In which a snarling conservative is surprised to enjoy a New Yorker writer. It would be this one. Sally C. Pipes (of the Pacific Research Institute) writes in theOneRepublic:

On the other hand, as we have recently observed, radical feminists can no longer expect special treatment from critics simply because of their gender and politics. Consider Peggy Drexler Ph. D., a “gender scholar” at Cornell University. Drexler’s new book, Raising Boys Without Men, argues that boys raised by women without men are better off than boys raised by mothers and fathers. As New Yorker staff writer Caitlin Flanagan states in the November Atlantic Monthly, Raising Boys Without Men is a chronicle of bad dads that compares men to “wounded rhinos.” This book, writes Flanagan, is “as much a work of advocacy as objective research.” It also holds consequences for personal responsibility and civil society. As Flanagan puts it, if you “[b]elittle men’s responsibilities to their families [and] raise boys to believe that fatherhood is not a worthy aspiration….the people who will suffer are women and children.” That strikes me as a fair assessment, and it does me good to see Caitlin Flanagan, without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment, demolish what she describes as a “preposterous book.”

Literature, like ideas, has consequences. Nobel Prizes and good reviews should be handed out on the basis of merit, not politics or gender.

As for me, I am often embarrassed by what Caitlin Flanagan chooses to either extol or demolish. I haven’t read Drexel’s book, nor, yet, Flanagan’s whole piece. (I’m waiting for my Atlantic online access to kick in.) Although some of the nicest people I know were raised without men, it would surely be folly to make fatherhood an even more remote idea than it already is for most befuddled chaps. That said, I don’t like agreeing with Flanagan, but I suppose it has to happen from time to time. Actually, I’d like to agree with her all the time, or rather, for her to agree with me. But that means she’ll really have to stop writing about Hawaiian luxury vacations. For instance.

But it doesn’t have to be—if you watch Thirty-Four Fourteen, a sublimely ridiculous five-minute movie by those sly, foxy goofs at the Variety Shac (that’s Chelsea Peretti, Heather Lawless, Andrea Rosen, and Shonali Bhowmik) while at work, that is. Boycotting Starbucks? Hating the faceless machine that is your boss? Under pressure? Wearing blouses? This film is for you.

And if you like this (and if you’ve ever worked somewhere, you will), consider Scott Prendergast’s equally absurd and initially office-gibberish-tweaking short film The Delicious, of which I am very fond. It, too, is online.

Oh, and what does this have to do with The New Yorker? As with so much in life, happily, it’s basically one degree of separation.

From the Observer, thoughts on the wild new lingo that’s taking the indiesphere by storm. Lynsey Hanley writes, “I’ve found myself scratching my head at some of the words and phrases used by bloggers to describe things that once would simply have been described as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s brilliant fun and completely baffling at the same time.” Just “good” or “bad”? I think, say, Arthur Danto, Greil Marcus, Pauline Kael, John Lahr, et al. might have another point of view. Anyway, continues Hanley:

You could never get away with this level of obtuseness on such an august title as the New Yorker, which prides itself on bringing the same sort of acts championed by Pitchfork – Dizzee Rascal, MIA and Lady Sovereign, among others – to the attention of doughty Manhattan [what means this “other four boroughs”?] intellectuals. In print, the magazine’s pop critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, can explain the cultural significance of East End rap collective Roll Deep in terms that your parents would understand, but uses his website, sashafrerejones.com, as an outlet for a style of writing which, though utterly infectious in its enthusiasm, is also often impossible to follow.

He drops street slang and music-insider references into his musings, calling, for instance, Burt Bacharach’s new album ‘dire bougie make-out piffle’ and, later in the same entry, referring to a promotional video by ‘smooth jazz footsoldier’ Brian Cuthbertson, complains that ‘dude is a turbochoad’ who speaks in ‘marketing pre-cum’. Come again?

‘Nobody’s paid to read my blog; nobody has to sit through it to get to The Sopranos,’ says Frere-Jones of his idiosyncratic blogging style, ‘so if I sometimes write in an unfiltered way, it isn’t likely aimed at other critics, but is simply a reflection of how I think when no one is watching.’

Asked if he hopes one day to transfer some of that unfiltered quality into his print journalism, Frere-Jones quips: ‘I hope to use the jaculation “Christ on a plastic dolphin!” in the New Yorker soon.’ Don’t we all, dude.

I don’t think Frere-Jones’ blog writing is like anything else I read online, or anywhere. I find it occasionally elusive (I skipped half a decade of pop music when I learned to lindy hop), but it’s fun to see people in different writing modes—memo to co-Eyebeam panelists, there are different writing modes—and if you get really lost, there are pictures.

The Yale Daily News reports on a talk by New Yorker visual editor Elizabeth Biondi:

Biondi discussed her passion for aesthetics before an audience of about 45 students and faculty at an Ezra Stiles College Master’s Tea on Wednesday. Biondi, who has worked with the New Yorker for nine years, said that even though she is not a photographer or illustrator herself, she enjoys her position as visual editor because it gives her the power to organize images in a text-heavy publication. During the tea, Biondi presented a series of slides and discussed the slow introduction of photography to the New Yorker magazine, which once only featured illustration.
…
The New Yorker does not publish photos that are digitally enhanced, Biondi said.

