New Yorker magazine alert thread

this court case is really something else
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/what-makes-a-parent

i thought that story was interesting but their case seemed so unique i don't really get how it can really be a test case for anything. they were SO BAD at actually communicating or talking about the status of their relationship.

is it just me or does gunn really not seem to have a case at all?

and seems like an awful person

or that if she has a case it opens up a troubling precedent for all kinds of claims we'd consider dubious

it seemed like her case was that she had enough money to keep the case going and put financial pressure on the other woman

xp. that was a particularly terrible way of phrasing that as i don't have any idea whether she has a case under new york state family law, but i mean, from an intuitive point of view this woman is not the child's parent and shouldn't be able to prevent the parent from taking the child to the uk just because she has money

The quiddities and agonies rich person introduction doesn't help my feelings toward Gunn.

if anyone remembers his profile from a couple of years back, karl deissiroth, the stanford psychiatrist and neuroscientist, is speaking at my girlfriend's med school graduation.

just finished that parenthood legal battle case and gunn is basically a monster

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/19/how-st-augustine-invented-sex

I invented sex. You’re welcome, pals.

Well, for anyone that has been clamoring for a 20-page piece on Texas politics ...

thoughts?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case-against-civilization

it's definitely an interesting piece but i found myself feeling v skeptical about its conclusions?

Me too, but I loved it and got tons of sparks off it. Really want to read the book about bushmen it cites.

James C. Scott is pretty good but you have to keep in mind his granaries-are-the-enemy-of-the-people thing goes back years and years and years.

Hunter-gatherers don't have pizza or beer so nah. Speaking of which I'm disappointed the piece doesn't even touch on the hypothesis that people went in for the Neolithic revolution because agriculture provides for a steady supply of booze.

'moral economy of the peasant' is the best Scott imo

whenever i come across this argument, wonder if they aren't idealizing the experience of tribal societies who happened to luckily live in abundance....for instance cabeza de vaca's account of living in pre-agricultural texas...no thanks.

i plan to read Scott's book though.

Lillian Ross has died at 99. One of my all-time favorites is her profile of Hemingway. https://t.co/v20xA6LkZM

— corey robin (@CoreyRobin) September 20, 2017

god it's exhausting reading that. such a bloviating old gasbag that seems conjured, an antic fictional character. those constant sporting metaphors, the shadow-boxing. hemingway really was a pos.

clearly you are NOT AN AMERICAN

unbelievably controlled writing. the picture she builds up, piece by piece, the oppressiveness of his tics. devastating

there's something feminist about it, too.. she carefully records who does the unpacking, who keeps track of the toothbrush, who keeps the train on the tracks

from Adam Gopnick's sharp review of Chernow's U.S. Grant bio:

A student of American prose could hold up Adams’s Grant-bashing memoir against Grant’s own memoir to define the two furthest points of American recollection: one discursive, mordant, allusive, and hyperbolic—exaggeration of affect is the key to Adams’s “education”—the other pointed, reduced, and understated. (Lincoln’s speeches, Grant’s memoirs, and Stephen Crane’s stories are the triple pillars of American stoical prose to this day.) What the two old enemies have in common, significantly, is a natural taste for irony: Grant’s understatements, like Adams’s self-mortifications, are meant to make the narrator seem modest while showing that he sees through everything. Grant underplays savage battles to escape the pretensions of heroic rhetoric; Adams overdramatizes his internal “lessons” to mock the earnest pretensions of intellect to master the commercial world. Grant’s battles have no heroism; they just happen. Adams’s education keeps sending him back to Go.

Whenever I’m intimidated about how smart Gopnik is, I just have to remember the number of problems he’s solved.

This line of thinking might deserve its own thread.

Man I don’t know I almost always skip gopnick he is hella annoying

^

often annoying, but he's not always wrong (except about hockey)

this was otm

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-dangerous-acceptance-of-donald-trump

I find that there are very few New Yorker writers distinctive enough to be especially irritating. I've probably read dozens of Adam Gopnik pieces and I couldn't tell you a single thing about his writing.

heroic detachment ftw

Adam Gopkin said 9/11 Manhattan smelled like Mozarella cheese. That's what I remember about him.

That is inaccurate btw

France, the 70s, young man older woman, just making my way through it now.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1971/06/26/immortal-gatito?mbid=social_twitter

^^ I've seen the film, but will def make time to read that tonight, thanks

Just stepped on that by accident and this is something else (certainly by New Yorker standards). Mavis Gallant is looking at every action and utterance from about five different angles.

https://twitter.com/MenCatPerson

is it supposed to be good or funny that someone is spending their time finding idiotic tweets by morons or perhaps bigots or actual deep misogynists and sharing them?

what do we learn from this?

Someone saw these tweets, was maddened enough to start one as you can do it for free.

When idiocy and bogotry are read aloud its great because you don't actually need to argue anything, just read it back to the person doing it - that's the effect that account has.

yeah no doubt the men who posted are following it and changing their ways

i don't even think it has to be anything other than funny but many of them aren't even funny, just the stupid, badly expressed opinions of dullards.

i suppose some people doubt that these dullards exist or something, but again, i doubt they are following this.

When idiocy and bogotry are read aloud its great because you don't actually need to argue anything, just read it back to the person doing it - that's the effect that account has.

i think this is seriously one of the most naive things i've ever read on ilx

They will never get to see it, but it might stop some ppl.

Ultimately its not meant to teach ppl anything, that was someone maddened by online. And who could blame them?

xp - its not about changing hearts and minds btw. Its war!

hearts and minds are not changed on twitter

One aspect of modern fandom is to publicize the worst examples of humanity who don't like what you are a fan of, in order to shame others out of criticizing it. (Cat Person was a competently written story and went viral due to its being relatable to people I am lucky enough not to be one of.)

sometimes it takes a long ass time to figure out why some tweet is posted in a particular thread

One aspect of modern fandom liberalism is to publicize the worst examples of humanity

fixed it for you

ITT: men react to men reacting to Cat Person

Those tweets should be added to the story.

someone on twitter had a very good thread yesterday reiterating that Cat Person is a SHORT STORY not a memoir or essay or thinkpiece, and should be assessed accordingly. relating to characters and their experiences is of course fine, but judging the merit of the story on the rightness or wrongness of the characters' actions is really really dumb. ftr I don't think the New Yorker really did itself or the author much of a favor by publishing an accompanying interview with her about it. not that the author should have to relinquish all authority but maybe let the work speak for itself for at least a little while first.