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The World Beyond BetterMost => The Culture Tent => Topic started by: Front-Ranger on January 11, 2009, 02:45:52 am

Title: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 11, 2009, 02:45:52 am
There were three very interesting articles in The New Yorker this week.

First was Strange Stones, about two men who travelled through China.

Then, "Barney's Great Adventure" about Rep. Barney Frank.

Third is a story by Joyce Carol Oates. I have never liked or finished reading one of her stories until now. But I found "Pumpkin Head (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/01/12/090112fi_fiction_oates)" to be very engrossing.

New Yorker is now available digitally! I will post links for those who subscribe.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 11, 2009, 11:49:04 am
Thanks for the recommendations, FRiend. I hadn't got past the table of contents. I'm still trying to make it through the past few weeks' issues, (very slowly) reading a piece about the history of the Village Voice.

But I like the idea of a thread in which we talk about articles we've read in the New Yorker that we found interesting. I almost never read entire issues, so suggestions could help me narrow it down more efficiently.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Lynne on January 11, 2009, 12:19:30 pm
Thanks from me too, FRiend Lee.

I have been meaning to get a subscription to The New Yorker.  Online now, hunh?  I also have never been one to get into Joyce Carol Oates, but now I'm intrigued.

 :-*
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: BelAir on January 11, 2009, 02:20:12 pm
Online links would be great...

I too thought about subscribing, but in the end didn't, because I knew it would take me forever to get through the issues and I would generate lots and lots of paper waste..
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 11, 2009, 02:22:20 pm
Online links would be great...

I too thought about subscribing, but in the end didn't, because I knew it would take me forever to get through the issues and I would generate lots and lots of paper waste..

Well, you're right about both. But it's fun to find something besides bills in your mailbox each week. And it's some of the best magazine journalism in the country!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 13, 2009, 11:58:44 am
Fun item in the New Yorker blog...Dippin Dots (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/goingson/2009/01/dots-for-dippin.html)!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 14, 2009, 11:59:13 pm
The latest issue has a cover commemorating the inauguration. If you read near the end of the magazine, there is an ad that tells you how to obtain a complementary cover image!

Just go to http://www.newyorker.com/user/registration (http://www.newyorker.com/user/registration)

Interesting things I've read so far: Judith Thurman on Scrabble mania.

An article on breastfeeding.

Movie marketing (altho it seemed to be way too long)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 20, 2009, 04:48:19 pm
You may miss the commemorative cover free offer even if you subscribe. It's on page 79 of the magazine!!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on January 29, 2009, 01:45:30 am


http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/magazines/will_the_new_yorker_fold_next_107145.asp (http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/magazines/will_the_new_yorker_fold_next_107145.asp)


Shocker


Wednesday, Jan 28
Will The New Yorker
Fold Next?


(http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/original/ny01.28.09.jpg)

Conde Nast shuttered Domino earlier today and unless things turn around quick (don't hold your breath), the magazine publisher will undoubtedly be looking to make more cuts. Could The New Yorker  be next?

At first glance, you'd immediately assume no. David Remnick's book consistently produces some of the best journalism around. Year in, year out, its assured multiple Ellie  noms and a couple of wins. But the economics might end up forcing Si Newhouse to kill his baby.

The mag's struggles to retain advertisers have been well documented. Earlier today, Gawker 's Hamilton Nolan called it the company's "Plutonium loser" for seeing its ad pages drop 26.8 percent over last year. (We would have gone with "Adamantium loser" but we quibble.)

The February 2 issue paints an even more dire picture. Checking in at 83 pages, it features — by our count — a mere 15 pages of ads, or roughly 18 percent. Five of those pages, however, are "house ads" for New Yorker  or Conde Nast products, bringing the total paid ad pages down to 12 percent. That, my friends, is not good. Not good at all.

The question might be not can Conde afford to shutter The NYer  but rather can the publisher afford not to.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 29, 2009, 10:55:41 am
OMG, no! That would be beyond awful. The New Yorker made it through the Depression!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 29, 2009, 12:11:30 pm
Jesus H.!  :o

OMG, no! That would be beyond awful. The New Yorker made it through the Depression!

During the Depression, it didn't have to compete with the Internet. Nobody did.  :-\

As much as it pains me, I think I can see why if I had something to sell I'd be reluctant to spend money on an ad in The New Yorker. As a reader, I almost never look at the ads. The ads are just those columns on the outside of the pages where you hold the magazine without covering up any of the text you are reading.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 29, 2009, 12:14:03 pm
In the January 26 issue, the one with the cover of President Obama as the Father of His Country, I recommend Atul Gawande's article on how national health insurance came into being in other countries, and what those examples could suggest for the U.S.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on January 29, 2009, 12:14:59 pm

OMG, no! That would be beyond awful. The New Yorker made it through the Depression!


Exactly. That's what I was thinking.

Si Newhouse has deep pockets. I hope!

I read something in the last few days--must find it--that in the future quality journalism will have to rely on philanthropy--

 :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 29, 2009, 12:26:06 pm
As much as it pains me, I think I can see why if I had something to sell I'd be reluctant to spend money on an ad in The New Yorker. As a reader, I almost never look at the ads. The ads are just those columns on the outside of the pages where you hold the magazine without covering up any of the text you are reading.

Me neither. But then, I don't look at the ads in any magazine or newspaper or website. The only ads I pay attention to, frankly, are the ones on TV. For some reason, even the stupid ones often hold my attention.




Exactly. That's what I was thinking.

Si Newhouse has deep pockets. I hope!

I read something in the last few days--must find it--that in the future quality journalism will have to rely on philanthropy--

 :(

As a former employee of another Newhouse publication, I was thankful that as a privately held company they were not beholden to stockholders' relentless demands for profitability (unlike, say, Knight-Ridder, which was forced by stockholders to sell off all of its newspapers). I've always sensed that S.I. sees the New Yorker as a source of pride and prestige more than income. I hope.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 05, 2009, 07:00:00 pm
In this week's issue, I'm reading an interesting article about tinnitus and hearing loss, from which I suffer. It's called "That Buzzing Sound."

Me neither. But then, I don't look at the ads in any magazine or newspaper or website. The only ads I pay attention to, frankly, are the ones on TV. For some reason, even the stupid ones often hold my attention.

Maybe you're one of those "kinetic learners" K!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 05, 2009, 09:54:40 pm


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/business/media/06mag.html?scp=3&sq=%22New%20Yorker%22&st=cse (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/business/media/06mag.html?scp=3&sq=%22New%20Yorker%22&st=cse)

New Publisher Named at the New Yorker

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: February 5, 2009

Condé Nast Publications named a new publisher for The New Yorker   on Thursday and put the magazine’s previous publisher in charge of Internet ad sales for the entire company. The move is part of a continuing reorganization as the company grapples with the magazine industry’s plunging ad revenue.


Drew Schutte, publisher of The New Yorker  for the last year, became senior vice president and chief revenue officer of Condé Nast Digital,  heading the recently consolidated ad sales force for all of the company’s magazines. That reorganization ended a fragmented approach and, executives said, reflected a recognition that the company had lagged the industry in building Internet revenue.

Lisa Hughes, The New Yorker ’s new vice president and publisher, had been vice president and publisher of Condé Nast Traveler  since 1995, making that magazine a rare island of stability at a privately held company that has been known for frequent executive shake-ups.

She takes over a magazine clearly in need of help. The New Yorker ’s ad pages dropped 26.8 percent in 2008, far more than other Condé Nast titles, and more than double the industrywide decline of 11.7 percent. Financial services ads, a New Yorker  mainstay, were among the hardest-hit categories last year.

The New Yorker  was operating in the black in early 2008, but not by the end of the year, according to company executives who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss finances.

One Condé Nast executive said Mr. Schutte’s stewardship of The New Yorker  was never intended as a long-term arrangement, and that the digital job is a better fit for him, with his extensive background in technology magazines and their Internet operations. Before going to The New Yorker,  he was vice president and publishing director of Condé Nast’s Wired Media, which includes Wired  magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 08, 2009, 01:36:55 pm

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2009/02/09/slideshow_090209_eustacetilley?slide=1#showHeader (http://www.newyorker.com/online/2009/02/09/slideshow_090209_eustacetilley?slide=1#showHeader)

Album
Your Eustace, 2009
February 9, 2009


We held our second annual contest soliciting readers’ takes on Eustace Tilley, the magazine’s mascot, who appeared on the cover of the first issue of The New Yorker as well as almost every anniversary issue since. More than three hundred readers responded. Looking for humor and originality, we picked twelve favorites.

Here is a portfolio of the twelve winning entries, which we feel would have made Rea Irvin, the creator of the original cover, proud. A sample of the winning covers also appears in the February 9 and 16, 2009, issue of the magazine, which celebrates our eighty-fourth anniversary.

All of this year’s entries can be found at our gallery; you can also browse last year’s winners and all entries from 2008.





(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleynyctaxiericalmendral_p323.jpg)
“NYC Taxi Eustace”
Eric Almendral
North Hollywood, Calif
.



(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleysocialbutterfliescharlenechua_p323.jpg)
“Social Butterflies Get All the Looks”
Charlene Chua
Toronto, Ontario




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleymobidavidleonard_p323.jpg)
“Eustace.Mobi”
David Leonard
West Orange, N.J.




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleydarenotspeakdaveortega_p323.jpg)
“The Tilley that Dare Not Speak Its Name”
Dave Ortega
Somerville, Mass.




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleydogandbutterflygaryamaro_p323.jpg)
“A Walk in the Park”
Gary Amaro
Berkeley, Calif.




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleybanksymarcusthiele_p323.jpg)
“Eustace Banksy”
Marcus Thiele
Knoxville, Tenn.




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/09/p323/090209_tilleydestijlerinzingre_p323.jpg)
“Eustace de Stijl-ley“
Erin Zingré
Fort Scott, Kan.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 08, 2009, 02:27:13 pm

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/02/11/slideshow_080211_tilleycontest (http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/02/11/slideshow_080211_tilleycontest)

(A Sampling of
Last Year's)
Album
Your Eustace
February 3, 2008





(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleychristo_p323.jpg)
“Used to See the Winter Sky, Till He Draped My Only Eye”
Jason Luz
Long Beach, California




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleyxray_p323.jpg)
“X-ray Tilley”
Adam Koford
Saint Cloud, Florida




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleylautrec_p323.jpg)
“Henri Touleustace Latilley”
Jennifer Culbertson
Dallas, Texas




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleyleather_p323.jpg)
“Leather Daddy Eustace”
Jerrold Connors
Alameda, California




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleytattoo_p323.jpg)
“Eustace Tilley’s Tattoo:
Always at the Forefront of What Is Truly Hip”
Brian Butler
Roxbury, Massachusetts




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleyfrankenstein_p323.jpg)
“Frankeneustace”
Peter Emmerich
Yonkers, New York




(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2008/02/11/p323/080211_tilleymrburns_p323.jpg)
“The Springfieldian”
Gary Amaro and Claire B. Cotts
Berkeley, California
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 08, 2009, 03:20:30 pm
Swweeet! I love the mouse and the greyhound best! I wonder what Eustace's nickname would be??

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 08, 2009, 06:39:13 pm
I've seen "Leather Daddy Eustace" before. He looks astonishingly like my friend Dusty, so much so that I actually printed a copy of the image and have it hanging on my refrigerator. I also sent a copy to Dusty; he never did tell me what he thought of it.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 17, 2009, 03:26:10 am

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2009/02/23/090223craw_artworld_schjeldahl?currentPage=all (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2009/02/23/090223craw_artworld_schjeldahl?currentPage=all)

The Art World
Hope And Glory
A Shepard Fairey moment.
by Peter Schjeldahl  
February 23, 2009


(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/23/p465/090223_r18221b_p465.jpg)
A wall of Fairey’s street posters.

It was only about a year ago, though it feels like half a lifetime, that Shepard Fairey created the most efficacious American political illustration since “Uncle Sam Wants You”: the Obama “Hope” poster. In innumerable variants, the craning, intent, elegant mien of the candidate engulfed the planet. I won’t forget coming across it, last summer, stencilled on a sidewalk of a hamlet in the upper Catskills, where cell phones don’t work and most people, if they vote at all, vote Republican. Underfoot, the small, tidy image organized its rustic environs as a frame for itself, like Wallace Stevens’s jar in Tennessee. I was delighted, as an Obama supporter. But I was a trifle disturbed, too, by the intrusion on a tranquil—and, it suddenly proved, defenseless—reality of weathered houses amid humpback mountains. The result was strident and mystical, yanking my mind into a placeless jet stream of abstract associations. It exploited a familiar graphic device—exalted and refined by Andy Warhol—of polarizing photographs into solid darks and blank lights, thus rendering volumetric subjects dead flat. Mentally restoring those splotches to rounded substance makes us feel clever, on the important condition that the subject excites us enough to elicit the effort. The reward with Fairey’s picture was a thrill of concerted purpose, guarded against fatuity by coolly candid deliberation. The effect is that of epic poetry in an everyday tongue.

