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Steve Coll wonders if the Times could really be nonprofit.
James Surowiecki loved Obama’s Georgetown speech, even if it wasn’t Churchillian.
Sasha Frere-Jones celebrates Graffiti Kings.
Hendrik Hertzberg on the electoral college and a Fox News stake out.
George Packer discusses George Orwell with the Book Club.
News Desk: What is it with the hundred-days business?
The Front Row: Who still thinks pornography is enlightening?
The Book Bench: Honoring E. L. Doctorow at the PEN Literary Gala.
Evan Osnos provides more details on China’s green-tech space race.
The Cartoon Lounge: Footage from the swing flu of 2006.
Goings On: A Jonas Brothers drug reference?
Category Archives: Looked Into
William Hamilton, Jack Russells, Mint Juleps, and Quality Road
Emily Gordon writes:
From the Andover homepage, courtesy of my alumni email newsletter (I went there for only a year, but it was an eventful year!), a nice horse story that also has a New Yorker cartoonist connection:
**Horse breeder Ned Evans ’60 has a Kentucky Derby contender**
April 15, 2009 – According to renowned New Yorker cartoonist and fellow PA alum **William Hamilton** ’58, Ned Evans would rather spend the day with his four Jack Russell terriers on his 3,000-acre farm in Casanova, Va., than sipping mint juleps at Churchill Downs on May 2. But Evans will just have to settle in and make do: his colt, Quality Road, posting 5 to 1 odds, will be competing in one of the biggest horse racing events of the year–the Kentucky Derby.
A top-ranked North American equestrian breeder, Evans has raised horses for 40 years on his sprawling Spring Hill Farm. And although he’s turned out some 70 stakes winners, three-year-old Quality Road is his first Derby contender. Evans, however, declines to partake just yet in the sweet conjecture of what a Derby victory would mean to him.
“I’ll tell you afterward what it means,” he proffers. “I’m mainly concentrating on getting there and doing the best we can.”
After graduating from Andover, the Greenwich, Conn., native earned a BA degree from Yale in 1964 and an MBA degree from Harvard in 1967. Known to many in New York’s top business circles as a shrewd entrepreneur, Evans’s many successes culminated in 1979 when he became chief executive officer of publishing giant Macmillan, a position he held for more than a decade.
What some associates may not have known until recently is that starting in 1970, while climbing the ranks of New York’s business world, Evans, a self-proclaimed “weekend commuter,” was quietly creating and expanding a vast horse farm on the old Civil War grounds of Virginia’s rolling countryside. Today, Spring Hill is home to roughly 200 horses at any one time, all handpicked and paired for breeding by Evans himself.
“I arrange all the matings and 15 months later a foal is born,” says Evans. “They don’t go into training until they’re 2, and all kinds of things happen along the way, not enough of them good.”
But it wasn’t until this past November that Evans knew he had bred a special one. Quality Road had burst onto the scene for his maiden race at Aqueduct and “caught everyone’s eye,” says Evans. According to reports, the proud owner turned down a $2.5 million offer for the galloping wonder and decided he would take Quality Road to the Derby himself, thank you very much.
As for what Evans would do if Quality Road were to take the Derby title, his fond friend Hamilton may know best. “A Derby win would leave him at least briefly ecstatic. He would probably give his terriers a treat and smile a moment at the sky.”
To which Evans replies, “He seems to know the situation.”
New Yorker Blog Roundup: 04.17.09
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James Surowiecki imagines the billboard of the future.
George Packer traces Irving Kristol’s intellectual decline.
Evan Osnos learns more about Gairsville.
Hendrik Hertzberg praises another state for embracing the National Popular Vote.
Sasha Frere-Jones produces another memo from the Prince archives.
Paul Goldberger explains why Peter Zumthor deserves the Pritzker.
Steve Coll gives a spoonful of medicine.
The Front Row: Michel Piccoli.
News Desk: Jeffrey Toobin goes through the newest round of “torture memos.”
The Book Bench: Deborah Digges.
The Cartoon Lounge: Forget sexbots, let’s get taxbots!
Goings On: What has Bob Dylan been reading?
