Good news! Now you can read The New Yorker in the dark. Sort of a sexy scenario, actually.

Digital Audio Edition of The New Yorker Now Available from Audible; Audible Provides Exclusive Subscriptions to the Digital Audio Version of the Legendary Magazine at www.audible.com/newyorker

WAYNE, N.J. & NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–June 28, 2005–Audible, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBL, www.audible.com), the leader in spoken audio information and entertainment on the Internet, and The New Yorker magazine today announced an exclusive agreement that brings The New Yorker‘s award-winning reporting, commentary, criticism, and fiction into the world of downloadable digital audio.

Every Wednesday Audible exclusively delivers select articles from The Talk of the Town, Fiction, Critics, and other sections of the magazine to Audible’s hundreds of thousands of digital audio listeners. Each article is read in its entirety and selected in collaboration with the editorial staff of The New Yorker.

In addition, Audible will become the exclusive digital audio provider of “The New Yorker Festival”—an annual celebration of arts and ideas—which features an eclectic lineup of discussions, talks, and readings with some of today’s most gifted and provocative writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, and politicians.

“The New Yorker is not only one of our culture’s richest sources of literature and profound discourse on issues of the day, it is a true American icon. We couldn’t be more pleased to translate this thought-provoking content into the digital audio experience,” said Beth Anderson, senior vice president and publisher of Audible, Inc. “And with our recent launch of RSS delivery, our listeners are now able to bring this extraordinary audio into their lives seamlessly.”

“We are very excited to be working with Audible to bring millions of loyal readers a new way to experience The New Yorker,” said Pamela Maffei McCarthy, Deputy Editor, The New Yorker. “And the partnership between the magazine and Audible will allow us to reach out to a new group of potential subscribers.”

From Audible’s website: “The site offers a powerful collection of audiobook best sellers and classics by authors such as Tom Clancy, Stephen King, John Grisham, Janet Evanovich, James Patterson, the Dalai Lama, David McCullough, Stephen Hawking, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Austen.” Hmm…that might not be the order I would use. A one-month subscription costs $12.95. Shame it arrives Wednesday, though at the current circulation speed that’s only one day behind Brooklyn. (I hear Brooklyn Heights gets special Monday treatment; figures.)

Update: I’m listening to it now (I bought the June 27 issue for cheap), and it’s a painless procedure. I recommend not using the 6 MB “AM radio” size; it sounds like AM radio after the radio has been dropped a couple of times and placed in the closet. But it’s not at all bad if you want that old-time radio feeling, as I often do. 11 MB is much crisper. I could swear it’s a young Rick Dees doing the introduction to the issue contents. Comforting! Then he becomes NPR-ish Voiceover Guy (no ladies for the lady pieces?), with friendly Elevated or Classical American Diction of which David Alan Stern would no doubt approve, but I think he’s from the South somewhere. He says phrases like “bong hits” and “big gummint” (Hendrik Hertzberg’s Talk about medical marijuana) and “pissed” and “get the hots” (Anthony Lane’s doggerel in his review of Yes) with admirable gentility. Our voice man seems to relish “simulacra,” “wargasm,” and “usurpation.” You know, I’ve done this stuff (for the blind, following my far more disciplined late grandmother’s example), and it’s damn hard. Very nice end Ts.

After the official program is over, the old song (in really old-time audio) “Caught Us Doin’ It” by The Hokum Boys begins! But don’t worry, it’s just iTunes, being alphabetical; it’s what comes after Hertzberg (who’s listed first as “Artist” on the download), after all. That Holiday’s dreamy cover of the Go-Gos’ “Vacation” is just after, followed by “We Like Bananas, Because They Have No Bones” (that’s the Hoosier Hot Shots, as you know), is one of those many happy iTunes moments. Sure, I don’t really need New Yorker audio. But it’s good that it exists, and it would have come in handy when I was a temporary pirate.

Digital Audio Edition of The New Yorker Now Available from Audible… [Business Wire]

Categories: NYer, Issue, Radio

Just in case you haven’t noticed it on the sidebar there along with other sites by or about various New Yorker contributors of yesterday and today, Susan Orlean has a blog, and it’s nice-looking and snappily written, too. In fact, the part about Adaptation is written by the esteemed Jason Kottke, who is a brave man and a good one, too, at least from all available evidence. Read all of the above. If you have links to contribute to my list, please send them.

Categories: NYer, Orlean, Extracurriculars

(Or being sheep.)

