Martin Schneider writes:
This issue had Drew Friedman’s cover combining the visages of Barack Obama and George Washington. Candidates include Atul Gawande on health care reform, Calvin Tompkins on Walton Ford, and Ben McGrath on pessimists. We’ll be expanding this post in due course!
Jonathan Taylor writes:
Ben McGrath’s “The Dystopians” cheered me up infinitely, making me think at least for a while that a lot of things worrying me won’t matter at all soon. The piece gamely absorbs the all-embracing view of its subjects; at every corner, there’s yet another novelistic image of the future as envisioned by James Howard Kunstler, like the aspiring hedge-fund managers who are “going to end up supervisors of rutabaga pickers.”

Martin Schneider writes:
This issue had Guy Billout’s cover with Obama (or an Obama-esque figure) parting the political seas of red and blue. Candidates include Tad Friend on marketing movies, Judith Thurman on Scrabble, and Samantha Power on Gary Haugen. Our crack team will be weighing in shortly!

I noticed that Sports Illustrated recently named 2008 the “best year ever.” (People continue to ignore 538, apparently. A criminally underrated year.) In that spirit, on the heels of yet another strong January issue, I’d like to put in a bid for 2009 as the best year of the post-Bush era. (Which hasn’t even started yet!)
Jeffrey Toobin on the delectable Barney Frank and Jill Lepore on inaugural addresses combine to slake our ever-unsatisfied thirst for politics; Elizabeth Kolbert hits the economics of environmentalism; international affairs is amply covered by Peter Hessler’s newest China report; and there was a story by Joyce Carol Oates to round matters out. I’m curious which one(s) will delight my colleagues! (I’ll weigh in later.)
—Martin Schneider
Benjamin Chambers writes:
I haven’t had a chance to dip into the week’s issue, but I do have a great, can’t-miss recommendation that’s also timely: Thomas McGuane reading and discussing James Salter’s 2002 story, “Last Night,” on this month’s fiction podcast. The story is stripped-down and stark like its subject, without the sensual pleasure usual for Salter’s fiction. The setup: a woman has a terminal illness, and she and her husband go out to dinner one last time before returning home to prepare for her suicide; they have a guest go with them, to blunt the tension. Could be maudlin, but boy, does it pack a punch. (If you like McGuane, you might be interested in this Q&A from 2003 with fiction editor Deborah Treisman.)
Jonathan Taylor writes:
I did pick only one story to read in this issue, Peter Hessler’s “Strange Stones,” a memoir of Peace Corps service in China. Beguiling in structure and emotionally polyvalent, it is my favorite, so far, of Hessler’s many Letters From China. Worthwhile travel writing is a portrait not of a place, but of an apprehending intelligence: one like Hessler’s, that recognizes that in fact, he “hadn’t seen anything stranger in China” than a fellow volunteer’s tale of a Midwestern biker rally.
Stuck in an absurd traffic jam on a remote Inner Mongolian steppe—driving in China is a fruitful theme for Hessler—he invokes “the shadowy line between the Strange and the Stupid,” putting me in mind of a farcical version of Joseph Conrad’s The Shadow Line (in which the narrator’s ship, with a cholera-ridden crew, is inexplicably stranded in windless Oriental waters). At the same time, Hessler’s piece touches on the serious side of Conrad’s “shadow line”—between Youth and Maturity—in sketching, with suggestive anecdotes, the transformations that he and his colleagues underwent through their service.