New Yorker Blog Roundup: 04.09.09
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Evan Osnos “gets”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2009/04/managing-expect.html advice on how to pick a pet in Shanghai.
George Packer “admires”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/04/books-worth-wai.html Wendell Steavenson’s book on Iraq.
Steve Coll “seeks”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/04/role-models.html a role model in the stimulus.
James Surowiecki “looks”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/jamessurowiecki/2009/04/the-curious-cas.html at the new unemployment numbers.
Hendrik Hertzberg “listens”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2009/04/freewheelin-bar.html to Bob Dylan on Barack Obama.
The Front Row: What to “screen”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2009/04/the-cinema-scho.html at Ghetto Film School.
Sasha Frere-Jones “shakes”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2009/04/postmisogyny-ap.html his head at Chris Brown.
News Desk: Iowa’s “turn”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/04/close-read-the-more-loving-ones.html on gay marriage.
The Book Bench: Wells Tower on his “stories”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/04/the-exchange-we.html and his name.
The Cartoon Lounge: “String,”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2009/04/serious-string.html “yarn”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2009/04/yarn.html, “rope”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2009/04/rope.html, “kinks”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/cartoonlounge/2009/04/naughty-knots.html.
Goings On: Eminem is “back”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2009/04/guess-whos-back.html.
Croissants, Bagels and the Ottomans: Stop It
Jonathan Taylor writes:
I suppose there’s great reason to think R.O. Blechman is being purposely playful with the phrase “most likely true,” but I’m still irked to see two most likely untrue food-history fancies, about the invention of the croissant and the bagel to commemorate battles against the Ottomans, reamplified in the Times today. Food historians have long doubted the croissant’s connection to the siege of Vienna, noting that known references to it emerged only centuries later. And the Forward recently noted, “Contrary to legend, the bagel was not created (in the shape of a stirrup) to commemorate the victory of Poland’s King Jan Sobieski over the Ottoman Turks in 1683. It was born much earlier in Krakow, Poland, as a competitor to the obwarzanek, a lean bread made of wheat flour and designed for Lent. In the 16th century and first half of the 17th, a ‘golden age for Poland’s Jews,’ the bajgiel became a staple in the national diet.”
Thank you.
New Yorker Blog Roundup: 04.03.09
Martin Schneider writes:
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Evan Osnos says China is feeling superpowerful.
Steve Coll learns Pakistan has two Jon Stewart imitators.
James Surowiecki looks at the new unemployment numbers.
Hendrik Hertzberg says Israel’s election system can’t be blamed on proportional representation.
George Packer finds out that Ulysses S. Grant enjoyed spanking.
The Front Row: Did Roberto Saviano plagiarize parts of his book?
News Desk: The Queen can take it.
The Book Bench: What poetry does to the brain.
The Cartoon Lounge: Protect your home with string.
Sasha Frere-Jones talks with the remix artist Kutiman.
Goings On: The health risks of the rock-and-roll life.
The New Yorker’s Guilty Pleasure: Thurber, Adler, Kincaid All Wrote About Soaps
Jonathan Taylor writes:
On Wednesday, CBS announced the cancellation of soap opera “Guiding Light,” which began on radio in 1937, making it the “the longest-running scripted program in broadcasting history,” according to the Times (which also links to some original audio from the show’s radio days).
For whatever reason, soap operas have been a source of continual fascination for The New Yorker. They’ve probably pushed a few buttons about “culture,” and the “pop” variety thereof. I would give a lot to sit down on the sofa with Renata Adler and a box of wine on a 1972 afternoon for some proto-hatewatching. Maybe that’s not quite the right word, but in her “Unhappiness Enough, and Time,” Adler concluded: “There does not seem to be a single sense in which soap operas can be construed as an escapist form.” Also: “One thing about a work of art is that it ends.”
(The abstracter of this article didn’t seem to get into it: “Overall look at television soap opera” is the entire thing.)
James Thurber’s 1948 “Soapland” was a really overall (five-part!) look at the radio soaps. He investigated “the early pioneers in that field” and described their focus on “the plights and problems of small town characters stretched into endless sequences,” isolated from broader “social consciousness”; he focused on the writers of the soap stories, and then on the “players”; and Thurber wrapped up with a consideration of the “listening women” (the audience) and the future of soaps on…television.