“Sometimes the reason I pick up something is completely random. I take a lot of chances with things. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Bing Crosby.”
—Beck, The Believer, June/July 2005 Music Issue

I like the enclosed CD quite a bit so far. I leave musical coolhunting to the experts, not to mention S/FJ, but Karla Schickele of Ida (“My Fair, My Dark”) is someone I can say I saw and recognized as uncommonly amazing early on. She opened for my multitalented friends VPN many years ago, and everyone was in awe.

Categories: Magazines, Music, McSweeney’s

A pleasing review by Marc Vincent in the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the elegant new book Steinberg at The New Yorker:

Like many other readers of The New Yorker, I look at all the cartoons before reading the articles. And no other artist in this genre left such an indelible mark on the magazine as Saul Steinberg, who is justly celebrated in this handsome volume.

It is perhaps an exaggeration (but Steinberg would have loved its cheeky irreverence) to state that just as Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel are irrevocably linked, so are Saul Steinberg and The New Yorker. Joel Smith, a curator at Vassar College, tells the enthralling story of the artist and the magazine, and of their symbiotic relationship.

Steinberg’s long career at The New Yorker (1941-1999) coincided with the magazine’s increasing cultural influence and visibility. It also ran parallel to America’s embrace of modernity with its concomitant social, political and cultural dislocation.

Born in Romania in 1914, Steinberg left for Milan, Italy, in 1933 to study architecture. In 1941, shortly after receiving his degree, Steinberg escaped war-torn Europe for the United States.

From then until his death in 1999, Steinberg’s drawings regularly graced the pages of The New Yorker. For the magazine alone, his output was prodigious: 89 covers (all fully reproduced in color at the back of the book), more than 650 solo cartoons and drawings, and almost 500 drawings connected to articles.

The book is divided into two parts: a 35-page critical essay followed by drawings grouped according to theme. The highly informative essay, with well-chosen supporting illustrations, examines Steinberg’s life and career at The New Yorker. It elucidates his artistic goals and style, while placing the artist in the broader context of American art and culture. Unique among major postwar American artists, Steinberg reached his audience not via the gallery or museum wall but through the printed page, which arrived weekly on the newsstand or in the mailbox. His astute commentary on American life made him an eagerly awaited guest every week for six decades.

The thematically arranged drawings focus more narrowly on Steinberg’s favorite themes, with titles such as At War, American Allegories, Cat People, The Sexes, On a Pedestal, and Mean Streets. Both his art and his nation were wrestling with issues such as materialism, bureaucracy and power. Steinberg’s favorite subject, close to the heart of an immigrant like himself, was what it meant to be an American or, more specifically, a New Yorker.

His most famous—and most often parodied and misunderstood—drawing, the March 29, 1976, New Yorker cover, “View of the World from 9th Avenue,” is typical of Steinberg’s irreverent, mischievous and ambiguous homage to his adopted home. Far from celebrating Manhattan, which appears without its canonical skyscrapers and bridges, Steinberg portrays an ordinary neighborhood of people going about their everyday tasks. To be smug about any locale —even New York City—is itself a mark of provinciality and bad taste. The joke is, of course, that New Yorker magazine readers would never fall into that trap.

But there was a gentler and less piquant side to Steinberg, who also celebrated the joys of reading, love, gossip and gardening, or delved into the mysteries of language, memory, or reason. Thus his drawings are populated by an array of improbable characters such as cats, pedestals, rubber stamps, buildings, letters and numbers, all of which come in various artistic garbs ranging from the exuberant and colorful to the sparing and austere.

Steinberg’s drawings in “Steinberg at The New Yorker” will reward the eye for their visually arresting lines, colors, and shapes, as well as provoke the mind with an array of intellectual and mental gymnastics. Laughter, wonderment and puzzlement are sure to emanate from the reader—and that is exactly what Steinberg would have wanted.

Vincent is a professor of art history at Baldwin-Wallace College.

To reach Marc Vincent: books@plaind.com

Update: Here’s an example of the kind of misunderstanding Vincent is talking about, by Ed Lasky writing in The American Thinker about “Seinfeld liberals”:

For those who have been away on religious missions to the South Seas for the last 15 years or so, the series featured a core cast of 4 characters: Elaine, George, Kramer and the eponymous Jerry Seinfeld. All were single New Yorkers with checkered job histories, who seemed incapable of developing lasting and caring relationships with others, either in their careers or their romantic lives. While different on the margins, they all shared certain attributes around which much of the humor of the show pivoted.

