New Yorker magazine alert thread

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. :)

all the time now when im reading stuff like the underground resto piece i think of your (or maxs?) description of the new yorker as something you read to have things to talk about to other people at dinner parties which is sort of an unwieldy description but exactly how a lot of pieces come off like 'oh, well the other day i was reading...' but that really isnt that bad because i mean you have to talk about something to yr friends coworker sitting beside you other than the weather and whats the most efficient biking route to get there xp

ya the kid rock was not that great, hes not v interesting, also lol at the generous attempts to position the rubin produced album as tasteful and timeless, when i finally checked out the songs i had a v of course experience

ya that was me xp B-)

and of course i am like the #1 offender as far as this behavior goes

i suffered the shock of recognition when you described it yes very much so

anyway i totally disagree with s1ocki about the london restaurateur piece i really love those low-key pieces about successful members of the professional class - other recent hilite was the long piece about the engineer that had worked in silicon valley - makes the world seem less relentlessly horrible to me all these reasonable people living their lives doing kinda cool stuff, making chicken for dinner

ha, otm

i just started listening to the radio station here & it is a kinda npr/radio 4 analogue that ranges from softly spoken news to interesting documentaries with a boring guy talking about climate change & then panel shows in which people put on improv voices & make "jokes" to clipped studio laughter & it strikes me as a neat & exact litmus test of how much you are part of the demographic you are part of - like most people have a turn-off point where they think that the documentaries are too boring or the commentators are too something or the panel shows are just insufferable bullshit, even if it's material for which they're primed (like that guy bill maher, right, like you agree with him or whatever but he is just the living worst & makes you hate people you should have a sense of attunement w/). & i totally have the stomach for like a gentle & nice new yorker profile about a bourgeois guy & his food-shopping routine & the interactions he has at the market, & i am sufficiently distant from ever going to an underground restaurant that i can appreciate the vicarious thrill of just knowing that there are such things and being momentarily involved in that & its personal undercurrent of social deprivation & that's fine. but then i can't read shouts & murmurs even if it's woody allen writing it, or i get bored in book reviews sometimes. s1ocki is a food person, maybe all of this is too close to the bone, maybe it is like when you read a positive newspaper review of a group you dislike & then are curious whether all of the newspaper's contents is equally error-strewn & off & you just aren't informed enough to know it.

seems like there's a trend for these profile pieces on 80s/90s celebs--

(Kid Rock/Trent Reznor/Ben Stiller) got famous doing a somewhat disreputable thing (rapping/industrial/meta-comedy) and yet their careers have persevered and they've gained new respectability by doing new things(Romney themes/movie scores/uh, directing)

(alyssa milano) got famous for doing a somewhat disreputable thing (dating baseball players/soft pr0n/acting w tony danza) and yet her career has persevered and she's gained new respectability by doing new things (listening to stereolab/yo la tengo)

loll

Kid Rock profile may not be anywhere near A+, but it's >>>>>>>>Reznor (he uses computers to make music!) and Stiller (he's a perfectionist when it comes to making shitty movies, especially his no-one-cares remake of "Walter Mitty!").

the Stiller piece was wonderful! full of a really ambivalent and ambiguous pathos, i thought.

I thought it took too seriously a subject not really worth taking that seriously, five or so years after a piece like this should have run.

Like, look the dude's track record, which has been this unbalanced pattern of "four for them, one for me." So many flops and shitty boilerplate sequels.

ya the author's fascination in the reznor piece with the idea of using computers to make music was pretty bad, like, if you still haven't gotten over that, maybe you shouldn't be the person or the publication to be covering trent reznor

a friend of mine had the cassette of pretty hate machine melted into her dashboard by the sun

see that would be a good talk of the town

s1ocki is a food person

it's 'bon vivant'

With computers, Reznor can make any sounds he wants, even sounds that don't exist!

he took a cello and a piano and put them together at the same time iirc

other recent hilite was the long piece about the engineer that had worked in silicon valley

Libertarian venture capital guy, or have I really fallen ?

... behind?