New Yorker magazine alert thread

i used to read the main articles in every issue but let most of my 2010 issues pile up without reading anything.

if you read something good in a new issue of the New Yorker, post about it here.

The review of the new Mao biographies.

Denby's Joan Crawford essay.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

Man I've thought abt starting this thread a few times

this is why i don't have a subscription

Subscription to the print version: $39.95
Subscription to the iPad version: $234.53

http://runawayjuno.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/thumbs-up-low-res.jpg

AYYYY WE MAKING INTERNET MONEY

http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/490177_o.gif

alright enough

Anything related to Mexico in the past year's issues has been pretty compelling, mostly by William Finnegan and Alec Wilkinson. The Jane Mayer article about the Koch brothers and the discreet establishment of the tea party is definitely worth reading. This week's Gopnik piece on postmodern desserts is a good read, too.

Date and month/description of the cover of the issues you're referring to would be helpful!

George Packer's essay on the decadence of the Senate was illuminating.

Oh, and, both from around August, the profiles of Gil-Scott Heron and John Lurie.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 31, 2010 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^otm

links would be nice too

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?

The psychoanalysis in China article is kind of disappointing imo, mostly because it seems to say that it'll explain why a) psychoanalysis fell out of a favor in the US and most other Western nations, and b) why China then picked it up. The article gets at b) at a certain superficial level, but really doesn't go into a) (which I'm sure has been the subject of a lot of other articles, just would've liked discussion here). Anyway, one of my prof is mentioned in the article, easily the best part of it.

really tapping into the slang here

The teens were from a variety of backgrounds—public and private schools, Manhattan and the outer boroughs—and they wore jeans, collared shirts, and leather jackets. They seemed like normal teen-agers, although they all had the faintly glamorous, knowing aura of city kids. They were discussing slang expressions. “ ‘Calm your tits,’ ” Yasha, an eighteen-year-old from Crown Heights, said, citing an expression that means “Calm down.”

“ ‘Good looks,’ ” said Kyjah, a sixteen-year-old fencer from the Upper West Side, who was wearing lime-green nail polish.

“It means ‘Thanks for looking out,’ ” Alexandria, from Yonkers, said. “Somebody’s like, ‘Oh, you dropped money.’ ‘Oh, good looks.’ ”

“ ‘Gucci’ is the same as ‘Good money,’ ” Yasha said.

“You can say, ‘What’s Gucci?’ ” Kyjah said. “ ‘What’s up?’ ”

Matteo, a sixteen-year-old from Park Slope, said, “ ‘What’s poppin’?’ ”

The teens hesitated. “That’s, like, a retro saying.”

Yasha added, “It’s gang-related.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/01/10/110110ta_talk_widdicombe#ixzz1AgfxnnHS

Does a print subscription also give access to the full digital edition + archives? Their website is suspiciously vague about that.

Yes it does - my international one does anyway.

yes, you can look at literally every single page of every single issue going back to 1921 or something.

the applet viewer thing is kinda stupid, but functional

the david brooks article is so terrible i cant remember the last time i read something that managed to be so offensive w/o actually saying or meaning anything

Yes, that was ugh.

i am considering writing a disappointed email, is how disappointed i am, right now

I know right! I couldn't even get through it.

I did enjoy the unintentional irony of describing what would commonly be thought of as "people skills" or "intuition" or "emotional intelligence" in ridiculously labored and aspergerian terms.

The psychoanalysis in China article is kind of disappointing imo, mostly because it seems to say that it'll explain why a) psychoanalysis fell out of a favor in the US and most other Western nations, and b) why China then picked it up. The article gets at b) at a certain superficial level, but really doesn't go into a) (which I'm sure has been the subject of a lot of other articles, just would've liked discussion here). Anyway, one of my prof is mentioned in the article, easily the best part of it.

― nomar little (Leee), Monday, January 10, 2011 7:21 PM Bookmark

Agree with this. Started to raise some interesting implications about what psychoanalysis could mean for China as well, but then wastes way too much ink on here-and-now descriptions of various conferences and meetings, which new yorker writers love to bore us with.

freud/china piece nakh http://pastie.org/1460821

The David Brooks article was so poor that I kept double checking to see if it was in fact fiction and supposed to be ironic. Or, failing that, if it was nonfiction and supposed to be a parody.

I knew the Brooks article would settle the argument.

I had trouble just imagining people named Harold and Erica being the same age.

that article was not about people it was abt the Composure Class (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Empty Factoids)

omg that brooks article guys

unacceptable

i saw the name and sort of hoped it was a different david brooks and after about two sentences i was like DX

Page 1 of 6?

forget it

Reading Jon Lee Anderson's recent article about Sri Lanka. I'm so curious what his personality is like, as far as how he behaves in a room with dictators and drug lords and everyone else he commiserates with as a reporter. (His article on Rio gangs from last year is terrific, too.)

I'm sure he tries really hard not to say anything offensive.

JL Anderson is great.

That's the thing -- I'm just really curious about what his manners and body language are like when he's sitting with legitimately paranoid, genuine killers.

(His article on Rio gangs from last year is terrific, too.)

loved this^^. favorite thing I read last year aside from maybe the Sibera travelogue (or was that 09?)

International subscriber so always about a week behind. That Brooks piece was such a bore, and added up to nothing as far as I could tell. Seemed like the editors took the day off when that made it onto the page.

I would like to add my ire about the piece of shit that was that Brooks thing.

All the action's over on the Brooks thread, it seems. Cloudberry!

New Yorker evidently messed up the John Lurie article. Have a look at the blog:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/08/video-john-lurie-the-drawing-show.html

Well, clearly Lurie's close friends and supporters didn't like it!

I got one par into the David Brooks article before I flipped to the Sri Lanka one.

Anyway, Jill Lepore on constitutional "originalism" is must-read: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/17/110117crat_atlarge_lepore

just got her book, whites of their eyes.

Dan, have you read the Lepore book yet? What do you think?

Another great one:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_gawande

I've only read three of Atul Gawande's pieces, but they are all so uniformly excellent. Does he ever write anything not worth reading?

Haven't read it. Have a backlog of books I'll never read from the holidays.

The Gawande articles are getting so much attention. This last one is getting picked up on all the political/progressive blogs as well general interest blogs.

yeah atul's stuff is regularly great

if you are a(n american) sports fan, it's def worth reading ben mcgrath on concussions in football

gawande article on health care is so good, so inspiring in content and as journalism. wow

Definitely, that Gawande article was fantastic. I'm playing catch up on the last few issues and just read that one last night.

btw http://gawande.com/

he is awesome

if you are a(n american) sports fan, it's def worth reading ben mcgrath on concussions in football

― mookieproof, Sunday, January 30, 2011 12:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

this one from 2009 is a great read too: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell

finally got my copy of the Jan 10 issue (i run about 3 weeks behind cover dates, being in the middle of the ocean and all. i'll see them on the news stand before my mailbox)

the freud in china thing was awesome but the story about banana scientists and the story about the sadaam statue were even better. gr8 issue

i always run about a month and a half late on the mag.