I was a decent SAT student (and have even been known to lead a Kaplan test-prep session or two), hence explaining my dorky post title.
After a two-week layoff, a fascinating first issue of 2009 to ponder. Interesting subjects, interestingly pursued. I know that my cohorts have plenty of impressions to impart (as, surely, you do too, reader). This post will magically alter as they weigh in. Stay tuned.
—Martin Schneider
From Benjamin Chambers:
My absolute favorite? The Robert Leighton cartoon on p. 44, in which Santa tells the couple that he made “quite a nuisance of himself” the previous night.
The Menand piece on the Village Voice felt as provincial, in its way, as the three-part Liebling profile of Chicago (here, here, and here) that -you- Martin posted about recently. Menand’s lengthy celebration of the Voice, with the full-page illustration from Jules Feiffer, seemed written for those who’ve lived in the Village. I really like Menand, so I was surprised to find myself wishing he’d be more concise.
I thought for a while my pick would be “Lives of the Saints,” by Jonathan Harr, about the humanitarian disasters in Chad and Darfur and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.) providing services there. But Harr seemed a little easily impressed, and unsure which details mattered.
In Julian Barnes’s story, “The Limner,” a deaf, itinerant painter gets the best of the bully whose portrait he is painting. Smoothly written, the story was enjoyable, but not stellar. I don’t associate Barnes with historical fiction (despite Arthur & George, his massive book on Arthur Conan Doyle), and it’s not common for The New Yorker either, so the setting of the story was a pleasant surprise.
All in all, I liked Patricia Marx’s “Kosher Takeout” best, in which she describes the work of two Rabbis who travel China ensuring that factories making kosher food meet the necessary standards. She plays it for laughs, which I enjoyed, though unlike the Menand and Harr pieces, which should’ve been shorter, I felt her piece should’ve been longer and more detailed.
From Jonathan Taylor:
Of course it’s been noted elsewhere, but it gave me a real little thrill to read Alex Ross’s restrained, to-the-point reply to Tom Wolfe’s letter objecting to Ross’s characterization of Wolfe’s “Radical Chic.” There is, indeed, as Wolfe himself says, “a difference between hysteria and hysterically funny”; I would ask New York magazine exactly whose reaction makes him look like a “weenie“?
Benjamin called Louis Menand’s Voice piece lengthy, but I mostly feel its gaps, and their odd timing. The subtext is the ongoing demise of the Voice—or, at least it was hard not to take it that way, in a week that saw the canning of jazz and civil rights columnist Nat Hentoff and fashion reporter Lynn Yaeger—but I find it a little creepy that this is never overtly acknowledged by Menand’s article, even as it’s cast almost entirely in the past tense. I know it’s about the seminal example set by the founding generation; but it’s still weird that after some thin allusions to later decades, a sentence in the last paragraph is practically the only clue that the Voice is still published at all. I admit it’s partly my bias, due to when I started reading the by-then very different paper in the 1980s; but if the Voice as a recognizable descendant of Mailer’s paper is disappearing, it remains for someone to consider its whole glorious life. Maybe Menand can expand into a book, just to please me.

Jonathan writes:
I believe Benjamin Chambers will be here soon with an authoritative Katharine Wheel survey of the year-end Fiction Issue. (I’d say, if you haven’t yet managed to read any Roberto Bolaño, his “Meeting With Enrique Lihn” is online; as they say, the first one’s free.)
My other personal pick is Zadie Smith’s nimble Personal History piece, “Dead Man Laughing.” I think it means something that the word “humor” appears much less frequently than “funny,” “joke,” or “comedy.” Humor can be mistaken for undemanding bonhomie (what’s more depressing than the Humor section of a bookstore?), but the latter connote the concrete, intellectual and absurd aspects of the comic that thrive on the edge of the abyss. Such was the sensibility expounded with dour glee by Smith’s father, Harvey; and she doesn’t just recall it, she shows us what life looks like seen through it. (Must look for that “Fawlty Towers” DVD-extra interview of Prunella Scales.)

At least, that’s what the cover says to me! Jonathan Taylor praised the “delightfully Arno-esque cover,” adding that “the whip makes it extra saucy!” He’s got a point there; I had not contemplated this aspect.
The artist, Marcellus Hall, was also the musical force behind Railroad Jerk, whose “Sweet Librarian” made it onto many of my mixes during those years when Napster was big. I saw Hall play a ditty at a book event held at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater last February.
Jonathan and I also agreed about the issue’s pick: Quoth JT: “On a friend’s advice, I turned first to Roger Rosenblatt’s restrained piece on moving in with his son-in-law after the unexpected death of his 38-year-old daughter—a meditation on life more than on death, particularly as seen by being more part of his grandchildren’s lives than he otherwise would have been.” O discriminating friend! Rosenblatt’s “Making Toast” is surely a minor masterpiece. If nothing else, it can claim a feat that few other works can: augmenting the oeuvre of James Joyce. (You’ll have to “read”:http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2008-12-15#folio=044 it to get that; subscription req’d.)
Jonathan liked the Zachary Kanin’s Grim Reaper cartoon on p. 68, which had no difficulty eliciting a chortle out of me.

