Monthly Archives: March 2009

New Yorker Blog Roundup: 03.08.09

Martin Schneider writes:
(This is taken directly from the left nav bar on the magazine’s website.)
George Packer praises an obscure civil servant toiling in federal bureaucracy.
The Front Row: Hilton Als can’t stop watching Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect.
Steve Coll unravels the broadband plans in the stimulus bill.
Evan Osnos, Twitterer, expects more surprises from China’s National Congress.
Hendrik Hertzberg thinks Ronald Radosh has lost his marbles.
News Desk: Lauren Collins on James Salter; the dog handler at Abu Ghraib dies.
Sasha Frere-Jones suggests Neko Case and house music for the weekend.
James Surowiecki won’t be watching Jerry Seinfeld’s new TV show.
The Book Bench: A poet submits to a vote; will Reader’s Digest go bankrupt?
The Cartoon Lounge: One million dogs; David Sipress draws man’s best friend.
Goings On: Michael Jackson’s big announcement; Britney Spears returns.

What’s in This Week’s New Yorker: 03.16.09

The Style Issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. Here are the prominent things therein:
D. T. Max goes on set with Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter and director of the upcoming film Duplicity, starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen.
Lauren Collins interviews the famously reclusive Bill Cunningham as he documents the fashion of New York for his Times column, “On the Street.”
Ariel Levy profiles Alber Elbaz, the designer of the Paris fashion house Lanvin.
Max Vadukul photographs Thakoon Panichgul and Jason Wu, who have both designed dresses for Michelle Obama.
In Shouts & Murmurs, Paul Rudnick reveals the confessions of a Pilgrim shopaholic.
Patricia Marx shops for products made in the U.S.A.
There is a sketchbook by Roz Chast.
John Cassidy writes about Obama’s plans to combat the economic crisis.
Judith Thurman writes about the playwright and novelist Yasmina Reza’s return to Broadway.
John Updike contemplates the end of life in a series of poems.
Sasha Frere-Jones explores the music of Neko Case.
Joan Acocella examines vampires in fiction.
Nancy Franklin reviews the HBO series Eastbound & Down.
Alex Ross visits the newly reopened Alice Tully Hall, at Lincoln Center.
Hilton Als reviews a new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.
David Denby looks at mumblecore movies.

More Twitter on The New Yorker, Memorable and Otherwise

Martin Schneider writes:
Without any ado, some painstakingly selected comments about our favorite magazine:
teamziller Forget DiMaggio: 64 straight days of understanding the joke on my New Yorker cartoon daily calendar.
alitvinov Loved the New Yorker article on fact checking. Feb 9th issue. Yes, I’m three issues behind.
cartgis is there any way to mention The New Yorker without sounding like a jerk? It’s a great magazine. no apologies.
johndunne This week’s New Yorker has two articles which were published posthumously. Weird.
keithcmartin Sitting here wondering how I’ve spent almost 3 decades of my life NOT reading The New Yorker..
stevenblum “I think people just like the font”- one of Eli Sander’s friends, on “The New Yorker.”
gizmo0718 @heymerrididdle I want a dramatic reencatment of that! I also wish i could umlaut the second ‘e’ a la The New Yorker. Listening Twitter God?
msgier Trying to think of a name for an alien magazine based on The New Yorker. Maybe something based on star names?
I think I might have sounded like a jerk just then. And in my last 400 posts. Have a good weekend, all!

The Unfinished Pale King: Guilt, Boredom, Acceptance, and Hope

Martin Schneider writes:
I’m still not all that comfortable about reading an unfinished work by a writer as fiercely scrupulous as David Foster Wallace was, but after reading the D.T. Max article and pondering his two great, flawed novels and his three great, flawed short story collections, I wonder if this isn’t, inadvertently, sadly, unwittingly, the proper (if that can be the right word) form for a work of the type Wallace was attempting, a meditation of the salvational qualities of boredom, using as a vehicle the IRS and the U.S. tax code.
I thought I would never be able to read The Pale King. Now I think I probably will be able to.