A “Hope” poster hangs alongside about two hundred and fifty slick and, for the most part, far more resistible works in a Fairey retrospective, his first, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Boston. The thirty-nine-year-old Fairey, a Los Angeles-based street artist, graphic designer, and entrepreneur, was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father is a doctor. At fourteen, Fairey, a budding rascal, started decorating skateboards and T-shirts. He graduated from the technically rigorous Rhode Island School of Design with a bachelor’s degree in illustration, in 1992. While a student in Providence, he took to applying gnomic stickers and posters, without permission, to buildings and signs. The signature image of his street work is the cartooned face of the wrestler Andre the Giant (André René Roussimoff, who died in 1993, and is fondly remembered for his role in the 1987 film “The Princess Bride”), accompanied at first by the wacky caption “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” and later by “Obey Giant” or, simply, “Obey.” Lyrically paranoid, the motif was inspired by the artist’s reading of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984”—a connection that looped back to the source last year when Penguin U.K. reissued those books with new cover designs, by Fairey. Fairey’s street work popularized a going fashion for academic deconstruction, with pretensions to exposing the malign operations of mass culture. Hip rather than populist, the Andre campaign projects an audience dumb enough to fall for media manipulation while smart enough to absorb a critique of it. And, of course, it’s vandalism—in the vein of urban graffiti—invading environments whose inhabitants, for all any artist knows, might value them just as they are. Boston’s I.C.A. has condoned a citywide smattering of street art by Fairey, as an extension of the show. That makes sense. So does the decision of the Boston police to arrest him for it, on his way to the show’s opening.

Fairey has run into a similarly predictable legal snarl with the “Hope” poster, having lifted the image from an Associated Press photograph. The original shows Obama seated at a dais (next to George Clooney) at the National Press Club, in 2006, and attending to a speaker who stands outside the frame, to his left. Knowing this rather deflates the mystery of an expression that has suggested, to some, a visionary surveying the future. Obama listens, merely, with a grimly amused concentration that may be explained by the identity of the speaker, the conservative Senator Sam Brownback, of Kansas. Anyhow, with the A.P. seeking compensation for copyright infringement, the artist has sued for a judicial ruling of fair use. This audacious counterattack aside, the general issue is an old story of our litigious republic. Appropriative artists, including David Salle, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince, have been sued at intervals since Campbell’s soup went after Warhol, in 1962 (but then thought better of it).

As an art maven, I’m for granting artists blanket liberty to play with any existing image. I also realize that it is not going to happen, and I’m bored by the kerfuffle’s rote recurrence, with its all but scripted lines for plaintiff and defendant alike. It is of a piece with Fairey’s energetic but unoriginal enterprise involving a repertoire of well-worn provocations—imitations of Soviet agitprop on shopping bags designed for Saks, to cite one example. Warhol sublimely commodified images of Mao and the hammer and sickle four decades ago, in keeping with an ambition—to infuse subjects and tones of common culture with powers of high art—that has not grown old. Warhol’s revelatory games with the cognitive dissonance between art and commerce have galvanized artists in every generation since. But you can stretch a frisson just so many times before it goes limp. Like the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, who included a Louis Vuitton boutique in his Los Angeles retrospective, Fairey reverses a revolution achieved by Warhol, along with Roy Lichtenstein. He embraces a trend in what the critic Dave Hickey has called “pop masquerading as art, as opposed to art masquerading as pop.”

The aesthetics of Fairey’s Boston show are formulaic, but they exercise immediate power. He is a terrific designer. His screenprints on paper, canvas, plastic, and metal, from found photographs and illustrations—publicity portraits, vintage advertising and propaganda, historical icons (Patty Hearst with a machine gun), satirically altered cash and stock certificates—deploy a standard palette of acrid red, yellowish white, and black. (The red, white, and blue of “Hope” were an ad-hoc departure.) Often, the images are overlaid on printed or collaged grounds of wallpaperlike pattern or fragments of newspaper pages, which impart a palimpsestic texture and a flavor of antiquity. Fairey’s stylistic borrowings from Russian Revolutionary, Soviet, and W.P.A. propaganda are often remarked upon, but borrowedness itself—studied anachronism—is his mode of seduction. His style’s old-timey charm, however, is not inexhaustible. That leaves the inherent attraction of his subjects and of his selection of ready-made images to represent them. These include, besides mainstream heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Muhammad Ali, Che, Fidel, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, generic freedom fighters, and “revolutionary women.” Punks abound: Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop. Let George W. Bush pictured as a vampire exemplify the calibre of Fairey’s many satirical japes.

Fairey has said that the real message behind his work is “Question everything.” I question the I.C.A. director Jill Medvedow’s claim, in the show’s catalogue, that Fairey pursues a “quest to challenge the status quo and disrupt our sense of complacency through his art.” What isn’t status quo about political rage? And have you met anyone not heavily medicated who strikes you as complacent lately? The retrospective is dated on arrival. Oddly, Fairey’s splendid tour de force for Obama anticipated a new national mood, of serious-minded pragmatism, which makes ideological extremes seem sort of quaint. I found myself regarding the show as strangely wholesome, like a vaccine that defeats the virus it imitates. It’s as if Fairey meant to ridicule rebellion. I’m not sure he knows what he meant, beyond wanting to get a rise out of people. But if he did know—that is, if he were a better artist—he probably could not have helped change the world with one magically ambiguous picture. ♦


Related Links
Slide Show: A portfolio of images by Shepard Fairey.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2009/02/23/slideshow_090223_shepardfairey (http://www.newyorker.com/online/2009/02/23/slideshow_090223_shepardfairey)

And as posted in the 'Obama Art' thread:
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.260.html (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.260.html)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 17, 2009, 03:51:21 pm
I like that turn of phrase, "a budding rascal."  ;D

OK, since George Clooney was seated next to the future president when the iconic photo was taken, I wonder if someone will now parody Fairey by substituting Clooney for the President?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 17, 2009, 06:13:55 pm




I like that turn of phrase, "a budding rascal."  ;D
(http://www.charlierose.com/images_toplevel/content/10/1004/segment_10047_140x90.jpg)

OK, since George Clooney was seated next to the future president when the iconic photo was taken, I wonder if someone will now parody Fairey by substituting Clooney for the President?  ;D




(http://www.charlierose.com/images_toplevel/people/6/655/guest_6554_340x340.jpg)
(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/23/p646/090223_fairey05_p646.jpg)
The Budding Rascal


Three cuties!! (am I wrong??)


(http://blogs.phillynews.com/inquirer/sceneonroad/ROAD20090121H.jpg)
(http://blogs.phillynews.com/inquirer/sceneonroad/ROAD20090121G.jpg)

The CBS videotape of the Press Conference:
U.S. Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.,
and George Clooney
National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1553673n (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1553673n)


http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.180.html (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.180.html)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on February 17, 2009, 07:54:24 pm
OK, since George Clooney was seated next to the future president when the iconic photo was taken, I wonder if someone will now parody Fairey by substituting Clooney for the President?  ;D

Here y' go.  :)

(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h269/merylmarie/FaireyClooney.png)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 17, 2009, 08:07:53 pm
Here y' go.  :)

(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h269/merylmarie/FaireyClooney.png)
Good grief!  :o  That didn't take long!  :laugh:

Not to mention. ...

The Feb. 23 New Yorker arrived in today's mail. The inside front cover is a parody with Bill Maher, and the word "Help!" advertizing his HBO show.

Shepherd Fairey is cute.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 17, 2009, 08:52:19 pm


http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=punim (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=punim)

(http://www.charlierose.com/images_toplevel/content/10/1004/segment_10047_140x90.jpg)

1.  punim   

A yiddish word for face, or more specifically a cute face.

Oy, look at the punim on that one! 

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 18, 2009, 10:19:05 am

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=punim (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=punim)

(http://www.charlierose.com/images_toplevel/content/10/1004/segment_10047_140x90.jpg)

1.  punim   

A yiddish word for face, or more specifically a cute face.

Oy, look at the punim on that one! 

 ;D


Punim, indeed!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 18, 2009, 02:57:09 pm

Also poster in the 'Obama Art' thread--
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.260.html (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.260.html)

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/02/23/090223sh_shouts_mccall (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/02/23/090223sh_shouts_mccall)

Our President’s New BlackBerry
by Bruce McCall
February 23, 2009


(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/23/p465/090223_r18212o_p465.jpg)

1. Oath-of-Office Interactive Memory Game.

2. Press to delete announcements of new Iraq self-government start date.

3. Press to play prerecorded “Love to, but this term’s no good” response to Senator McCain lunch request.

4. Tap to get today’s White Sox 2009 astrological chart.

5. Push for hourly update on Michelle clothing expenditures.

6. Alarm flashes if Malia and Sasha are jumping on Lincoln’s bed.

7. Push to get Rahm Emanuel’s Wisecrack of the Day.

8. Push to set automatic “Line no longer in service” response to incoming Hillary calls.

9. Press to activate simulated busy signal on incoming Caroline Kennedy calls.

10. Push to reset automatic cigarette-break reminder buzzer.

11. Tap once to activate C.I.A. briefing. Tap twice to activate C.I.A.-briefing lie detector.

12. Press to activate simulated nuclear alert ten minutes after Vice-President Biden enters Oval Office.

13. Automatic alert beeps if Al Gore is within one mile of White House.

14. Press to divert incoming Bill calls to Hillary’s number.

15. Press for Mensa chat line.

16. Mute button for twenty-four-hour live CongressCam.

17. Press for Illinois Attorney General’s office Crisis Hot Line.

18. Push once to add another ten billion dollars to bailout plan.

19. Press to refresh current Cabinet roster.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 18, 2009, 03:03:40 pm

Also poster in the 'Obama Art' thread--
http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.260.html (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30120.260.html)


http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_mayer (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_mayer)

A Reporter at Large
The Hard Cases
Will Obama institute a new kind of preventive detention for terrorist suspects?
by Jane Mayer
February 23, 2009


(http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/02/23/p233/090223_r18230_p233.jpg)
“We don’t own the problem,” Greg Craig,
the White House counsel, says.
“But we’ll be held accountable for
how we handle this.”
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 27, 2009, 02:13:26 am


http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/02/david-brooks-is.html (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2009/02/david-brooks-is.html)

(http://www.newyorker.com/images/headers/hese_INTERESTING_TIMES_g.gif)

Semi-regular thoughts on foreign affairs, politics, and books, from George Packer.

February 24, 2009
Conservatives Take on Obama


David Brooks is going to be one of the best critics the Obama Administration will have, because his reservations and attacks are based on a world view that’s not only viable and thoughtful but almost always proved right: the view that we human beings overrate our ability to solve problems through the application of reason. The return of liberals to power has driven Brooks back down to his philosophical roots in Burkean caution toward rapid change based on abstract principles (he had lost touch with this inner self during the early Bush years, especially around the invasion of Iraq). Today’s column http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1) is just one of many recent examples, prompted by the fact that the Obama White House is taking on massive challenges in the economy, housing, banking, health care, energy, and education—all at once. It is, Brooks writes, “the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes.” Obama should do what Bush never did and make sure he talks to a critic like Brooks at least once every few months.

In one sense, the Administration is bound to disappoint, and Brooks’s “epistemological skepticism” is bound to be vindicated. If the test for Obama is whether “highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change,” what are the chances that in a year or two Brooks will have to admit he was wrong? History never produces such clear outcomes. The results of government attempts to deal with huge systemic crises, like the ones we face today, are always dissatisfying, especially in the short-term, and leave most of the old problems unsolved. Brooks’s standard is so high that it sets liberalism up for certain failure.

Here’s the test Brooks should set: will Obama’s efforts lead to worse than the alternatives? Will they be worse than his predecessor’s? The conservative approach to economic and social policy, as refined to ideological purity under Bush, is to get government out of the way, trust free markets, and let chronic problems fester until they turn into disasters. The results are all around us (one example among hundreds: the failure of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate Wall Street). Brooks pits a rigid, abstraction-loving liberalism against a wise, experience-loving conservatism. But recent American history has shown the truth to be closer to the opposite. We are where we are because the ruling conservative ideology of the past few decades refused to face facts, like the effect of private insurance on health-care costs, or the effect of deregulation on investment banking. Facts drove the Republicans out of power. And judging from their response to Obama’s first month in office, facts are very hard things to face in politics.

Obama isn’t trying to remake America’s economy and society out of ideological hubris. He’s initiating sweeping changes because he inherited a set of interrelated emergencies that require swift, decisive action. There’s an instructive example for both Brooks and Obama’s supporters to bear in mind: Herbert Hoover became President with the sterling reputation of a practical man, an engineer and businessman who had succeeded at everything in his life. When the Depression began, he took what he assumed to be practical steps to ameliorate it. But, as Richard Hofstadter observed in The American Political Tradition,  “What ruined Hoover’s public career was not a sudden failure of personal capacity but the collapse of the world that had produced him and shaped his philosophy…Because, on his postulates, his program should have been successful, he went on talking as though it were, and the less his ideas worked, the more defiantly he advocated them.”

This is an apt description of the current attitude of John McCain, Eric Cantor, and Bobby Jindal. Like Hoover, they cannot fathom the failure of their philosophy, so they cling to it and insist that it has all the answers while the country drowns. Conservatism, pace  Brooks, is no more likely to be clear-eyed and critical-minded than liberalism. Any set of ideas can harden into ideological certainty, especially when it’s been in power for a long time. Obama’s emphasis on government intervention could become as calcified and resistant to facts as the Republican Party’s free-market conservatism is now. If or when it does, Obama will need to hear from Brooks all the more. But for the moment, Obama is necessarily experimenting in the face of disaster much like the President who followed Hoover.

