Category Archives: New Yorker

New Yorker Blog Roundup: 04.17.09

(This content is taken directly from the left nav bar on the magazine’s website.)
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?

Book Giveaway: Olivia Gentile’s “Life List”

Martin Schneider writes:
Emdashes is pleased to be hosting giving away three copies of Life List, a biography of Phoebe Snetsinger by Olivia Gentile that was released just a few days ago. The term “life list” signifies a list of the birds a person has seen in the wild, as all birders are aware. (Here is my life list, for instance.) The book is about a very unusual twitcher (birders’ term for a birdwatcher who is perhaps unduly concerned with adding new birds to his or her life list), and it sounds marvelous. I can’t wait to read it.
Here are favorable notices the book has received from two well-known people:

Except for one thing, this book would rate as a great adventure novel and fictional psychological portrait, about a woman’s obsession with bird-watching, its effect on her relationships with her husband and her four children, and the horrifying mishaps that she survived on each continent—until the last mishap. But the book isn’t that great novel, because instead it’s a great true story: the biography of Phoebe Snetsinger, who set the world record for bird species seen, after growing up in an era when American women weren’t supposed to be competitive or have careers. Whether or not you pretend that it’s a novel, you’ll enjoy this powerful, moving story.

—Jared Diamond

Gentile’s tale of a desperate but determined housewife with a passion for birds and adventure is engrossing, sharp, and affecting—a touching portrait and great read.

—Susan Orlean

If you have not seen the author’s entertaining and striking website, you should.
Here are the rules: Drop us an email, subject line “BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER,” and please include your name and full mailing address. We’ll take all entries until 8:00 pm EST on Sunday, April 19, and then the Random Number Generator will intervene with its trademark dispassion. Good luck to all entrants!

What’s in This Week’s New Yorker: 04.19.09

Martin Schneider writes:
A new issue of The New Yorker, the “Journeys” issue, comes out tomorrow. A preview of its contents:
Burkhard Bilger looks at the dangerous exotic animals that now make their home in Florida. Bilger writes that Florida’s “ecology is a kind of urban legend come true—the old alligator-flushed-down-the-toilet story repeated a thousand times with a thousand species.”
Lauren Collins profiles Alain Robert, the “French Spiderman,” who recently climbed the Lloyd’s Building during the G-20 Summit, and follows Robert on February 17, 2009, as he climbs the Cheung Kong Center, a sixty-two-story office tower in Hong Kong.
David Owen visits South Uist, a sparsely populated island in the Outer Hebrides, off Scotland’s northwest coast, as groups battle over the restored Askernish golf course, which is also used for grazing animals.
Dorothy Wickenden discovers a Western comedy of manners in the story of two young women—seeking adventure, intellectual stimulation, and real jobs—who left their sheltered lives in the East in 1916 for a year on the American frontier. Wickenden collected the letters, photograph albums, memoirs, and oral histories left by the protagonists of the story, interviewed many of the descendants, and went to the still remote mountains of Elkhead, Colorado, to re-create a single year that changed dozens of lives.
Steve Coll writes about President Obama’s disarmament strategy in the face of a heightened nuclear-arms race.
David Sedaris connects with fellow train travelers in the bar car.
In Shouts & Murmurs, Larry Doyle opens a new amusement park, Fun Times!
Sasha Frere-Jones writes about the hip-hop songwriting team of Terius (The-Dream) Nash and Christopher (Tricky) Stewart.
Hilton Als examines Katherine Anne Porter’s life and work.
James Wood explores the travel-inspired writing of Geoff Dyer.
John Lahr reviews Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them and The Toxic Avenger.
Peter Schjeldahl checks out the younger generation of artists in the New Museum’s “Younger Than Jesus” show.
Anthony Lane reviews Anvil! The Story of Anvil.
There is a short story by Chris Adrian.

New Yorker Blog Roundup: 04.09.09

(This content is taken directly from the left nav bar on the magazine’s website.)
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.

What Is the British Equivalent of The New Yorker?

Martin Schneider writes:
Happened to stumble upon Andrew Orlowski’s paean to Wired, in which he writes in passing, “In Britain we’ve never had the equivalent of a Harper’s or a New Yorker—something with a cracking 15,000-word article that you can read in the bath.” Is that true? What’s the closest periodical—glossy or otherwise—that can deliver such an Anglo-aquatic reading experience? The London Review of Books, perhaps? Any others?

New Yorker Blog Roundup: 04.03.09

Martin Schneider writes:
(This content is taken directly from the left nav bar on the magazine’s website.)
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.

Brace Yourself for Bruno, the New Yorker Way

Martin Schneider writes:
Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie Bruno (or Brüno), featuring his “flamboyantly gay” Austrian fashion scenester character, is due out this summer. The recently released trailer starts with a barrage of pullquotes, one of the first of which is “Lavatorial!” and is credited to “Anthony Lane, The New Yorker” (it’s perfectly accurate).
Like any good fashionista, the trailer jokes that Borat is “so 2006.” But sadism-tinged guerrilla culture-war humor (no matter how brilliant) really does seem incredibly 2006, no? It’ll be interesting to see if squirming squares will play as well in the age of Obama, now that those squares are worried about their jobs, mortgages, retirement plans. Is it homophobia or parody of same? Ah, who can tell. If you missed it the first time around, George Saunders’s take on Borat was one of the sharpest.
I’m writing this from Austria, Bruno’s supposed homeland, where Joseph Fritzl pleaded guilty a couple of weeks ago. Bruno’s definitely a step up, PR-wise.

Six More Days for the New Yorker/Worth 1000 Cartoon Mashup Contest!

Martin Schneider writes:
This is really neat. The New Yorker is teaming up with well-known Photoshop humor website Worth 1000 (lovingly known as W1K) to present the “Dogs at the Bar” Contest. And it’s even being hosted at the New Yorker website; so odd to see all of that rampant scurrilousness underneath the familiar august sedate navbar (there is no such thing as an august navbar).
The way it works is, you have to create the cartoon in Aviary, and all the visual elements you will need to do it are supplied. The only constraint? It’s got to be about dogs in bars! Surely a comedic goldmine. (I gently propose a ban on “hair of the dog”-related wit.)
Wow. If only I had a graphical sensibility, a proficiency in Photoshop/Aviary, or a sense of humor, I’d be all over this.

New Yorker Blog Roundup: 03.31.09

Martin Schneider writes:
(This content is taken directly from the left nav bar on the magazine’s website.)
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?