Three cheers for Slate and people who get the new issue as soon as Barnes & Noble does, or even before! Bidisha Banerjee (“In Other Magazines”) on the Lonely Uncle Sam issue:

Jeffrey Goldberg [my link] has a piece about Steve Rosen, a former top lobbyist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who faces indictment for spilling classified information about Iraq to an Israeli diplomat. In his first interview since leaving AIPAC, Rosen denies that he was spying for Israel; if he’d been given information that might help save the lives of British or Australian soldiers, he says, “I’d have tried to warn them by calling friends at those embassies.” … Agonizing about whether to tell his daughter about the death of her pet fish prompts Adam Gopnik to ruminate about consciousness and the plot of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. He writes, “We begin as small children imagining that everything could have consciousness—fish, dolls, toy soldiers, even parents—and spend the rest of our lives paring the list down, until we are left alone in bed, the only mind left.”—B.B.

In the Magazine [New Yorker; copy ‘n’ paste TK]
‘Oh Say, Can You See’ in Navajo? [Gallup, NM, Independent]
Vertigo [Filmsite.org; always worth the popups, which you should be blocking, anyway]

This week: Hendrik Hertzberg on the Supreme Court and medical marijuana (with a fabulous hed: “Watched Pot”); Rebecca Mead on Leonard Nimoy, photographer (I’ve seen some of these pictures!); David Remnick on Mike Tyson; Nick Paumgarten on Ry Cooder; Hanna Rosin, Jane Kramer, Alec Wilkinson (“The Crossing: Tackling the Pacific on a homemade raft”), J. M. Coetzee, Louis Menand, Hilton Als on “The Cherry Orchard” and “The Constant Wife”; Alex Ross on Philip Glass and scoring movies; Anthony Lane on “Bewitched,” “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” and “Yes”; a Seamus Heaney poem (hooray!), Eliza Griswold, and Robert Hass (“The Problem of Describing Trees”). Jim Surowiecki’s Financial Page (“Cops and Robbers”) also features Christoph Niemann‘s satisfying answer to the timeless question, “Who moved my cheese?”

In cartoonland, Liza Donnelly, Robert Mankoff, Alex Gregory, Carolita Johnson, C. Covert Darbyshire, Gahan Wilson, Jack Ziegler, Robert Weber, William Hamilton, Roz Chast, David Sipress, Drew Dernavich, Lee Lorenz, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Edward Koren, Mike Twohy, and Michael Crawford. (Here’s a feature from 2004 about Dernavich, Carolita Johnson, Matt Diffee, Eric Lewis, Alex Gregory, Marisa Acocella, and other members of the magazine’s younger-cartoonist generation.) Jacques de Loustal does les spots. Have any women done the whole-issue spots yet? Just curious. How about Maira Kalman? She’s good with small details. The cover, “Dog’s Eye View,” is by the magnificent Eric Drooker.

Jury’s still out on the début fiction, ’cause I’m still reading it. Aren’t you?

Here are your TOC grubs, baby birds. It’s a double issue (Début Fiction, and don’t they look like pleasant young people?), so we’ll have lots to talk about. I mean eat. Sometimes metaphors have to mix, like wallflowers at the Mistletoe Mixer. Hey, want to play a fun game? This time you guess which sections all the pieces might be in! Remember, high-falutin’ Easterners, lots of people don’t have their issue yet. The Pony Express lost a shoe. Boldface here shows the stories I’m most excited about right now.

FILIBLUSTER: Hendrik Hertzberg considers the nuclear option.

WATERGATE DAYS: Seymour M. Hersh recalls the era of Deep Throat.

RECORDS DEPT.: Ben McGrath on Craig Biggio and the pitches that hit him.

HERBERT WARREN WIND: David Remnick remembers the late New Yorker writer.

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY: James Surowiecki on crisis management in business.

David Sedaris
Turbulence: How to fight with a fellow-passenger.

Edmund White
My Women: Why I loved some of them.

Janet Malcolm
Someone Says Yes to It: Gertrude Stein and “The Making of Americans.”

Karen Russell
“Haunting Olivia”: The search for a sister’s ghost.

Uwem Akpan [Interview with Cressida Leyshon, online only]
“An Ex-Mas Feast”: A season on the streets of Nairobi.

Justin Tussing
“The Laser Age”: Dating your teacher.

Adam Gopnik: William Dean Howells’s writing life.

John Updike: Robert Littell’s “Legends.”

Briefly Noted: It’s All Right Now, by Charles Chadwick; The Wonder Spot, by Melissa Bank; Ogden Nash, by Douglas M. Parker; A Mirror in the Roadway, by Morris Dickstein.