I used to be great at keeping totally up to date, but lately I've been reading a bunch of random books I got over the holidays so I'm losing my place.

oh i'm basically a year behind on reading.

i just mean when they actually arrive in my mailbox.

is the new yorker better than the NYRB or LRB?

woof!

US: 1 year (47 issues) of The New Yorker for $39.95
UK: 47 issues (one year) for $120

$40 is insane value

NYer is great for original reportage, but the criticism pales next to NY- or LRB

x-ps

it's a totally different kind of thing to either. not really a ranking decision if you want to subscribe to one.

lrb is £12 per year in the uk, but it's monthly.

ta

thought the LRB was fortnightly, tho it might've changed since my sub lapsed

oh you are right, it is fortnightly. £12 is for six months.

i get nyrb, which is $109 for european addresses. if you want a mag with short fiction or plenty of up to date criticism of stuff other than academic books and literary fiction then it is not for you. i just like it's very slow style.

its

i got my first 2 years of NYer for $25/year /braggin

My mother pays for mine!

lol my subscription was also a gift from my mother

ha, now I know what to ask my dad for as a birthday present

When I was married we maintained two subscriptions so we'd not have to share. Marriage would no doubt have ended sooner had we tried to make due with just one sub.

lol my subscription was also a gift from my mother

^me three

tho i asked for it originally & would pay myself

me four. her mom did the same for her so it's a family tradition now.

the reporter who profiled guillermo del toro in this weeks issue seems a little over obsessed with his weight. like, comically so.

i think i've had a new yorker subscription for a decade now
lol old

xp i agree there were several descriptor details (not just weight stuff, cant remember off hand) that made me cringe

It'll be a decade for me this summer. One of the first issues I got featured that Alex Ross article on Radiohead.

o one was not eye candy but "eye protein"
i guess that might'ev been str8 reportage tho

yeah just the constant status updates on his weight like it must be a sign of his anxiousness!!!

when my mom visits she always asks why i read the new yorker when i no longer live in new york.

:-/

no answer will satisfy her

I'm on a $20-something subscription for one year, I randomly got a solicitation letter one day and was all, woah nice deal.

when my mom visits she always asks why i read the new yorker when i no longer live in new york.

:-/

― Z S, Wednesday, 2 February 2011 05:03 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol my friends do this too, it is annoying

what, ask? or read it?

ask

"why do you read entertainment weekly if you're not an entertainer"

"why do you read the atlantic monthly if you're not a large body of water"

Well, then she'll thumb through the first 20 pages or so and see a bunch of listings for upcoming local NY events, so I guess I can sort of see it. I'm trying to give my mam the benefit of the doubt, dudes

when people ask me that i just tell them the nyer has hilarious cartoons and that's why i subscribe

i tell them it's for nancy franklins incisive tv criticism

i need to know consumer goods prices from patricia marx

what is up with patricia marx anyway?

she's working it on the avenue

partricia marx stuff is just crazy. how long has she been writing for the magazine?

sometimes it's funny, but most of the time I start reading it without paying attention and start thinking, when is this interesting article about shopping going to get to the point? Then I notice it's her article and I realize it's just going to be 3 more pages of gift prices and snarky comments.

ugh fuckin hate patricia marx

partricia marx stuff is just crazy. how long has she been writing for the magazine?

feel like shes been writing the xmas issue 'upper west siders buy shit' article since i started reading the mag in high school but google says 1989

sometimes i half enjoy the ivy league legacy types @ the new yorker but marx is p worthless & unfunny

yeah but as bad as she is, even she isn't as unfunny and uninteresting as shouts and murmurs routinely is.

do people find the woody allen shouts & murmurs funny? i can barley get through those and they're only like a page long.

and patricia marx articles are the only ones i skip by byline alone.

i wonder why i don't spend more time being enraged by patricia marx, the way i do with nancy franklin? it's like i forget she exists as soon as i see her byline and think "wtf?"

I don't mind Nancy Franklin.

I loved Woody Allen growing up, but his S + M stuff is terrible. Maybe it's no different and I'm the one who changed. I love Jack Handey and a few others. Every few issues there's a S + M that I think is pretty funny.

Did not know that Ben McGrath was only 34.

http://www.newyorker.com/images/contributors/p233/contributor_benmcgrathphoto_p233_crop.jpg

I'm not sure that I've ever laughed, even internally, at Shouts + Murmurs. Not even Woody Allen, and I love that guy.

this was good - What I imagined the people around me were saying when I was...

sad to see bob odenkirk being unfunny in last weeks S&M.

it's like trying to be funny at a funeral; the location makes things more difficult.

Simon Rich has a lot of funny ones:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/simon_rich/search?contributorName=simon%20rich

I don't care for any of those really.

but that's me i guess.

i don't even bother w/ "shouts & murmurs" anymore

I like a enough of them. Maybe you guys aren't "new yorker" enough. Maybe Hawaii and New Jersey have their own funny magazines for your sensibilities.

lol, dude i am posting from 53rd and 5th. i was mugged on the way in by the statue of liberty.

I AM NY

simon rich and jack handey are the only shouts and murmurs authors worth reading

patricia marx sucks but its harder to be mad about her than nancy franklin b/c theres no reason for them to have only one, terrible tv reviewer, instead of one terrible one and one p good one, the way they do with all the rest of their critics

name names

lane - good
denby - terrible

alex ross - good
sfj - hit or miss

james wood and some of the other bros - ok
adam gopnik - f this dude

poor joan acocella

"some of the other bros"

if you are a(n american) sports fan, it's def worth reading ben mcgrath on concussions in football

― mookieproof, Sunday, January 30, 2011 12:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

this one from 2009 is a great read too: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/19/091019fa_fact_gladwell

― gr8080, Tuesday, February 1, 2011 2:11 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I was like wtf big-upping a Gladwell piece, but after I read it, it's actually a little bit better on both the medical side and the moral side (though I can imagine people thinking that MG is stretching the analogy).

lol malcom gladwell hating is such an ILX cliche

lol so is ur face. ^_^

i'm a big peter schjalujkojahl fan. forget who the other art critic is.

i dont think they have a second art critic. not in the back of the book.

and yea i like schjeldahl too. dont always agree with him but hes a great writer.

I can see that Gopnik is incredibly intelligent and a deft, original prose writer but something about him aggravates the hell out of me. It's self-conscious "fine writing" of the kind that James Wood is always slamming in fiction.

I saw that Ben McGrath was 34 and that he'd first contributed in 2002. I don't know how anyone gets to be a New Yorker contributor but certainly not a 25/26-year-old. Do you just get the call one day? Do you hang around the office until they get tired of telling you no? Do you have to make your bones, mob-style?

WS James Surowiecki any day of the week.

