to be a New Yorker cover. From the Times story:
But before officers could catch up with him, Hal scaled the fence around the sanctuary, and made his way through the park again. At one point his followers saw him go past Wollman Rink, where a woman in a sparkly sweater was serenely executing figure-8s upon the glistening ice, unaware of the commotion around her.
Update: R.I.P. Hal. Poor ol’ pup, all tuckered out.
Calvin Trillin spoke at Stanford the other day and, once again, proved that he should do more Benchley stuff like giving funny speeches and acting in plays and short subjects, not just going to restaurants and writing. The Stanford Report reports:
Facts are messy and inconvenient, and nonfiction writers are obliged not to clean them up, writer Calvin Trillin said in a campus conversation last week that touched on topics as diverse as the ethics of nonfiction writing, barbecued mutton in Owensboro, Ky., the deployment of National Guard troops in Iraq and the writer’s childhood dog.
…
Trillin was interviewed at Stanford by Alan Acosta, associate vice president and director of University Communications. Acosta, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a former editor at the Los Angeles Times, had spoken with Trillin before, Acosta reminded the writer. In the 1980s, Acosta had been Trillin’s waiter at a restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York City, where Trillin resides. (“You spilled the soup,” Trillin deadpanned.
…
Trillin also addressed the recent debate over memoirs, including James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, which was marketed as a memoir but contains fictionalized accounts of events. “Now, in order to write a memoir in the U.S. that will sell and will show your redemption, it has to be pretty horrible. This kid was a middle-class druggie—they’re a dime a dozen,” Trillin said. “I was in jail longer than that kid.”
You’re my new hero. Thank you!
Or as the girls would say, Thinkss.
Update: My thanks to Horowitz became a letter to the editor. God I hope people stop talking like this!
For enquiring minds that don’t, for some ineffable reason, read Gawker: Gerald Marzorati, former nonfiction editor at The New Yorker, will be the NYT‘s Assistant Managing Editor.
For those following the explosion of Pilkington homages that makes Guy Fawkes look like Arbor Day, here’s a brand-new tribute (link’s to the MP3) by Very Tasteful Productions that transcends Ricky’s mashup/remix suggestion altogether and simply rocks out. I’ll take a moment here to imagine Stephen dancing to this, a smile of bliss on his goofy face.
the brand-new, Peruvian “sleek New Yorker-esque nonfiction magazine” Etiqueta Negra, which features, among others, our favorite flower girl:
“I don’t read Spanish so all I could respond to was the idea and feel of the magazine,” says New Yorker magazine staff writer Susan Orlean, who didn’t let a language barrier stop her from having her work translated and published in Etiqueta Negra. “Language aside, it’s one of the best-looking magazines I’ve ever seen.”
Many of the contributing English-speaking writers are scouted by Peruvian American writer Daniel Alarcon (“War by Candlelight”), who runs a sort of North American bureau for Etiqueta Negra out of his Fruitvale loft in Oakland.
As an associate editor, Alarcon skims his favorite magazines, such as Esquire, Harpers and Believer, looking for stories that would be of relevance or interest to Latin America, and passing the word about Etiqueta Negra on to other writers from San Francisco to New York.
Along with Orlean, several well-known North American writers — Gay Talese, Jon Lee Anderson and Tom Junod — have either had their work translated into Etiqueta Negra or have endorsed it with written shout-outs. And to emphasize their support for the magazine, most of the more well-known writers accept their assignments for free.
“I’m happy to give them my stories without getting paid,” Orlean says, “because just the thought that people from another culture are reading what I wrote and getting value out of it is more than enough. It’s sort of transcendental — like being transported to another universe.”
A lot of Anglo writers like Orlean are also intrigued by Etiqueta Negra’s graphic art design, which is louder and more expressive than that of most literary journals.
“The interpretation of a story I may have written in the New Yorker becomes more visually dynamic in Etiqueta Negra,” Orlean says. “Obviously the New Yorker doesn’t attempt that kind of aesthetic, so it almost isn’t fair to compare.”
But comparisons to the New Yorker are no accident.
Etiqueta Negra’s founding brothers, Huberth and Gerson Jara, originally wanted to start a political publication for diplomats and businessmen with the Economist and Foreign Policy as models. But while they were searching for an editorial director, a friend of a friend put them in touch with longtime Peruvian journalist Julio Villanueva Chang, who had something else in mind.
