Martin Schneider writes:
The summer fiction issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine’s press release:
In “Good Neighbors,” Jonathan Franzen’s first piece of fiction in four years, an upwardly mobile couple, Walter and Patty Berglund, deal with their recalcitrant son while their neighbors gossip and their blighted St. Paul block gentrifies in the nineteen-eighties and nineties.
The issue also features début fiction by Téa Obreht, a previously unpublished writer who graduated from Cornell University’s writing program in January, 2009. Obreht was born in Yugoslavia, grew up in Egypt and Cyprus, and moved to the United States in 1997.
In an excerpt from his upcoming book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated, due out this fall from W.W. Norton, R. Crumb illustrates the story of creation and of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
Louis Menand explores the rise of university creative-writing programs.
In “Old Wounds,” Edna O’Brien chronicles the difficulty that two cousins have in trying to reconnect after a long family feud.
David Grossman writes about the Jewish Polish writer Bruno Schulz, and investigates the circumstances of his death—ostensibly as a victim of a feud between two Nazi officers—in 1942.
In “A Soldier Home,” Yiyun Li remembers reading Hemingway and other writers in English as a way to escape from her life during and after her military service in China.
In “Two Emmas,” Roger Angell describes the bookshelves at his summer home in Maine and recalls fondly his experience reading The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble.
In “The Magic Mountain,” Aleksandar Hemon reminisces about his long solo summer reading holidays in his family’s remote cabin on Jahorina, a mountain in Bosnia.
Jeffrey Toobin, in Comment, examines Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and reflects on diversity on the Supreme Court.
In The Financial Page, James Surowiecki looks at the role that fear has played in the U.S. credit crunch and Buenos Aires’s recent coin shortage.
Nancy Franklin watches Nurse Jackie.
Sasha Frere-Jones listens to the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.
Alex Ross attends a musical “marathon” of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies.
Hilton Als explores race and desire in Tennessee Williams’s Vieux Carré.
David Denby reviews Up, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and Away We Go.
Author Archives: Martin
Pnin & Semicolons: Zadie Smith & Jonathan Safran Foer at NYU
Kirsten Andersen writes:
Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer sat down on April 30 at New York University for a ninety-minute discussion that began with a list—originally drafted by Smith in an email to Foer—of topics the two writers covered in a recent (and one assumes more private) conversation.
That list included foreskin, farting, and a nation’s romantic love for its president, and it served as the springboard to a milder discussion moderated by Foer, during which Smith addressed the Internet’s effect on writing (“an absolute disaster for writers”); writing about family (“writers come to destroy their families; there’s no doubt about it”); and her insistence on writing in the third person, despite the fact that “it looks antique now.”
The stage at Vanderbilt Hall remained unlit as the sun set in the windows along MacDougal Street, and it became difficult to see the faces of Smith and Foer from my seat in the middle of the auditorium. Still, I could easily make out Smith’s red head wrap, peacock blue mini-dress, and yellow stack heels. She was, as Foer might say, luminous, and when the conversation was opened to the audience for questions, a group of adoring men in front of me smiled at each other and shook their deferent heads.
Asked about her definition of failed writing, Smith scratched her arm and rubbed her neck. “Indulgence, making a fool of one’s self, caricature, overplotting, bad confused endings, too many semicolons,” she said. She smoothed her dress and crossed her legs as she dismissed femininity as a code for “passivity and delicacy”; she cited Pnin as one of her favorite novels.
“I’m constantly feeling like I’m on the back foot,” insisted the 2005 Orange Prize winner. Smith said that her forthcoming book, Changing my Mind: Occasional Essays, was an extended exercise in self-education. Citing her less than desirable primary school experience, Smith said she feels she is constantly learning “on the hoof.” A few heads pulled back and the brilliant writer nodded in earnest. All things considered, it seemed unlikely. Still, I took her elegant, artful word for it.
Kirsten Andersen is a poet, writer, and editor.
Roger Angell Beats Jeffrey Toobin to Sotomayor by Fourteen Years
Martin Schneider writes:
One of the few things we know about President Obama’s recently announced nominee for the Supreme Court, Yankees fan Sonia Sotomayor, is that she played an important role in the resolution of the baseball strike of 1994-1995 (glad I was living abroad for that stretch; I barely noticed it). She issued the injunction against the baseball owners after ruling that their actions against the players’ union had violated federal law. As Avil Zenilman noted, that happenstance bit of notoriety caused Roger Angell to mention her name in the magazine, twice, in 1995:
“Comment: Mind Game,” April 10, 1995, p. 5
“Called Strike” May 22, 1995, p. 46
Jeffrey Toobin, who mentioned Sotomayor back in February, is catching up fast, though:
“After Ginsburg”
“The Arc of Justice”
Amy Davidson has also written about Sotomayor several times since the announcement of Justice Souter’s retirement:
“Uncharitable Judgments”
“Insults and Impunity”
“A Deep Bench”
“Saving the Season”
What’s in This Week’s New Yorker: 06.01.09
Martin Schneider writes:
A new issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine’s press release:
In “Slim’s Time,” Lawrence Wright profiles Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican businessman who is sometimes ranked as the richest man in the world, and who agreed to extend a two-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar loan to the New York Times Company earlier this year.