No really, he's hot.

he used to live on my block

Where does he live now, I will run to him

he and his poetess wife moved elsewhere, sorry

john seabrook on crowds/stampedes is v. interesting

ben mcgraths dad used to be the magazines fiction editor

had never heard of that hillsborough soccer disaster, that photo is srsly something -

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01380/HillsboroughDisast_1380793c.jpg

ben mcgraths dad used to be the magazines fiction editor

Mystery solved. Not to say he's not a good writer.

hey someone just posted this to facebook

ahem cobble hill was NOT rough when you moved there in 2002 . . honky please . . i know its the new yorker but still

whats it abt, seems like a good topic to discuss here

true, but the dude wrote that in a piece about his wife dying, so maybe it should slide

What article is that? I don't remember and I have opinions, as somebody who lived in Cobble Hill in 2002.

yeah, jesus, it's like the saddest story ever.

it's the personal history one from this weeks issue. xp

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/07/110207fa_fact_goldman

my cousin lived in cobble hill in 2002, someone got murdered in the house next to hers

There really isn't many parts of any big city, especially one that's this diverse, that isn't a stone's throw from some less safe neighborhood. Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens are some of the most desirable streets in Brooklyn and are filled with wealthy, wealthy people, living 1 block from a relatively bad housing project. I haven't read the story yet, but while I'd certainly say that by 2002 most of Cobble Hill was gentrified, doesn't mean you wouldn't find yourself in a rough area if you walk 1 block in the wrong direction. And it's still that way.

lots of mafiabros iirc

True, but they never mugged my friend who lived a block away!

John Lurie discussing his questionable New Yorker profile:

http://www.jambands.com/features/2011/02/01/john-lurie-sustains/

ruth franklin's article on h.g. adler is really good (01/31/11 issue)

Working my way through the Guillermo del Toro, and actually my biggest gripe is how the reporter renders del Toro's speech into stilted sound bites, when I remember him speaking a lot more expansively and dynamically.

the funniest thing about that profile was the paragraph he devotes to giving clueless new yoker readers a little background on who this h.p. lovecraft fellow is

I seem to recall Oliver Sacks' last two articles being pretty great, and I'm surprised they hadn't been mentioned yet (since he was mentioned in the NPR or Radiolab thread). Anyway, they're both behind the pay wall. :(

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_sacks (2010/08/30)
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/28/100628fa_fact_sacks (2010/06/28)

i was like ok i dont have much 2 do this morning, ill print out this paul haggis/scientology article....it's 49 pages!

And it's a tease of a forthcoming book, no?

The best bits of the Haggis piece come at the end, btw, with the revelation of some brazen church-contradicting forgeries. Not that you should skip to the end of anything.

The biggest (so to speak) revelation of the del Toro piece is how ... hefty the guy is. 300 pounds! But dude is clearly smart and knows his nerd stuff.

man do i hate paul haggis

oh i read the whole thing. but yeah, that stuff abt hubbards war records was prob the most damning

the whole thing was just like parenthetical denials of every claim idk scientologys tenets seem like ideas a bratty little kid would come up with - ie. it's sacrilidge & damaging to us for non members to read our scriptures, etc

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/02/07/110207ta_talk_paumgarten

Enjoyed this quick profile of The Man Who Plays The Most Interesting Man In The World

also liking Gopnik's roundup of all manner of writings on how the internet is making our life better or worse

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_fey

The writing is pretty terrible, but: Ball of Fingers.

dressed like i am here to repair your aquarium

the article about near-earth-objects/NEOs in this week's is good; i'm only half way through. affectionate portraits of ex-austronaut guys, ex-astronaut probably being the best ex-thing you can be. hearing about them all sat around a conference table at a best western makes me want to watch mission to mars (should i watch mission to mars y/n)

there are some sciency types on ilx so this primer for dilettantes about a relatively underrepresented issue might be too basic if you're really into NEOs and stuff

that is either the 2nd or 3rd said sayrafiezadeh story ive liked quite a bit, has anyone read his memoir?

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/02/07/110207ta_talk_paumgarten

Enjoyed this quick profile of The Man Who Plays The Most Interesting Man In The World

nick paumgarten is one of my favorite staff writers...he had that narrative of the days surrounding the collapse of the economy a while back that was amazing/made me want to kill myself

YES that was crazy

i had a quick google around and couldn't work out which one that was - any clues?

i think it was this one - http://www.scribd.com/doc/15483403/Nick-Paumgarten-Annals-of-Finance-The-Death-of-Kings-The-New-Yorker-May-18-2009-p-40

hey thank you. made me want to kill myself should not be such a ringing endorsement but i've loved some other stuff that's ticked the same boxes

Jeffrey Goldberg piece about Haaretz and the Israeli left is amazing. Not done with it yet -- it be long.

David Remnick

Tho I'd be really curious to read a similar article by Goldberg

ha, whoops

That actually makes sense -- I tend to like Remnick's writing a lot and Goldberg's less.

Goldberg did that one about the white guy who poached African poachers, right?

paumgarten wrote the elevator article, that was dope

^^^loved the elevator article! But it totally messed with me when years later I was stuck on an elevator after hours at my office.

what happened??

Only in there for about half an hour (I think--didn't have watch, phone, or reading material, so it felt like a long time!), but the elevator emergency phone guy did have to call my husband and explain that I'd be home later than planned. I had plenty of time to contemplate tht fact that being stuck for the weekend (like that guy in the NYer article) was entirely possible.

Evidently The New Yorker screwed up John Lurie. You should check out Lurie’s comments about the article and stalker situation. so sad…:
http://www.jambands.com/features/2011/02/01/john-lurie-sustains/

do we have a general rolling thread for long-form articles/journalism worth reading or am I misremembering

its in 77

(what's the procedure for getting on 77? sounds like a good thread.)

can't find it :/

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=78720

: ) thanks

toby you could try asking mods I think 77 requests are being handled on a case by case basis

Man, as always seems to happen with the New Yorker, I have no idea how I missed that elevator piece - sometimes I'm convinced the letters page is a pomo joke referencing articles that don't exist, from fabricated readers - but I just read it and it was awesome!

the article about near-earth-objects/NEOs in this week's is good; i'm only half way through. affectionate portraits of ex-austronaut guys, ex-astronaut probably being the best ex-thing you can be. hearing about them all sat around a conference table at a best western makes me want to watch mission to mars (should i watch mission to mars y/n)

Yeah, this was pretty fun, especially as I just finished reading Packing for Mars which was knee-deep in lolz. However, it includes this quotation from an idiot Congressman:

the stampede of people trying to get the public to move on global warming versus the tiny number on an issue that really could destroy us -- it gives me a further understanding of mankind.

ha, yeah, i think it took a sec for me to try to square 'NEO enthusiast' with 'republican congressman' and everything else that platform must entail

Man, as always seems to happen with the New Yorker, I have no idea how I missed that elevator piece - sometimes I'm convinced the letters page is a pomo joke referencing articles that don't exist, from fabricated readers - but I just read it and it was awesome!

