New Yorker magazine alert thread

xxp i think the more provocative element for me was that it tapped into what i think is a pretty universal feeling (of you know "am i normal," "what are other people like in private,") but then projected through this horrific transgressive context which practically scans like a horror movie. like i couldn't help but empathize on some level w. this desire to know but then absolutely repulsed by the ways that he went about satiating it. the writer in some ways an even creepier individual on how he has allowed himself to be complicit in these crimes as their stenography (and then even participate in them himself!) bc of this sense of like journalistic adventurism. tbh jordan i'm surprised you didn't like it, or maybe that is why you didn't like it.

stenographer* -- and apparently there's a book coming out too? i don't know which of the two are sicker - the guy crazy motel owner who has convinced himself he has done nothing wrong or the journalist who knows it's wrong but participates anyway for the story.

I think the voyeur guy is definitely grosser than 36-years-ago Gay Talese.

definitely creepier but they both seem v unpleasant

It's the kind of article I could imagine David Cronenberg reading back in the 70s/80s and immediately wanting to make a movie around.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/07/calvin-trillin-and-the-new-yorker-slammed-for-poem-about-chinese-food/

satirizing foodies, or a vaguely racist white guy...

lol that poem is lame but it's pretty obviously a satire on hipsters chasing "exotic" cuisine. The rage by the usual poet-scolds on my FB feed is even lamer.

Yeah, I wish Trillin wouldn't write these stupid poems (though if I could get an quick check for writing some lame rhymes at age 80 I'd take it), but the vast majority of what he's written in the past 50 years has shown him to be a thoughtful, culturally aware, self-deprecating writer. Bums me out to see people taking the poem literally and assuming he's a sheltered know-nothing (and given that every cultural figure I like is dying this year I'd hate for him to be remembered for this). Not that the poem deserved to be published in the New Yorker but couldn't people focus their outrage on Borowitz?

i would be up for the job but it would require not ignoring borowitz

voyeur story was craaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy

yah it's crazy.

spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't read it:

talese not snitching on the voyeur despite the fact that he didn't even have any intention of using him in story, and the fact that he was continually committing a fairly serious crime in a manner that had almost chance of being detected; the fact that the voyeur has "come out", and has received money for his story; and maybe caused/witnessed a murder and did nothing to help the victim; and it's going to be a book; and the book will print entries from his log of voyeurism. imagine being a person who had sex in that motel and finding that it's detailed in a book.

i thought about that and i'd be grossed out to realize i had been spied upon while staying there but i assume that the log excerpts will remove any strongly identifying information?

yeah there's not going to really be an exposure problem but like, you would know it was you if you read the description :\

i love reading naughty journalism. the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as i was reading voyeur's hotel, like dude writing this is probably a breach of ethics aaaaahh. when talese's tie slipped through the vent--FFUUUCK!!

it's funny that gay talese 'went through the twitter wringer' at the exact same time this piece came out but for a completely different reason (saying there were no female gonzo journalists in the 60s at a conference)

ultimately (after the thrills wore off) i agree with j0rdan though, there wasn't much 'of interest' to the story. but i enjoyed the hell out of reading it

I imagine some Colorado lawyer is trying to line up aggrieved parties for a class-action suit. "If you stayed in this hotel between 1969 and 1995, you may be eligible for damages!"

talese just kind of saying, oh his wives were cool with it nbd, makes me think of nan talese & the fallout over thy neighbor's wife. like there's probably a lot more to that side of the story that this particular writer is not inclined to see.

i imagine if you're gay talese you prob have random sleaze balls like this contacting you all the time. what a life.

both wives being cool with it was momentarily shocking but so many weird things happen within the privacy of relationships + families behind closed doors and ppl indulge + enable each other's sick behavior all the time (or get drawn into the fantasy/altered reality of /us/ that makes these things ok) and that resonates w/ the rest of the piece i think. feel like a lot of terrible behavior has been justified by ppl in the context of /our family/ and /our way of life/ in its private insularity vs. /the world/

imagine what it was like when he told them

candles...teddy pendergrass playing in the background...an assortment of binoculars...a chocolate fountain

i imagine it being much more serious + intense. wish i had a vent to look in and see for myself..

