New Yorker magazine alert thread

recent fire:

Joyce Carol Oates, Personal History, “A Widow’s Story,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2010, p. 70

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

only abstracts are online for nonsubscribers for those i think

Some articles are popular enough to remain accessible to all (e.g. the Packer article on the Senate to which I linked above).

here's the one abt the koch bros - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

A thread like this for all (literary/current event) magazines would be pretty cool.

Joyce Carol Oates article devastated me.

John Lurie article blew my mind.

dessert article was excellent, thanks for the recc

so john lurie is insane huh

The review of the new Mao biographies.

seconded

Gopnik's desserts article was like a magazine version of the No Reservations episode in Spain.

Which is not meant as a negative at all! They make good companion pieces.

dessert article was good but gtf outta here w/ this

Finally, the server arrives with the Messi dessert, as Jordi fusses anxiously in the background. He presents half of a soccer ball, covered with artificial grass; the smell of grass perfumes the air. On the “grass” is a kind of delicately balanced, S-shaped, transparent plastic teeter-totter—like a French curve—with three small meringues on it, and a larger white-chocolate soccer ball balancing them on a protruding platform at the very end. A white candy netting lies on the grass near the white-chocolate ball.

Then, with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile, the server puts a small MP3 player with a speaker on the table. He turns it on and nods.

An announcer’s voice, excited and frantic, explodes. Messi is on the move. “Messi turns and spins!” the announcer cries, and the roar of the crowd at the Bernabéu stadium, in Madrid, fills the table. The server nods, eyes intent. At the signal, you eat the first meringue.

“Messi is alone on goal!” the announcer cries. Another nod, you eat the next scented meringue. “Messi shoots!” A third nod, you eat the last meringue, and, as you do, the entire plastic S-curve, now unbalanced, flips up and over, like a spring, and the white-chocolate soccer ball at the end is released and propelled into the air, high above the white-candy netting.

“MESSI! GOOOOOAL!” The announcer’s voice reaches a hysterical peak and, as it does, the white-chocolate soccer ball drops, strikes, and breaks through the candy netting into the goal beneath it, and, as the ball hits the bottom of a little pit below, a fierce jet of passion-fruit cream and powdered mint leaves is released into your mouth, with a trail of small chocolate pop rocks rising in its wake. Then the passion-fruit cream settles, and you eat it all, with the white-chocolate ball, now broken, in bits within it.

You feel . . . something of what Messi must feel: first, the overwhelming presence of the grass beneath his feet (he’s a short player); then the tentative elegance of acquired skill, represented by the stepladder of the perfumed meringues; and, finally, the infantile joy, the childlike release, of scoring, represented by the passion-fruit cream and the candy-store pop rocks. I saw Jordi watching us from the kitchen entrance. He had the anxious-shading-into-delighted look that marks the artist.

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

Would not recommend this one! People have been arguing about Jevon's Paradox for a century now, and the article doesn't really advance any significant new ideas. As a primer on the "debate" around energy efficiency, however, it's alright.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

^ totally recommend that

yeah i read that one the other day, great stuff

it was interesting, lol scientists

i liked this one, seemed like a great premise for movie: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_collins

Haven't finished it yet, but I'm digging the Freud, psychiatry, and mental health in China article (subscription needed): http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_osnos

The Patel story was amazing.

yeah needs a good 3rd act tho.

he only contributed a couple of articles this year but i always enjoy atul gawande's stuff: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande is probably his best piece this year

if anyone subscribes then feel free to webmail me the china/freud article kthx

I would, but I can't figure out how to turn it into a pdf or another webmail suitable file.

just copy and paste the text? or is it a different viewer thing.....no worries if that's the case

the lehrer article is indeed pretty good and supplies ~evidence~ for my distrust of falsificationism and the inability of some ppl to think of scienctific 'knowledge' subjunctively, tho it does show science self-correcting so i don't read it as a total excoriation of the method

The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.

The recent one on the Vatican Library was pretty sweet: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/03/110103fa_fact_mendelsohn

I really like Toobin's diptych on JP Stevens and... the other guy.

nakhchivan, FYI, digital subscription gives you access to this weird applet-y, un-C&P text.

Oh, and that review of the new biography on Sergei Diaghilev was A+++++++ and really wish it was available to all humans: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/09/20/100920crbo_books_acocella

you can c+p articles from an library institutional subscription, but the evan osnos china thing is from the jan 10 issue which is not on the library wires yet. if you can't get it nakh, bump this thread in a week or two and i'm sure someone from what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff will help you out.

