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.
Author Archives: Martin
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.
David Foster Wallace, Background Hummingbird
Martin Schneider writes:
Reading about David Foster Wallace’s researches into the U.S. tax code makes me think that Wallace conformed better to Ian McEwan’s ideal of the scientist-novelist than McEwan does.
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.
Syllabus: Columbia University, Writing R6212, Spring 2009 (Prof. Zadie Smith)
Martin Schneider writes:
Zadie Smith is teaching a weekly fiction seminar at Columbia University this semester under the title “Sense and Sensibility.”
A local bookstore called Book Culture, which I believe for years was called Labyrinth, has posted 10 of the 15 books that Smith is assigning her charges. Here they are:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
Catholics, Brian Moore
The Complete Stories, Franz Kafka
Crash, J.G. Ballard
An Experiment in Love, Hilary Mantel
Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, David Lodge
The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
My Loose Thread, Dennis Cooper
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Loser, Thomas Bernhard
The Book of Daniel, E.L. Doctorow
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Reader’s Block, David Markson
Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
The Quiet American, Graham Greene
Pretty good list! I see she hit favorites of Benjamin (Spark), Jonathan (Bernhard), and myself (Wallace). I wonder what the other five are? If you’re taking the course and happen to see this, drop us a line!
Addendum: Book Culture has now come through with the full list. Thanks very much!
Watchmen Indulges in Alternate History, So Can New Yorker Covers
Martin Schneider writes:
I noted earlier that, to judge from the Twitter posts I’m seeing, Watchmen fans are none too pleased with The New Yorker right now, and boy oh boy does that continue to be true. But really, Watchmen fans should remember The New Yorker‘s guts in being the first national magazine to put Dr. Manhattan on its cover, way back in 1985.
Video Gem: Updike and Cheever on Cavett, 1981
Martin Schneider writes:
I have it running on my computer even as I post this, in my haste to alert you to it, but Dick Cavett, on the space The New York Times allots to him, has posted the full telecast of the October 14, 1981, program of his show, which featured two of America’s finest writers, John Updike and John Cheever, in conversation together. Watch and be enthralled. (Here’s the prior post, which led to this one.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Updike on TV before. I find him very appealing; it’s a shame he wasn’t on television more during the 1990s. A commenter on the page notes that they discuss the New Yorker submission process, but I can’t vouch for it. I look forward to the day that Jimmy Fallon invites Cormac McCarthy and Marilynne Robinson on for a chat. Until then, Cavett remains the undisputed champion! And even if he weren’t, the decision to unite a purple jacket and a green shirt would make him champ anyway.
Addendum: The question pertaining to The New Yorker is in the very last minute—well worth a peek!