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, February 27, 2011 6:20 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

This American Life did a story on this too, right? Google is failing me.

read that huge thing on Paul Haggis and Scientology yesterday; i think my favorite part was the one little paragraph of Josh Brolin's A+ trolling:

One of those actors, Josh Brolin, told me that, in a “moment of real desperation,” he visited the Celebrity Centre and received “auditing”—spiritual counselling. He quickly decided that Scientology wasn’t for him. But he still wonders what the religion does for celebrities like Cruise and Travolta: “Each has a good head on his shoulders, they make great business decisions, they seem to have wonderful families. Is that because they were helped by Scientology?” This is the question that makes celebrities so crucial to the religion. And, clearly, there must be something rewarding if such notable people lend their names to a belief system that is widely scorned.

Brolin says that he once witnessed John Travolta practicing Scientology. Brolin was at a dinner party in Los Angeles with Travolta and Marlon Brando. Brando arrived with a cut on his leg, and explained that he had injured himself while helping a stranded motorist on the Pacific Coast Highway. He was in pain. Travolta offered to help, saying that he had just reached a new level in Scientology. Travolta touched Brando’s leg and Brando closed his eyes. “I watched this process going on—it was very physical,” Brolin recalls. “I was thinking, This is really fucking bizarre! Then, after ten minutes, Brando opens his eyes and says, ‘That really helped. I actually feel different!’ ” (Travolta, through a lawyer, called this account “pure fabrication.”)

if Josh Brolin is making all that up he is my favorite Hollywood actor of all time

loved loved loved the haaretz article. i always enjoy the english language edition, any ilx israelis (ilxraelis?) who can vouch for the quality of the hebrew language haaretz?

was gonna go with a "fuck the haaretz" one liner but perhaps too much

i get it, it's an anagram (almost)!

Turkish soccer fanatics (2011/3/7):
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/07/110307fa_fact_batuman

yeah that one is terrific.

loved loved loved the haaretz article. i always enjoy the english language edition, any ilx israelis (ilxraelis?) who can vouch for the quality of the hebrew language haaretz?

― symsymsym, Tuesday, March 1, 2011 7:22 PM Bookmark

Wife remembers it being good but doesn't read much Israeli news anymore -- sort of finds it too painful I guess.

liked the ben marcus story this wk

Link?

Thought Tina Fey on comedy writing was very funny.

it's subscription only i think xp

Thought Tina Fey on comedy writing was very funny.

Yeah, loads better than her first one.

this is great:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_paumgarten

Yes it is. Paumgarten's brilliant.

it made me nostalgic for my youth in a small new england town where i evenly devided my free time between exploring forests and playing nintendo

that bioessay is one of the best pieces on video games i've ever read

Magnus Carlsen, chess prodigy (sub required): http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_max

just finished that article on the train ride home from work. Great.

has anyone read that super loooooooong oil spill article?

^^^Finished it yesterday. I was definitely waiting for a piece like this to appear, and was definitely surprised by the general takeaway that shit wasn't that bad and ppl were being way too alarmist.

But then, I basically couldn't follow the story back when it was unfolding that closely because it started giving me a nervous breakdown.

Would love to hear some other perspectives on the article.

what issue was it in

mar 14
and yeah im half way through it + am like jon, dont know enough abt the situation to judge it, it is really interesting that the general gist of the article is that ppl were freaking out a lil too much

i mean, ppl were right to freak out, but also, everyone involved was doing a really really good job working on it (including bp)

I read this article as a bizarro companion to the Haggis/Scientology piece.

read that Haaretz piece- loved it.

everyone should read this rodrigo rosenberg article

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all

david grann is the best

lol that piece is some serious through the looking glass type shit

i was referring to the hollywood therapist one FYI

tho i am v much looking forward to reading the guatemalan conspiracy, i have it open in a tab all rtg

that piece is great great

btw i will sendspace u nyer articles that are subscriber-only

everyone should read this rodrigo rosenberg article

this is otm

tellin you guys, david grann is the shit, i highly recommend his collection of nyer stories from last year

http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Sherlock-Holmes-Madness-Obsession/dp/0385517920

^^ that. Top 3 Grann:

The Chameleon: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/08/11/080811fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all
The Mark of a Masterpiece: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/12/100712fa_fact_grann
and of course Trial By Fire: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

Also recommend Lost City of Z, which is less wow but still really interesting.

Oh yeah. I'm really bad at paying attention to who writes what, but those 3 articles were all amazing.

I kind of love the New Yorker these days. Used to stan for Harper's but the only thing I've enjoyed reading in that recently was Vollmann's piece on the homeless people he associated with in San Diego. The New Yorker is bringing it with regularity.

er, Sacramento

which is probably a much sadder place to be homeless than San Diego

lol the art authenticator one was so R U SERIOUS sweet read xp

yeah i didnt realise the same dude wrote all 3 of those articles! that art one just got crazier + crazier

haven't read that one yet but "the chameleon" was pretty insane, i should check out that book

Finished the Rosenberg article -- WOW.

love the anna faris profile from this week

ANNA FARIS PROFILE!!!!???

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/11/110411fa_fact_miller

Is this piece any good?

i remember the one about the chameleon! these articles are amazing.

yall need to hop aboard the grann-wagon with me and plasmon

i went on a grann-spree last week

ordered that book too

the texas arson thing was so :(

I remember reading the chameleon one but I forgot what happened in it

anna as claire on six feet under wouldve been nuts

yeah texas arson thing was awesome, looking forward to re-reading it when my copy of the book comes.

learning this was a little bit of a let-down tho: http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2009/10/willinghams-last-words.html

i wish grann had used the whole quote but this is BS:

Now that is a way different exit picture than the one Grann painted for us. Not only were Willingham's very last words the diametric opposite of the high-toned, religious sentiments Grann led us to believe were the very last, but they bear on one of the most difficult things to comprehend about this case -- motive. Why would a father intentionally burn up his baby girls?

Well, as incomprehensible as it seems, we know that some fathers do kill their young children, and anger at the mother is one common reason. If that tirade was directed at his ex-wife Stacy, as the reporter who was there believed it was, it helps fill in the motive.

yes all of granns meticulous reporting and evidence for innonce, proven wrong by the profane rantings of a man condemned to die

max otm

2/3rds of the way through the Rosenberg article. Holy shit. All I want to know is when is the Tony Gilroy movie version coming out?

Yeah, that Rosenberg article was an amazing read.

yeah, again grann lives up to the cliche "stranger than fiction"!

I meant to read just a couple of pages of the Rosenberg article at lunch and wound up finishing the thing in one go. The magazine is on an incredible roll. I wonder if its circulation and subscription figures have remained steady; I'd imagine it hasn't lost much of its urban liberal base.

Woah, those last words. Talk about changing tack halfway through.

Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man -- convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return -- so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby. I hope you rot in hell, bitch; I hope you fucking rot in hell, bitch. You bitch; I hope you fucking rot, cunt. That is it.

think it's noted in this thread but $50 or so for a year's subscription is a ridiculous deal. and i don't even take advantage of the online archives very much.

I got the "educator's discount" last August: $32 then.

you monster

lol that quote is killing me... lord, why have you forsaken me? ride or die bitch fuck cunt booger.