This is the issue with Barry Blitt’s cover image of Barack Obama interviewing the dogs, a flight of fancy that manages to capture something essential about the serious, careful president-elect, I thought. I found the juxtaposition of Larissa MacFarquhar’s “Profile”:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_macfarquhar of Naomi Klein, author of _The Shock Doctrine,_ and Patricia Marx’s “look”:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_marx at recessionary fashion most intriguing.
In transit from West Coast to East, “Benjamin Chambers”:http://emdashes.com/katharine-wheel/ was able to register his impressions via iPhone (I really must acquire one of those things):
“Some things I’ve liked this week:
“P. 19, brief review of a show of artifacts from 12 cultures circa the Bronze age. Quote: ‘Battalions of pitilessly educational wall texts and labels beseige about three hundred and fifty often tiny, mostly terrific objects in ivory, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and lots else. Duly benumbed, you may slip the odd item of power or caprice into a pocket of memory, to take home.’
“E. Kolbert’s TOTT “comment”:http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/12/08/081208taco_talk_kolbert on the Big 3 bailout is sharp, a useful summary, and challenges Obama to address the root issues. Quote: ‘It would, of course, be foolish to allow the American economy to collapse in order to make a point. And it’s possible to conclude that the Big Three deserve on every front to fail and still decide to rescue them. But such a decision will itself be a form of temporizing, and will only pass the problems on to the next Administration. Real change—as opposed to the kind in slogans—is hard and, by definition, disruptive. If Obama has any intention of fulfilling his campaign promises, sooner or later he’s going to have to face up to that.’
“Graeme Wood’s “Afghan piece”:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/08/081208fa_fact_wood feels truncated, but nails the difficulty of the forgotten war and the drawbacks of pitting ethnic minorities against each other. Also chock full of mini-stories that cry out for dramatization: e.g., the police unit that took heavy losses, and, shamed into patrolling, sang songs and wrapped their rifles in flowers. Or the army unit that attack a position and steal grapes along the way.”
If you have strong feelings about an article in any current issue, by all mean “write us”:mailto:poti.emdashes@gmail.com and let us know!

In the pragmatic, can-do spirit of the incoming Obama administration, Emdashes has made a collective decision to put aside “the failed policies of the past”…and revive the useful “Pick of the Issue” feature instead!
Our goal is utilitarian. Consider: You are being pursued by a highly funktastic “lizard”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l94S1yDJEE and thus cannot follow through on your oath to read with care every page of this week’s issue. You’ve only got about thirty minutes to dedicate to the issue. To which feature should you allot your circumscribed time?
This week, districts reporting so far (Jonathan Taylor and I) thought John Cassidy’s Reporter at Large story about Ben Bernanke and the reaction to our still-unfolding economic crisis, “Anatomy of a Meltdown” (here’s the link at the Digital Edition), took the cake. Jonathan found it “the most detailed thing I’ve read about what Bernanke was up to earlier.” The article also features an amusing/disturbing anecdote about Bush’s undue interest in socks (the footwear, not the Clinton cat). Jonathan also enjoyed Peter Mueller’s daft take on televised talent shows in his cartoon on page 68.
Emily notes that this feature has always benefited from the contributions of keen Emdashes readers, who are, after all, New Yorker subscribers who read large chunks of the issue every week. I heartily agree! If you have a strong positive reaction to any article in the current issue, by all means “write us”:mailto:poti.emdashes@gmail.com and tell us why! You might even make our weekly “Pick of the Issue” writeup. And, of course, if there’s something you didn’t like, feel free to tell us about that, too.

1. I am so happy that Bob Dylan has two poems (“17” and “21,” which is not about daring cousins Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berns and the secret of the smoked hams) in this week’s magazine. I was picturing David Remnick reading the final TOC, looking at the three entries under “Poems” and beaming: Marilyn Hacker, Bob Dylan. Cool. Be mindful of names, indeed.

Man, I wish Dylan would talk about writing the poems, for half an hour, on “The New Yorker Out Loud.” Anyway, Gary Nelson at Gary Nelson–Acoustic Roots led me to this story from the New York Times that explains how the poems came to be found: “Dylan’s Poetic Pause in Hollywood on the Way to Folk Music Fame.”
2. We usually see the same New Yorker news that Gawker does, but we don’t have a staff, as such, so we don’t always post it. And some things are better posted there, if they need be posted at all, which you can debate elsewhere. Anyway, from the Independent via Gawker, Annie Proulx is put off by “Brokeback Mountain” slash fiction. It can’t all be bad, but the except Gawker posted is atrocious. I hope Proulx will consider lunch with J. K. Rowling (who has some experience in this realm) so they can guffaw about it together.
3. My friend Mark sent me this witty link today, from the Poetry Foundation: “Poetry by the Numbers: Eight shortcuts to writing timeless odes and getting $$$ for it!”
4. Have a really nice weekend. I love fall.