Atul Gawande explores how to contain the rising costs of health care by looking at McAllen, Texas, one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country, and at the Mayo Clinic, one of the country’s most effective, low-cost health systems.
Jill Lepore chronicles the parrot fever of 1930, a “medical mystery” that transfixed the nation with the possibility of a pandemic and set a precedent for the coverage of future outbreaks and epidemics.
On the cover, an image by Jorge Colombo, “Finger Painting,” drawn entirely on his iPhone—a first for the magazine.
Jeffrey Toobin, in Comment, reflects on President Obama’s and Dick Cheney’s recent speeches on national security.
In the Financial Page, James Surowiecki explores how corporate boards of directors could be reformed to protect shareholder value.
In Shouts & Murmurs, Andy Borowitz demonstrates how to make the most of your “quiet time.”
In a sketchbook, Roz Chast offers sea chanteys for the subway.
Calvin Tomkins examines the life and works of artist Bruce Nauman.
Peter Schjeldahl visits the Francis Bacon retrospective at the Met.
John Lanchester considers the role human nature played in the banking crisis.
John Lahr attends Wallace Shawn’s first play in more than a decade, Grasses of a Thousand Colors.
Anthony Lane reviews Terminator Salvation and Jerichow.
There is a short story by Craig Raine.
Experience Gopnik and McLemee Virtually, This Saturday
Martin Schneider writes:
This, from the National Book Critics Circle, made its way to my in-box:
How reviewers are adapting to the new digital order has been one of the burning themes among NBCC members for the past year. NBCC board member Scott McLemee sends along notice of his own intervention of sorts: On Saturday, from 5 to 7 PM EST, he’ll be hosting an on-line book salon about Adam Gopnik’s Angels and Ages at Firedoglake.com. The transcripts of previous FDL salons, which have featured contributors ranging from Thomas Ricks to Rick Perlstein are here.
How intriguing! I’m sure that’ll be terrific.
Update: Rich/Mayer 92nd St. Y Chat Captured on Video
Report: Frank Rich, Jane Mayer at the 92nd St. Y
Martin Schneider writes:
To see New York Times columnist Frank Rich interview New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer about the Bush administration’s torture policies at the 92nd Street Y, as I did last Tuesday in the delightful company of Emily and Jonathan, is to experience (in the audience) a certain kind of informed liberal orthodoxy in its most undiluted form. At times I felt that if we were to concentrate any more intently, we might inadvertently summon the corporeal form of Keith Olbermann, if not I.F. Stone himself.
As it happened, it was that degree of obvious advocacy and affection in the audience that permitted the conversation to be as focused, and yet as unfussy, as it was. In other words, Mayer and Rich scarcely had to adjust their dialogue to the audience—we were all on the same page. Rich wanted Mayer to explain what was happening with the torture story, and that’s exactly what she did. We were along for the ride.
Mayer’s latest book, The Dark Side, is now out in paperback. She is certainly one of the best-informed people in the country (not on a government payroll) when it comes to our government’s recent rendition and torture practices. She confessed a desire to investigate some new story, but as the facts of this one are not yet out, she keeps getting drawn back in.
On Obama, Mayer ventured a familiar combination of hope and incipient disappointment. Rhetorically Obama has been so good on the subject that it’s difficult to assess the obvious backsliding. The Bush administration left behind an intractable legal problem—how to prosecute dangerous members of Al Qaeda (almost certainly) whose rights have egregiously been violated and whose cases would surely be thrown out of court under any normal circumstances. As one CIA employee told her, “The problem was always the disposal plan.” The Obama administration clearly regards the matter of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the subject of Mayer’s February 2009 article in The New Yorker, as a test case to see how this will play out, so keep your eye on that. On the subject of disposal, the Bush administration apparently contemplated with some seriousness a plan of putting the prisoners on a ship that would then circumnavigate the globe in perpetuity, an idea Rich instantly dubbed “Halliburton cruises.”
One interesting revelation was that journalists are not permitted to interview convicted terrorists—and they are also not permitted to interview people who for legal reason have had access to them, this “two degrees of separation” prophylactic approach bearing the bland appellation “special administrative measures.”