“I pulled out a copy of the New Yorker and said, ‘Let’s do something like this,’ ” remembers Chang, who had a background in Peruvian newspaper journalism that felt too limiting. After the two brothers stared blankly at the New Yorker magazine and its stories with few photographs or graphics, Chang explained that the Peruvian interpretation would, of course, be more colorful and picturesque. A small sigh of relief followed, along with a green light.
Unlike much U.S. culture that gets lost in translation by the time it reaches Latin America, Chang understood that the inspiration from the New Yorker was merely a starting point. Because while, say, a rock band from Lima might be influenced by Depeche Mode or the Doobie Brothers, the musicians sometimes forget to throw their own Latino roots into the mix. Not so with Etiqueta Negra.”
I’d also like to point out that the author of the San Francisco Chronicle story of which I’ve reprinted a sizeable chunk above is named Delfin Vigil. A name I love, suspect only slightly, and covet.
Also, a friend of mine who dated a man from Peru likes to say there are really four sizes to things: small, medium, large, and Peruvian. May Etiqueta Negra be the same!
If you haven’t visited with them lately, you may not know what they’ve been getting up to.
Jon Friedman on the purported National Magazine Awards snub (the magazine got five nominations).
And roll my eyes, and feel a little bad for the silly centerfolds. Still, I love wholesome American porn. Getting back to Acocella, I was happily reading along till I reached this: “This whole ‘bachelor’ world, with the brandy snifters and the attractive guest arriving for the night: did it ever exist? Yes, as a fantasy. Now, however, it is the property of homosexuals.” Eh? I’m pretty sure she’s just being dry, but it’s a little creepy, especially in an issue that insists on calling David Furnish Elton John’s “companion.” Shall we ease into the new century with a little all-around sophistication, o Style Issue? Also a surprise not to see any mention of Gloria Steinem’s glorious Bunny experiment, subject of the very fine ’80s TV movie A Bunny’s Tale. Anyway, if you find yourself unsated after gawping at the ladies on p. 3, I mean 145, take Richard Brody’s advice and buy the Busby Berkeley boxed set:
The sexual allusions in Berkeley’s choreography are startling even today. He transformed the costumed bodies and shining faces of his chorus girls into suggestively biomorphic shapes: slits that open and close, undulating canals, and expanding and contracting holes. He frequently organized his dancing girls into enormous V-shaped phalanxes, one of which, in “Don’t Say Goodnight,†from “Wonder Bar,†is besieged by huge moving pillars. “By a Waterfall,†from “Footlight Parade,†suggests a fertility rite, as water nymphs stand with their legs spread on wedding-cake-like turntables while jets of water spurt around them.
Busby was great, for sure. Makes little Elizabeth look like an amateur.
Speaking of sex, “Well, that was abominable” is one of the funniest captions in ages, contest or no contest. Give Carl Gable your vote or I’ll sic Tobias Meyer on your entire collection. You know which one I mean.
I loved Tom Colapinto’s sensitive, subtly hilarious piece on Tobias Meyer; it’s top-notch. But the modestly versatile Nick Paumgarten nabs this week’s prize with his Profile of Hedi Slimane, “Dirty Pretty Things,” I mean just “Pretty Things.” It’s intelligently observed and skillfully written, and I give it a Saint Laurentesque standing ovation.
Also, please note that while single-potato-chip-eating Frenchman Slimane’s English is “good but not perfect,” comely auctioneer to the stars Meyer, originally from Germany, is “also fluent in French, has a good grasp of Italian, and speaks perfect English”—take that, Reed Boy! (It’s reassuring to know that as he’s been spending more time in London, says Slimane’s friend Janet Street-Porter later in the piece, “His English has got better.”) Meanwhile, a disgruntled resident of the Dominican Republic mentioned in Ben McGrath’s long piece about Playa Granda, “the Creative Person’s Utopia,” knows only enough English to swear, but it gets the job done. In his Critic’s Notebook, Sasha Frere-Jones tells a sweet story about the obligingly multilingual Nicole Renaud’s appearance in a “dark Russian bistro.” Finally, in his informative advertorial, “Enigmatic Destination Piques the Senses,” Rob Rachowiecki takes care to let us know that “the indigenous peoples living here [in Peru] are frequently separated by language, of which there are dozens, but are often united by fables about the mysterious pink river dolphins. Said to transform themselves into humans, they are sometimes conveniently blamed for a surprise pregnancy!”
General Motors bigwig Carl Icahn (profiled by Ken Auletta elsewhere in the issue), on the other hand, merely “seems bored when someone else is speaking.”
I’m thoroughly bedazzled by the lifestyles of the rich and famous from the past few issues. They all seem like terrifically impressive people, but I’m jealous of their apartments and designer wallpaper.