Among the truly numerous Talk stories about soap operas: The 1975 final taping of NBC’s “How to Survive a Marriage” was covered. In 1978, Jamaica Kincaid attended the First International Soap Opera Exposition. Somewhat less sniffy is a 2001 piece (available online) about a real nurse who consulted for soaps, and had even appeared on “One Life to Live.”
Soaps have provided also fodder for fiction by S.J. Perelman and Constance Schraft.
Cartoons are a whole other story, I imagine….
New Yorker Blog Roundup: 03.31.09
Martin Schneider writes:
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Evan Osnos wonders about China’s new Tibetan holiday.
George Packer finds out that Ulysses S. Grant enjoyed spanking.
James Surowiecki thinks it makes sense to treat automakers differently than banks.
Steve Coll and the stimulus go back to nature.
Hendrik Hertzberg says the Denver Post suffers from state chauvinism.
The Front Row: “Katyn” and the Holocaust.
News Desk: Guns lead to no good.
Sasha Frere-Jones hosts a roundtable about Haitian music.
The Book Bench: Anne Carson in Iceland.
The Cartoon Lounge: The supremacy of string.
Goings On: The Vaselines reunite. So what?
New Yorker Blog Roundup: 03.25.09
Martin Schneider writes:
This batch seems somewhat “urgent” to me, in a good way. Have a look.
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George Packer discovers George Orwell was a loving father.
Evan Osnos mourns the Chicago Tribune‘s foreign bureaus.
Steve Coll thinks the Treasury’s plan does what’s politically possible, not what’s necessary.
James Surowiecki challenges Joseph Stiglitz’s distortions of the Geithner plan.
Hendrik Hertzberg applauds another Bill O’Reilly target.
The Front Row responds to A. O. Scott.
News Desk: Signs of progress, the President and the Pope.
Sasha Frere-Jones hosts a roundtable about Haitian music.
The Book Bench: If Samuel Beckett used Twitter, Bulgaria’s favorite book.
The Cartoon Lounge: North by Northeast, reports of nose skirts from SXSW.
Goings On: The New York Dolls‘ “Cause I Sez So,” second-generation rock drummers.
True! Twitterers Tout, Twit “Tweedy” Weekly
Martin Schneider writes:
One of two things will happen: Either Twitter will gain sufficient acceptance that nobody will bother being annoyed it, or it’ll stop being used enough to warrant any attention at all. In the meantime, some messages:
mldrabenstott @genmarshall A weekly New Yorker equals 6-8 monthly mags. Quality, not quantity.
ljhliesl I just put a lot of staples through the New Yorker so Blake could take them out again. He is a staple-remover and a confetti-maker.
youngamerican Can anyone deny that for the last two or three months, this has been the best part of each and every New Yorker? http://bit.ly/ofuim
BananaEsq The New Yorker consistently misuses the word “insure.” Please stop.
splendid Weird: Marina showed 8-sec clip of artist performing by getting rifle shot in arm; get home, open New Yorker, see article about that artist
guttersniper Going to the John Updike tribute at the NYPL tonight. Expecting tweed.
MitMoi “Editing is the same as quarreling with writers – same thing exactly” Harold Ross: American Writer, New Yorker founder
LaurenProctor32 Lauren Collins’ article in this week’s New Yorker is wonderfully well written. She’ll always be a favorite. [I think this was referring to the article about Bill Cunningham.]
dbrauer The New Yorker’s partisan cover fetish has become boring.
mrcornie Reading short story in 3/23 New Yorker & it talks of Facebook & Wii. Fascinated when new-ish pop culture phenoms start showing up in my lit.
suzannegangi Asked w/utmost respect: How old is Mr. John McPhee, esteemed author & “New Yorker” contributor? He made la crosse(!) interesting (3/23 NYer) [I wrote back, informing her that McPhee had turned 78 about two weeks earlier.]
VelocityWong My fave part of the New Yorker’s Burris piece is how almost every mention of an IL pol has a parenthetical epilogue about their crimes.