Mayer noted that there are detailed reports produced by the likes of the CIA’s inspector general and the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility that have yet to be released, an eventuality that is likely, in her view. So brace yourself for more shocking revelations. One of the tiny number of people permitted to see the interrogation transcripts called them the “the most disgusting thing he had ever seen.” Like any good reporter, Mayer takes the view that disclosure of these practices is essential to the maintenance of an open society.
Simplistic as it sounds, that process will yield heroes and villains. Doug Feith, David Addington, John Yoo, and their ilk are apparently “very nervous,” while others, like Alberto J. Mora, once general counsel of the United States Navy (as Mayer reported in 2006), distinguished themselves with their courage in opposing these reprehensible practices. Addington et al. prompt the question, were they imparting sound legal advice or did they have their collective thumb on the scale? The absence of an important 1983 waterboarding precedent in Yoo’s internal memoranda prompts the latter interpretation, an inauspicious sign.
One of the most interesting questions that remains is the degree to which the torture regime was a sincere effort to obtain valid intelligence or a cynical attempt to manufacture a justification for the war in Iraq. In my opinion, the available facts aren’t encouraging. If that manufacturing is exposed, it’s going to take a very long time for our country to come to terms with the official, costly duplicity in which our governmental representatives engaged.
The first question of the audience Q&A section demanded an impossible degree of information, albeit one close to the concerns of this blog: “Can you describe the process of writing a New Yorker piece from start to finish?” Mayer’s comments were appreciative yet betrayed a glimpse of the pressure that such high standards bring: “The process is endless, no one would believe it. . . . We have an in-house grammarian who will mark up your copy to the point that you want to cry—or change professions. . . . I have a hunch that it’s the typeface that makes us look so good.” She also singled out editor Daniel Zalewski for his unerring instincts.
There was more, but my hand can furtively scribble only so much, and the remainder of my markings are unintelligible, even to me.
Tonight: See Jane Mayer and Frank Rich (w/ New Yorker Discount)
Martin Schneider writes:
This found its way into my in-box:
Jane Mayer in Conversation with Frank Rich at the 92nd Street Y
Tuesday, May 19, 8 pm
Join Jane Mayer, New Yorker staff writer and author of the best-selling book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, and Frank Rich, New York Times Op-Ed columnist and author of Ghost Light: A Memoir, for a lively discussion on Mayer’s book, current events and issues of national security, civil liberties and American ideals.
New Yorker readers save 20% on the listed ticket price with the discount code FR20. Click www.92Y.org/Mayer, call 212.415.5500 or visit the 92nd Street Y Box Office, at Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street.
Emily, Jonathan, and I will be attending, so if you see us, by all means say hello!
Michael Berube on the Race Donnybrook that Would Not Die
Martin Schneider writes:
I’ve been a fan of Michael Bérubé’s since I was in college (graduated 1992), and was charmed to have a brief exchange with him several years ago about an essay of his that apparently only I liked, about 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which he argues persuasively that the extremely common default reading of the movie, which involves some variation on the idea that HAL “goes crazy,” is indisputably contradicted by virtually everything that happens in the movie, and that the movie is really a political movie about the Cold War military-industrial complex. It’s an eye-opener.
Anyway. Bérubé’s exhaustively hyper-droll style always brings a smile to my face, even when he writes 2-3 times more than my attention span can handle (he kissed the Blarney Stone). Today he turns his attention to his only appearance in The New Yorker, a relatively dusty (1995) look at Cornel West and a few other African-American intellectuals who became more prominent in the mid-1990s.
Be forewarned; his post of today is not for everybody. I like Bérubé because he chases down a lot of nuance in people’s arguments that other writers wouldn’t bother with; plus he’s funny in a way that no academic of my knowledge is. But not everyone will take him the same way.
What’s in This Week’s New Yorker: 05.18.09
Martin Schneider writes:
A new issue of The New Yorker comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents, adapted from the magazine’s press release:
In “The Death of Kings,” Nick Paumgarten presents a wide-ranging exploration of the economic crisis and its impact. “Much abridged, a few familiar words will do” to tell the story of the economic crisis, Paumgarten writes: “debt, greed, hubris.”
In “Don’t!” Jonah Lehrer examines recent evidence that indicates that self-control, not intelligence, may be the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life.
In “Drink Up,” Dana Goodyear profiles Fred Franzia, the man behind Charles Shaw, a wine that sells for $1.99 at Trader Joe’s and is affectionately known as Two Buck Chuck.
Hendrik Hertzberg, in Comment, discusses Obama’s upcoming commencement addresses.
There is a “strange, but true” sketchbook by Roz Chast.
Ian Frazier writes an ode to turning forty—again.
Arthur Krystal looks at the life and works of critic William Hazlitt.
Anthony Lane reviews J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek.
John Lahr reviews the new Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
There is a short story by Salman Rushdie.