I meant to read just a couple of pages of the Rosenberg article at lunch and wound up finishing the thing in one go. The magazine is on an incredible roll. I wonder if its circulation and subscription figures have remained steady; I'd imagine it hasn't lost much of its urban liberal base.

― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 6, 2011 3:39 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im pretty sure theyve risen since remnick took over; the really amazing figure is that the mag has a resubscribe rate of near 90%

that rosenberg article is insane

had read the chameleon and the art piece before, the arson was new but had never really picked up name of author

need to renew my subscription

I got the "educator's discount" last August: $32 then.

― Hey Look More Than Five Years Has Passed And You Have A C (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 6, 2011 9:44 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark

$25/year for the last 2 years, suckers

but i get them 3 or 4 weeks late, even the newstands here get them a week ahead of me somehow

I get the "my mom buys me a subscription" discount.

$0/year for 8+ years

that's how to live.

UK sub is something like £120 (or maybe $120, I forget which) but still worth it.

$25/year for the last 2 years, suckers

^^^yesss

at some point during the rodrigo rosenberg article i actually wondered if it was leading up to an april fool's joke

guys, guys - let's not allow a few pieces of meticulously researched and tautly written long-form journalism obscure the reams of smug forgettable shit in this monthly publication

Patricia Marx to thread.

It's weekly BTW

haha yes. which is kind of a miracle actually

$25/year for the last 2 years, suckers

Let's poll the subscription options.

I, like everyone else, accumulate daunting piles of New Yorkers, because each issue has so much I want to read. Then I wait for a vacation and bring along five or six issues. They're light and disposable, and I can discard them (or give them away, or leave them behind) wherever I happen to finish them. Perfect for airplanes, waiting rooms and hotels. Each issue is like a great little anthology.

guys, guys - let's not allow a few pieces of meticulously researched and tautly written long-form journalism obscure the reams of smug forgettable shit in this monthly publication

Oh, good ol' reliable ilx, always someone coming along to rain on the parade.

patricia marx writes what like... six articles a year?

the nyer critics are probably 3/4s unbearable but the rest of the stuff is consistently great, incl. talk of the town

i've been finding the ny'er amazingly un-smug lately, i guess except for that insane david brooks article that i couldn't even finish.

tbh & i say this as a fan i think the NYer house style w/ its long-form pieces is too straight & bland to be "smug"

Adam Gopnik's pretty smug but I agree that the house style mostly avoids that pitfall.

Enjoyed the Tunisia feature in the same issue as the Grann one.

ive given up on "shouts and murmurs"

lioke even if someone who's opinion i respect tells me there's a good one i should read i refuse to on principle

oh yeah haha i forgot about shouts and murmurs in my estimation of the nyers smugness, probably because i never, ever read it

basically i check to see if its jack handey and if its not i skip

I cannot face shouts & murmurs ever. I also never read the short fiction, cards on table.

What is the Rosenberg story everyone is talking abt? Starting to worry that I misplaced an issue...

It's in last week's issue and also online:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann

Oh cool, got that one already, been saving it.

George RR Martin profile in the current ish was hella depressing. Fans are not good people.

oh yeah shouts and murmurs blows obv

The short fiction is hit or miss, but I liked the Murakami story they re-ran in the Japan issue.

yeah i read the martin profile last night -- don't know anything about the guy, but yeeesh. his fans! definitely a good book or something to be written (if it hasn't been written already) about modern fandom, and how the internet has mucked everything up.

It's rly rly weird psychologically and the GRRM profile is far from the first time I have noticed it; basically, Fans with a capital F have this weird seething RAGE toward the creators of the narratives they want. Like this impotent rage. The creator(s) don't even have to be late on delivery of new work like GRRM has been, the Fans just are constantly teetering between deification and hatred of those who CONTROL "their" characters. There DOES need to be a new book abt it because the internet has exacerbated it severely.

i still read the fiction every week but it's kind of depressing how far its fallen off. i remember back in the early to mid 00's when they had authors like munro, edward jones, murakami, jhumpa lahiri, etc in constant rotation. there's still a quality story now and then but it's much less frequent. i do really like the fiction podcast from the website tho.

http://www.slate.com/id/2290801/

all aboard the grann wagon

groann

Started Lost City of Z and seriously, crack on paper.

Did anyone else notice one of the entrants to this week's caption contest?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/826480/Photo%20Apr%2019%2C%209%2057%2002%20PM.jpg

from the ipad edition, remnick's latest sounds like a must-read.

I feel like there are a few Franzen haters around here, but I'm surprised to find myself enjoying his article about the island, Robin Crusoe, and DFW.

read that malcolm x thing yesterday. it was aight.

its just a book review.

haha joe

xxxp yeah i liked it ok...i generally like franzens fiction but not really his non-fic; he def jazzed it up & had a legit point but i was v much groaning at his blackberry/Blackberry analogy

Did anyone else notice one of the entrants to this week's caption contest?
ha, yeah. gonna assume that it's THE roger ebert?
Franzen essay was excellent despite some of the cringiness.

Oh yeah, I cringed a couple of times, plus the whole conceit started out a little "oh, poor life of famous author on the road" (not at all to take away from losing a friend) for me, but it was still a good read.

only so many r eberts in chicago i'd imagine

ipad app dece?

it is him. he posted about it on his blog: he's been trying to get into the finals round for years and years

his caption wasn't that good iirc

no it wasn't.
cartoon was a pair of people standing in the middle of a wasteland under a mall parking lot sign with an "F" on it and Ebert has the woman saying "Guess which word I'm thinking of now."
har har
video games aren't art btw

ipad app dece?

― thetan is cheatin (cozen), Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's ok, pricey, would be better if you got access with a subscription. i just loaded it up to check the price of each issue when i saw that "remnick on remnick" gaffe.

"That might play big in Chicago, but the New Yorker has a different set of standards."

xp

"we prefer film critics with senses of humor, ebert. you know, like david denby."

lol

tbf anthony lane used to be kind of funny

lane is kinda funny, but i don't think he's that great a film critic

he's very funny!

I haven't actually read a Lane review in a while but some of his takedowns of hollywood blockbusters are classic. It can feel a little cheap though.

whole travel issue was pretty enjoyable imo. the astana and chinese people touring europe articles in particular

didnt know that that dope 2-part travelogue about siberia from summer 09 had been expanded into a book:

http://www.amazon.com/Travels-Siberia-Ian-Frazier/dp/0374278725

I loved the Franzen/Robinson Crusoe thing.

Haven't read the cover story ("Middle East of the West?") but I can tell from the subhead that it's going to be one of those UuuuuuNnnnnnngggggghhhh stories to read.

just like the story they ran on energy efficiency recently (which suggested that there's no point to pursuing efficiency measures because lol Jevon's paradox, uuuuuuuuunnnnggghhhhh). <3 new yorker but their energy stories blow. elizabeth kolbert rulez, however.