They were, to use the term now in vogue, Metrosexuals. Their perspective as Manhattanite city dwellers was expressed by the famed New Yorker cartoon by Saul Steinberg, in which everything beyond the Hudson looks tiny and insignificant. They never evinced any desire to travel or live elsewhere. They all lived in rented apartments and never expressed any home-owning desires.

When they did take excursions outside of Manhattan, they often used these trips to belittle and alienate the rural or suburban people they met. George’s trips to the outer boroughs were usually to visit his parents, and what usually transpired was an argument. Other trips lead to the Bubble Boy episode, cabins being burned down, accusations of lobster stealing, and parking garage travails in a suburban shopping center.

Celebrating New Yorker’s Star Artist [Plain Dealer]
Seinfeld Liberals [The American Thinker]

Categories: NYer, Cartoons, Steinberg

Via the esteemed Greg.org (who has his own commentary as well), a lively discussion on the Wired New York Forum about Paul Goldberger’s recent piece on the wrinkles of Ground Zero real estate. The full text of Goldberger’s piece is in the post.

Up From Zero [Goldberger, New Yorker, 7/29/02]
Groundwork: How the future of Ground Zero is being resolved [Goldberger, New Yorker, 5/20/02]

Categories: NYer, Critics

Good tidings from Playbill News:

Jennifer Jason Leigh will star in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party as part of The New Group’s new season Off-Broadway, which will also include the Wallace Shawn-Allen Shawn world premiere play-opera The Music Teacher.

New Group artistic director Scott Elliott will stage the work by Leigh (Smelling a Rat, Naked, Vera Drake) for his company’s 2005-2006 season, beginning previews in November at Theatre Row. More casting is yet to be announced.

Abigail’s Party, which centers on a dinner party gone awry, was first produced in London in 1977 at the Hampstead Theatre. It then became popular through the BBC television adaptation. The work was recently revived in 2002 at the New Ambassador’s Theatre, earning a nomination for an Olivier Theatre Award for Best Revival of 2002.

Actress Leigh (no relation to the British scribe) has appeared on Broadway in Cabaret and Proof. She is best known for her film work, appearing in such movies as Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Rush, Single White Female, Dolores Claiborne, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle and The Anniversary Party, which she co-wrote and co-directed with co-star Alan Cumming.

In February 2006, the Off-Broadway troupe will again team with actor-playwright Wallace Shawn on the world premiere of The Music Teacher. Shawn pens the new work billed as a “play-opera” which features music by his brother Allen Shawn. Casting and director are to be announced.

Shawn has collaborated with director Elliott as an actor on Hurlyburly, as a playwright for the revival of his Aunt Dan and Lemon and for the new adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, to be presented on Broadway next season. Other plays Shawn has penned include Marie and Bruce, The Designated Mourner, The Fever and Thought In Three Parts.

For more information on The New Group, visit the website at http://www.thenewgroup.org.

Speaking of Fast Times, where are our old flames Judge Reinhold and Phoebe Cates? Don’t they get their ’80s revivial, too? I know Reinhold was Aaron the Close Talker on Seinfeld, and he was tremendous, but what’s going on now? Quentin Tarantino, are you listening? Or at least John Waters?

Leigh in Leigh’s Party, Shawn and Shawn’s Music Teacher Slated for New New Group Season [Playbill News]

Categories: Shawn, Extracurriculars, Movies

And he is: a handy gallery of the good times and the less so, in the faithful SF Chronicle. The one of Sean and Dede in front of Harry’s Bar is particularly evocative, now that you know his fevered thoughts ’round about then. Funny Woodhall photo, too. It’s just how I pictured it.

Categories: Wilsey

If, like me, you feel as though you’ll be paddling blissfully in clear, deep Wilsey Pond till the end of your days, you’ll fold this anecdote right into all the fantastically excessive others:

When Dede Wilsey saw the surface of the stone that had been chosen for the floor of the new de Young Museum, she was worried.

“What’s it going to be like in my Manolos?” she recalls asking herself.

The petite blond heiress tested mock-ups of the rough-hewn Italian stone in her designer heels and approached the architects.

“‘It’s a mistake,'” she recalls saying during a recent hard-hat tour of the new museum. “And they said, ‘Dede, you’re not serious. It’s already been ordered.’ And I said, ‘I’m not buying a $200 million museum where the floor hurts your feet. I’ll pay the difference.'”

In the end, the stone was changed.