Unfortunately, Brooks’s fair-minded critique is rare on the right. Most conservative critics of Obama’s first month are not hoping to be proved wrong, as Brooks says he is. Far from it: their dice were loaded from the start. Charles Krauthammer, Karl Rove, Peter Wehner, and others have already concluded that Obama is a failure, even as they pretend to reserve final judgment. Given the amount of wrongheadedness and damage pundits like these have inflicted on the country in its recent history, the decent thing for them to have done is say nothing for at least six months. They might even have learned something.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on February 27, 2009, 11:28:03 am
Quote
Obama isn’t trying to remake America’s economy and society out of ideological hubris. He’s initiating sweeping changes because he inherited a set of interrelated emergencies that require swift, decisive action.

I like the way he states this.  Very good article.  Thanks, John.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2009, 06:16:39 pm
I received two issues of The New Yorker at the same time...is this a cost-cutting move, or what?

Anyway, in the March 2 issue, there's an interesting article called "Lesbian Nation" recalling women-only outposts in the 1970s, a wonderful article on Damon Runyon in preparation for the return of Guys and Dolls to Broadway, and a critique of Josh Whedon's new television show Dollhouse.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2009, 08:00:05 pm
I received two issues of The New Yorker at the same time...is this a cost-cutting move, or what?

I'd say it means your mail was late.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 05, 2009, 08:15:03 pm
Anyway, in the March 2 issue, there's an interesting article called "Lesbian Nation" recalling women-only outposts in the 1970s,
[/quote]

Written by Ariel Levy, who wrote that nice essay "The Lesbian Bride's Handbook." I really like her.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30126.0.html (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30126.0.html)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2009, 10:58:00 pm
Written by Ariel Levy, who wrote that nice essay "The Lesbian Bride's Handbook." I really like her.

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30126.0.html (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,30126.0.html)

I thought that was from where I remembered the name.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 06, 2009, 05:02:01 pm
... a wonderful article on Damon Runyon in preparation for the return of Guys and Dolls to Broadway...

Oh, no! Terry Teachout says the new production is "dull"!!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 14, 2009, 11:34:57 pm
Here's a few of the artilces I have saved from The New Yorker:

The Hollywood One: An Intellectual in screenwriter's clothing
Goodbye to all that: Who Killed the Boom? Two economists make their cases
The Mirage: The architectural insanity of Dubai
Salesman: days and nights in Leo Koenig's gallery
The God of War. Fiction by Marisa Silver
The translation Wars: How the race to translate Tolstoy...
The New Pitch: Do ads still work?
This is No Game, by Jack Handey
Amateur Hour: Journalism without Journalists
The Atomic Emporium: Abdul Khan and Iran's race to build the bomb
Google's Moon Shot: The Quest for the universal library
Boomtown Blues: How natural gas changed the way of life in Sublette County
Different Strokes: VanGogh and Gauguin in Arles
Bear Meat, by Primo Levi
Big Pictures: Hollywood Looks for a Future
How I Spent the War, by Gunther Grass
When I'm Sixty-Four, Paul McCartney then and now
Westward Ho: Revisiting Kit Carson
Black Ice, by Kate Kennedy
Too Big to Fail, by Andy Borowitz
The Dark Side, Making War on Light Pollution

More soon
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 15, 2009, 11:42:14 am
And more...

True Story, The Art of Short Fiction
Credit Grab: how many writers does it take to make a movie?
My Life as a Paulette (David Denby's memoir of Pauline Kael)
The Real McKee, Lessons of a screenwriting guru
The End Matter, a nightmare of citation
1839/2003: Five Days on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Spheres of Influence: How the government helped build America's media night
Mother Courage: Kids, careers, and culture
The Price of Valor. We train our soldiers to kill for us. Afterward, they're on their own.
Will Power: Why Shakespeare remains the necessary poet
Northern Lights: How modern life emerged from 18th century Scotland
High Prices: How to think about prescription drugs
The CHamber. Young Raphael in London
Lost Boys. Why J. M. Barrie created Peter Pan
Reading Lessons, by Edwidge Danticat
Orpheus at the Plough, the father of Little Women
Battle Lessons, What the Generals Don't Know
The Comfort Zone, growing up with Charlie Brown, by Jonathan Franzen
Fine Disturbances. To track someone, you have to learn to see
Me Media. How hanging out on the Internet became big business
Adina, Astrid, Chipwee, Jasmine, by Matthew Klam
The Ecstatic Truth: Werner Herzog's Quest
What Happened at Alder Creek? Excavating the Donner Party
Homer in India
Game Master: Will Wright changed the concept of video games with the Sims. Can he do it again with Spore?
The Show Woman. Suzan Lori Park's idea for the largest theater collaboration ever
Millions for Millions: Nobel Peace Prize winner and some high-tech entrepreneurs competing to provide credit to the world's poor
There She Blew: the history of American Whaling
You've Got Blog. How to put your business, your boyfriend, and your life online
On a Bad Day You Can See Forever, by Woody Allen
Future Reading, digitization and its discontents
Damn Spam
Unconventional Crude. Canada's synthetic fuels boom
The Patriot: Turner and the drama of history
Candid Camera: The cult of Leica
Penny Dreadful
Red White and Bleu: What do we eat when we eat meat? by Bill Buford

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 15, 2009, 12:04:22 pm
Great list, FRiend! It could be a collection in itself.

I remember some of the titles; others I think I may have missed (I've been a NYer subscriber since the mid '80s), but I found that, for two that I tested, I was quickly able to find them online by cutting and pasting the title you've provided into google.

So you've done the world a service by presenting a selection of fine reading, curated by someone in whom we know we can place our trust.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 15, 2009, 01:08:54 pm
That was one of my goals! I'm so pleased you found it of use. The other goal was to give a little snapshot of myself by showing which articles I was interested in keeping. How about other subscribers?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 15, 2009, 01:45:46 pm
How about other subscribers?

Well, here's an article I found enjoyable and memorable for reasons I can't fully explain:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/10/15/011015fa_fact_macfarquhar (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/10/15/011015fa_fact_macfarquhar)

(Actually, that's just an abstract of the article -- to see the whole thing, you have to register, which I haven't gotten around to doing yet.)

It's a profile of the producer Brian Grazer, who often teams up with director Ron Howard. Grazer is kind of interesting, but probably not all THAT wildly fascinating. Yet for some reason, memories of the piece stuck with me. So now Brian Grazer is just about the only Hollywood producer I am familiar with and pay attention to. I always perk up when I see Grazer on TV, or any mention of Grazer in print, am likely to see any Howard/Grazer movie (most recently, Frost/Nixon). Also, I am likely to read any profile by Larissa MacFarquhar.

It's funny, the articles that stay with you. Maybe it was just that I read it while sitting outdoors on a beautiful afternoon or something. I'd probably better not reread it, because then instead of remembering it fondly I would probably wonder why I found it so interesting in the first place.

I'll see if I can think of other memorable articles. I don't clip them, so I have to rely on my unreliable memory.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 15, 2009, 05:08:24 pm
Then you might also like:

Big Pictures: Hollywood Looks for a Future

which discusses currently successful producers including James Shamus!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 18, 2009, 11:13:08 am
I just discovered that if you are a subscriber, you can register on the New Yorker site and access all of the magazine's articles going back to 1925.

I saw David Grann, the author of "The Lost City of Z," on Colbert. Grann is a staff writer who wrote an article in 2005 about an explorer who disappeared in the Amazon in 1925 (there's that year again!), and recently published a book about it. So I looked it up and, voila.

Wow, this could be a serious time-vacuum.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 18, 2009, 10:52:38 pm
Hopefully it should be a good research resource!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 16, 2009, 08:45:49 am
This week's issue is outstanding IMO. There is a Gladwellesque article about the success of children who learn to put off gratification, a lovely short story by Salmon Rushdie, and an excellent but long article about the economic crisis. Does it seem to you like there have been more books and articles written about the economic collapse than about 9-11, even though we're still in the thick of it? Another article profiles Fred Franzia, an Archie Bunker type who has shaken up the Napa Valley with Two Buck Chuck.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2009, 10:47:21 am
I'm two weeks behind in my reading (there's never enough time, never enough. ...),  :( plus I tend to jump around from issue to issue, reading the movie and theater reviews as soon as an issue arrives in the mail. Anyway, right now I have going the article on the search for a cure for cystic fibrosis in the May 4 issue--and the profile of Helen Gurley Brown in the May 11 issue.  ::)  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 16, 2009, 12:51:54 pm
the profile of Helen Gurley Brown in the May 11 issue.  ::)  ;D

That article was a hoot!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2009, 03:53:28 pm
That article was a hoot!

Wasn't it, though?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on May 16, 2009, 03:57:07 pm
I didn't renew my subscription to The New Yorker when my daughter was a baby, because I wasn't (gasp) reading.  I oughta go ta Mexico renew.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 16, 2009, 06:15:56 pm
I tend to jump around from issue to issue, reading the movie and theater reviews as soon as an issue arrives in the mail.

That's sort of like what I do. I start with the movie reviews, especially if they're by Anthony Lane or involve a movie I've heard of. I also read the back page cartoon contest, because that's quick and occasionally funny. Then the "Shouts and Murmurs" if it looks at all funny, the letters, the contributors' notes.

Then I read anything I think will be good based on the writer, especially David Sedaris -- any issue with a David Sedaris piece is a winner with me -- but also Malcolm Gladwell and to a lesser extent Larissa MacFarquhar (again, dating back to her oddly memorable Brian Grazer profile), Louis Menand, Nicholas Lemann and a few others.

Then I read anything about what looks like an interesting subject on its own merits.

Then the magazine gets cast into a pile where it sits for months.

Then it's time to clean house and I go through the by now giant pile and rip out any articles that I still feel compelled to read.

Then those ripped-out articles sit there for months. Occasionally, I grab a bunch of them the way you might grab a wad of Kleenex, stick it in my purse and have it there to read when I have idle time. Just today, for example, I was out and about and had some extra time so wound up reading part of a profile of Arianna Huffington that originally ran who knows when and was in my backpack.

Then I eventually take the still unread ripped-out articles -- by now dating back practically to the Clinton Administration -- and throw them out.


I should add that the half-life of my New Yorkers used to be a little shorter before I became a Brokie. They did go through the same basic life cycle, though.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 16, 2009, 07:18:03 pm
Anything that doesn't get read by me in the week that I get my New Yorker probably won't be read by me ever. Although I do keep a stack of NY'ers by the sink in my bathroom and flip thru them while I curl my hair.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2009, 09:03:31 pm
Anything that doesn't get read by me in the week that I get my New Yorker probably won't be read by me ever. Although I do keep a stack of NY'ers by the sink in my bathroom and flip thru them while I curl my hair.  :P

Did Annie Proulx's story, "Tits-Up in a Ditch," curl it for you?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 16, 2009, 09:05:29 pm
How's this for an idea? We do a New Yorker "article club." My old book club tried this when people kept not reading the books. We could start right now, with the Malcolm Gladwell piece "How David Beats Goliath" in the May 11 issue (my selfishly pick, since I just started reading it) or the Helen Gurley Brown profile, since two people have already read it.

Not a big deal, and no pressure. But if you're interested, read the article(s) and then return here to discuss.

Did Annie Proulx's story, "Tits-Up in a Ditch," curl it for you?  ;D

 :laugh:

That took me a minute to decipher, but once I got it I LOLed.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2009, 09:08:34 pm
Then the magazine gets cast into a pile where it sits for months.

I pass my magazines on to a coworker. She's glad to get them, however out of date they are. I keep the occasional issue, like the two last year that had Annie Proulx stories in them. I look at all the cartoons, but I almost never read the "Shouts and Murmurs," or the short fiction, unless I recognize the author's name.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2009, 09:15:04 pm
the Helen Gurley Brown profile, since two people have already read it.

Actually I guess I was a little misleading to call it a profile. The article is one of those New Yorker peculiarities, a combination review of a new biography of her and a profile of her.

I was first aware of HGB when she would be a guest on Merv Griffin's talk show, when I was still a kid. I always think of her when some of my gay male buddies from church order Cosmopolitans at Sunday brunch. ...  ::)

I stick with a Bloody Mary, if anyone is wonderin'. ...  ;)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 16, 2009, 09:46:25 pm
I look at all the cartoons, but I almost never read the "Shouts and Murmurs," or the short fiction, unless I recognize the author's name.

I used to look at all the cartoons, nowadays only if my eye falls on them. And I used to read the fiction more religiously. Now it has a lot to do with what the fiction looks like when I glance at it. Not much dialogue, long dense paragraphs? Forget it. Main character referred to by his last name? Probably not.

But if it's dialogue-heavy and accessible and easy-reading (yeah, I've gotten lazy), I do often find fiction I like by writers I've never heard of before. Last year, I not only read the story but was moved to buy (in hardcover!) and read the whole book: The Ms. Hempel Chronicles, by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum.

Actually I guess I was a little misleading to call it a profile. The article is one of those New Yorker peculiarities, a combination review of a new biography of her and a profile of her.