New Yorker Stories That Haunt My Dreams

Emily Gordon momentarily surfaces to write:
The briefest list, representing a much longer longer one spanning roughly 1981 to the present. I’ll add links later when I’m not hiring an art director for Print. Yes, you may still send your resume if you get it to me in the next couple of days.
Anyway, the beginning of that list of free-floating-anxiety-provoking, lingering-question-leaving, and dream-haunting stories (“the universe is expanding!”):

  • An elderly lady in a nursing home in, possibly, Florida, was starving to death because of the bureaucracy of Medicare, or something like that. Is she being nourished properly now, if she’s still with us?
  • The dangerous case of the dissolving pterapods. Has Obama appointed a Pterapod Czar?
  • The mothers, the nurses, and the kids in Katherine Boo’s piece about Louisiana programs that pair nurses and teenage mothers. Is it still being funded? How are the mothers? How are the kids? Are they still reeling crayfish from the back yard for dinner? I’ve eaten crayfish; is there really enough meat on them for dinner, or are they bigger in Louisiana?
  • The bees—about which Elizabeth Kolbert wrote (and gestured) so compellingly. I know they’re still not doing well as a group, because I keep hearing distressed British beekeepers on the BBC talking about the apian health crisis and the perilous honey business. I am a friend of the bee and a honey appreciator. How can I help?
  • Pretty much everyone from Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s series on the South Bronx, which later became Random Family, which I finished reading a few months ago and am still reeling from. How are you, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc? What are you writing about and when can we read it, preferably in The New Yorker? Are you still in touch with your friends and subjects from the various neighborhoods you covered so intensely well? Has anyone broken out of the cycle of poverty and pregnancy and gone to college or gotten a decent job? Is the economy eroding any gains they’ve made? Although it may be voyeuristic or simply none of my business to ask, I literally can’t stop thinking about them.
  • Not to mention Florence, Crystal, and Daquan, part of whose stories Susan Sheehan told in the series that became Life for Me Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair.
  • Roger Angell and Lillian Ross. I know they’re getting on. But I hope they’re all right.

To be continued as long as I read The New Yorker and worry, that is, as long as I live. And you? What’s haunting you from the past 1 to 84 years of The New Yorker?

Native New Yorker: Calvin Trillin Saw You Coming

Martin Schneider writes:
As I’ve mentioned many times by now, I’ve been monitoring a Twitter search feed lately. Of course there are plenty of tweets that are irrelevant, referring to someone behaving “like a New Yorker” or some such. Which is fine. But there’s a restaurant based in Phoenix, Arizona, called the Native New Yorker that specializes in buffalo chicken wings and has taken to Twitter promotion in a big way, which means that I periodically get tweets like this:

NativeNY_HQ HOW MANY WINGS CAN YOU EAT? WWW.BATTLEOFTHEBONE.COM Native New Yorker’s 2nd annual chicken wing eating contest starts 3/11 in TEMPE

I must say, I’m halfway tempted to go over and check that out. I know Calvin Trillin would be intrigued, which is why I sent them a little tweet linking them to Trillin’s classic article on buffalo chicken wings.

What’s the Word on the Tweet? Starring “the New Yorker Guy”

Martin Schneider writes:
Perhaps you remember Johnny O’Connor, Phil Hartman’s showbiz character from Saturday Night Live who kept insisting that that his agent give him the straight, unvarnished bad news (“Don’t mince words!”):
Harry (Jon Lovitz): You’re through, do you hear me, through! You’ll never work in this town again! … I think you’re the worst actor I’ve ever seen, and I get five hundred letters a day telling me the same!
Johnny O’Connor: What’s the word on the street?
Well, the word on the “tweet” is that lots of people read The New Yorker all the time, care about it a lot, and say so on Twitter frequently. They say nice things, and some not so nice things too, but we pay less attention to those. Here are a few messages that caught our fancy.
tculkin Reading Roger Angell’s story about Joe Torre in the New Yorker. Wow!
ksouth Finishing a New Yorker makes me sad.
sugarblum wants to borrow or buy your feb. 9 -16 copy of the New Yorker (with the New Yorker guy on the cover)
spants You know you have a migraine when you can read the New Yorker IN THE DARK.
emjones wondering where my New Yorker is… does my postman heart DFW as much as me?
stamos perfect night: clean carpets, a great ep of bones, new issue of the new yorker, and a delish crumb cake straight from jersey (dessert)
barbiedesoto i’m tempted to check out every robert benchley book at the salt lake library. but i won’t read them all. i never do.
jonathansegura reading the new yorker on my kindle. ha. also: drinking a martini. how classy am i? answer: very.
miss_print My house is now a New Yorker Magazine free zone! It took two years but my backlog is gone (partly because my subscription lapsed but still)!
kimberlya heard @sashafrerejones talk about lily allen on the new yorker podcast today; didn’t know sfj has such a low voice. lovely.
fakebook A terrible day redeemed by the arrival of the latest New Yorker.
dmellecker Convinced New Yorker cartoon caption contest rigged. My submissions are way better
That’s all for now! Maybe we’ll try this again sometime.