New Yorker magazine alert thread

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

Just getting underway with icebreaker article myself, very gripping.

toobin on civil rights and voting - will be short, will read
rachael aviv on the science of sex abuse - sure!
peter hessler on the egyptian power struggle - kind of out of the loop on this so i assume it'll be informative at least
joan acocella on st francis of assisi - def!

they autorenewed my sub at 90 bucks; just cancelled and will reup at about half that online. wtf nyorker

whoah they better not try that shit with me. My sub is up this month and I'm intending to switch to electronic-only.

the review of the Thorton Wilder bio – a mixed one, which is the consensus – whetted my appetite for his fiction; otherwise, yeah, last week's was blah.

this week and last week both pretty zzzzzzz imo

seven pages on how london yuppies like 'the killing' a lot seemed like too much but the personal essay on corresponding w/mary renault was really affecting and kinda saved the issue

but the newest one seems even less promising - i couldnt finish the piece about being in your 20s since it was just the same enraging nonsense it always is and i wanted to bail before he started talking about hbo pop culture phenomenon 'girls' - and i feel the same kindof disinterest in pieces about criminal injustice that you do about foreign policy i guess

1/3 of the essay being a terrible approximation of 20something memoir was not a good choice

oh yeah the mary renault piece was good. i knew there was something solid last week but couldn't remember.

haha i thought you were referring to daniel mendelsohn's piece for a minute (xp)

mary renault piece was nice

i wanna rewind a bit and talk about how lame the food issue was tho

the ottolenghi piece was so freakin boring... the food sounds nice but the guy isnt that interesting and by the time the author got around to doing a mini-profile on their cafe manager who is like, a really great manager, i could barely keep going

the calvin trillin was just ok and the private restaurants one was also extremely whogivesashitty

i feel like their profile game has been pretty weak lately tbh... the trent reznor one was also kind of unacceptable imo... he's a taciturn guy who makes music... doesnt talk alot about himself... nothing to say about him really... he is apparently nice irl... GREAT

i find it super lame that they feel they need to profile ppl just because they are popular in some way right now

like the ottolenghi one read like it should have been in some boostery london city lifestyle magazine

Kid Rock one was great, Reznor was w/e

i liked the kid rock one because he seemed like an actually sort of interesting character with a weird journey

nyer is kinda just one big explainer column

Agree. Food issue was terrible.

Kid Rock profile overrated in this thread. :)