Sasha Frere-Jones: The White Stripes’ new album.

John Lahr: “After the Night and the Music,” “BFE.”

Nancy Franklin: “The Inside,” “The Closer.”

David Denby: “Batman Begins,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

Les Murray: “The Mare Out on the Road”

Eavan Boland: “An Elegy for My Mother in Which She Scarcely Appears”

Eamon Grennan: “Steady Now”

Ana Juan: “Debut on the Beach”

Frank Cotham, David Sipress, Paul Noth, Barbara Smaller, Carolita Johnson, Kim Warp, Charles Barsotti, P. C. Vey, Bruce Eric Kaplan, John O’Brien, Steve Duenes, Alex Gregory, Victoria Roberts, Matthew Diffee, Michael Maslin, Robert Leighton, Danny Shanahan, Gahan Wilson, Mick Stevens, Leo Cullum, Roz Chast, Edward Koren, Robert Weber, Pat Byrnes, Michael Shaw

Pascal Lemaitre

Hmm, I see I’ve boldfaced most of the issue. How come the poems are so seldom linked, I wonder? I didn’t say these were the only things I’m interested in—I mean, Ben McGrath always rules, but I’m just not that informed about baseball—just the things I’m most excited about before even looking at the issue. (Book review. I’m that dedicated.) If you’re wondering, as some have, why I would write a blog about The New Yorker, this is why.

The contents in a much nicer format, with fun colors and illustrations, Flash ads, the Cartier menace, and the Cartoon Bank [New Yorker]

As far as I’m concerned, at least till I and my fellow city-dwellers can get the issue the day it comes out. Circ. Dept.: This means you. After I turn in my book review (yep, I work!), now that I can see slightly better than Ray Charles in the fuzzy part of the movie, I’ll post the TOC. Of course, you can go look at it here, and I suggest you do (beware! dreaded Cartier ad), but I know you like having it here too. As do I. Part of the reason I do this is that I have a relentless urge to put things in boxes, and this is the ultimate typesetter’s case. Some would say this is because I’m a Virgo, but I say it’s because my mother introduced me to the work of the great Louise Nevelson when I was only weeks old. That did the trick.

Cheesy as Lindsay Robertson says it is to mention your own traffic, it’s worth noting that tons of people have been googling profilee and “mummy doctor” Art Aufderheide since the piece (by Kevin Krajick) appeared on May 16. Predictably and happily, one of his local papers followed up:

Aufderheide has answered lots of questions lately, beginning with an article—”The Mummy Doctor”—that appeared in the May 16 issue of the New Yorker magazine.

“I turned them down twice,” Aufderheide said. “I’m a shy person.”

Aufderheide said he has learned the hard way, as many scientists sooner or later do, that the popular press often gets complicated science wrong.

But what about the thrill of seeing himself profiled in one of the nation’s most prestigious magazines?

“I’m a few months shy of 83,” Aufderheide said. “I’m not trying to expand my resume.”

The New Yorker article is a splendid outline of Aufderheide’s life work, but omits an important fact: He’s a really nice guy.

“He’s Minnesota good,” said Lorentz Wittmers Jr., an associate professor in the Department of Physiology at UMD, who has collaborated with Aufderheide.
…
Aufderheide said he’s pulled back from field work recently, but has no plans to retire from teaching.

“Being around young people is such a stimulus,” Aufderheide said. “They’re so excited about life.”

I have to confess with paleolithic egg on my face that I haven’t yet finished the New Yorker piece—though I was liking it—since I have my mother’s keen interest in things anthropological and archaeological but always not her stomach for them, at least during lunchtime. I intend to try the dessicated body parts again, with Emetrol.

Mummy Doctor’ pioneered study of ancient remains [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

Here’s the abbreviated TOC for this week’s issue. Links will be linkilated later; diacritics have been noted with a tired nod. What looks good: H. Allen Orr on evolution/devolution; Ian Frazier on anything; Paul Goldberger on Ground Zero; David Bezmozgis’s short story “The Russian Riviera” because I’m hopped up on Russia lately; Sharon Olds and Donald Hall poems; Peter Schjeldahl on Jasper Johns; most of my favorite cartoonists.

Special stuff, online only: “PLUS: Coming tomorrow, a discussion with Bruck about McCain and the 2008 Presidential race.” And, of course, the current stats on the caption contest (plus a really annoying Cartier ad). The pitch-perfect Lewis Gatlin (“This is my stop. Phil, you’ll be C.E.O. till Sixty-third Street”) won contest #2, as I predicted; although my mom didn’t make it to the finals of Gorging Dragons with “I take it you’ll be paying,” there’s still a very funny caption, which is David Markham’s “Remember that time you made me laugh and people came out of my nose?” That’s the one you’ll be voting for, I’m sure. The other contest results are pending. Pray for justice.

