New Yorker magazine alert thread

i enjoy nussbaum's zings

i love that constructed language article. something about the idea of "the #2 terrorist in ukraine" showing up at that conference totally cracks me up for some reason

zadie smith on joni mitchell was like something purpose-built to give ILM fits.

Skipped it. Seems like a double - triple? - whammy of not interested.

That chem weapons epic, on the other hand - wow.

i love that constructed language article. something about the idea of "the #2 terrorist in ukraine" showing up at that conference totally cracks me up for some reason

― scream blahula scream (govern yourself accordingly), Monday, December 17, 2012 10:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this one was great. also enjoyed the article about the huge ship loaded with iron ore traveling across the arctic circle

i generally like zadie smith's novels (haven't read her new one yet) but that article was a mess

ugh yeah

kinda funny that of the 3 overlong rambly pieces about musicians this year my least favorite was zadie smith on joni mitchell and my favorite was the one about the dead

Dead one was really good. Struck a nice balance between taking its subject seriously without taking it too seriously.

i couldn't get through the ZS piece despite the fact that she is a fellow ZS and that i'm currently going through my own "i've never liked joni mitchell but i'm starting to 'get' her" phase

I listened to 'blue' earlier this month when I was feeling 'blue' and I totally got it, after years of not getting it

maybe you just had be feeling 'blue' to feel 'blue' I dunno

can anybody tell me where the buffet line is?

I saw an album called "More Songs About Buildings and Food." You already know who made that album. I did not. However the New Yorker thinks people will be interested in my long humble brag about how my expertise at novel reading has left me deficient in other areas.

Yeah, I often like ZS, but that article, ugh.

The profile of Laurie Simmons was pretty boring, but I feel like that's because the subject is boring. I mean even the subject's art is boring, and even the subject of the subject's art is boring.

no, that's not fair, her art isn't really boring, some of it is striking. I just think the way she talks about it is boring.

Yeah, that was a boring piece. I skimmed looking for a hook, but nope.

the insertion of really literal quotes made it pretty hard going, i think. like it'd describe some period of her work, & then end on a line in which she said that it was a good time or a hard time. it felt so straightforward. i don't think it was bad or anything though.

I also get bored when Lena Dunham talks. I think it's partly just that her career is so short and she talks like she's such an accomplished artist with such a long history -- which, tbf, fits her schtick of her career being about itself from day 1.

I just read that piece about the military experiments at Edgewood though, fuck. Nightmare material.

and the zadie smith piece was terrible

I also get bored when Lena Dunham talks. I think it's partly just that her career is so short and she talks like she's such an accomplished artist with such a long history -- which, tbf, fits her schtick of her career being about itself from day 1.

― drunk 'n' white's elements of style (Hurting 2), Thursday, 20 December 2012 14:07 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, cf the stories about her sidling up to cindy sherman

i'm reading the edgewood piece now, it is not going anywhere i'm optimistic about

i just finished it up! my only complain is that it should have been titled Project DORK

Lena Dunham actually kind of makes sense as an aspie with a fixation on artist's statements.

Most clicked stories of 2012: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/the-top-ten-new-yorker-stories-of-2012.html

Bill Wyman's review/synopsis of the Michael Jackson book is interesting/sad, although not a lot new covered in it.

I want that MJ book so goddamn bad.

I'm happy he spent a column explaining MJ's songwriting.

yeah for sure. the last paragraph of the wyman article's very well rendered & moving, i think. also dug the batuman piece. last few issues v strong i think.

Kind of wish that the Ithkuil piece continued in the purely academic linguistics vein, rather than swerve into the weirdness, which I realize is the point of the article's thesis, but I'm a frustrated academic.

If you enjoyed the conlang stuff, I'd recommend Arika Okrent's book In the Land of Invented Languages, which IIRC was mentioned in the article.

Still general interest, rather than academic, tho.

That's fine, because I should've said that I've got the heart of a frustrated academic lol no grad skules want me.

liked the mendelsohn-mary renault story

The Danish TV one and the pickpocket dude are both pretty good, too.

i just read this old one on ricky jay that made the pickpocket dude seem a little meh

they do love their magicians

i stayed up late to read the pickpocket one because i thought it was gonna be awesome but i ended up thinking everyone involved was kinda sad

yeah, the dude he retrieved from jail was sad for sure

did some catching up over the weekend. recent ones i particularly enjoyed: underground restaurant one, & jill lepore on the history of the income tax

can't believe they didn't mention bob arno, i was all about bob arno when this aired and i was like 12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hboPd9GzJxg

this week and last week both pretty zzzzzzz imo

aw really this week's email kind of excited me. you always read them so fast man wtf!

I skipped a ton of stuff this week. Patricia Marx (ugh), Muslim brotherhood (feel guilty about this but I'm tired of these pieces), John McPhee (not in the mood for long personal reminisces). Pedophilia piece was good but I skimmed some because it was so hard to read.

I'm pretty ruthless about skipping in general because its the only way to stay on top of the issues while also reading other stuff.

john mcphee rules tho

i stayed up late to read the pickpocket one because i thought it was gonna be awesome but i ended up thinking everyone involved was kinda sad

I didn't think Apollo was sad, really. The little A-Team he was trying to put together was a bust, and those guys were sad, but it was also a nice illustration of the difference between the pickpocket romance that he sells and the grubby reality. He's a smart guy, and I like how much effort he's put into figuring out why things work. (I looked up some youtubes of him doing his thing, and it is kind of amazing -- you know he's going to take someone's watch, and it's still hard to spot him doing it.)

I think Ricky Jay is the living person I would be most Beatles-in-64 awestruck to meet.

yeah i didnt like the look of this weeks issue at all. havent been loving hessler in egypt really

i did just finally finish keith gessen's ice breaker think which was pretty good!

also the heller critic at large about 20somethings was horrendous