Justin, my former Newsday colleague and a Pulitzer genius sort of person, has really outdone himself with this week’s story (not online, but this accompanying video is) on the art and science and dance of classical music conducting. As I read it I was suddenly itching to listen to some Mahler, and then realized what I wanted really badly was to conduct some Mahler.

One of my sundry uncredited blurbs on the backs of paperbacks goes (this is for Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven, which I reviewed for Salon), “[Smiley] makes us care about horses the way E.B. White made us care about pigs in Charlotte’s Web, and makes us understand them the way Walter Tevis made us understand chess in The Queen’s Gambit.” I feel the same way about this piece: Justin is going to make thousands of people who hardly ever listen to classical music suddenly dream about batons and the waiting faces, poised bows, and expectant embouchures of orchestras, like that great scene in The Phantom Tollbooth where Milo gets to conduct the sunset. Incidentally, I think this one story may contain more juicily expressive adjectives than even the most ardent of New Yorker issues in their entirety. The editing is also palpably excellent (I felt the same way about the Sarah Silverman Profile I was just rereading). Well done!

Related:
Some Newsday stories by Justin Davidson
Justin as guest writer on Alex Ross’s blog

Here’s Rob Walker, in Murketing mode, on the very nicely written Wikipedia piece from last week’s issue. Which, as you know, is for me still this week’s issue. I just got my renewal notice (yes, I too pay for The New Yorker, but sometimes I get free pizza and a much-needed cold beer, so thanks, nice people!), and I think it’s finally time to give up and have my subscription transfered to my office in Manhattan, just so I can actually see the magazine in a timely fashion. Which doesn’t mean I’ll give up the fight for the four-fifths of New York City that can’t read The New Yorker till Wednesday or Thursday. No sir!

Meanwhile, in the Boston Phoenix, a preview of Wikimania 2006.

New York sweltering
Sweet and cool relief arrives:
Zesty fall-themed Talk

Haiku leave so little room for exposition! Also, too much like ad copy, too iambic in the 7, and not strictly accurate. Besides, who ever heard of the third line of a haiku being a hyperlink, except maybe at Brown? How about:

Trees lose last few leaves
Free boxes for poetry?
Turn toward Craigslist

I couldn’t let this week pass without pointing out that in the current issue there’s a Talk of the Town about poems written on—not on as in with a permanent marker on, but in the sense of “about”—moving boxes. (Moving-boxes, that is, not gerund object.) And that Talk is written by Tom Bartlett, a pal whose Minor Tweaks is a consistent source of amusement, reassurance in the occasional sanity of man, and the backs of strangers’ heads. I love this story; public poetry is going around, I think. Remember that mathematical puzzle-formula that inspired a poetical internet explosion? (Don’t make me say meme.)

Only semi-unrelated: The History Boys! Go see it!

I loved Tom Colapinto’s sensitive, subtly hilarious piece on Tobias Meyer; it’s top-notch. But the modestly versatile Nick Paumgarten nabs this week’s prize with his Profile of Hedi Slimane, “Dirty Pretty Things,” I mean just “Pretty Things.” It’s intelligently observed and skillfully written, and I give it a Saint Laurentesque standing ovation.

Also, please note that while single-potato-chip-eating Frenchman Slimane’s English is “good but not perfect,” comely auctioneer to the stars Meyer, originally from Germany, is “also fluent in French, has a good grasp of Italian, and speaks perfect English”—take that, Reed Boy! (It’s reassuring to know that as he’s been spending more time in London, says Slimane’s friend Janet Street-Porter later in the piece, “His English has got better.”) Meanwhile, a disgruntled resident of the Dominican Republic mentioned in Ben McGrath’s long piece about Playa Granda, “the Creative Person’s Utopia,” knows only enough English to swear, but it gets the job done. In his Critic’s Notebook, Sasha Frere-Jones tells a sweet story about the obligingly multilingual Nicole Renaud’s appearance in a “dark Russian bistro.” Finally, in his informative advertorial, “Enigmatic Destination Piques the Senses,” Rob Rachowiecki takes care to let us know that “the indigenous peoples living here [in Peru] are frequently separated by language, of which there are dozens, but are often united by fables about the mysterious pink river dolphins. Said to transform themselves into humans, they are sometimes conveniently blamed for a surprise pregnancy!”

General Motors bigwig Carl Icahn (profiled by Ken Auletta elsewhere in the issue), on the other hand, merely “seems bored when someone else is speaking.”

I’m thoroughly bedazzled by the lifestyles of the rich and famous from the past few issues. They all seem like terrifically impressive people, but I’m jealous of their apartments and designer wallpaper.

How great is that Tad Friend piece (not online—buy it) on high- and pretty-low-speed police chases in L.A.? Best thing in the issue, and last week’s was a very good issue. Tad Friend also talked to Ben Greenman for the website. More of my issue highlights to come. I might do this every week, on Sundays. Or on other days, or every other week. Meanwhile, I have the new Ricky Gervais podcast to listen to. Here’s an excerpt from an interview Gervais did with DVD Times about his standup-comedy release Politics.

[MD] Did you put the interview with him on the DVD [of Politics] just to prove [Karl Pilkington] was a real guy?