TALK OF THE TOWN/FINANCIAL PAGE
Hendrik Hertzberg on Newsweek, the White House, and the fallout from the Guantanamo allegations.
Jeffrey Toobin on a legal battle raging within a feminist arts organization.
Rebecca Mead on trying to save the mounds in Washington Square Park.
Calvin Tomkins on celebrating David Rockefeller’s birthday.
James Surowiecki on how geography is still destiny when it comes to medical care.

ANNALS OF SCIENCE
H. Allen Orr
Devolution: Intelligent design vs. Darwin.

SHOUTS & MURMURS
Ian Frazier: Chinese Arithmetic

THE SKY LINE [Have I seen this heading before? I don’t think so. Old-fashioned style, “sky line” as two words. It makes you actually think about the shape of the line formed by the buildings, which is nice.]
Paul Goldberger
A New Beginning: Should Ground Zero be used for housing?

PROFILES
Connie Bruck
McCain’s Party: The Arizona senator gets ready for 2008.

FICTION
David Bezmozgis: “The Russian Riviera”

BOOKS
Arthur Krystal: A history of the night.
Briefly Noted

THE THEATRE
Hilton Als: “Miss Julie,” “Memory House,” “Flight.”

MUSICAL EVENTS
Alex Ross: “Tristan und Isolde,” “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl: New work by Jasper Johns.

THE CURRENT CINEMA
David Denby: “The Ninth Day,” “Madagascar.”

POEMS
Donald Hall, “Tennis Ball”
Sharon Olds, “Her Creed”

COVER
Peter de Seve: “The Song of Spring”

DRAWINGS
Danny Shanahan, Liza Donnelly, Eric Lewis, Roz Chast, Leo Cullum, Bruce Eric Kaplan, J. J. Sempe, William Haefeli, Victoria Roberts, David Sipress, P. C. Vey, Jack Ziegler, C. Covert Darbyshire, Drew Dernavich, Mick Stevens

SPOTS
Laurent Cilluffo

…till I have my magazine. Inevitable that they should cover the high silliness/seriousness over at the Flux Factory, or rather cover Ben McGrath’s Talk of the Town about it:

The New Yorker’s always enterprising Ben McGrath made the harrowing, God-awful trek to Queens last week to visit Flux Factory, an alleged “artist’s collective.” He appears to have survived the ordeal to the “living installation” called “NOVEL” without vomiting once.* (New Yorker writers have a higher tolerance for pretentiousness than us, naturally.) He even observed a little live blogging(!) from writer/resident blogger Laurie Stone:

Laurie Stone didn’t respond to a couple of knocks on her wall. She appeared to be napping.

Very impressive. We’re still at the stage where we just close our eyes and bang the keyboard. -KEW

Fly away on the link jet to see Laurie Stone’s blog. I remember copyediting her years ago at The Nation, but I don’t remember anymore what punny nickname we gave her. This is what happens to you if you work at a magazine where, shall we say, recreation occurs.

The New Yorker Unlocks Secret to Blogging [Gawker]
Excerpt from the NYT piece about the Flux Factory shenanigans [LICNYC; Times piece is already archived, which I think is insane. Thanks to Eric for tipping me off to the story as it actually happened, though I was set on Slow and didn’t jump to it as, obviously, our boy Ben did. I suspect this may mark the difference between people who are paid to respond to news as springily as firemen and those who haven’t even set up their Amazon Affiliate program yet, which is said to bring bloggers as much as $25.00 a month!]
Napping on the Job [Laurie Stone]

Because it’s Tuesday and there is no issue in my mailbox. This is the issue (Specter, Rudnick, McGrath, Bass, Tomkins, Franzen, Thurman, Marshall, Franklin, Lane, Moore, Tanning, Blitt, Smaller, Kane, O’Brien, Vey, Lewis, Gregory, Kaplan, Crawford, Chast, Sipress, Sempé, Koren, Cotham, Cullum, Dernavich, Mariscalto…) to which I refer, but I do not have it in my hungry hands. Why, circulation dept., why? I thought we were friends, or had at least reached a détente.