“Our photography is based on content,” Biondi said. “We visualize our stories … Pictures are never arbitrary. They are always based on fact.”

Some audience members asked Biondi about how she chooses images to match with essays. Biondi said essays about abstract ideas or concepts are better supplemented with illustrations.

“Not everything lends itself to photography,” she said.
…
Sochie Nnaemeka ’09 said she was moved by Biondi’s presentation [and] was impressed that Biondi has accomplished so much without a formal education in her field.

“It kind of makes you question, what are we doing here?” Nnaemeka said.

Biondi said that while she has worked at a number of different publications ranging from glamour magazines to other literary magazines, she does not intend to leave the New Yorker.

And here’s Biondi on CNN last year, talking about her experience chairing the World Press Photo Awards:

BIONDI: This [by Jean-Marc Bouju of The Associated Press] is the one we pulled out in the end, and that stayed with us. You know, judging is sort of a long process. You look at a lot of things, and then you narrow it down, and eventually you come up, well, hopefully, with a photo that everyone in the jury is excited about and believes in.

And this one really touched us, because, obviously, we looked at a lot pictures from Iraq, and there were a lot of pictures that showed violence, and death and killing. And this one here, it’s a father, it’s a prisoner of war with his son that he had to be put in a detention camp and put on the hood. And you know, when you look at this, you can imagine what he feels like. He’s holding his son, and he’s comforting his son, and the military actually allowed him to be with his child, and in the beginning his hands were bound, and now they’re unbounded, so there was some humanity on all sides.

But we were all touched how this father cares for his child, and you know, war turns life upside down. More.

And here’s a gallery of 50 years of World Press Photo Award winners. Amazing collection.

You want to do this tonight. Get there early, though—last year it was standing room only.

PEN American Center presents:

State of Emergency: Readings Against Torture, Arbitrary Detention & Extraordinary Rendition

with:

Edward Albee, Paul Auster, Sandra Cisneros, Don DeLillo, Dave Eggers, Martín Espada, Philip Gourevitch, Jessica Hagedorn, Heidi Julavits, Nicole Krauss, Rick Moody, Walter Mosley, Grace Paley, Emma Reverter, Salman Rushdie, Martha Southgate & Colson Whitehead

Tuesday, November 8, 2005, 7:00 p.m., The Great Hall at Cooper Union

7 East 7th Street at Third Avenue

Subway: 6 to Astor Place or the R/W to 8th Street

FREE ADMISSION—Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

For more information, please visit www.pen.org.

Just happened on this—a helpful blogger’s reprint of Frank Bruni’s review of sushi temple Masa (“You pay to be putty”), which inspired John Kenney’s diabolical Shouts & Murmurs (“We sat on hemp pillows, as chairs cost extra and we were not offered any, owing to our tardiness”).

Namely, at some very familiar magazines.

Remember that silly 1995 movie The Net, in which Sandra Bullock gets erased from the world by some cyberguys? Suddenly, I have a glimpse of what that might be like.

My own observations TK—hey, I do still exist! I feel like Jeff Bridges escaping the grid. Trondashes: A world inside the computer where man has never been.

First, this welcome news:

DreamWorks has acquired theatrical rights to the Jonathan Lethem novel As She Climbed Across the Table, a romantic comedy that takes place in the realm of theoretical physics. Lethem, who has also written such novels as Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, recently won the MacArthur Genius Award, which led to this deal. The book centers on a strange romantic triangle between an anthropologist, his girlfriend (who is a particle physicist), and Lack, a black hole in the universe that has come about as the result of an experiment with which the particle physicist was obsessed.

Then, in the current National Review Online, John J. Miller has a whole side of beef with Tom Reiss about his recent profile of Peter Viereck:

Did you know that America’s “first conservative” was an anti-capitalist poet who wanted Adlai Stevenson to become president?

That’s what The New Yorker claimed last week in a long profile of Peter Viereck, a man who is said to have “inspired” the conservative movement—before William F. Buckley Jr. and other ne’er-do-wells came along and caused us all to lose our way. (The article isn’t available online, but you can read this [Mt. Holyoke magazine notice about the piece; Viereck is professor emeritus of history there].)

The occasion of a major liberal magazine devoting nine pages to a figure from the early days of modern conservatism ought to be the cause of much rejoicing. Maybe in future issues we’ll get to read about the legacies of Frank Chodorov, Willmoore Kendall, and Albert Jay Nock.

But don’t count on it. The New Yorker‘s interest in Viereck does not arise from a sincere desire to explore the roots of the Right. Instead, the article by Tom Reiss is a transparent attempt to attack “the radicalism of the George W. Bush Presidency” by suggesting that the conservative movement, in its infancy, betrayed its founding father. The true story is that Viereck was on stage during the creation of modern conservatism, but only in the opening scene. Then he walked away, never to be heard from again, except occasionally as a heckler. Here’s the rest.

Categories: Jonathans, Reiss

From the other day, Steve Martin Receives Twain Humor Award.

I’m distressed that Shopgirl has been getting such stinky reviews—I’ll just have to see it for myself. The often grating Terry Gross interviewed Claire Danes on “Fresh Air” yesterday; Danes was likable if a bit (understandably) guarded, and mused about filming My So-Called Life while she was supposed to be in high school herself, “It was like a public diary, with someone else’s words.”

Categories: Martin, Movies