I've read a bunch of things about that new biography, but based on the comments here I will also check out the New Yorker one.

Quote
I stick with a Bloody Mary, if anyone is wonderin'. ...  ;)

That would be my preferred post-church drink, myself.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 18, 2009, 01:04:58 pm
Here's a factoid that I picked up from The New Yorker that I find interesting. It's from the article on Rwanda in the May 4 issue; I started reading the article at lunchtime today. Anyway, the factoid is, in the city of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, plastic bags are outlawed to keep down litter and protect the environment.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 18, 2009, 07:33:21 pm
A New Yorker article club would be fun!! I think I still have the Gladwell article on David/Goliath around here somewhere.

I often don't read the fiction ennimore (of course, I read ENNITHING by AP) but I highly reccamend the new story by Salmon Rushdie. For one thing, it is short. Another, the first paragraph is a real grabber. You hardly never find that ennimore...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 20, 2009, 08:24:42 pm
I loved everything in the previous issue, but in today's issue I am only interested in reading about Victor Fleming and the Guggenheim. Strange whims I have about NY Magazines!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 20, 2009, 08:32:31 pm
I loved everything in the previous issue, but in today's issue I am only interested in reading about Victor Fleming and the Guggenheim. Strange whims I have about NY Magazines!

I've got three New Yorkers piled up on the dining room table, and one in my backpack.  ::)  I read the Victor Fleming article over dinner this evening.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 20, 2009, 09:59:16 pm
As a kid I was a huge GWTW fan, so I'm looking forward to Victor Fleming. But mine hasn't come yet.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on May 21, 2009, 09:41:18 am
That's weird, I just put the Wizard of Oz (directed by Victor Fleming) on the banner, and this was the very next thread I came to after doing that. 

Wow, I've known for years that Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz were both 1939, but only now realized they had the same director.  How the heck did he make such huge, vast movies the same year?  I can barely run the dishwasher and the washing machine on the same day.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 21, 2009, 12:01:09 pm
That's weird, I just put the Wizard of Oz (directed by Victor Fleming) on the banner, and this was the very next thread I came to after doing that. 

Wow, I've known for years that Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz were both 1939, but only now realized they had the same director.  How the heck did he make such huge, vast movies the same year?  I can barely run the dishwasher and the washing machine on the same day.

It's complicated.

Spoiler Alert!  :laugh:

Victor Fleming wasn't the sole director in charge of each film from start to finish. It's well known that he was brought onto GWTW after David O. Selznick fired George Cukor from the film. According to The New Yorker article, Fleming didn't direct any of the Kansas scenes in Oz.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 22, 2009, 11:21:45 am
After reading this, I just HAD to read the Fleming article last nite...even after driving for 14 hours (YES, really!) Interesting that his exploits with Douglas Fairbanks set the bar for "manly man" behaviour that influenced Clark Gable's performance in Gone With the Wind and Red Dust. Was Fleming the first androphile, hehe?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on May 23, 2009, 12:42:57 pm
It's complicated.

Spoiler Alert!  :laugh:

Victor Fleming wasn't the sole director in charge of each film from start to finish. It's well known that he was brought onto GWTW after David O. Selznick fired George Cukor from the film. According to The New Yorker article, Fleming didn't direct any of the Kansas scenes in Oz.


I notice that on IMDb about both movies.  They both have additional directors listed, including some very well-known ones.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 04, 2009, 01:27:12 pm
I just finished reading Jeffrey Toobin's profile of Chief Justice Roberts in the May 25 issue. Clearly the chief justice is George W. Bush's instrument to continue screwing the nation for decades to come.

The article includes what appears to be the chief justice's high school graduation picture. He has a face I would have neither liked nor trusted, even in high school.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 08, 2009, 01:31:28 pm
At lunch today I read Atul Gawande's article on "The Cost Conundrum" in U.S. health care in the June 1 issue. I was cheered to learn from this article that while the U.S."may be more obese than any other industrialized nation," the U.S. also ranks "among the lowest rates of smoking and alcoholism," and is "in the middle of the range for cardiovascular disease and diabetes."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 08, 2009, 01:38:40 pm
In the summer reading issue, I've read Jonathan Franzen's short story, "Good Neighbors," and Louis Menand's article about writing programs.

The Franzen story started out great -- the characters are perfect reflections of the kinds of people who live in my neighborhood -- but my enthusiasm about it dwindled as it went along. The Menand article was not particularly memorable or profound. Oddly enough, I liked Louis Menand's writing better before he became a New Yorker staff writer, about a decade ago.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 08, 2009, 01:48:56 pm
The summer reading issue

I'm slowly catching up on my issues.  :P  It helped that June 1 had almost nothing in it that interested me.  :-\

Is the Summer Readingn issue the one with today's date on the cover?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 08, 2009, 02:28:55 pm
Yes, it's the one with the extraterrestrial reading a book. I also found the June 1 issue and the summer reading issue to have nothing of interest, which was distressing. I was most interested in the Franzen story but only got halfway through the first column!! I tell you, Annie Proulx really knows how to spoil people!! The last good fiction I read in the New Yorker was the Salmon Rushdie piece, and I mostly liked that one for the little references to some of his greatest works.

So, I have to turn to actual books since TNY has let me down...I just finished Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, which was given to me by my closest friend and was sent directly from the author!! I'm just about to start on The Doo Dah Club, given to me by another friend. Need to amass a stack of summer reading materials, and taking suggestions!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 08, 2009, 02:46:28 pm
Thanks to you, F-R, Rapt is in my reading pile.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 08, 2009, 03:35:21 pm
Need to amass a stack of summer reading materials, and taking suggestions!!

Proust would probably keep you busy the entire summer. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 09, 2009, 01:19:04 pm
So, at lunch today I was reading Louis Menand's "A Critic at Large" piece on creating writing programs--and books about creative writing programs--in the June 8 & 15 issue, and I came across a sentence that immediately made me think of Annie Proulx.

Substitute "Annie Proulx" for "Raymond Carver" in this sentence: "The meaning of one of Raymond Carver's stories is not only what the story says; it's also the way the story says it."

Just think. "Brokeback Mountain" would be a very different short story without Annie Proulx's colloquialisms, regionalisms, and vulgarities.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 09, 2009, 03:44:48 pm
I love Raymond Carver. But it was in the New Yorker, I believe, that I first read how much the qualities I think of as characterizing a Raymond Carver were actually edited in by Gordon Lish, sometimes against Carver's wishes. And now I'll never feel exactly the same way about Raymond Carver. Damn you, New Yorker!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2009, 02:55:08 pm
The Franzen story started out great -- the characters are perfect reflections of the kinds of people who live in my neighborhood -- but my enthusiasm about it dwindled as it went along. The Menand article was not particularly memorable or profound. Oddly enough, I liked Louis Menand's writing better before he became a New Yorker staff writer, about a decade ago.

I don't think Menand was out to be profound, but I found the article interesting and informative. And I enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's story. More interesting than some of the stuff they sometimes run that's "translated from the Azerbaijani," or whatever.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2009, 03:36:28 pm
I don't think Menand was out to be profound, but I found the article interesting and informative. And I enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's story. More interesting than some of the stuff they sometimes run that's "translated from the Azerbaijani," or whatever.

Well, profound was probably an overstatement, but I didn't get much out of it that was particularly interesting. Though maybe because I'm already pretty familiar with those writing programs, and some of the criticisms of them.

I know what you mean about the "translated from ..." stories. I rarely read those. Maybe because for me New Yorker stories are so slice-of-life, their appeal often dependent on the way they illuminate some subtle nuance of culture, that it's better to start from a POV of a shared culture. That said, I have read New Yorker stories by foreign writers that I liked a lot. Sometimes they read like regular New Yorker stories, just set in a different place.


In other New Yorker news, I stumbled across an online reference to an article in the May 18 issue by Jonah Lehrer, the brilliant, seemingly 17-year-old writer and science expert who has been published in a lot of places recently. Somehow I had missed it the first time around, though it's on a subject I've always found interesting: those late-'60s experiments in which a researcher offered little kids one marshmallow, then told the kids he was leaving the room for a few minutes and that they could have a second marshmallow if they did not eat the first one until the researcher returned. Apparently the kids who waited were found, years later, to be much more successful in school, careers, and the rest of life.

Apparently an effort is now underway to contact those same people, now in their 40s, and do more testing.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2009, 03:48:25 pm
In other New Yorker news, I stumbled across an online reference to an article in the May 18 issue by Jonah Lehrer, the brilliant, seemingly 17-year-old writer and science expert who has been published in a lot of places recently. Somehow I had missed it the first time around, though it's on a subject I've always found interesting: those late-'60s experiments in which a researcher offered little kids one marshmallow, then told the kids he was leaving the room for a few minutes and that they could have a second marshmallow if they did not eat the first one until the researcher returned. Apparently the kids who waited were found, years later, to be much more successful in school, careers, and the rest of life.

Apparently an effort is now underway to contact those same people, now in their 40s, and do more testing.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer)

I read that article; it interested me because the older I get, the less patience I seem to have.  ;D  I never bothered to check the author blurb, however.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2009, 04:01:50 pm
I read that article; it interested me because the older I get, the less patience I seem to have.  ;D  I never bothered to check the author blurb, however.

I have only become aware of this guy over the past month or two, but suddenly I seem to be seeing him everywhere and he seems pretty brilliant. Which is annoying, because from the photo you might think he was still in high school.

http://www.jonahlehrer.com/articles (http://www.jonahlehrer.com/articles)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: oilgun on June 11, 2009, 04:11:40 pm
I have only become aware of this guy over the past month or two, but suddenly I seem to be seeing him everywhere and he seems pretty brilliant. Which is annoying, because from the photo you might think he was still in high school.

http://www.jonahlehrer.com/articles (http://www.jonahlehrer.com/articles)




His book HOW WE DECIDE looks interesting but you're right, how old is this guy, sixteen?  I totally feel inadequate after seeing his list of published articles  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on June 11, 2009, 05:48:48 pm
His book HOW WE DECIDE looks interesting but you're right, how old is this guy, sixteen?  I totally feel inadequate after seeing his list of published articles  :o

I don't know if this will make you feel less inadequate, but, according to this source, he is 26.

http://www.ideafestival.com/Dynamic/Speakers/Show_Bio.cfm?ID=21023 (http://www.ideafestival.com/Dynamic/Speakers/Show_Bio.cfm?ID=21023)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2009, 06:02:48 pm
I don't know if this will make you feel less inadequate, but, according to this source, he is 26.

http://www.ideafestival.com/Dynamic/Speakers/Show_Bio.cfm?ID=21023 (http://www.ideafestival.com/Dynamic/Speakers/Show_Bio.cfm?ID=21023)

Oh, that's much better. That makes him well over half my age (by about six months).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 12, 2009, 10:08:01 am
This week's issue is outstanding IMO. There is a Gladwellesque article about the success of children who learn to put off gratification, a lovely short story by Salmon Rushdie, and an excellent but long article about the economic crisis. Does it seem to you like there have been more books and articles written about the economic collapse than about 9-11, even though we're still in the thick of it? Another article profiles Fred Franzia, an Archie Bunker type who has shaken up the Napa Valley with Two Buck Chuck.

I wrote about this on May 16...see above.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2009, 10:41:56 am
I wrote about this on May 16...see above.

Oh, right! Sorry, I forgot.

I probably didn't notice because back on May 16 I wasn't as aware as I am now of this Jonah Lehrer guy. More from his website: in addition to writing for the New Yorker and a handful of other high-end publications, including contributing editorships at Wired, Scientific American Mind and NPR, he writes a blog, "The Frontal Cortex," that he updates with essay-length posts almost every day. Sickening!

His writing style is very Gladwellian, though I kind of think that, unlike Gladwell, he has actual science credentials rather than just journalistic ones (we know how much those are worth these days). On the other hand, Gladwell is really good at synthesizing different, unrelated situations and concepts to support an idea of his own invention, which I haven't seen Lehrer do, as yet. Gladwell's ideas sometimes seem a bit shaky, scientifically, but they're usually interesting.

I still have that issue handy, so now I am going to check out the other articles you recommended. Thanks, FRiend!



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on June 12, 2009, 11:51:52 am

In other New Yorker news, I stumbled across an online reference to an article in the May 18 issue by Jonah Lehrer, the brilliant, seemingly 17-year-old writer and science expert who has been published in a lot of places recently. Somehow I had missed it the first time around, though it's on a subject I've always found interesting: those late-'60s experiments in which a researcher offered little kids one marshmallow, then told the kids he was leaving the room for a few minutes and that they could have a second marshmallow if they did not eat the first one until the researcher returned. Apparently the kids who waited were found, years later, to be much more successful in school, careers, and the rest of life.

Apparently an effort is now underway to contact those same people, now in their 40s, and do more testing.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer)




Thanks, K.  That is very interesting.  I wonder if they'll use larger marshmallows for the adults.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2009, 01:26:01 pm
Reading the June 22 issue at lunch today, I learned a good tip, courtesy of Simon Doonan: Once you pass age 50, start aging in French. It sounds better.

Je suis cinquante-et-un.  ;D  See? Doesn't that sound elegant?  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 17, 2009, 01:46:25 pm
Reading the June 22 issue at lunch today, I learned a good tip, courtesy of Simon Doonan: Once you pass age 50, start aging in French. It sounds better.