Was hoping Talese would confront Foos about the inconsistencies of the dates in the journal. Like how could the original journal entries be dated three years too early? And then Talese alludes to other inconsistencies but doesn't describe them.

mordy idk about you, but when i got candles and teddy things get plenty serious and intense

xp i think it's not surprising that a sick dude has maybe a weak grasp on reality but he did show talese the vents so at least some of it is true

For sure, I was just wondering at what point creativity may have taken over

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/04/gay_talese_s_unethical_new_yorker_article_on_gerald_foos.html

My gut feeling is that Foos's "journal" is largely a fabrication

idk how i feel about Nussbaum winning a pulitzer... don't hate her writing, but it's basically bloggy listicles dressed up as new yorker criticism? like why would you win a pulitzer prize for that

cuz she works for the new yorker

i generally like her writing tho

yeah she's pretty good

serious tv criticism still feels kinda dirty and av-club to me tho

I think the avclub TV writing is miles better than Nussbaum's, more perceptive, more invested. Every once in a while she makes a good observation, but much of her criticism seems very ... reactive? Like, maybe she'll wait a season or two in until she addresses something. Or several episodes, and tie it into a think-piece. Maybe that's a good thing, since TV shows in particular sometimes take a while to get going, but it seems kind of safe on her part. A lot easier to write about shows that have benefited from countless features and reviews down the line than to stick your neck out early. And yeah, I get the listicle thing, too. But I have a feeling she covers a subject this wide-ranging, constant and cumulative on the website. I dunno.

I think the avclub TV writing is miles better than Nussbaum's

ok lol

Laugh all you want, but even if you like her better, there is no way her writing is substantially better.

tv sux

av club write the way third-graders write book reports

tv journalism just seems kinda nasty to me in principle. not that it shouldn't exist or we shouldn't read it, but we shouldn't give em prestigious awards imo

the more "invested" tv criticism is in a show the worse it usually is

Nussbaum is the NYer's best critic

av club write the way third-graders write book reports

Maybe we are reading different reviews/pieces? Certainly the Todd Van Der Graaf or whomever guy was really good. A lot of their writers seem to be good. Better than 3rd graders, for sure. I'm not sure I've ever read a Nussbaum piece that made me want to tell a friend, wow, you should read this. And her writing can be plainly stupid, too. Like in her recent "Americans" piece, in which she implores of someone re: Matthew Rhys, "Put him on all the magazines! Give him the Jon Hamm treatment. Seriously, he deserves it." What does that even mean? Make him a star? Make him the subject of tabloids? That's he's foxy? I dunno, but it's a waste of words in service of being cute, nothing more, and I couldn't give a fuck if he gets the "Jon Hamm treatment" even if I think he's possibly the best actor on TV right now (which I never thought of Jon Hamm).

Since they've been letting her write for the site while the position remains semi-vacant, I'm really hoping they hire Amanda Petrusich as their music critic. She'd immediately go up to my fave, or at least second fave, after Alex Ross, maybe.

Todd Van Der werff? That dude has an uncanny knack for finding parallels to his own life story in every episode of tv in existence.

hate when writers do that shit

I'd be happy if they banned first person, but hey, that's what people seem to like.

Nussbaum is pretty good (especially about stuff she likes) but Pulitzer-good? She's probably just the best in a very bland, groupthink-y field. Also points off for the "last episode was Walter's hallucination" theory.

Generally I've wasted too much of my life reading recaps, I don't think there's a solid writer or thinker in the lot, but they're such easy procrastination material.

yeah i dunno if it's possible to be pulitzer-worthy writing about the arts. tho i dunno, is the pulitzer even respected? some crappy things have won pulitzers.

xpost pulitzer for ask a maester

I think the avclub TV writing is miles better than Nussbaum's, more perceptive, more invested. Every once in a while she makes a good observation, but much of her criticism seems very ... reactive? Like, maybe she'll wait a season or two in until she addresses something. Or several episodes, and tie it into a think-piece

this is what criticism is

yeah, i think you guys are overrating the pulitzers. I don't even mean that as a shot against nussbaum, just that the pulitzers for criticism and for commentary often go to stuff that's not that great.

i don't read nussbaum or any TV writing but there is more to criticism than insta-reactions. tying smaller things into a larger narrative is i would say the very fabric of the american essay