[RG] Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think people just won’t believe anyone thinks like that, and you can see that I just can’t believe what he’s saying and he surprises me constantly, every time I speak to him there’s something funny. Like, I saw Finding Nemo the other week, and I was on the phone to him and I said I’d just watched it and said “Brilliant innit” and it’s always good when you genuinely, without irony, see eye to eye with Karl it’s like a connection, like your child hasn’t spoken until now, you just want to nurture it. So I said it was great it was such a great story as well, and it’s beautiful how far animation has come, but it’s amazing how much it cost. And he said “Whatcha mean?” so I told him animation costs more than real films. “Rubbish. What’s the point of computers if it takes longer?” Well no Karl, it takes each animator one week to put 2 seconds on screen. And after raving about the film he said “fuck it, it’s not worth it, just a get a real fish and poke it with a stick.” [amazed] Just get a real fish and poke it with a stick?! It’s just incredible. The way he lives inside his head, it’s just a joy, so yeah I did put it on to let people know that I know the closest living thing to Homer Simpson.

has a fantastic Shouts & Murmurs this week.

By all means, we must encourage the funny lines. In his review of Caché (which the magazine insists on referring to as Hidden), Lane writes of the character played by Daniel Auteuil:

Georges is the host of a literary discussion program on French TV. Short of wearing a luminous T-shirt with the word ‘Smug’ picked out in rhinestones, there isn’t much more that he could do to advertise his character.

Funny! And true! Lane also has a moment of beauty here that is so modestly profound I think it, too, should be noted:

On the other hand, you might protest, why lay all this on Georges? He is no [Maurice] Papon, and were all of us to be harassed for our childhood misdemeanors mankind would stalk itself to death.

Incidentally, shame on the Voice‘s David Ng for this: “Indeed, everyone in Cach&eacute may have something to hide, including [Juliette] Binoche’s frigid wife and their son, Pierrot.” That’s not just crashingly old-fashioned, it’s a lazy misreading, too. Really, David, do you know what fucking year it is? Otherwise, his profile of director Michael Haneke is quite interesting. It ends:

Haneke’s obsessions converge in Cach&eacute‘s final scene, a chilling long take that’s the most enigmatic conclusion in recent movie memory. “Using a fixed shot means there’s one less form of manipulation—the manipulation of time,” Haneke says. “I’ve always wanted to create the freedom one has when reading a book, where one has all the possibilities because you create all the images in your head.” Resolutely cryptic, he refuses to decode the scene’s meaning: “About half the viewers see something and the other half don’t, and it works both ways.” He adds, invoking his protagonist’s own mental journey, “We always fill the screen with our own experiences. Ultimately, what we see comes from inside us.”

Here’s the Gothamist review, by Ben Cosgrove, of Ian Frazier’s new essay collection, Gone to New York.

for The New Yorker: Lauren Collins’ Talk on Scooter Libby’s titillating hoot, his icky-sounding 1996 novel The Apprentice. Here’s Libby talking to Diane Rehm about the book. The Kerouacian story of its composition, according to the WaPo: “‘I went out to Colorado, drank tequila and wrote,’ Libby told CNN’s Larry King in 2002 in a rare television interview, the bulk of which he spent discussing the 1996 novel, which had just been issued in paperback.”

But enough with the media elite. Let’s listen to the fans. On the MacMinute forums, a poster called lanovami writes:

I started reading up on Lewis Libby a while back, and found out that in his spare time he wrote a novel (just the one) published in 1996 about intrigue at a small Japanese inn that lies in the snow country of northern Japan. Having lived in Japan’s snow country for 6 years, I was intrigued myself, and ordered the book used.

Just finished reading it and it was pretty darn good! The atmosphere felt quite real to me as someone who has lived up there, and the story itself was very readable. The book is called the Apprentice. I liked it so much I am hoping Libby will write another. He may have some spare time coming up here pretty soon…

We are what we repeatedly do. -Aristotle

lanovami’s signature is so apt. Finally, Edrants has, um, an excerpt from Libby’s next novel: The Yesman.

Categories: NYer, Issue, Talk, Collins

I happened to visit the Condé Nast building today and tried your sneaky elevator trick. It worked! Eleven straight floors with no stops. Maybe you got a bum one? I’d give it another go. The magazine is full of crime tips this week (OK, bypassing pissed elevator-callers isn’t really a crime, but in New York you could get beat up for it)—ever wanted to remove a rare map from an antique atlas? William Finnegan tells you how, writing in a bold second person (“Take an ordinary cotton string, wad it into your cheek, go to the library, and, when the desired map is found, unobtrusively place the string along the tab of the book or atlas…”) as if to say, yes, even you could gum some twine if you think you’re up for defrauding the Ivy League and the NYPL. Cheeky.

Speaking of Paumgarten, I liked the balance of the Talks this week; both the elevator story and Ben McGrath’s absurd report on a floating taxi—clever but not preciously Gopnik-cute—were pleasantly breezy and about bits of city life we either all experience (elevators) or are unlikely to try (floating taxis). Jon Mooallem’s I Am Curious (Political) piece has a nice lilt, too. That’s the kind of light but meticulous musing-reporting the magazine began with, and while it would be silly to put too many things like this in one issue, having a few here and there cleanses the palate nicely.