^thus concludes my new yorker minute

whole travel issue was pretty enjoyable imo. the astana and chinese people touring europe articles in particular

Kazakhstan article indeed very entertaining, and all without making a single Borat joke.

wasn't the chinese people touring europe article done recently in another magazine? i feel like harper's ran an article on the same topic maybe 3 months ago.

yeah the atlantic did one too a few months ago...but the new yorker guy went UNDERCOVER, embedding himself with an actual chinese bus tour! he spoke chinese and everything!

i was really bracing myself for a borat reference the whole article too lol. The last sentence does describe men in small swimming trunks, but i guess that doesn't quite count

"We spoke in Chinese, but when he was surprised he’d say, “Oh, my Lady Gaga!,” an English expression he’d picked up at school."

There's a remote possibility that the harpers guy ended up interviewing the new yorker guy as part of his story without even realizing it! Journalists interviewing undercover journalists, the Journalistic Centipede, pt. II

yeah texas arson thing was awesome, looking forward to re-reading it when my copy of the book comes.

learning this was a little bit of a let-down tho: http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2009/10/willinghams-last-words.html

― gr8080, Tuesday, April 5, 2011 4:22 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

just started working my way through the book and read this piece for the 2nd time since it first got published.

interesting to note that the passage that appears/appeared in the New Yorker:

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body.

appears in the book with an extended sentence:

Willingham had asked that his parents and family not be present in the gallery during this process, but as he looked out he could see Stacy watching; whatever calm he had obtained was lost, and with his last breaths he cursed her. The warden pushed a remote control, and sodium thiopental, a barbiturate, was pumped into Willingham’s body.

also the context being that though she divorced him she always defended him until towards the end when, having not seen the new evidence she suddenly changed it up and declared him a murderer.

well yeah i dunno after 14 years in prison for a crime i didn't commit i'd maybe lose my cool if i saw her on the other side of the glass too i guess.

the closing paragraph remains the same though.

Yeah and it is problematic, but I don't think it changes the strength of the piece which isn't really "look Willingham is really a great dude and therefore totally innocent" and more "the evidence that convicted Willingham is a joke and the state of Texas killed an innocent person because the safeguards that should exist to prevent that from occurring are also a joke."

What really drove me crazy about the Chinese tourists was that they didn't try the local cuisine and went out of their way to find Chinese restaurants/McDonald's (having also experienced the exact same thing when I went on a canned tour).

Has anyone tried commenting on the website before? Do comments get quarantined until a moderator approves them first?

Been reading the Eagleman brain timing article. Gets very ilx friendly when Brian Eno shows up. Also had to enjoy the reed krakoff article since I work for him.

yeah the part with the drummers is pretty fun

I had a hard time visualizing what that amusement park ride of near death was supposed to entail?

that article was pretty cool but eagleman seemed kind of annoying as a person

otm

like he had cool ideas but wnkiw

*unless brian eno came

actually brian eno is probably really annoying too

first clue is his radical occupation of the 99th percentile of the "food as fuel" spectrum

actually all the clues are clues

For years, Eagleman was a confirmed bachelor and “serial dater,” as one of his friends put it, with a tidy bungalow that he liked to call the Eagle’s Nest.

“I knew I had some intellectual horsepower,” he says. “But I didn’t know where my tires would catch purchase.”

Liked the Chinese tourism article a lot, although I thought there was an irony in that the article exposes all these ways in which the Chinese tourists have their views about Chinese superiority subtly reconfirmed by the tour guide's framing of everything, and yet in the end the writer seems to be pushing a view that, actually, America will remain superior because of CREATIVITY or something.

that's the same spin some of the anti-tiger mom articles take--"Maybe our kids will write some music that your robots will perform"

Finished the Guatemalan murder mystery; holy shit

It doesn't seem completely surprising to me that the Chinese tourists only eat Chinese food, btw -- sounds very typical of group tours aimed at people inexperienced with travel. It's a common complaint about American tourists that they always look for the McDonalds.

I knew Italians who travelled w/ their own pasta and can confirm that my ex-wife's French family weren't the most culinarily adventurous ppl either. Still, Chinese food in Italy, for example, is mostly food that I would avoid.

Man, either these guys or my postal service needs to get their shit together. I've gotten the past three issues all within the last five days.

the tour guide didn't allow them local cuisine because European meals take up to 5 hours.

That was one of his excuses at least

Europeans--they eat so slowly! How can they expect their economy to grow?

Finished the Guatemalan murder mystery; holy shit

― forks (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, April 27, 2011 10:01 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

holy shit is right.

i was late to work after i got hooked on the first four pages.
Was that story international news while it was happening? First i had heard of it.

I feel like I remember hearing about it after the tape came out.

I haven't read the article but how are chinese tour groups different from any other tour groups

Well, one of the highlights of their tour is Karl Marx's birthplace.

I just reached that part of the article and it sounds like they were pretty enthused to be there

I think the message to take from that article is "tour groups are awful"

i feel like they prob have a much higher ratio of bus lecturing to actually being at places than other tour groups? but maybe not.

article about kazakhstan in that ish was good too.

if you're gonna spend half a day on a tour bus what else are you gonna do

been reading through the grann book while on holiday

so good

One of dirty Roger Ebert's other caption contest entries:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonists/upright-position.jpg

^^^ The only one that I liked.

I had a hard time visualizing what that amusement park ride of near death was supposed to entail?

― iatee, Wednesday, April 27, 2011 6:39 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think basically you're free-falling BACKWARDS, which, like, no thanks.

Didn't really care for the Eagleman article because it was sort of a bait-and-switch: we're talking about time and perception thereof, no wait it's really ("really") about ("about") Deistic agnosticism and hanging out with Brian Eno.

One I did like was one on poverty as a cause of poor health:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_tough

Definitely read as Gawande-like (if Gawande-lite) to me.

Haven't read the cover story ("Middle East of the West?") but I can tell from the subhead that it's going to be one of those UuuuuuNnnnnnngggggghhhh stories to read.

Hated this article, couldn't finish it. So dull.

but answering the poll, prob wyoming

oh i liked that article! i mean it was depressing i guess but i didnt find it dull.

speaking of depressing articles that FBI informant one from this week was pretty alarming.

but answering the poll, prob wyoming

― iatee, Saturday, April 30, 2011 1:58 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

haha I suck at zing, meant to post this to the island-state thread

I think basically you're free-falling BACKWARDS, which, like, no thanks.

― NoShoutsNoCalls (Leee), Saturday, April 30, 2011 12:48 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

that's what it seemed like, but that doesn't even seem like a ride, it just seems like....falling into a net

Then you are more X-TREME than me, it sounds terrifying.

no no I agree it sounds terrifying, it just doesn't sound like a 'ride' more like a 'net'

the girl who broke her spine in 20 places

damn

The New Yorker will become the first publication from the S.I. Newhouse, Jr., empire to be available via subscription on the popular tablet, and it will happen early next week, said a source familiar with the situation.

The deal means Condé will actually beat rival Hearst in the iPad subscription derby. Hearst said yesterday it was going to start selling subscriptions and single copies of Esquire, O: the Oprah Magazine and Popular Mechanics via the iPad effective with the July issues, available sometime next month.

