The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2026, 11:20:35 pm ---I find that to be the case quite a lot. It's why I read almost all the book articles, and even the Briefly Noteds.
--- End quote ---
Me too. I often find Adam Gopnik's articles in that section particularly interesting.
southendmd:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2026, 03:15:42 pm ---I never would have thought I'd say this, but I found Jill Lepore's article in the Feb. 9 issue both boring and depressing.
Probably the best thing about it was learning that the singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman ("Fast Cars") went to Tufts.
It was also a bit of a surprise to learn that Lepore went to Tufts. I would have expected that someone who became a tenured professor at Harvard would herself have graduated from Harvard--or maybe Yale or Brown.
I've written this without checking: Maybe she did her Ph.D. at Harvard.
--- End quote ---
Some of my Tufts friends were talking about this article. I also found it stupid. She didn't even know Tracy.
Tracy was in the class behind me. She was well known on campus because she was always performing--at the pub, at festivals, etc. I knew her a bit as we worked in the psychology lab together. She was very shy in those days.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: southendmd on February 21, 2026, 05:25:39 pm ---Some of my Tufts friends were talking about this article. I also found it stupid. She didn't even know Tracy.
--- End quote ---
That's a good word for it.
I can't imagine what she was thinking in writing it, or TNY in publishing it.
I wrote a lot more in my post but then deleted it. I had written that she and I are pretty much in the same age cohort. When I was doing my M.A. at William and Mary in 1980-81, the top historians in early American history were at Harvard, Yale, and Brown, and the market was such that even small liberal arts schools could get history professors from the top schools.
Here's something from my own background. When I was still an undergraduate, I said something to my academic adviser about having an interest in Brandeis because one of my favorite historian/writers, John Putnam Demos, taught at Brandeis. My adviser warned me off Brandeis because, he said, it had a reputation as "a Jewish school." ::)
(Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was Jewish.)
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on February 14, 2026, 05:34:01 pm ---
In the latest issue, "I Claudius" by Gideon Lewis-Kraus is so long I decided to put it down at several points but then my eyes encountered such a beautifully written passage that I just had to soldier on.
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In light of the pressure on Anthropic by the DoD, I'm thinking it might be prudent to reread that article in the February 9th issue. We're talking about the full 1984-ization of the country, you know. Here it is:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/16/what-is-claude-anthropic-doesnt-know-either
Have you noticed how many domestic things the "Dept. of War" has gotten itself into? Now, Hegseth is attacking the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts!
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 17, 2026, 05:19:43 pm ---...,I enjoyed the piece about the 30th anniversary of Infinite Jest, and discussion of how the book has become so male-coded....
--- End quote ---
One part of the book review that interested me was how the book has been taken up by female readers, writers and critics of late. And regarding Pynchon, I was struck by how much it resembled the writing of Proulx, her mannerisms, the whimsical names she gives people, the verisimilitude. I'm only a few pages into Shadow Target but wondering how much I can take of these mannerisms.
IJ was quite prescient. Chilling to read about the people who view the film, become catatonic and die of starvation or dehydration. Also to read of what the U.S. becomes after it takes over Canada and Mexico and becomes ONAN. ::)
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