Monthly Archives: January 2009

Joan Walsh in Salon on Barry Blitt’s Obama Cover

Emily Gordon notes this passage in Salon today:

Still, at times Obama seemed to have the best of both worlds, politically: The self-confidence that comes from being raised (and loved, intimately, from Day One) by the white majority, while also being protected from any perceptible threat of racism by black and white supporters admirably determined to identify and crush it when it surfaced….

Historians may find that this double force field protected Obama; certainly, we saw it in the primaries, when anything that could be remotely perceived as a racial diss to Obama, by the Clintons, their supporters or the media, ignited a firestorm and damaging charges of racism against whomever slurred — or simply slipped — in their treatment of the black Democratic candidate. I enjoyed the anti-racist media strikeforce when it hit Fox News for its idiotic “slips” labeling Barack and Michelle’s affectionate fist-bump a possible “terrorist” gesture, and describing Obama’s wife of 16 years as his “baby mama.” I liked it much less when it was directed at outlets I respect, like the New Yorker (or Salon). I still can’t believe the backlash against the New Yorker’s hilarious (in my opinion) fist-bump cover, sending up all the right wing’s dumbest, least believable slurs against Michelle and Barack Obama. His supporters howled with outrage, and his campaign bit back, too, with even Obama himself lamenting that the cartoon might be misunderstood by confused voters.

Friday Steinberg Blogging: California Cheese

Other blogs do “Friday”:http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2008/12/friday_cat_blogging_-_26_december_2008.html cat “blogging”:http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2008/05/friday-cat-blogging_30.html; we present the genius of Saul Steinberg! From the December 27, 1982, issue:
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Have a good weekend, everybody! —Martin Schneider

James Wolcott: He Could Type the 1978 Manhattan Phone Book, And I’d Read It

No, I didn’t want to read another review of John Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick, either—until I saw that the London Review of Books‘ critique is by James Wolcott, who’s perennially on fire like one of those burning coal mines (and, thank God, is “working on a memoir about 1970s Manhattan”). Wolcott has a winning way of accentuating the positive by taking for granted the negative, dispensing justice that is elegant in its balance of cheery severity and generosity.—Jonathan Taylor

New Yorker Fiction Podcasts–2008 Highlights

Benjamin Chambers writes:
2008 was the first full year of The New Yorker fiction podcast, and I gotta say, it was a very fine year. Fiction Editor Deborah Treisman’s unhurried confidence sets a nice tone, and the authors nearly always choose interesting work and read it well (not the way actors would, but sensitively nonetheless). They also tend to have interesting things to say about the work, or their reasons for choosing it, that help you see it in new ways. It’s sort of like sitting in on the bull session in the bar after a graduate writing workshop.
Anyway, here are my picks for the best of the bunch:
Best at Getting Me Interested in a Classic Author I’d Never Read: E. L. Doctorow reading and discussing John O’Hara’s 1943 story “Graven Image,” which had the singular effect of making me want to read more O’Hara, whose Appointment in Samarra once failed to entice.
Best Reading of a Classic Short Story First Published in 1948: I can’t decide. I’m sorry; I know you look to Emdashes for firm opinions, but I just can’t do it. It’s a toss-up between Mary Gaitskill tackling Nabokov’s terse story “Symbols and Signs,” and A. M. Homes narrating Shirley Jackson’s creepy chestnut, “The Lottery” (which you can see on film here). What are the odds that two authors featured on the podcast in the same year would both choose stories from 1948? Who cares? Just don’t make me choose.
Best Story by a Contemporary Writer I’d Never Heard of: Stephanie Vaughn’s “Dog Heaven,” read exceedingly well by Tobias Wolff. The upshot? I’ve just picked up a collection of Vaughn’s stories from the library.
Most Interesting Commentary on a Story I Wasn’t Crazy About: Once again, a toss-up. I enjoyed hearing Roddy Doyle talk in his warm Irish accent about having TNY writer Maeve Brennan live with his family in the 1970s; but I also enjoyed hearing Jeffrey Eugenides, after reading Harold Brodkey’s 1994 “Spring Fugue,” chat with Treisman about Brodkey’s lack of appeal to some readers, in spite of his obvious talent.
Podcast I Liked Best In Spite of Myself: T. Coragahessan Boyle reading Tobias Wolff’s 1995 story “Bullet in the Brain.” I admire Wolff’s stories, but this one isn’t his strongest. Nonetheless, it reads well aloud, and it was a smart choice by Boyle, whose discussion of the piece is quite winning, though I’m surprised that he never once mentions the story’s obvious model, Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.”
Best Fiction Podcast of the Year: I’ve already talked my fool head off in several posts about how much I liked Louise Erdrich’s reading of Lorrie Moore’s 1993 story “Dance in America.” Surely, ’nuff said. But if you listen to only one fiction podcast from last year…
For Completists: Here’s the entire list of TNY podcasts, going back to 2007. (There’s some good’uns from 2007, too.)
If You’re Eager for More: Go right head and check out the January 2009 podcast, in which Thomas McGuane reads Jame Salter’s kick-ass 2002 story “Last Night.” Not to be missed. Just be sure you’re ready for a fright.

Best of the 01.12.09 Issue: The Annual Chart, Pointing Upward So Far

I noticed that Sports Illustrated recently named 2008 the “best year ever.” (People continue to ignore 538, apparently. A criminally underrated year.) In that spirit, on the heels of yet another strong January issue, I’d like to put in a bid for 2009 as the best year of the post-Bush era. (Which hasn’t even started yet!)
Jeffrey Toobin on the delectable Barney Frank and Jill Lepore on inaugural addresses combine to slake our ever-unsatisfied thirst for politics; Elizabeth Kolbert hits the economics of environmentalism; international affairs is amply covered by Peter Hessler’s newest China report; and there was a story by Joyce Carol Oates to round matters out. I’m curious which one(s) will delight my colleagues! (I’ll weigh in later.)
—Martin Schneider
Benjamin Chambers writes:
I haven’t had a chance to dip into the week’s issue, but I do have a great, can’t-miss recommendation that’s also timely: Thomas McGuane reading and discussing James Salter’s 2002 story, “Last Night,” on this month’s fiction podcast. The story is stripped-down and stark like its subject, without the sensual pleasure usual for Salter’s fiction. The setup: a woman has a terminal illness, and she and her husband go out to dinner one last time before returning home to prepare for her suicide; they have a guest go with them, to blunt the tension. Could be maudlin, but boy, does it pack a punch. (If you like McGuane, you might be interested in this Q&A from 2003 with fiction editor Deborah Treisman.)
Jonathan Taylor writes:
I did pick only one story to read in this issue, Peter Hessler’s “Strange Stones,” a memoir of Peace Corps service in China. Beguiling in structure and emotionally polyvalent, it is my favorite, so far, of Hessler’s many Letters From China. Worthwhile travel writing is a portrait not of a place, but of an apprehending intelligence: one like Hessler’s, that recognizes that in fact, he “hadn’t seen anything stranger in China” than a fellow volunteer’s tale of a Midwestern biker rally.
Stuck in an absurd traffic jam on a remote Inner Mongolian steppe—driving in China is a fruitful theme for Hessler—he invokes “the shadowy line between the Strange and the Stupid,” putting me in mind of a farcical version of Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line (in which the narrator’s ship, with a cholera-ridden crew, is inexplicably stranded in windless Oriental waters). At the same time, Hessler’s piece touches on the serious side of Conrad’s “shadow line”—between Youth and Maturity—in sketching, with suggestive anecdotes, the transformations that he and his colleagues underwent through their service.