Condé is expected to make the New Yorker available next week to capitalize on coverage of Osama bin Laden's death.

But by the end of the May, Condé will have the seven other magazines that are currently selling single-copy-only editions on the iPad available via subscriptions, including Wired, Golf Digest, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Self, Allure and GQ.

The deal will involve drastically slashing the single-copy price of the digital issue to $1.99 from the $4.99 price tag for the digital New Yorker and GQ -- the same as the newsstand price -- and from $3.99 for digital Glamour and Wired.

Annual subscriptions for each title will sell for $19.99.

psyched for this if the UK pricing is equiv

woah yeah thatd be great, would save me quite a bit

whats the point of subscribing to the new yorker if you dont get to anticipate it in your mailbox every week and let its pretty covers pile up in a stack somewhere in your house

my gf just throws them away anyway ;_;

i don't have room for those multiplying new yorker stacks, i reluctantly cleared them all out a couple of years ago and cancelled my subscription, but now i'm gladly going to get this digital one.

heathens

! ;)

Last week's issue (2011-05-02) had some fierce articles:
Quantum computing
FBI informant (above mentioned)
Obama foreign policy

really really psyched

one thing I like about the instapaper new yorkers is that you don't really realize how long they are. (which is a good thing!)

btw that stroller cover was the first actually funny one in a long, long time imo

i enjoyed the toobins thing in this week's, though maybe because it's the first law thing i've read for a while. some really distressing case details referred to in passing. the contributors panel at the start of the magazine says he's working on a follow up to the nine, too.

Who are y'all's favorite cartoonists? Haefeli had one in the last couple weeks that had me IRL LOLing.

Pretty good article on reality tv this (last?) week: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/05/09/110509crat_atlarge_sanneh

Btw, I always get my print copy half a week after the online version goes up (i.e. usually around Thursday). Is it because the Pony Express has difficulty reaching me on the West coast?

I will definitely get the iPad version at $20. Part of the frustration with the dead tree edition was having nothing come for weeks at a time and then three mangled issues show up on the same day. Also, fuck information delivery through deforestation -- it's 2011 for the luvva god.

ipads are made from the tears of factory workers iirc so neither delivery method is perfect

true

:: is properly chastened ::

think i was just feeling defensive on account of just having re-subscribed to the paper edition, & gotten one through. it's an upgrade from reading online with my old login and printing at work, which was really not the best of either world

$60 a year ON IPAD, it turns out. still half the price of an international subscription.

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20110508/apple-brings-conde-nast-aboard-the-subscription-bandwagon-starting-with-the-new-yorker/

Still more than I've ever had to pay for a US print subscription, though.

wondering if it 'll be easier or harder to ignore ON IPAD

u+k: "Very important: Conde says print subscribers will get iPad access for free."

^^^yeah that is awesome. thinkin baout an iPad tbh

pay $10 more to kill millions of trees

also this:
http://i.imgur.com/YUo0k.jpg

made me go back and read this 5-year old thing on the Death Metal kid who turned Al-Qaeda operative last nite:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/01/22/070122fa_fact_khatchadourian?currentPage=all

really enjoyed.

"Introducing Oasma to the Mortgage Crisis" ?

Enjoyed the Malcolm Gladwell article about Xerox and the Anthony Lane piece about Pixar tho both seemed (surprisingly?) poorly thought thru. Anthony Lane didn't seem to have much of a point beyond 'look at how weird/cool this company is -- maybe too cool???' which isn't really a problem since his writing is great and Pixar seems legitimately bizarre and magical. The Gladwell article's organizing theory was even more hamfisted than they normally are. You can either be incredibly inventive, build the model perfectly, or execute it perfectly but for some reason can't do all 3 -- it's not clear WHY that is tho. also apparently fighting a war in the Middle East is comparable to Steve Jobs bringing the PC to the market. still i didn't know the Xerox/Apple story and the narrative stuff was really interesting.

yeah you got the impression that pixar offered nyawker an exclusive and they sent lane and he didn't have shit to say but he thinks they're pretty cool

Last week must have been a busy one at America's leading crypto-newsweekly. The announcement of Osama bin Laden's death last Sunday hit the New Yorker at the worst possible moment in the publishing cycle, when bin Laden–free issues were already off the presses and in the mail. (Nice show of gratitude, Mr. President.) So this week's table-of-contents promotional email feels a little frantic—there was the foreign news to be caught up to and seriously grappled with, but the regular news-and-culture calendar could not wait. So:
David Remnick on Osama bin Laden; Steve Coll on the making of a modern fanatic; Lawrence Wright on Pakistan; and Jon Lee Anderson on Afghanistan. Plus: Malcolm Gladwell on the mouse; Judith Thurman on Alexander McQueen; Anthony Lane on Pixar; John Seabrook on snacks in the age of obesity; James Surowiecki on Dropbox; Joan Acocella on Paula Fox; Joyce Carol Oates on Margaret Drabble; Sasha Frere-Jones on Stevie Nicks; John Lahr on "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures"; Anthony Lane on "Everything Must Go" and "Thor"; fiction by Michael Ondaatje; and more.
Eh, OK, that sounds resoundingly fine. Nothing wrong with falling back on muscle memory in a crisis. But how much more exciting would it be to open the mailbox if Remnick had shaken up the assignments a little? Anthony Lane on Osama bin Laden, for starters. I would read that immediately. How about:

• Malcolm Gladwell on Margaret Drabble.
• Sasha-Frere Jones on "Thor."
• Michael Ondaatje on snacks in the age of obesity.
• Jon Lee Anderson on Alexander McQueen.
• Joan Acocella on the making of a modern fanatic.
• James Surowiecki on Pixar.

And definitely, definitely David Remnick on Stevie Nicks.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/scocca/archive/2011/05/09/reassignment-memo-the-new-yorker-shuffle.aspx

Jon Lee Anderson on Alexander McQueen.

I crossed 17th Street, unescorted, to meet with Sarah Burton. As her assistant brought us bottled San Pelligrino water, she spoke of McQueen's recent death.

Don't you mean Judith Thurman?

michael...

o michael

Sorry, groggy...

I would love to read a JLA piece on McQueen; shit would be very informative, poignant and yet damning.

it's weird how one of the paragraphs in Lane's article on Pixar begins by referencing the criticism that they haven't featured enough leading female characters, and ends by wondering how Bob resists banging Helen in the Incredibles, especially given that she has elastic superpowers and wears hot thigh-highs

i love anthony lane but he is sometimes gross about women. maybe i'm mixing him up with denby, but i feel like he wrote a review of Baby Mama that made a huge deal of how Tina Fey wasn't pretty enough to play that role and it was pretty o_0.

"There is, of course, another skill that she could master with her natural sinuosity, but that is never mentioned. Back in 2004, some of us in the movie theatre wanted to shout, 'Bob, she's wearing a black mask and thigh-highs. What are you waiting for, man?' For the sake of the kids, though, we kept quiet. Bedrooms, in Pixar, are places where you chat to monsters, or horse around with your toys: not perspiring rumpus rooms, where Mr. and Mrs. Incredible play adults-only Twister."

ew

what an odd thing to say

like what was the purpose of even bringing that into it?