Lamp, thanks for the Gawande link.

ive been using a friends login for the subscriber stuff for a while and the interface is just so poor i dont usually bother to fuck w/it - seems theyd much rather you read the actual magazine - lol

^agreed. kind of why i started this thread so i knew which actual magazine to pick up and start reading.

p interesting follow-up of sorts on the recent duchenne muscular dystrophy activism article -- they just had a spot f/ clay matthews sponsored by cadillac during the orange bowl

OK a TA I had in college had a poem published a few issues ago, woah.

the whole Jan. 11 issue is worth picking up, the aforementioned freud in china article is amazing and hilarious, and it also has decent articles about belgium and why stieg larsson is so fucking popular

i know the concept of 'worth picking up' is still valid, even for subscribers, in translating to 'worth retrieving from the well-intentioned pile of unread NYers', BUT in general it's still worth remembering how insanely valuable subscribing to the magazine is when compared to buying a newsstand copy. like forty bucks, for a year, for it to be mailed to your house, which is the cost of like seven newsstand issues.

what is the point of an article like this? - http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/01/17/110117ta_talk_surowiecki

surowiecki doesn't have a single interesting thing to say here

He's just summarizing the various memes on this now that are being mentioned in newspapers and blogs without asking anyone where things could go from here--what is the future for unionized government employees, will there ever be more unionized private sector employees, how would this help in regards to the inequality differences that have grown since union membership has declined...)

His column is like a monthly crib-sheet of conventional wisdom so you can sound like you know what you're talking about when you get invited to a garden party in Stonington

what is the point of an article like this?

to summarize and provide some context to a current event or idea its not really about 'saying interesting things' its just a primer? like i know being 1000x smarter than anyone else ever is your thing but i mean the section is called 'talk of the town' so yeah, it exists so the mag's readers can get a vague grip on an issue - the column (which john cassidy also writes some weeks) is supposed to be a gloss? & thats not really all that terrible???

honestly tracer maybe u wld get more out of the articles u read if u didnt spend all ur energy snarkily coming up w/ reasons why u wld have done it better

dude there are a zillion interesting things happening with unions at the moment (the biggest of which imo is the belated but hugely important efforts to hook up with undocumented immigrants). i'm not sorry for wanting more out of a column called "the financial page"! this article could have been written at any time in the last 15 years - there is zero content to it!

i'll also admit that i am rankled by his terminology - "cadillac health plans" etc - and his conclusion that ultimately the reason that lots of people "resent" unions now is because unions have been successful at negotiating good contracts

like, if i want economist-lite i'll read newsweek

snark on that one for size

there is a cover story public sector unions in the economist this week. dunno why i'm bringing it up though because i haven't read it.

i'll be interested in reading that, in an "oppo research" kind of way.

i should probably just recuse myself from talking about surowiecki - everything about his steez rankles me and i'm finding it hard to put into words - the "primer" aspect is part of it, but there are people who write primer-type stuff who i love. i dunno!

yah i can see finding the article glib and too-neat "The Great Depression invigorated the modern American labor movement. The Great Recession has crippled it" both oversimplifies and maybe misses the point - i was just sort of baffled that you didnt seem to understand why an article like this gets written

i guess i still don't! the avg new yorker reader could have dictated this article in their sleep 15 years ago

so did anyone else read the all of the "20 under 40" pieces? thought it was pretty disappointing. vaguely remember liking one about a guy working on a boat in florida that catches on fire, but not much else.

t-pain?

And he might be reelected for decades.

I don't see any way out of this situation. So long as Dems are the party of everyone-not-a-fascist it's going to elect legislators like Fetterman.

I think it's fair to giving him shit as long as he speaks like an 8 year old bully about the genocide. I'm not voting for him again.

Lol was just going to revive this as I saw this blog/page that talks through the statistical evidence in the Letby case.

https://triedbystats.com/

There is no way I would vote for
Fetterman again, but that’s stating the obvious. I’ve met people like him all my life in PA— they’re all not-so-secretly racist assholes

Lol was just going to revive this as I saw this blog/page that talks through the statistical evidence in the Letby case.

https://triedbystats.com/

― xyzzzz__, Monday, June 24, 2024 5:15 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

shouldn’t you check with your local precinct that this is approved reading material?

lol

just skimmed through. good stuff

There is no way I would vote for Fetterman again, but that’s stating the obvious. I’ve met people like him all my life in PA— they’re all not-so-secretly racist assholes

this is the closest i've ever seen you to admitting you might have been wrong about something!

which is cool. i wasn't in a position to vote for him, but was a fan, and am also deeply disappointed

My subscription expires at the end of July. I only subscribed in the first place so I could pillage their archives for anything and everything they had on Cecil Taylor (which was a lot, going all the way back to 1957), and I don't know if I'm ready to give them another $120. Although I suppose it's a tax writeoff since it could wind up being research for potential future projects.

