Martin Schneider writes:
I mentioned recently that I am a bit of an Orwell junkie. So it with no small pleasure that I announce that, having decisively proven its worth with Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, the New Yorker Book Club now turns to Orwell’s terrific memoir of his days as a dishwasher in Paris and a hobo in England.
I must say, after Revolutionary Road, I was half-expecting the Club to continue with books that are currently in the public eye. This classics-minded selection immensely increases my enthusiasm for the project. Down and Out in Paris and London was probably one of the first “grown-up” books I ever read, but it has been a while. I’m looking forward to this!

Martin Schneider writes:
(This content is taken directly from the left nav bar on the magazine’s website.)
George Packer wants liberals to put principles first (or second).
The Front Row: Novels we wish filmmakers would bring to the screen.
Steve Coll offers readers a biodegradable coffee mug.
James Surowiecki remembers the early nineties.
Evan Osnos on when boats collide.
News Desk: Mass famines, bad bishops.
Hendrik Hertzberg tentatively concludes that Americans love their (political) parties.
Sasha Frere-Jones is neither old nor grouchy, in case you were worried.
The Book Bench: Charlotte’s Web, John Wray on writing a book on the subway.
The Cartoon Lounge: Dispatches from SXSW.
Goings On: Pop music’s brain drain, Neil Young, the Flaming Lips.
Ask the Author: Submit a question to the editor of the Style Issue, Susan Morrison.

Martin Schneider writes:
You guessed it, more New Yorker mentions from the aether! Let’s dive right in, shall we?
LeonardoZ Reading The New Yorker. Such a well written magazine. Wondering how even good mags can survive, specially in this economy.
cazelk It’s about time the New Yorker coughed up a solid 12,000 words on DFW. What do we pay them for again? Ohhhh right, I get it.
PaigeWiser The cover of the New Yorker magazine features Michelle Obama… with sleeves. Didn’t recognize her.
ericaceous Is there a bookstore in all of New York that carries anything by James Wood? He writes for the New Yorker, fer cripes sake!
judygoldberg I’m a finalists in this week’s New Yrker Caption Contest! I’ll just come right out and ask pls vote 4 me!!! http://tinyurl.com/anban5
mnreads listening to the new David Foster Wallace excerpt in the New Yorker, the read pronounces Edina, Minnesota wrong
nancheney David has the newly arrived New Yorker with the David Foster Wallace article. I had it first. grrrrrr.
alsolikelife: thinks David Denby’s New Yorker mumblecore piece reads like a teacher-parent consultation during PTA week: “Little Joey is making movies…”
wackjack I find it charming that The New Yorker still refers to publicists as press agents.
ErikHagen I like his beard so much that I want to draw pictures of it, and send them to the New Yorker to be published.
samduke left my new yorker at the taqueria only a 1/3 way through that epic DFW profile. 2nd time this week i’ve lost something before finishing it.

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.

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!

Emily Gordon momentarily surfaces to write:
The briefest list, representing a much longer longer one spanning roughly 1981 to the present. I’ll add links later when I’m not hiring an art director for Print. Yes, you may still send your resume if you get it to me in the next couple of days.
Anyway, the beginning of that list of free-floating-anxiety-provoking, lingering-question-leaving, and dream-haunting stories (“the universe is expanding!”):

• An elderly lady in a nursing home in, possibly, Florida, was starving to death because of the bureaucracy of Medicare, or something like that. Is she being nourished properly now, if she’s still with us?
• The dangerous case of the dissolving pterapods. Has Obama appointed a Pterapod Czar?
• The mothers, the nurses, and the kids in Katherine Boo’s piece about Louisiana programs that pair nurses and teenage mothers. Is it still being funded? How are the mothers? How are the kids? Are they still reeling crayfish from the back yard for dinner? I’ve eaten crayfish; is there really enough meat on them for dinner, or are they bigger in Louisiana?
• The bees—about which Elizabeth Kolbert wrote (and gestured) so compellingly. I know they’re still not doing well as a group, because I keep hearing distressed British beekeepers on the BBC talking about the apian health crisis and the perilous honey business. I am a friend of the bee and a honey appreciator. How can I help?
• Pretty much everyone from Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s series on the South Bronx, which later became Random Family, which I finished reading a few months ago and am still reeling from. How are you, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc? What are you writing about and when can we read it, preferably in The New Yorker? Are you still in touch with your friends and subjects from the various neighborhoods you covered so intensely well? Has anyone broken out of the cycle of poverty and pregnancy and gone to college or gotten a decent job? Is the economy eroding any gains they’ve made? Although it may be voyeuristic or simply none of my business to ask, I literally can’t stop thinking about them.
• Not to mention Florence, Crystal, and Daquan, part of whose stories Susan Sheehan told in the series that became Life for Me Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair.
• Roger Angell and Lillian Ross. I know they’re getting on. But I hope they’re all right.

To be continued as long as I read The New Yorker and worry, that is, as long as I live. And you? What’s haunting you from the past 1 to 84 years of The New Yorker?