Je suis cinquante-et-un.  ;D  See? Doesn't that sound elegant?  :laugh:

How about fifty-something...would that be cinquante-chose? I like that!

My June 22 issue has gone missing...I'll have to hunt under the bed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 17, 2009, 02:48:44 pm
Cinquante est le nouveau trente.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2009, 02:57:51 pm
Cinquante est le nouveau trente.

 :laugh: That's just what I was thinking!

My French is so bad; are you sure it isn't la nouvelle?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 17, 2009, 03:07:21 pm
:laugh: That's just what I was thinking!

My French is so bad; are you sure it isn't la nouvelle?  ;D

Not according to Babelfish (yes, I have to cheat sometimes!  ;))

Actually, Babelfish put it in plural, "les nouveaux," but that tent don't look right to me.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2009, 03:18:17 pm
Not according to Babelfish (yes, I have to cheat sometimes!  ;))

Actually, Babelfish put it in plural, "les nouveaux," but that tent don't look right to me.



Les cinquantes sont les nouveaux trentes?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 17, 2009, 03:39:07 pm
Les cinquantes sont les nouveaux trentes?

No, they left cinquante's verb singular, apparently trying to be faithful to the "thirty is" that I typed in. So it REALLY didn't look right. And I guess cinquant and trente don't get S's because plurality is already implicit in the words "fifty" and "thirty" (as opposed to my typing in "fifties are the new thirties"). So it was:

Cinquante est les nouveaux trente.

PS Turns out "Fifties are the new thirties" gets you Les années '50 sont les nouvelles années '30. Seems a bit presumptuous of Babelfish to assume I'm referring to years, but oh well.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2009, 03:49:22 pm
Cinquante est les nouveaux trente.

That tent don't look right.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on June 17, 2009, 04:35:40 pm
Reading the June 22 issue at lunch today, I learned a good tip, courtesy of Simon Doonan: Once you pass age 50, start aging in French. It sounds better.

Je suis cinquante-et-un.  ;D  See? Doesn't that sound elegant?  :laugh:

Happy Birthday, Jeff!  Actually, the French aren't an age, they have their age.  So, you'd say, "J'ai cinquante-et-un ans". 

Cinquante est le nouveau trente.

I'm trying to think how the French would say this...  While this looks good, it probably doesn't translate directly; those wonderful short Americanisms don't always work in French.  Perhaps something like:  "Avoir cinquante, maintenant c'est comme d'avoir trente".  (Being fifty, now is like being thirty.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 17, 2009, 04:41:39 pm
those wonderful short Americanisms don't always work in French.

Just as certain French phrases have a certain je ne sais quoi.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 22, 2009, 01:36:01 pm
Well, here's a "mystery" solved, courtesy of The New Yorker.

At lunch today I read the article about Romance author Nora Roberts in the June 22 issue (yup, I'm actually caught up in my issues!). The article includes some discussion of the history of the genre, beginning with Samuel Richardson's Pamela, published in 1740. The discussion also mentions a novel called  The Sheik, published in 1919 and described as '"the ur-romance novel of the twentieth century.'" The novel is the story of an aristocratic Englishwoman, traveling in the Algerian desert, who is kidnapped by an Arab chieftain.

OK, one of Rudolph Valentino's most famous movie roles was The Sheik. Now I suppose I know where the movie role came from; it was an adaptation of the novel--or maybe it was inspired by the novel to take advantage of the popularity of the book. I guess this also tells us that even in the Silent days, Hollywood made adaptations of current popular novels.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 22, 2009, 07:10:00 pm
I checked out that article at lunchtime...wow that is a long article! Can't wait to read the rest about this "tough broad."

And I was so pleased to see an article about Federico Garcia Lorca, the very next day after viewing the movie Little Ashes about him, Salvador Dali, and Luis Bunuel!!

Gotta read the one about decreasing urban violence by "telling them to stop." Looks like another important issue!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 24, 2009, 03:50:38 pm
The cover of this week's New Yorker holds several double meanings and hidden meanings, a couple of which I got. One thing that delighted me about Barry Blitt's "Hanging Chador" was the fact that the Iranian woman has green eyes. This just one or two days after the announcement that Kodak's Kodachrome film, used to take an award-winning photo of a green-eyed Afghan woman, was published.

BTW, I was horrified when reading the story in The Wall Street Journal, to see that photographers are hording (sic) the film. For shame!! It's hoarding.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2009, 09:04:24 am
The cover of this week's New Yorker holds several double meanings and hidden meanings, a couple of which I got. One thing that delighted me about Barry Blitt's "Hanging Chador" was the fact that the Iranian woman has green eyes. This just one or two days after the announcement that Kodak's Kodachrome film, used to take an award-winning photo of a green-eyed Afghan woman, was published.

I got that issue in yesterday's mail. All I've had time for so far was a quick look at the short book reviews. I was under the impression that Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the first woman to hold a cabinet post, was a lesbian. Perhaps she was, but, if so, apparently she was a lesbian who also had a mentally ill husband.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 25, 2009, 09:28:50 am
I got that issue in yesterday's mail. All I've had time for so far was a quick look at the short book reviews. I was under the impression that Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and the first woman to hold a cabinet post, was a lesbian. Perhaps she was, but, if so, apparently she was a lesbian who also had a mentally ill husband.  :-\

Jeff, your comment reminded me that I wanted to post about Willa Cather. I will do so in The Culture Tent. Come look for it later!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on June 28, 2009, 04:30:58 am
Reading the June 22 issue at lunch today, I learned a good tip, courtesy of Simon Doonan: Once you pass age 50, start aging in French. It sounds better.

Je suis cinquante-et-un.  ;D  See? Doesn't that sound elegant?  :laugh:


Well, almost elegant.  In French you don't be an age, you have an age.  So it would be "J'ai cinquante-et-un ans."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 28, 2009, 02:20:39 pm

Well, almost elegant.  In French you don't be an age, you have an age.  So it would be "J'ai cinquante-et-un ans."

Whether I have it or I am it, I don't really want it! But that's just an arbitrary place on the wheel of life, sigh.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on June 30, 2009, 08:27:55 am




Just in case you missed this in the June 22 issue: (http://www.newyorker.com/images/covers/2009/2009_06_22_p139.jpg)

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/06/22/090622sh_shouts_rudnick?currentPage=all (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/06/22/090622sh_shouts_rudnick?currentPage=all)


Shouts & Murmurs
True Story
by Paul Rudnick

June 22, 2009

My name is Mike Henkle, and I’m a devout Mormon from Provo, Utah. I know that some of my convictions may upset more liberal people, but I’m only asking you to keep an open mind. Because just this past week something happened to my family and me, and it’s something that all of us, on each side of the political divide, need to think about.

Beth and I have been married for almost eighteen years, and we’ve got three great kids, which, in Mormon terms, means we’re barren. But give us time. Last week, for a sort of second honeymoon, we loaded the whole family into our Jeep Wagoneer and headed East, to Massachusetts, to visit my brother Steve and his beautiful wife, Jen. I didn’t realize at the time that Massachusetts is a state where gay marriage is now legal.

So we’re driving through upstate New York, and getting closer to Massachusetts, and we’re all singing one of our favorite travel hymns, “Jesus Is Under the Hood.” And, as we’re singing, my kids are also trying to spot license plates from different states, and seven-year-old Ethan shouts, “I see a new one! Look, Daddy, on that license plate it says ‘Massachusetts—The Anal Sex State’!”

“Mike?” my wife said.

“I see it, too!” four-year-old Ruth cried, and then she asked, “Daddy, what’s anal sex?”

“Is it something the Pilgrims brought over from England?” Ethan asked.

I don’t like to lie to my children, so I replied, “Yes, it is.”

“Like scurvy,” Beth said.

As we crossed the border into Massachusetts, everything looked just beautiful, with all the quaintness of picture-postcard New England. We passed a small town square, and I noticed that a work crew was removing a life-size bronze statue of Paul Revere, which a plaque said had been erected in 1820. The workmen were replacing Paul Revere with a more contemporary statue, a tall figure in a simple black suit, who I thought was Abraham Lincoln.

“Look at that, kids,” I said, pointing to the statue. “There’s Lincoln, one of our greatest Presidents.”

“That’s not Lincoln,” Beth said, as we drove closer to the statue. “It’s Rachel Maddow.”

I was beginning to feel apprehensive. We stopped at a roadside stand to buy some cider and apples as a gift for my brother and his family. Amid the colorful bins of dried corn and shelves full of maple syrup was a hand-lettered sign reading “50% Gay Discount.” When I went to pay for our bushel basket of wholesome fare, I asked the cashier if I’d really pay only half price if I were gay.

“Of course,” she replied. “It’s the law.”

My wife looked at me. “Pay for it, Sharon,” she told me.

“Sharon?” I said.

“We’ve been together for eighteen years now,” Beth told the cashier, “although some people think we look more like sisters.”

“Why did you do that?” I asked Beth, as we loaded the produce into our trunk.

“It’s a big discount.”

“But I don’t look like a woman,” I protested. “Do I?”

“Should we get some more beets?” Beth asked.

Now I was really confused. As we pulled into Steve and Jen’s driveway, I saw that their mailbox was painted with rainbow stripes. “Steve, what’s that all about?” I asked, as we shook hands.

“If I didn’t do that, we’d never get any mail,” he explained. “The mail carrier would just throw it into the street.”

As I admired Steve’s new carport, many happy-looking same-sex couples walked by, some of them holding hands.

“Don’t say anything,” Steve whispered. “Just smile and wave.”

“What would happen if I didn’t?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “there’s this perfectly nice couple who live next door to us, Ted and Eric. But last week I mistakenly asked Ted about his partner, and Ted got a little chilly and said, ‘He’s not my partner; he’s my husband.’ And that night our house got egged.”

“Oh, my Lord,” I said.

“Smile and wave,” Steve said, as five more gay couples, all pushing strollers, moved along the sidewalk. “And when you look at their kids,” he cautioned me, “be careful, because sometimes they’re adopted, or from donor sperm. So don’t say, ‘Gee, your baby looks just like you.’ Instead, say, ‘My, what a wonderful nontraditional family, and what a real baby.’ ”

Once we were inside, Steve and Jen pulled all the curtains shut.

“Sometimes we get gawkers,” Jen said. “They don’t see many straight people around here.”

“This sweet couple at the mall, Amber and Jessalyn, they took our picture,” Steve said. “They said they were going to e-mail it to Amber’s mom in Brookline, because she collects pictures of straight people. Sometimes she puts them on mugs.”

I was growing seriously disturbed. “Come on,” I told everyone. “We’d better get to church.”

We all piled into Steve’s minivan, and as we rolled through town we passed a stately Federal-style brick building with a sign reading “Gaychovia.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Since the bailout,” Steve said, “most of the banks here went gay.”

“And look at the money,” Jen said, showing us the coins in her change purse. Barney Frank’s profile was on the quarter, and Neil Patrick Harris was on the dime.

“Hon, I’ll need some singles for the collection plate,” Jen told Steve.

“Here you go,” Steve said, as he passed Jen some bills. “I can give you five Ellens for a Milk.”

Once we were settled into the pews of the local Mormon church, I breathed a whole lot easier.

“See,” I said to my kids, “it’s just like home.”

“Please open your hymnals,” said the minister, a genial, ruddy-cheeked fellow, who was clearly filled with the Holy Spirit. “We’ll begin today’s service with selections from ‘Billy Elliot.’ ” ♦
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on July 27, 2009, 10:29:27 pm
Kind of confusing.  To think I paid a couple of Ellens for my issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 08, 2009, 11:02:47 am
A very interesting article about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane in this week's issue. I read it late last night even though I was exhausted after reading a long piece about travels in Siberia. Then, this morning, I was moving books so that my mother would have more room, and I found Home Over Saturday by Rose Wilder Lane, sent to me by a true friend.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on August 09, 2009, 02:26:12 am
A very interesting article about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane in this week's issue. I read it late last night even though I was exhausted after reading a long piece about travels in Siberia. Then, this morning, I was moving books so that my mother would have more room, and I found Home Over Saturday by Rose Wilder Lane, sent to me by a true friend.


I've been reading that article today.  Mother and daughter sure were different.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 20, 2009, 08:40:14 pm
Over my dinner last night, I was reading the article in the Sept. 21 issue about culture in the decade of the Great Depression, and I came across this statement: "Steinbeck reacted [to the human misery of the 1930s] by describing archetypal characters in a deliberately plain style, almost as if he were writing myth rather than literature."

Tell you what, that statement made me think immediately of Annie Proulx. Maybe I should read some Steinbeck. (Somehow I made it through high school and college without ever having to read The Grapes of Wrath.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 20, 2009, 09:44:37 pm
The first paragraph of The Grapes of Wrath is really well written. I also enjoyed Of Mice and Men and To A God Unknown.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 21, 2009, 09:00:05 am
The first paragraph of The Grapes of Wrath is really well written.

What about the rest of the book?  ;)  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 26, 2009, 01:25:31 am
It was basically a repetition on the theme.

Did ennione read "The It Bird" by Susan Orlean? I am proud to be on the bleeding edge of fashion again, as I venture out to feed and be pecked by my new pets, Jose and Paco!!

