New Yorker magazine alert thread

Here: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-case-against-sotomayor

Snap, I've been beefing on the wrong law-talking guy named Jeff all this time.

The Parfait profile is great!

Enjoyed the Louis Menand piece on Dwight MacDonald and middlebrow. He's such a sleek, wry writer - he doesn't bulldoze MacDonald with his own opinions.

Especially love his Thornton Wilder review: "I agree with everything Mr. Wilder says, but I will fight to the death his right to say it this way."

The Parfait profile is great!

― Mordy, Saturday, September 3, 2011 5:26 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^

^^

(is "parfait" some kind of nickname for the dude, i am not that into philosophy)

lol it was just a typo when i wrote that

(an auto-correct typo)

Good news for Nancy Franklin haters (I think she's OK but I seem to be in the minority)

http://www.observer.com/2011/09/new-yorker-television-critic-nancy-franklin-taking-a-break-from-writing/

lol i was about to post that

PEACE OUT NANCE

max! didn't he want that job????

xpost

gonna email remnick right now, would really appreciate a letter of recommendation que

on it

all joking aside though dude, you should do it. get a pitch together.

i nominate the ilx tv krew to collaboratively write the new tv column for the new yorker

last couple of issues have been snoozy. did not really need 20 columns from different authors/columnists/whoever about how 9/11 impacted them. the long piece in the newest issue about the murdered pakistani journalist was pretty good but the rest was boring.

every time this thread gets bumped i hope it's for a new david grann article

i would welcome anyone over her
for real, i can think of at least six people on ilx that could do better

i havent gotten an issue since the friday the 2nd :(

i feel bad but i didnt even crack the cover of the 9/11 issue

i feel a lot less bad about nancy franklin not having a job as a tv critic

i skipped all the 9/11 pieces, felt ok about it

ha i liked a lot of the 9/11 pieces (zadie's, remnick's, mccann's), & that's where i'm up to in that issue, having fallen behind, etc. idk, i read those from the issue after 9/11, not so long ago (mainly for the poem on the back) & thought they were v memorable & insightful, even/particularly franzen's, someone probably people don't give so much of a shit about the political insight of, but who talked p presciently about the change in tone between the boom of the 90s & the different mood of the next decade, which, i don't know, might or might not have been excellent foresight on his part but which proved correct, iirc.

it's not so long since i re-subscribed, so i am maybe in my own ny-er golden age, but i've thought the last few issues good, the one with the neanderthal piece a pick-up from a quieter spell (the ones with dogs &c). there's always some small nick paumgarten/staffer piece i like, of the thing about the bus driver in the 9/11 one that's enough to chew on for awhile.

Nancy's okay.

i feel bad but i didnt even crack the cover of the 9/11 issue

I liked it (not as much as the NY magazine 9/11) but if it's worthy, it will last. Good NYer stuff generally does.

i am reading janet malcolm on the journalist & the murderer out of the archives at the moment, it is great.

did anyone make a thread to compile the worst/best/o_O 9/11 10 year anniversary pieces?

i thought abt it but then decided not to mostly cause i didn't want to spend an afternoon looking for one worthy of an opening post :(

Not to mention the fact that we were fcuking inundated w/9-11 anniversary pieces...

janet malcolm is a national treasure, love her so much.

this is the first thing i've read by her, stirred by her paris review interview cropping up elsewhere. i have been meaning to for awhile, half on the rep of the journalism piece, half thinking that i could probably manage another cold-as-ice dissection journalist in the mould of didion. really good so far. had wondered whether to pick up the iirc extended but still short journalist/murderer book? let me know if i am making a mistake & should switch.

Book is great but I don't know how much it adds to the New Yorker piece so not sure if it's worth the extra $$$.

thanks; will maybe slip onto something else of hers (the psychotherapy one?) after.

I'd check out the book version, actually -- it's considerably longer, but still short (and not at all padded out).

If you want a detour from the investigative stuff, her book on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas is also pretty terrific and (just about) doesn't really require any prior Stein reading.

Enjoyed the Louis Menand piece on Dwight MacDonald and middlebrow. He's such a sleek, wry writer - he doesn't bulldoze MacDonald with his own opinions.

― Science, you guys. Science. (DL), Wednesday, September 7, 2011 5:49 AM (1 week ago)

^^yeah this is excellent!

wait you like louis menand, kevin? this does ... does not sync with what i know about you.

this sentence seems posed to give you hives:

But judging from my recent conversations with a handful of literary and intellectual types -- the heirs, you could say, to the Macdonald/Greenberg tradition -- we live, today, in a pleasingly hierarchy-free, almost utopian cultural world. Most people I know share my disparate taste, enjoying "South Park" alongside Franz Schubert, the crisply plotted novels of James M. Cain as well as the philosophically searching films of Antonioni.

packer's 'state of the nation after 9/11' was suitably despairing (and a nice juxtaposition to gopnik's 'what me decline' piece) but managed to conveniently avoid a couple things:

a) despite congenially tearing walter russell mead a new one, did not mention that he himself supported the iraq war

b) no doubt beyond the article's scope, but maybe make a pass at why surry county, north carolina would continue to vote against its own economic interests

i never really cared for menand. macdonald was good though.

The Metaphysical Club is as good as searching "popular" criticism gets.

I quite liked Packer's essay though but then again I often do.

the menand piece that sticks in my mind is the one about orwell, which was headlined something like 'honest, decent, wrong.' it sticks in my mind mainly because menand never seemed to get around to explaining precisely how orwell was 'wrong,' other than the fact that the world today is not literally the world of '1984.'

The best Orwell essay I've read recently is James Wood's, also published in the NY, and in the 2010 Best series.

i remember the menand orwell piece! we never got stuck with equal and opposed totalitarian empires, i think was the main point.

I just started Malcolm's Two Lives. I love her meta-biographies, especially the Chekhov one.

Couple from the vault that I read and liked this week:
Ben McGrath on Tim Wakefield
Susan Orlean on a lost doggy

menand follows up his macdonald piece with another good one on ts eliot

btw remy i never figured out what i was supposed to dislike about that sentence you reprinted last week