Oh, irony, you scamp. In a recent post we identified “irony” as being, by some measures, a New Yorker kind of word, but today brings evidence that Time Out New York is the really ironic one. In this week’s cover story, “The Hipster Must Die!”, the weekly guide performs a “hipster detox” on a misguided (their assumption, not mine) hipster on staff named Drew Toal.

The feature puts The New Yorker in an, ahem, interesting light. First, here The New Yorker is defined as a hipster journal. I beg to differ, but I can’t deny that its reach encompasses George Saunders as well as Seymour Hersh. So in the makeover, Toal (or should I say “Toal”? He may be a real person, but the makeover is clearly facetious) discards The New Yorker in favor of “a Star Wars novel and a copy of Maxim.” Ah, good to know what “regular” people read! So what does Toal think?

Truth be told, I found myself enjoying tales from a galaxy far, far away. Despite the fact that they were written on a third-grade level, the lack of existential conflict and postmodern window dressing was refreshing. And the lightsabers were cool too. Maxim, it should be noted, was less revelatory, although I did learn six important tips on how to make a successful sex tape. I will be going back to The New Yorker and Harper’s, but I’m also going to make time for nerding out in sci-fi land.

Is “hipster” so strongly coupled with “intelligent” that its opposite automatically denotes a “third-grade level”? I don’t think so, but let’s move on.
Clearly, this is a backhanded compliment to The New Yorker—it’s the opposite of third-grade fare. But wait! Doesn’t that make it also a backhanded compliment to hipsters, too? In a feature about the necessity to de-hipsterize Williamsburg? Color me confused.
And the confusion doesn’t end there. If we showed ten random local culture vultures a Star Wars novel and The New Yorker and asked them to pick the purer hipster artifact, how many of them would reflexively single out the one that frequently dedicates considerable space to poverty and genocide? Surely it’s the Star Wars novel that reeks of hipster slumming, no? Even Maxim can be read ironically, you know.
At this rate we’ll need Jesse Thorn, mastermind of the new sincerity, to sort it all out.
Note to TONY: Did you mean McSweeney’s? Or was that too obvious?
—Martin Schneider

Did you see the “100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know” that the makers of The American Heritage Dictionary are touting? It’s a pretty good list, actually, although such an enterprise is always going to be a bit random. I confess there are more than a few terms (mostly science-related, e.g. “gamete“) that I would not be able to define to my own satisfaction.
I decided to run the words through The Complete New Yorker to see if The New Yorker “knew” them all. Sure, you’re thinking, it’s everything since 1925! They’ll all come up dozens of times, silly! But ah, I could counter, it’s only abstracts and keywords and hastily typed summaries we’re talking about here.
Anyway, it turns out that the CNY balked on seven words. I find it very suspicious that two of the words it didn’t “know” were “suffragist” and “enfranchise.”
Which of these words do you think would produce the most interesting set of results? The comments section awaits your opinion.
Here are the results. The winner, with yards to spare, was a surprise to me, as was the margin.
irony 435
totalitarian 59
infrastructure 52
wrought 48
metamorphosis 47
epiphany 39
hubris 32
lexicon 30
equinox 28
filibuster 27
kinetic 27
paradigm 25
nomenclature 22
euro 20
hegemony 20
impeach 20
obsequious 19
nihilism 18
soliloquy 18
vortex 17
gauche 16
incognito 16
reciprocal 16
facetious 15
vehement 13
bellicose 12
diffident 12
homogeneous 12
incontrovertible 12
precipitous 12
acumen 11
chromosome 11
feckless 11
lugubrious 11
tempestuous 11
auspicious 10
chicanery 10
fatuous 10
omnipotent 10
sanguine 10
tectonic 10
vacuous 10
fiduciary 9
respiration 9
abstemious 8
loquacious 8
plasma 8
taxonomy 8
antebellum 7
circumnavigate 7
deleterious 7
gerrymander 7
unctuous 7
yeoman 7
evanescent 6
kowtow 6
oligarchy 6
plagiarize 6
polymer 6
quotidian 6
supercilious 6
usurp 6
photosynthesis 5
reparation 5
belie 4
churlish 4
nanotechnology 4
nonsectarian 4
orthography 4
winnow 4
abjure 3
deciduous 3
hemoglobin 3
hypotenuse 3
parameter 3
ziggurat 3
laissez faire 2
recapitulate 2
tautology 2
thermodynamics 2
abrogate 1
bowdlerize 1
circumlocution 1
enervate 1
gamete 1
inculcate 1
jejune 1
mitosis 1
oxidize 1
parabola 1
pecuniary 1
quasar 1
subjugate 1
enfranchise 0
expurgate 0
interpolate 0
moiety 0
notarize 0
suffragist 0
xenophobe 0
Notes:
* A friend observes: “Jejune” is the month after “Mimay.”
* I don’t really see why anyone needs to know the words “yeoman” and “moeity” in 2007. [I’d argue for “yeoman,” used sparingly, but what would George Orwell say about some of these slovenly Latinate clunkers? —Ed.]
* “Quasar” has one hit—in which it is mentioned as a difficult word that nobody knows. It’s a cartoon from the 8/21/1965 issue by Alan Dunn. Mother to inquisitive son: “If you want to know what a quasar is, I’d say you’ve come to the wrong person.”
* A story in the current issue (June 4, 2007) explicitly refers to “sanguine” as a difficult word, the kind of word someone would look up in a dictionary. In fact, Karl Rove looks it up in a dictionary.
* For me, the big shockeroo is the total for “wrought.”
—Martin Schneider