To console myself, I plan to read Maureen Thorson’s fabulous monster poem, which I heard her read last night at Pete’s Big Salmon just before a performance by the irresistable Paul Muldoon. If you too live in one of the pariah boroughs and are suffering from empty-mailbox syndrome, I suggest you read it too. It will help. Here’s a wee taste:

We also learn that all the earth’s monsters
Have been collected and put onto one island.
The monsters will fight for you, if you’ve got
Cash. You and your buddies can relieve yourselves
Of whatever assumptions of complexity and just
Go in pounding each other with monsters. “Arggh!
You will pay dearly,” yell the monsters when
They lose. Their monster teammates yell back,
“Arggh!” Go on…

Is emdashes actually reading the new issue? Yes, I am. I’m timing it to see how long (in minutes and, if possible, seconds) it takes to read a single issue in its entirely without skipping around, including most of the non-boring ads and many of the Goings on About Towns. It may, in fact, take a week. Check back. In the meantime, a very rough approximation of the current table of contents, whose formatting makes even more sense on the magazine’s website—which you should bookmark anyway so you can read those Online Only pieces you know you forgot even existed. I never used to read them either, but that was before I was saved.

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN

THE TALK OF THE TOWN
George Packer on the new Iraq; girl in an Arbus photograph; the musician business.
George Packer, Lauren Collins, Rebecca Mead, Ben McGrath

THE FINANCIAL PAGE
Hello, Cleveland
James Surowiecki

THE POLITICAL SCENE
The Upstart: Has Manhattan’s D.A. met his match?
Jeffrey Toobin

SHOUTS & MURMURS
Try These Fun Hoaxes
Andy Borowitz

ANNALS OF RELIGION
Annals of Religion: A Hard Faith: Pope Benedict XVI confronts America.
Peter J. Boyer

PROFILES
The Mummy Doctor: What a scientist learns from ancient bodies.
Kevin Krajick

FICTION
The Room
William Trevor

THE CRITICS

A CRITIC AT LARGE
Tallulah Bankhead’s wild life.
Robert Gottlieb

BOOKS
Briefly Noted
Pop culture and intelligence.
Malcolm Gladwell

POP MUSIC
The Mountain Goats and the Hold Steady.
Sasha Frere-Jones

THE THEATRE
August Wilson’s “Radio Golf.”
John Lahr

THE CURRENT CINEMA
“Kings and Queen,” “Monster-in-Law.”
David Denby

POEMS
“Joe Heller,” Kurt Vonnegut [my link; note that poem is in Talk so that, like something by Sparrow, it’s marked as No Way Would We Publish This For Real]

“Clouds,” Charles Simic

“Dad, You Returned To Me This Morning,” Deborah Garrison

COVER
“On Her Way,” Carter Goodrich

DRAWINGS
Jack Ziegler, Robert Mankoff, Charles Barsotti, Danny Shanahan, Tom Cheney, Lee Lorenz, Mick Stevens, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Gahan Wilson, Michael Maslin, Matthew Diffee, David Sipress

SPOTS
Philippe Petit-Roulet

I like it when magazines about the sweet slurp of capitalism tsk-tsk conspicuous consumption. From a Fast Company blog entry by Ryan Underwood:

What Billionaires Don’t Have

This week’s New Yorker magazine—a staff favorite minus one vocal holdout—contains a snappy little elegy by Kurt Vonnegut about the writer Jospeh Heller, author of the classic book Catch-22 and who died in 1999. I’m normally not a big poetry fan, but sitting on a city bus this morning, surrounded by stretch limos and chauffeured Mercedes’ [sic] hauling their respective masters of the universe off for another day of obscene money making, I got a kick out of these lines (which I’m reproducing in whole, much to the nail-biting chagrin, I’m sure, of our hardworking legal department):

JOE HELLER

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!

Which brings to mind Steve Martin once again. From the Chippewa Herald (that’s in Wisconsin, for the Midwest-ignorant):

Remember back in the 1970s when a new comic named Steve Martin had a routine offering advice on how to be a millionaire and never pay taxes?

“First, get a million dollars,” Martin deadpanned. Then when the IRS comes and asks why you haven’t paid taxes, just say, “I forgot!” The routine set up Martin’s “excuuuuuuuse me!” catch phrase.

It seemed funnier back then, but we have to credit former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski with a revival of sorts. His testimony in his trial on charges that he bilked his company out of millions was truly laughable.

Kozlowski has a lot to answer for. He admits his compensation was pretty over-the-top, but claims it was approved by a now-deceased company director. Federal prosecutors accuse him of stealing more than $150 million – money Kozlowski says was agreed to, but apparently was never disclosed to shareholders.

Last week, a prosecutor pressed Kozlowski on a $25 million “bonus” not reported on his 1999 tax return.

“You did not notice that the $25 million was missing from your W-2?” a prosecutor asked, according to reports of his testimony.

“That is absolutely correct,” he replied. “I did not notice that.”

What Billionaires Don’t Have [Fast Company Now]
Editorials From Wisconsin Newspapers [Chippewa Herald, via Duluth News Tribune]
Current issue contents [Left Business Observer]