'in kids movies, there is very little talk of conception, as if children have not yet developed the ability to reproduce'

when will old dudes learn that they should stop writing about sex

Anthony Lane didn't seem to have much of a point beyond 'look at how weird/cool this company is -- maybe too cool???' which isn't really a problem since his writing is great and Pixar seems legitimately bizarre and magical.

Still working through the Pixar piece, but there were some very awkward sections in it, syntactically, I thought.

It's part of the logical progression introduced at the start of the piece: Hollywood makes movies for kids, the kids company makes movies for adults, ergo, Pixar should be making adult films.

The article about Libya from the week before last was pretty amazing. I almost skipped through thinking it'd be a bland news piece, but it was some serious first-hand man on the ground reporting, with a heart wrenching human angle.

Yeah, that Libya piece was great. That Lane Pixar piece almost felt like a teaser for something more in-depth, or else it was just chopped to shit before it got published.

Anyone mind if I lower the level of discourse here by mentioning how hot Amy Davidson and Susan Orlean are?

Also, per Richard Brody, Terrence Malick once co-wrote a "Comment" for NYer (sub req'd): http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1968/04/13/1968_04_13_035_TNY_CARDS_000290020

ariel levy (who is also hot, if not interested in leee's glances) on silvio berlusconi's italy is pretty lol/wau/wtf

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_levy

The June 6 issue is fantastic -- the best this year. Highlights:

- Ariel Levy's batshit article on Silvio Berlesconi's pornocracy as well as a larger rumination on the culture of Italian machismo.

- Sy Hersh's latest article on Iran

- The history of Romneycare and the former governor's (and Bush administration's) enthusiasm for it in 2005 and 2006

ariel levy (who is also hot, if not interested in leee's glances)

I deserved that. :I (Started the Berlusconi article, o_O indeed.)

here is the ad described in the article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOJNjJjNP3c

I couldn't make it through the Iran article because of the weird imposing sense of Seymour Hersh deja vu. The Italy one I struggled with for a different reason: it's just too depressing. I mean, there's sexism, and then this brand of Italian sexism to the bunga bunga degree. It posits Berlusconi as endemic of a pretty horrible, more-than-merely-macho culture.

oh nothing personal, leee -- i believe ms. levy is gay

The Bunga Bunga Degree is my favorite John Grisham novel

My old buddy (and Atlantic journo) Stephan Ferris (cousin of Anna Ferris, haha) is based in Italy and takes heat for calling out Italian misogyny. Fish in barrel, I know--but Euros always think USA is worse despite all evidence.

reading the acai article from a few wks back, really wanted a 'resulting paste' sighting

They eat the resulting think purple pulp with fish or game, or by itself, like soup.

also wtf w/ analogies to miley cyrus cmon dude

REPEATED analogies!

lol yes

i thought that article was a mad stretch because i'm not really seeing the "fall" part of the rise and fall and neither was the author--still kind of interesting to learn abt acai cause i knew nothing about it.

yeah, unnecessary framework

"Fall" is overstating it, but it seemed clear to me that there's been some backlash/fallout from acai's popularity.

oh nothing personal, leee -- i believe ms. levy is gay

Anyway, here's a good complement to Levy's Berlusconi article, more about the inherent dysfunction of Italian political institutions that lets someone like Berlusconi dominate the government.

I never knew how to pronounce acai before I read the piece, and tbh I kept forgetting how to pronounce it every paragraph or so and went back to the beginning for reference. And now I have no idea.

ah-SAH-ee i believe
i did the same thing

i like to say chee-POT-uhl just to annoy people

Suddenly I am very annoyed at you, forks.

I never knew how to pronounce acai before I read the piece, and tbh I kept forgetting how to pronounce it every paragraph or so and went back to the beginning for reference. And now I have no idea.

ha, i thought i had this nailed & then half way through the guy's like, we even have people saying ah-sigh-ee!, it's crazy

ah-SAH-ee i believe

ah-sah-EE. (There's an accent on the "i.")

The June 6 issue is fantastic -- the best this year. Highlights:

- Ariel Levy's batshit article on Silvio Berlesconi's pornocracy as well as a larger rumination on the culture of Italian machismo.

- Sy Hersh's latest article on Iran

- The history of Romneycare and the former governor's (and Bush administration's) enthusiasm for it in 2005 and 2006

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 4, 2011 3:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the article on contractors in iraq is really good & depressing too

I started reading the Romneycare one but couldn't finish it. It seems like a thousand articles have already been written about Romneycare and how Romney has to run against his own policy bc of how toxic Obamacare is in the Republican party, etc, etc and I couldn't figure out anything the NYer could add to it that would make it interesting. Does it get better?

i didnt read it, i dont like politics anymore, it makes me sad

the berlusconi article is a+++++++++++++++ though, skip to that one

yeah, i read that one. hilarious + insane.

xpost this was probably just new to me because i didn't follow the original passing of the MA legislation at all, but for me it added a bunch of useful details about how the bill was passed with a bunch of help from the bush administration, and how it was seen as a big republican victory.

there's a trend in the article on foreign contractors, in last week's issue, of some chance of modest advancement or progress being introduced mid-paragraph, before the next paragraph begins with Yet or But or However. pretty crushing.

Yeah, I was pretty depressed after reading that article.

surowiecki this week: "the banks thought they were taking advantage of uninformed consumers, but they ended up playing themselves."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8e76XpXD1o

as one might expect, the george saunders & jeff eugenidess stories in the summer fiction issue are really good

The Berlusconi one is Best of 2011 quality – such good reporting and insight.

I know an article is good when I end up getting stoned like a week later and summarizing it to someone half passed out

the whole situation is really as excruciating as it sounds but it keeps happening

the first half of the levy article is so full of just ... ammunition that it's almost like flipping through one of those bush-isms books. but then there's the second half, w/the vox pops with italians & silvio's cronies, pinching her cheek, etc. i'm not sure if it's because i was reading it in chunks, and had broken the momentum, but reading the last section, about the Ruby case (in which it'll be hard to prove something happened between two people who insist it didn't), i kinda almost felt sorry for Berlusconi, & could imagine his whole approach to paying crazy sums of money to young girls.

Has Saunders been putting out much stories recently? I could do with a new collection. Could do with a new Eugendides book for that matter

eugenides novel is coming in october

hadnt known that, good news

Yeah just checked there. Sounds intrsting.

alec baldwin article makes me...kinda like him? sorta sad that one of the best comic actors of our age doesn't really like comedy.

aleksander hemons article in the summer fiction issue was devastating

i was all but bawling in union square when i finished it

what's it about?

i have the summer fiction issue waiting @ home for me but am considering saving it for my vacation next month

his infant daughter getting sick with really rare cancer

i know what it sounds like! but

oh jeez