Happy birthday, Martin!
ANSWERS TO HARD QUESTIONS 1/21 71; 2/18 91
ANTICLIMAX DEPARTMENT 2/4/46
CLEAR DAYS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 3/4 94
CLEAR DAYS IN SACRAMENTO 1/14 94
DEPT. OF UNDERSTATEMENT 2/11 68
DEPT. OF UTTER CONFUSION 3/11 130
FULLER EXPLANATION DEPT. 2/25 108
HOW’S THAT AGAIN? DEPARTMENT 3/11 111
MOST FASCINATING NEWS STORY OF THE WEEK, WITH JUST A TOUCH OF PATHOS 3/25 132
OUR OWN BUSINESS DIRECTORY 2/25 99; 3/18 138
REMARKS WE DOUBT EVER GOT FIZZED, EXPLODED, GRUMPED, CROAKED, OR SPAT 3/4 70
SECRECY IN AMERICA 2/25 116
SOCIAL NOTES FROM ALL OVER 1/21 60; 3/11 105
THE BUREAUCRATIC MIND AT WORK 2/4 106
THE CLOUDED CRYSTAL BALL 3/4 79
THE GOOD OLD DAYS 1/7 62, 3/25 124
THE MYSTERIOUS MIDDLE WEST 1/7 51
THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND 3/4 66
UH HUH DEPARTMENT 1/14 66
WORDS OF ONE SYLLABLE DEPT. 3/11 124; 3/25 76
Notes:
* Calvin Trillin article on Garrison, NY; my brother used to live there!
* Penelope Gilliatt profile of Woody Allen; definitely one of those “even more interesting in hindsight” pieces, wincha think?
* Roger Angell article about Super Bowl VIII presented in a sardonic way that would not be possible today; accompanied by a drab Steinberg of a football player with Mickey Mouse for a head; nice.
* Elizabeth Drew two-part report on Watergate actual diary entries rather than regular reporting; these were among her first dispatches; swell.
* Ellen Willis pops up a few times doing rock reviews; love that!
—Martin Schneider

I’m making my way through the highly alluring videos from the inaugural New Yorker Conference a couple of weeks ago. In his lecture on “Genius: 2012,” Malcolm Gladwell discusses Fermat’s Last Theorem, which (according to Wikipedia) states that

if an integer n is greater than 2, then the equation aⁿ bⁿ = cⁿ has no solutions in non-zero integers a, b, and c.

After realizing this, Fermat famously wrote, “I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.” Which Gladwell explains, more or less, and then says this:

It leads to one of the greatest, ah, graffiti in the history of the New York subway system. I think it’s still there, on Washington Square. Someone has scribbled Fermat’s Theorem on the wall, and then below it they say, “I have the solution, but my train is coming.”

Question: Anyone seen this graffito? Where is it exactly?

Later on, Gladwell talks about the “10,000 hours rule” (fascinating!), which he identifies as a signal finding of the “expertise literature.”
My new favorite term is “expertise literature.”
—Martin Schneider