I can't post a picture of them right now because it's dark, and they're in their henhouse.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 30, 2009, 01:51:25 pm
Did ennione read "The It Bird" by Susan Orlean? I am proud to be on the bleeding edge of fashion again, as I venture out to feed and be pecked by my new pets, Jose and Paco!!

I just read that over lunch today.  ;D  I sure hope you're on the cutting edge, rather than the bleeding edge. ...  8)

The other piece in the Sept. 28 issue that I read over lunch today was Adam Gopnik's article on writings about the Dreyfus affair. I was hauled up short over my cider by the following:

"In any modernized country, the backward-looking party will always tend toward resentment and grievance. ... When the conservative party comes to see itself as unfairly marginalized, it becomes a party of pure reaction."

Sound familiar?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 26, 2009, 12:26:12 pm
I highly recommend Ariel Levy's piece about feminism in the books section of the Nov. 16 New Yorker, which I read just last night. I find that I keep recommending Ariel Levy articles here. I did so even before she joined the NYer staff, so I feel a bit cutting edge, myself!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 26, 2009, 01:09:01 pm
Thanks for the recommendation, friend. I will read it tout suite!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 26, 2009, 02:45:22 pm
Wow, that was a very powerful article, especially considering how short it was. It brought back a lot of memories too.

I also read her bio of Caster Semenya in the Nov 30 issue, and that was very powerful as well. What a trauma that poor girl has faced!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 26, 2009, 03:20:10 pm
I haven't read that one yet, but I will make a point of it!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 06, 2010, 08:33:01 pm
Anybody else read "A Risky Proposal" in the Jan. 18 New Yorker, an account of the effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Prop. 8, by a team whose two leaders are a prominent Democratic trial lawyer and the 69-year-old, conservative, former solicitor general under George W. Bush?

Maybe some of you have followed this case on a day-to-day basis, but it's new to me, and fascinating!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 06, 2010, 09:51:50 pm
Anybody else read "A Risky Proposal" in the Jan. 18 New Yorker, an account of the effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Prop. 8, by a team whose two leaders are a prominent Democratic trial lawyer and the 69-year-old, conservative, former solicitor general under George W. Bush?

Maybe some of you have followed this case on a day-to-day basis, but it's new to me, and fascinating!

I've read it, and MargeInnavera has posted links to blogs of the testimony on her blog.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 06, 2010, 09:54:15 pm
I highly recommend Ariel Levy's piece about feminism in the books section of the Nov. 16 New Yorker, which I read just last night. I find that I keep recommending Ariel Levy articles here. I did so even before she joined the NYer staff, so I feel a bit cutting edge, myself!

Ariel Levy's account of her own wedding to her girlfriend was posted on some thread around here somewhere quite some time ago. I think the thread was about gay weddings.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 07, 2010, 11:28:00 am
Ariel Levy's account of her own wedding to her girlfriend was posted on some thread around here somewhere quite some time ago. I think the thread was about gay weddings.

 :laugh:  I was the one who posted it. The gay weddings thread was created just for it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2010, 02:42:13 pm
Everybody should read Jane Mayer's article, "The Trial: Eric Holder and the Battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," in the Feb. 15 and 22 issue (the annual anniversary issue). Mayer does a wonderful job of laying out the whole sequence of events and the issues involved.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 24, 2010, 03:41:10 pm
Thanks for the tip, Friend!

You know, this thread is a great service to New Yorker subscribers. Who has time to read all of the articles -- or even most, or even (some weeks) any? And frankly, some weeks there isn't much in the table of contents that excites me. Yet there are so many wonderful pieces, I never want to risk missing anything really good.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2010, 04:06:08 pm
Thanks for the tip, Friend!

You know, this thread is a great service to New Yorker subscribers. Who has time to read all of the articles -- or even most, or even (some weeks) any? And frankly, some weeks there isn't much in the table of contents that excites me. Yet there are so many wonderful pieces, I never want to risk missing anything really good.

Agreed! I know exactly what you mean!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2010, 01:57:22 pm
I recommend the profile of Paul Krugman in the March 1 issue. I've heard his name from time to time but had no idea who he is.

It's nice to read about someone who will come right out and say that the Bush Administration told outright lies to the American people.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 25, 2010, 05:22:27 pm
After several weeks in which I failed to get much interested in my weekly issues of TNY, I really enjoyed the latest issue, March 29, especially the graphics and photos, but several of the articles as well. I recommend you take a look at:

A beautiful photograph by Viviane Sassen on page 26 of a man with a small child (his son?) on his head and a lovely painting of an Amish (?) girl by Richard Wathen on page 32. A great short article on bats in Vermont and one on the trials of our boy Rufus Wainwright. (His dad Louden also is featured on TNY website singing about economist Paul Krugman, Jeff.) optom might find "Four Eyes" interesting, and

I even liked a poem (I usually bypass them), Titian Vs. Roadrunner by Dan Chiasson, on page 55.

Judith Thurman is her usual witty self, this time writing about wrinkles.

It's the style issue, so there is a wonderful portrait of the late Alexander McQueen and his iconic Armadillo shoe.

I haven't read the fiction yet. It's by Joyce Carol Oates, whose work I rarely like. But the illustrations are great.

But most of all, check out Fixed Couples (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/03/29/100329crat_atlarge_lepore), not to read about marriage therapy, which it is ostensibly about, but to understand the roots of the Eugenics movement which has spawned a lot of disguised homophobia, racism, elitism, and other forms of discrimination. I was shocked at the actions of Paul Popenoe, who was not a doctor or psychiatrist but who nevertheless influenced lawmakers and presidents enough to make forced sterilization a reality in the U.S. during the '20s and '30s.

Online, Hendrick Herzberg discusses the Republicans' latest misstep that led to their (not President Obama's) Waterloo (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2010/03/waterlosers.html), in the health care bill debate.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 29, 2010, 12:53:56 pm
OK, I just skimmed back over this whole thread because I thought I remembered a discussion about the article about the Texas man who was executed for the arson murders of his own children, and how it was later demonstrated that he was innocent, wrongly convicted because of bogus ideas about the "science" of fire--but I couldn't find anything on this thread. Perhaps the discussion is on another forum.

Anyway, I bring this up here because I'm sure the article was in The New Yorker, and the incident proved the basis for the plot on last night's episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit: A man with a shady past was accused of murdering his two daughters by arson. In fact, reference was even made to the case of the Texas man, and the plot was resolved in the same way, demonstrating that a purely accidental fire could leave traces that looked like what was thought to be signs of arson.

Incidentally, in last night's episode, Sharon Stone began a short "run" as the new ADA who works with the SVU. The twist is that she is Eliot Stabler's/Christopher Meloni's former partner. Sam Waterston also made an appearance as DA Jack McCoy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 30, 2010, 09:10:25 pm
That doesn't ring a bell, friend. But, I enjoyed the theater criticism of La Cage aux Folles:

"Most gay children have straight parents, which means that, from birth, they're different from those who are closest to them. And, as they grow, so does their sense of their own otherness--a feeling that is not without use for an artist." The article talks about the life of Steven Sondheim, and the show it is about must be fascinating...I hope I get to see it, someday!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2010, 12:53:34 pm
Well, here I am on the 3rd of May, finally catching up to the April 19 issue.  ;D

At lunch today I read the article by the writer who returned to the U.S. after living in China for 15 years. He and his wife settled in southwestern Colorado.  :D  One day they got a telephone call from a Chinese tour company that wanted to sell them a vacation tour to a mysterious land with lots of cowboys called Wai Er Ming. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2010, 01:04:21 pm
Well, here I am on the 3rd of May, finally catching up to the April 19 issue.  ;D

That's not so bad! I've probably got some in my pile dating back to the Bush Administration. Hopefully not Clinton's.

Quote
At lunch today I read the article by the writer who returned to the U.S. after living in China for 15 years. He and his wife settled in southwestern Colorado.  :D  One day they got a telephone call from a Chinese tour company that wanted to sell them a vacation tour to a mysterious land with lots of cowboys called Wai Er Ming. ...  ;D

 :laugh:  Then what?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2010, 01:40:17 pm
:laugh:  Then what?

His wife mistook a phone call from the National Rifle Association as coming from the National Lightbulb Association. Then the author won a half-marathon in Vegas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2010, 01:41:14 pm
That's not so bad! I've probably got some in my pile dating back to the Bush Administration.

Bush II or Bush I?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2010, 07:20:25 pm
Bush II or Bush I?  ;D

 ;D  Tell you what, if I hadn't moved five times since Bush I, I wouldn't be surprised to find some that old.

His wife mistook a phone call from the National Rifle Association as coming from the National Lightbulb Association. Then the author won a half-marathon in Vegas.

Hmm. Sounds like an odd piece.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 04, 2010, 07:28:19 pm
Well, here I am on the 3rd of May, finally catching up to the April 19 issue.  ;D

At lunch today I read the article by the writer who returned to the U.S. after living in China for 15 years. He and his wife settled in southwestern Colorado.  :D  One day they got a telephone call from a Chinese tour company that wanted to sell them a vacation tour to a mysterious land with lots of cowboys called Wai Er Ming. ...  ;D
There was an interview with that author on the radio. About the culture shock of moving from Beijing, China to Ridgeway, Colorado. He sounds like an interesting fellow. I'll have to go rummage around in my pile of New Yorkers. Wonder what date my oldest one is? I know I have some pages from an issue from October 13, 1997.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 04, 2010, 08:00:15 pm
I know I have some pages from an issue from October 13, 1997.  :D

But have they been in your bedside table since it came out?  :)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 05, 2010, 10:16:04 pm
But have they been in your bedside table since it came out?  :)

Sure enuff, friend!!  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 19, 2010, 04:23:19 pm
Anybody else reading the fiction issue? I just finished ZZ Packard's story, which is about two kids, former slaves, making their way across the backwoods of the South in the days immediately after Emancipation. It is really compelling and well-written, and strikes me as historically authentic. It reads like an excerpt from a novel; I will be looking out for this novel.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 19, 2010, 04:27:25 pm
Oh, and while I'm on this thread, have I ever mentioned how much I love James Surowiecki's "The Financial Page" columns? They're always about some complex and potentially dry financial/economic topic. But they're never boring -- they read like entertaining little self-enclosed stories, and I feel like I always learn something important from them. The one in the June 14/21 is about why federal regulators -- and, by extension, regulations -- have lost so much of their power, including the ones who could be partly held to blame for the BP oil spill. Sound a bit dull or turgid? Not at all!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 22, 2010, 12:14:48 pm
Anybody else reading the fiction issue? I just finished ZZ Packard's story, which is about two kids, former slaves, making their way across the backwoods of the South in the days immediately after Emancipation. It is really compelling and well-written, and strikes me as historically authentic. It reads like an excerpt from a novel; I will be looking out for this novel.

In an interview piece published in this morning's Metro, Bret Easton Ellis made some rather snarky remarks about The New Yorker fiction issue:

Quote
Q.: As a former wunderkind, any thoughts on The New Yorker's list of best writers under 40?

Ellis: Who cares! Who cares! Who cares about these writers? Sure, they're pretty good. But for the most part, they're white and educated, so they're The New Yorker's audience. That's why they choose them.

What a jerk. ...  ::)

Oh, and while I'm on this thread, have I ever mentioned how much I love James Surowiecki's "The Financial Page" columns?

Ever notice his picture? He's kinda cute.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 22, 2010, 12:26:48 pm
In an interview piece published in this morning's Metro, Bret Easton Ellis made some rather snarky remarks about The New Yorker fiction issue:

What a jerk. ...  ::)

Many writers feel at least a touch of schadenfreude in response to the Fiction Issue -- hell, to the New Yorker in general. I'm guilty myself. But most know better than to snipe about it on the record.

Here's a much more reasonable and likable response by the writer Steve Almond: http://therumpus.net/2010/06/the-new-yorker%E2%80%99s-one-over-40/ (http://therumpus.net/2010/06/the-new-yorker%E2%80%99s-one-over-40/)

Quote
Ever notice his picture? He's kinda cute.  ;D

Yes, and yes! I'm taking a class in writing the 10-minute play. Last week, for an exercise during the first class session, the teacher dumped a bunch of pictures of people she had clipped from the New Yorker (we were supposed to write monologues and dialogues for these mostly anonymous people). I noticed one was of an attractive guy who looked strangely familiar. Suddenly I recognized him -- James Surowiecki! No, I didn't pick that one for my exercise.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 06, 2010, 01:25:26 pm
I'm most of the way through "Letting Go," in the Aug. 2 issue, a powerful article about how doctors do and/or should treat terminally ill patients. It's by Atul Gawande, who wrote another fabulous piece last year about how we age, which I read a second time when it was included in Best American Essays 2009. (He's a successful surgeon, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, a writer for the New Yorker, a MacArthur fellow, and is even cute -- do you want to marry him or kill him?)

(http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTYlg0FnPd_oxMUPgm1pMi7aX0Nlh9X8Y5RUXUdRD3_9rNGS70&t=1&usg=__2ZNIJKW-0Yf4rktiQYSYUrGAHUA=)

Anyway, though it's not the least bit political, the article makes a great case for death panels. We need death panels! Oh, not the mythical panels of bureaucrats who would condemn Sarah Palin's son for not being a "contributing member of society," but somebody who helps guide people through end-of-life decisions in a realistic, caring way. Because nobody, apparently, is doing that now.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 06, 2010, 01:33:50 pm
Also, while I was on here, I reread the Bret Easton Ellis quote that Jeff posted above and was freshly annoyed.