If you cancel and wait them out, they'll eventually send a better deal. I cancelled in spring 2023 and after about 10 months, I got mailed an offer to get 12 months for $50. I'm a pretty casual New Yorker reader so the gap in my subscription doesn't bother me

just skimmed through. good stuff

― flopson, Tuesday, 25 June 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Knew you'd like a bar chart

If you cancel and wait them out, they'll eventually send a better deal. I cancelled in spring 2023 and after about 10 months, I got mailed an offer to get 12 months for $50. I'm a pretty casual New Yorker reader so the gap in my subscription doesn't bother me

I got a year via cheap "please come back!" promo, extended it another year cheap, and then some friends gave us a gift sub that extended it one more year. I'll hang around through the centennial next year but probably not after that. Unperson, I'd keep it as a business expense.

things i never read in the new yorker:

letters
talk of the town
shouts & murmurs
long depressing articles about politics or global affairs
anything by patricia marx
fiction
poetry
critical reviews of classical music or theater

but for some reason i always read the restaurant review even though i don't live in NYC

first thing I read in the new yorker:

long depressing articles about politics or global affairs

Ha I religiously read the restaurant reviews too.

first thing I read in the new yorker:

long depressing articles about politics or global affairs

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes)

ha, same.

Followed by Justin Chang's reviews.

as for the archives on jazz, I've really been digging this three issue-spanning profile on Ellington from 1944. So cool to get a sense how he was seen at his peak. Starts here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1944/06/24/duke-ellington-profile-the-hot-bach-i

The only thing I almost never read is fiction. I also don't make a point of reading the poetry, although it occasionally catches my eye in the middle of the page. I usually at least skim the rest, although I sometimes skip long features about international subjects (sorry, Jon Lee Anderson!) or medium-sized articles in the back of the book about long-dead writers I have scant interest in.

Agreed that Tables for Two is reliably worth reading, especially since Hannah Goldfield became the regular columnist a few years ago. And now it's Helen Rosner, who's pretty good, too. I sometimes miss Goldfield in that space, but glad that she's still on staff, writing longer articles about food and dining.

Everyone seems very proud of themselves for not reading the fiction. I admit it's usually not to my taste, but I will give stories a try now and then.

The Tessa Hadley story in this week's issue was at least as interesting as that article about the Surgeon to the Stars.

i'm not proud of most of this, but it's how i manage getting through each week's issue and keep myself sane. also i'm not that interested in short fiction in general, though they often have authors i like in the NYer.

i am proud of never reading david sedaris pieces, that guy sucks

i'm not proud of most of this, but it's how i manage getting through each week's issue

Same

If you cancel and wait them out, they'll eventually send a better deal. I cancelled in spring 2023 and after about 10 months, I got mailed an offer to get 12 months for $50. I'm a pretty casual New Yorker reader so the gap in my subscription doesn't bother me

ditto and we didn’t even wait 10 months it was more like 1 or 2 if even. my bf was the one who did all the negotiating over the phone but we got a drastically reduced subscription
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, June 25, 2024 6:31 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

if you have a .edu address you get a nice discount too — I think my rate is 69.99/yr

I jump to the restaurant review and any long-form pieces about scammers or people putting themselves in uncomfortable & inadvisable situations (y'know, trekking across Antarctica or spending millions of dollars getting to the bottom of the ocean, etc).

I go right to pieces about like Ja Rule opening a nail salon or Slick Rick's line of magnet poetry.

And he might be reelected for decades.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 24, 2024 5:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. he’s in his mid-50s, is 6 foot 8 and overweight, has heart failure, and already had a stroke

also, a terrible driver

I sometimes skip long features about international subjects (sorry, Jon Lee Anderson!)

Anderson is my current favorite of the staff writers. Always amazed how he gets through the most dangerous parts of the world, reports on whatever complicated conflict is going on there, and gets out. I mean, he got to Haiti and met with Barbecue last year!

I did like his Personal History about hitchhiking around the world as a teenager in the '70s.

people putting themselves in uncomfortable & inadvisable situations

this one was really good:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/29/the-woman-who-spent-five-hundred-days-in-a-cave

Yes exactly right, a perfect example of the form.

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. he’s in his mid-50s, is 6 foot 8 and overweight, has heart failure, and already had a stroke

― brony james (k3vin k.), Tuesday, June 25, 2024 2:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

also, a terrible driver

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes),

otm

Back when I subscribed - I dropped off last fall because it got too expensive and I wasn’t reading enough for it to be worth it - was largely about the movie reviews, the music blurbs, the book reviews, the occasional big feature. The poetry sometimes, the fiction less often, when it was a fiction writer I was into.

What I pretty much always read and was always reliably delighted by: Peter Schjeldahl, the GOAT.

Same.