Welcome to the wild world of Dede Wilsey, where public good is forged through the power of a Chanel suit, an iron will and a Midas touch. In Dedeland, the vertical surface at the entrance of the museum that celebrates the thousands of $1,000-plus donors is called the “dog wall,” because many of her canine companions have given generously to the museum and their names will be listed there alongside those of donors belonging to Homo sapiens. In Dedeland, the grates on the floors needed to pass muster with her Manolos to fend off possible lawsuits from similarly shod patrons. And in Dedeland, the massive Gerhard Richter for the central hall gets approval because, she says, she can “decorate around it.”
…
For those on her radar screen, her fund-raising acumen elicits praise and even a little fear. At a recent tour of the museum, Jim Ludwig, a friend of Wilsey’s and a de Young donor, half-jokingly told a group of assembled journalists, “San Francisco has never seen another fund-raiser like Dede. A lot of people are now afraid to sit next to her at dinner.”
…
There’s also a matter of having a calling. Some people are meant to ice-skate or write sonnets; Wilsey seems to have been born to raise money. “Unlike a lot of people, I love asking for money,” she says. “Not small amounts—I can’t stand to do annual drives—but big amounts. You get to your goal much faster. I just love round numbers.” [If this were the book, Wilsey might say something like: “Dede. Dad. Trevor. Todd.”]
…
When Wilsey gave the money for Wilsey Court, the vaulted-ceilinged central gathering place at the de Young, she wanted to also donate the art that would adorn the enormous wall. “If I gave the art, I could make sure it wouldn’t be too ugly,” she explains. In the end, she chose to commission a piece by Gerhard Richter, an artist whose more traditional work appeals to her but whose more challenging pieces remain, well, challenging. “We really hit it off,” recalls Wilsey of her trip to Cologne to visit the celebrated artist. “It’s mostly black and white, but there was some color, and I love color. My favorite colors are pink and green. I said, ‘I see lavender, and I see green.'” The painting, which is based on blown-up images of atoms, reminded her of the large pearls she was wearing. “And he said, ‘It’s a self-portrait.’ And I said, ‘OK. I’ll buy the thing.'”

The book is a giant. Buy it in hardback.

Forever Dede Young: Dede Wilsey is the charismatic driving force behind the new expensive de Young Museum [SF Chronicle, 9/04]

Categories: Wilsey

With apologies to Oprah, some Vermont alternatives to Faulkner, in the Rutland Herald. Look for New Yorkerists Galway Kinnnell, Ruth Stone, Bill McKibben, and Janisse Ray, among others.

Categories: Extracurriculars, Kinnell

Oh, this nostalgic fiction of “summer reading”! But hey, it sells books. From St. Petersburg Times business columnist Robert Trigaux’s survey of 15 Tampa Bay-area businesspeople on their beach-reading agendas:

A few books of particular insight, including one about the virtues of the snap judgment and instinctive hunch, appeared on multiple lists this summer. Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, wins praise from AmSouth’s Florida banking executive Susan Martinez, St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau chief Carole Ketterhagen and Peter Rummell, CEO of St. Joe Co. (Florida’s biggest private land owner).

“EVERYONE who deals with people should HAVE to read it,” Rummell wrote (the capitalized words are his) in an e-mail.

Others mentioned books with similar themes. Deanne Roberts of Roberts Communications in Tampa, just back from a tour of Eastern Europe, is reading James Surowiecki’s long-titled The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. The book makes a counterintuitive argument that the wisdom of the masses “under the right circumstances” is often smarter than the smartest person in the crowd.

I love how much editorializing (“the capitalized words are his,” “long-titled”) Trigaux gets into this short passage; it can be a life saver in a thanklessly list-y piece like this. A roundup like this is actually a pretty good indicator of the attention span of American capital:

This time, Dan Brown’s super-selling The Da Vinci Code is still on a few lists but is no longer the dominating read it was in past years. And books about Middle East history, religion and terrorism—big topics on summer lists after 9/11—are less prominent but can be found.
…
One favorite (and I must agree) is Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, the New York Times columnist’s look at how globalization and technology have enabled anyone with drive and talent to compete with anyone else, anywhere. In the United States, that message is only now starting to sink in…. From the big picture to the highly focused, books on Six Sigma are also popular…. History also remains a hot topic.

Call me preoccupied (I am, happily), but Trigaux’s lede sounds a bit like the gossip columns Sean Wilsey quotes with such glee in Oh the Glory: “Other than her ability to run a Coca-Cola Enterprises call center in Tampa and her fondness for a swift Porsche, I knew little about Nita Pennardt.” Or it’s a Danielle Steel noir. Fiction students: Go make your millions!

Reading Lists of Business Elites [St. Petersburg Times]

Categories: Gladwell, Surowiecki, Extracurriculars