Quote
Q.: As a former wunderkind, any thoughts on The New Yorker's list of best writers under 40?

Ellis: Who cares! Who cares! Who cares about these writers? Sure, they're pretty good. But for the most part, they're white and educated, so they're The New Yorker's audience. That's why they choose them.

First of all, many of them aren't white. Second, of course they're educated -- how many uneducated people write New Yorker-caliber short stories? Third, BEE himself is white and educated. Should we not care about him, then?

What a jerk, is right. Or, more to the point, what a bitter has-been.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 06, 2010, 02:38:52 pm
Yes, that was pretty annoying. So many of TNY's writers are global...lots of stories are translated from other languages. And there's Annie Proulx too, who writes about rural people. He cares not a fig and shouldn't have even been asked the question. He's so ignernt on the subject it hurts my eyeballs to read it!!

Atul reminds me of Mark Ruffalo in The Kids are All Right, appealing in an absent-minded cuddly type of way. I'll look up the article. I skimmed through the last issue and only read the cartoons, LOL! Loved the cover of the angular lady dropping the angular iphone into the angular pool.

So, aren't there advocates and ministers helping older people make end-of-life decisions?? Oh, and family members as well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 06, 2010, 02:56:30 pm
Atul reminds me of Mark Ruffalo in The Kids are All Right, appealing in an absent-minded cuddly type of way.

Cuddly, maybe, but his mind seems to be quite present.  ;D

Quote
So, aren't there advocates and ministers helping older people make end-of-life decisions?? Oh, and family members as well.

Ministers and family members don't fully understand potential medical consequences, and doctors are loathe to candidly discuss the near-inevitability of a patient's imminent death. Advocates in the form of hospice workers can bridge the divide, but in most cases the patients must accept that their impending death and give up extensive life-saving procedures in order to use hospice care.

The overall point is that people wind up undergoing excessive and expensive procedures trying to extend their lives, even though the time they buy is often minimal at best and in the meantime they may suffer much more than they would otherwise. The trouble is that on rare occasions those procedures DO come through and offer patients extra years of life. Often, though, it's more like weeks or months, and very unpleasant ones at that. According to Atul, people tend not to get realistic appraisals of this.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2010, 12:45:29 pm
Over lunch today I just read Patricia Marx on cars in the Aug. 16 & 23 issue. Very funny at the end! I love it when she describes hybrid vehicles as the motorized equivalent of free-range chickens.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2010, 01:00:07 pm
Over lunch today I just read Patricia Marx on cars in the Aug. 16 & 23 issue. Very funny at the end! I love it when she describes hybrid vehicles as the motorized equivalent of free-range chickens.  ;D

I always enjoy her articles. If you have to cover shopping, that's the way to do it.

What makes the New Yorker so great is that it publishes so many writers whose work is almost always worth reading no matter what it's about, which besides Marx include Anthony Lane, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Ariel Levy, Atul Gawande, Larissa MacFarquhar ...

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2010, 10:29:52 pm
That's true!! On the advice of friend Jeff, I've been reading the article about end-of-life care, and I'm about halfway through it. It's a slog, with too much about what things cost and not enuff about ennithing else.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 25, 2010, 08:20:00 pm
That's true!! On the advice of friend Jeff, I've been reading the article about end-of-life care, and I'm about halfway through it. It's a slog, with too much about what things cost and not enuff about ennithing else.

Well, one of the things that I took away from the article was that that was one of the author's points: Often lots of money gets spent on expensive treatments that ultimately do no good and may even make the patient suffer more in the time that he or she has left.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 25, 2010, 08:26:50 pm
I always enjoy her articles. If you have to cover shopping, that's the way to do it.

What makes the New Yorker so great is that it publishes so many writers whose work is almost always worth reading no matter what it's about, which besides Marx include Anthony Lane, David Sedaris, Malcolm Gladwell, Ariel Levy, Atul Gawande, Larissa MacFarquhar ...

Ian Frazier, Jane Mayer, Adam Gopnik, Nancy Franklin, David Denby, John Lahr, Hendrik Hertzberg, Joan Acocella, Tad Friend, Simon Schama. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 25, 2010, 09:04:38 pm
Ian Frazier, Jane Mayer, Adam Gopnik, Nancy Franklin, David Denby, John Lahr, Hendrik Hertzberg, Joan Acocella, Tad Friend, Simon Schama. ...  ;D

Personally, I'd probably exempt a few of those from the "always worth reading" category, but the great thing about the New Yorker is that it appeals to a variety of tastes and interests.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 26, 2010, 08:38:30 am
Personally, I'd probably exempt a few of those from the "always worth reading" category, but the great thing about the New Yorker is that it appeals to a variety of tastes and interests.

Not me. Especially the critics. I read them first in every issue.

And there is another woman whose name is escaping me--and it's driving me crazy!  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 26, 2010, 09:12:29 am
Funny that the critique of Eat Pray Love is rather benign, even positive!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 26, 2010, 10:52:38 am
Funny that the critique of Eat Pray Love is rather benign, even positive!!

With interesting things to say about Julia Roberts at this point in her career!  :)

(I liked the comment that the book title has commas in it!  ;D )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on August 26, 2010, 11:57:31 am
Here is Denby's review of Eat Pray Love.  He was kinder than I was!

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/08/30/100830crci_cinema_denby?currentPage=1
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 26, 2010, 12:06:41 pm
And there is another woman whose name is escaping me--and it's driving me crazy!  >:(

It might be Claudia Roth-Pierpont (sp?), but I'm not sure.  :(

That is, I always read her articles, but she may not be the writer whose name is eluding me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 28, 2010, 01:13:20 pm
Jon Lee Anderson's articles are the New Yorker equivalent of cod liver oil. They're good for you, but I don't like them. They're too long and boring.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 28, 2010, 02:07:44 pm
Jon Lee Anderson's articles are the New Yorker equivalent of cod liver oil. They're good for you, but I don't like them. They're too long and boring.  :P

Actually, I can think of a few New Yorker writers I would say that about. But I'm sure that in some cases their articles are of intense interest -- to policy-makers, maybe, or think-tank fellows.

What I'm glad to see less of in the New Yorker in recent years -- probably since the Tina Brown days, actually -- are those pages-on-pages-long articles that, oh, have some marginal interest, and would undoubtedly add to your knowledge of the world, but are excruciating to plow through and not really of major importance, either. For example, I recall getting about a third of the way through one about a grocery store. When I got to "On Tuesday, the dairy truck comes, and the cases of milk are loaded into the shipping dock ..." or something like that, I bailed.

I still see the occasional article that I would put into that category, but not so many as before.

Remember back to those pre-Tina days -- when there were no photos, no capsule descriptions of the stories in the tables of contents, no discussion of anything Hollywood outside of Pauline Kael's pieces, bylines in the form of 10-point italicized tag lines instead of bold lines at the tops of the articles?

I'm not one to dis Tina Brown. I think she improved on what was already a great magazine.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 28, 2010, 04:05:05 pm
I like JLA's articles on Iran and such, but you have to be in the mood to enjoy them. I also very much like John McPhee. His articles used to take up about half an issue and I've noticed that he is being edited more severely these days.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 28, 2010, 08:41:15 pm
I'm not one to dis Tina Brown. I think she improved on what was already a great magazine.

She did some badly needed updating. The world is no longer what it was when John Hersey's "Hiroshima" was an entire issue of the magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 29, 2010, 02:01:04 pm
She did some badly needed updating. The world is no longer what it was when John Hersey's "Hiroshima" was an entire issue of the magazine.

Though if the United States, or anyone really, were to attack a city with nuclear weapons now, I would hope there'd be a modern-day John Hersey covering it and that the New Yorker would devote an entire issue again. I'd be willing to skip the movie reviews and James Suroweicki for a week, anyway. I think they more or less unofficially devoted at least one entire issue to 9/11, though by a multitude of writers, of course.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 29, 2010, 02:35:52 pm
The cover of that issue was so moving, and won an award for best magazine cover as I recall. It was a black cover, with the silhouette of the towers in black varnish.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 29, 2010, 03:43:46 pm
The cover of that issue was so moving, and won an award for best magazine cover as I recall. It was a black cover, with the silhouette of the towers in black varnish.


Maybe because we're getting closer to the anniversary, but I find myself thinking back on how various media organizations and figures dealt with it. The New Yorker, David Letterman and The Onion especially come to mind for handling their situations post 9/11 gracefully, though obviously all in very different ways.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 30, 2010, 10:32:48 am
Over the weekend I read Adam Gopnik's essay on Winston Churchill and recent books about Churchill in the August 30 issue. I was fascinated to read the following:

Quote
This faith in government as the essential caretaker led [Churchill] later to support the creation of a national health service, "in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available."

So I guess our resident reactionaries will be dismissing Winston Churchill as a hopeless socialist.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 30, 2010, 01:36:50 pm
At lunch today I read Jane Mayer's article on the Koch brothers in the August 30 issue. Everyone should read that article.

Talk about malefactors of great wealth.

I wonder whether Brokeplex ever worked with the Koch brothers. I understand he worked in the oil industry.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 01, 2010, 10:37:54 pm
I saw that article but it just didn't interest me. Maybe it was the picture that went with it. Wichita is my home town. I left there at 18 and have never felt the urge to go back again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 02, 2010, 08:37:12 am
I saw that article but it just didn't interest me. Maybe it was the picture that went with it. Wichita is my home town. I left there at 18 and have never felt the urge to go back again.

It doesn't have anything to with Wichita and it does have everything to do with the Koch brothers contributing millions upon millions of dollars to support ultra-right-wing, "libertarian," reactionary political positions--and all of it behind the scenes, frequently through "centers" and "think tanks" with harmless-sounding names. Their father was one of the founders of the John Birch Society.

This is why everyone should the article.

Edit to Add: Everyone should also scoot on over to Current Events and read the Frank Rich article that John posted on the irony of billionaires funding the Tea Party Movement. The Rich article discusses Mayer's article and reactions to it. These people like the Koch brothers are dangerous to democracy and freedom. They are aiming at nothing short of a plutocracy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 03, 2010, 06:32:14 pm
Yes, my father, a Wichita businessman, was a John Bircher. Those people fall somewhere between the Klu Klux Klan and the Tea Party Movement. That's a spot so small you could get wedged in, die, and not be discovered for three effen days!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2010, 01:37:26 pm
Over lunch today I finished the Terry McDermott article about Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed in the Sept. 13 issue and started to read the Peter Hessler article about uranium mining in southwestern Colorado. When I get home today, i want to see whether I can find some of the places mentioned in the article on a map. This interests me because southwestern Colorado is my next ramble destination, possibly though not probably this fall, and if not this fall then next summer.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 14, 2010, 09:27:07 pm
I read that story about uranium too! It coincides closely with the experience I've had at work where I am involved with mining projects. Mining people underestimate the dangers and risks, and nonmining people overestimate them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 22, 2010, 12:46:48 pm
Well, how clueless am I? Until I read it in The New Yorker at lunch today, I didn't know that the Gap owns Old Navy and Banana Republic.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Brown Eyes on September 22, 2010, 12:52:53 pm

^I definitely knew about the Old Navy connection.  But, until now I didn't know about the Banana Republic connection... but now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense.

My parents have been subscribing to the New Yorker for decades (long before I was born) and have saved all the covers, etc.  And, just recently - randomly - my parents got me a subscription to the New Yorker.  So, now I've been receiving it regularly too.  It's fun.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 22, 2010, 01:14:57 pm
Wow, I'm thrilled that you're joining the ranks of New Yorker readers, friend!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 26, 2010, 09:50:50 pm
Fitzgeraldfest!! Completely serendipitously, I found myself this weekend simultaneously reading two New Yorker articles about F. Scott Fitzgerald.

One is from the 11/16/09 issue, an article I ripped out and saved to read when I was weeding through a giant stack of New Yorkers for recycling. It's about Fitgerald's attempt to become a Hollywood screenwriter. Apparently he was a dismal failure, partly because he was an alcoholic going through bad times, and partly because (unlike with Larry McMurtry, apparently!) his talents as a fiction writer did not transfer well to screenwriting. I stuck that clipping, along with several others, in my purse, to read when I found myself out and about with extra time on my hands.

The other is from the 9/27/10 issue, the one whose cover shows a bed occupied by two apparently post-coital bedbugs. It's about a little experimental theater company in New York that produces an eight-hour show called "Gatz" in which an actor reads "The Great Gatsby" in its entirety while other actors in the background play office workers who do things that sort of loosely reflect the action in the novel.

Both were really interesting!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 26, 2010, 11:33:47 pm
What a coincidence! F. Scott Fitzgerald's ghost made an appearance on A Prairie Home Companion this weekend in commemoration of his birthday!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2010, 12:04:13 am
What a coincidence! F. Scott Fitzgerald's ghost made an appearance on A Prairie Home Companion this weekend in commemoration of his birthday!

