i can be like "so *that's* what nick paumgarten looks like" and "what made david remnick put that cartoon in the yes pile?"

They probably could have had less about the cartoons, since there was documentary specifically about that a few years ago. (I think you see a poster for the film behind Remnick.)

thought the documentary was nice for what it was. don’t think kael really needed to be there, the multiple brody shots carrying the NYer tote bag did it for me

You're fishing me in here...I think there needed to be a bit more. Maybe I'm wrong--someone who knows the magazine better than I do can correct me on this--but didn't she bring more attention (and controversy) and more readers to the magazine than anybody for the duration of the '70s? You could, though, make the same argument I made about the cartoons: there's already a documentary on Kael. And I did find Brody more interesting than just about anybody in the film.

David Remnick's a nice guy, and I remember liking his Ali book, but I didn't think he was a great camera subject--he's almost too genial and un-neurotic. I thought Robert Gottleib in the Caro/Gottleib documentary was more compelling. (I'm influenced here also from having read Gottleib's memoirs a few months ago.)

I get it, though. Anthony Lane held Kael's job for 31 years, and I don't think he was even mentioned. It probably would have been better to just focus on the now and avoid these questions. But as someone said in the film, it's a magazine forever in the grip of now-vs.-then.

i think it's just that there are way too many notable contributors to mention, so they had to focus on a few good stories where they could demonstrate impact. were dorothy parker, james thurber, john updike, renata adler, and janet malcolm mentioned? what about calvin tomkins, who has written for the magazine for the past 65 years and is still contributing feature-length profiles even though he is, as of today, 100 years old? or john mcphee, who has contributed for a comparatively paltry 62 years?

if you were making a doc on the new yorker's critics, then kael is obviously a prominent figure, but in the scope of the whole magazine, i am not sure. personally, i hadn't heard that she brought more readers to the magazine, though that doesn't mean it isn't true.

She is the name I most remember from the mag in the ‘70s and ‘80s, though that was certainly colored by my parents being movie buffs and Kael fans.

I found a 2012 article by Armond White (lol) that claims that Kael "brought a wider readership to The New Yorker." Owen Gleiberman's Variety review of The New Yorker complains that the documentary slights Kael, calling her "the rock-star writer who helped to keep The New Yorker relevant" and "the magazine’s most popular and important writer for 25 years."

So maybe she does deserve more attention, though casual viewers aren't likely to be persuaded that an influential film critic is more significant than writers whose works sparked the anti-nuclear and environmental movements or who gave voice to the oppressed.

Bought John McPhee's Levels of the Game, about the '68 U.S. Open (tennis), a few weeks ago--amazing to learn he's still there.

The only thing he writes now are personal essays, published about once a year, on the writing process and his career as a writer. Some of them are a bit self-indulgent (I am recalling several paragraphs about his Wordle strategy), but they're almost always a delightful read.

He is an incredible writer and is close to death, I don’t think I can begrudge him a bit of self-indulgence tbh.

I enjoyed the Calvin Tomkins piece of short reflections on being roughly the same age as the magazine.

the rachel aviv story about oliver sacks was (as usual) great

The Willie Nelson profile was kind of lame until the Dylan quote at the end

has any person, while living, ever been as famous for 60+ plus years as dylan/mccartney?

i feel like they've handled it about as well as anyone might, but it remains impressive how full of shit dylan is (complimentary)

Cat People actress Jane Randolph was John McPhee's first cousin once removed. #onethread

i dare you to explain 'first cousin once removed' without looking it up!

Dare accepted. She was his father's cousin.

If you can't do the math yourself let the man himself explain it to you: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/tabula-rasa-volume-one

Dare accepted. She was his father's cousin.

rude to call my bluff

but also ty

np. you probably never had it explained to you properly before

oh no, i totally did and then instantly forgot

Also there are lots more complicated kinship relationships in, say, Native American cultures– or those associated with certain popular conlangs– than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_and_cross_cousins

so many **osts and ***ists whom i never even met

I can introduce you.

oh no

Also there are lots more complicated kinship relationships in, say, Native American cultures– or those associated with certain popular conlangs– than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_and_cross_cousins

― Eric Blore Is President (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, December 28, 2025 1:05 AM (nine hours ago)

yeah chinese has distinct words for almost every possible configuration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_kinship#Common_extended_family_and_terminology

https://preview.redd.it/familial-terms-v0-oxek8l6ho0ie1.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=91e33333478334eabd5ce118e0c5a422d344dba0

why one town in rural pennsylvania won’t stop stoning its residents to death: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436?view_adult=true

that's really good

dang the rachel aviv story on oliver sacks really was excellent, so much more nuanced and interesting than the sorta straightforward exposé i was expecting

haven't read it yet but i'd say the exact same about her Alice Munro piece in 2024