Wow! It's today!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 15, 2010, 01:25:44 pm
How the mighty have fallen. ...  :(

I am getting very disappointed by The New Yorker. Time was when the magazine was meticulously edited and was known for its meticulous fact-checking. Yet these days I am finding punctuation and typographical errors with depressing regularity, and today I came across a real shocker.

Over lunch I was reading Ryan Lizza's article in the October 11 issue about how the Senate and the Administration missed the chance to deal with climate change. In a discussion on attempts to get Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the Senators from Maine, on board with legisation that John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman were drafting, mention is made of a prominent fishing area off the New England coast. This area is known as the Georges Bank, and I'm sure I remember it being mentioned quite prominently in The Perfect Storm (the book, not necessarily the movie).

Well, in Ryan Lizza's article, this important fishing area is referred to as "Georgia's Bank, a Maine fishery."

How the mighty have fallen.  :( I think I need to start photocopying these bloopers, and when I get a good pile of them, send them to the editor.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 15, 2010, 09:47:23 pm
I hear you, friend. The first time I found a typo in The New Yorker, I was shocked!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 20, 2010, 07:05:13 pm
Here are some videos from this year's New Yorker Festival, in which prominent New Yorker writers give speeches and sit on panels. I don't have the time, let alone the money, to watch the full videos, but I watched a few of the free sample clips, and some are interesting. I highly recommend the Malcolm Gladwell one -- what he has to say is shocking as well as entertaining. Paul Krugman and James Surowiecki are also pretty good.

http://fora.tv/conference/new_yorker_festival_2010 (http://fora.tv/conference/new_yorker_festival_2010)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 21, 2010, 10:08:35 am
There's an article beginning with an anecdote from Sherlock Holmes in the October 18th New Yorker! It's called "Too Much Information" and it's about books on sex and reproduction. I love The New Yorker!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 26, 2010, 01:14:32 pm
There's an article beginning with an anecdote from Sherlock Holmes in the October 18th New Yorker! It's called "Too Much Information" and it's about books on sex and reproduction. I love The New Yorker!

Well, yes. I read that article over lunch today. And when I get home this evening, I need to check my Holmes books and hope I have one that includes "The Blue Carbuncle." Jill Lepore quotes from that story, "Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. 'By Jove, Peterson,' said he. ..."

"Peterson"?  ???

I need to find out whether Jill Lepore made a mistake for "Watson," and if she did, somebody at The New Yorker should be fired for not catching it.

I saw the dramatization of "The Blue Carbuncle" with Jeremy Brett as Holmes--the best screen Holmes ever--but that was long ago, and I'm not that familiar with that story.

I wonder whether the full text is accessible on line somewhere?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on October 26, 2010, 01:20:00 pm
I wonder whether the full text is accessible on line somewhere?  ???

Here: Blue Carbuncle (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=DoyBlue.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1)

Peterson is identified as the "commissioniare".

(http://images.tvrage.com/screencaps/26/5175/152739.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 26, 2010, 01:33:39 pm
Here: Blue Carbuncle (http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=DoyBlue.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1)

Peterson is identified as the "commissioniare".

(http://images.tvrage.com/screencaps/26/5175/152739.jpg)

Thanks.  :)  Saved me time and trouble (And why am I not surprised that the text is on line?  ;D ). My faith in Jill Lepore is restored, if not my faith in The New Yorker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 26, 2010, 01:45:02 pm
Well, yes. I read that article over lunch today. And when I get home this evening, I need to check my Holmes books and hope I have one that includes "The Blue Carbuncle." Jill Lepore quotes from that story, "Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. 'By Jove, Peterson,' said he. ..."

"Peterson"?  ???

I need to find out whether Jill Lepore made a mistake for "Watson," and if she did, somebody at The New Yorker should be fired for not catching it.
Their jobs are safe! Holmes ejaculates  ::) that to Peterson, the commissionaire, whose wife found the carbuncle in the crop of a goose she was preparing.


I saw the dramatization of "The Blue Carbuncle" with Jeremy Brett as Holmes--the best screen Holmes ever--but that was long ago, and I'm not that familiar with that story.

I wonder whether the full text is accessible on line somewhere?  ???
I was reading about Jeremy Brett...apparently he got lost in the Homes character at some point and misplaced himself. Easy to do I imagine. He was also bi.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 26, 2010, 02:07:08 pm
Their jobs are safe! Holmes ejaculates  ::) that to Peterson, the commissionaire, whose wife found the carbuncle in the crop of a goose she was preparing.

Actually, it was Dr. Watson.
 
Quote
I was reading about Jeremy Brett...apparently he got lost in the Homes character at some point and misplaced himself. Easy to do I imagine. He was also bi.

He was also a hopeless drunk, unfortunately, and my understanding was more gay than bi. I had it on the authority of a friend who worked at WGBH in Boston that Brett's marriage to Rebecca Eaton, a producer for PBS, was merely one of convenience, as they used to say.

But he was still a damn fine Sherlock Holmes.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 28, 2010, 01:03:22 pm
Well, here's a familiar phrase!

Today while I eat lunch I'm reading William Finnegan's "Letter from Tijuana" in the October 18 issue. Describing the retired army colonel who had been given the top police job in Tijuana, Finnegan writes, "Leyzaola himself was, unmistakably, the new stud duck in town."

 :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 30, 2010, 11:52:56 am
I read the New Yorker's profile of Gawker Media founder Nick Denton the other night, just before Gawker.com published some anonymous guy's reprehensible account of his (non)sexual encounter with Christine O'Donnell. I bet the New Yorker is wishing they'd held the piece another week. But their profile was a good preparation for happening on the O'Donnell post -- Denton comes across as interesting but unlikable. Now I've just upgraded him to loathsome.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 30, 2010, 12:18:29 pm
I read the New Yorker's profile of Gawker Media founder Nick Denton the other night, just before Gawker.com published some anonymous guy's reprehensible account of his (non)sexual encounter with Christine O'Donnell. I bet the New Yorker is wishing they'd held the piece another week. But their profile was a good preparation for happening on the O'Donnell post -- Denton comes across as interesting but unlikable. Now I've just upgraded him to loathsome.

Now I'm intrigued. I was actually gonna skip that article!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 02, 2010, 12:11:33 pm
I thought that before the U.S. election was over, I should read Nicholas Lemann's article on Harry Reid in the Oct. 25 issue. I'm glad I did because I didn't know that Reid had said that George W. Bush "is an ideologue who has done incalculable damage to the government, reputation, and moral standing of the United States of America," a position with which I completely agree.

I also didn't know that Reid had twice publicly called Bush a liar, and then explained, as if for the simple-minded, "When one lies, one is a liar."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 02, 2010, 09:59:14 pm
I thought that before the U.S. election was over, I should read Nicholas Lemann's article on Harry Reid in the Oct. 25 issue. I'm glad I did because I didn't know that Reid had said that George W. Bush "is an ideologue who has done incalculable damage to the government, reputation, and moral standing of the United States of America," a position with which I completely agree.

I also didn't know that Reid had twice publicly called Bush a liar, and then explained, as if for the simple-minded, "When one lies, one is a liar."  ;D

hehe!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 03, 2010, 08:45:50 am
I read the New Yorker's profile of Gawker Media founder Nick Denton the other night, just before Gawker.com published some anonymous guy's reprehensible account of his (non)sexual encounter with Christine O'Donnell. I bet the New Yorker is wishing they'd held the piece another week. But their profile was a good preparation for happening on the O'Donnell post -- Denton comes across as interesting but unlikable. Now I've just upgraded him to loathsome.

While I haven't read the Gawker piece, I do find it difficult to believe that anyone could do more damage to Christine O'Donnelll than she could do to herself. Nevertheless, I read the Nick Denton piece over lunch yesterday.

What a thoroughly unlikable individual.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 03, 2010, 09:09:13 am
While I haven't read the Gawker piece, I do find it difficult to believe that anyone could do more damage to Christine O'Donnelll than she could do to herself. Nevertheless, I read the Nick Denton piece over lunch yesterday.

What a thoroughly unlikable individual.  :P

Oh, I don't think the Gawker piece damaged her. It probably won her some sympathy votes. But you're right, she's her own worst enemy.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 03, 2010, 10:04:15 am
Oh, I don't think the Gawker piece damaged her. It probably won her some sympathy votes. But you're right, she's her own worst enemy.

But as John says, she probably has a bright future on Fox News.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 03, 2010, 01:22:56 pm
Today at lunch I began to read, but did not finish, Lauren Collins's article in the Oct. 25 issue about David Cameron's "Big Society" program in Britain.

I was delighted to learn that there is a hamlet in central Dorsetshire named Shitterton.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on November 07, 2010, 05:23:02 pm


(http://blog.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/assets_c/2010/11/101115_2010_p233-thumb-465x634-55164.jpg)




http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2010/11/cover-story-approval-bump.html
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 09, 2010, 09:15:10 pm
O.M.G. ...

Run, don't walk, to the Nov. 15 issue and read Nancy Franklin's review of Sarah Palin's Alaska.

 :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

Far too many hysterical and apt comments to quote here.

 :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on November 15, 2010, 01:39:55 am
Thanks for the heads up about the review, Jeff.

I just watched "Sarah Palin's Alaska."  Contrary to my expectation, I was able to watch the whole show without getting run off by Sarah's twangy folksy narration, mainly because the scenery is just too good to not want to see.  But thinking back on the episode, there really wasn't much to it.  The two trips they took, salmon fishing along a river lined with bears and mountain climbing above a glacier in Denali National Park, seemed to be dutifully performed for the sake of the show and offered hardly any information or excitement.  The footage at the Palin home was unremarkable, too.  The show is produced by the same guy who does "Survivor," so he's no beginner, but there really needed to be more momentum, more of a sense of occasion.  It made me think that she and her family didn't commit themselves to the show, rather that it was something they fit into their other activities and didn't really prepare for.  If the first episode is any indication, it might be one of those shows that's for fans only.  It doesn't seem to help either her or Alaska, and it should do at least something.  :-\

Here's the New Yorker review:

Mush!

Sarah Palin takes us for a ride.
by Nancy Franklin November 15, 2010

The hills are alive with the sound of Sarah in TLC’s new reality show.

When it was announced, in the spring, that Sarah Palin would be making a reality show about Alaska, the state she grew up in and then, last year, blew off, by resigning the governorship, I’m sure I winced and groaned and rolled my eyes, before hanging my head, shaking it, and emitting a deep sigh, and then repeating the sequence several times. For one thing, the show was going to be on TLC, whose initials used to stand for The Learning Channel but which I like to call The Leering Channel. Among its recent and current shows are “Make Room for Multiples,” “The Little Couple,” “Strange Sex,” “Obese and Pregnant,” “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” “Mermaid Girl,” and “Paralyzed and Pregnant.” Then, there’s the supersized Duggar family, whose show was first called “17 Kids and Counting,” then “18 Kids and Counting,” and is now idling at “19 Kids and Counting.” (At some point it will probably be called “But Who’s Counting?”) The show that TLC is most famous for is “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” which by now needs no introduction except a quick reminder that it was about that awful couple with the twins and the sextuplets.

TLC’s approach to programming is, in a nominal way, educational; if you don’t know any little people, or kids whose legs are fused, or families with nineteen children, you don’t really know what their lives are like. The shows are extremely invasive, though; TLC’s programming is all about babies, weddings, and families in extremis, and yet there’s something inhumane at the center of it all. It panders to our curiosity, allowing us to gawk at its subjects for as long as they are willing to be gawked at—which may be longer than is good for them. When it comes to Palin specifically, there is the fundamental problem that some of us don’t want to see or hear any more of her than we have to. And there are those whose objections have a physiological basis as well as an ideological one: the pitch and timbre of her voice, the rhythms of her speech, her syntax, and the way she coats acid and incoherence with cheery musical inflections join together in a sickening synergy that distresses the listener, triggering a fight-or-flight reaction. When Palin talks, my whole being wails, like Nancy Kerrigan after Tonya Harding’s ex-husband kneecapped her: “Why? Why? Why?”

Bundled with the news of Palin’s upcoming show, which débuts November 14th, was the eyebrow-raising fact that it would be produced by Mark Burnett, who created “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” Burnett’s mastery of the reality-TV formula would keep the show from being a certain kind of disaster but would also keep it from being truly revealing. And what could Palin’s agenda possibly be? Supposedly, it was to show us the wonders of Alaska (the show is called “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” after all), to acquaint us with the state’s resources and its people, and, to some extent, with her own family. Why she thought that was a good idea, considering that she complained regularly about the media’s intrusion into her family life when she was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 (while, at the same time, frequently putting her children on display), is a mystery. Moreover, you might ask, how seriously will people take her as a political candidate—a Presidential candidate—once she has participated in a reality show? Karl Rove, the executive producer of the Republican Party, wondered the same thing. A couple of weeks ago, he said to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, “With all due candor, appearing on your own reality show . . . I am not certain how that fits in the American calculus of ‘That helps me see you in the Oval Office.’ ” Of course, Rove has reasons to want to undermine Palin, and this was an obvious opportunity to do so, but if Palin fails to win elective office in the future it probably won’t be because she did a reality show; it will be because of real-world reality—a shift in the political climate or a strong opponent. Even to wonder these days whether a foray into baldly profit-making, politically loaded entertainment reflects on a public figure’s worthiness for office is to risk being seen as, and feeling, priggish and prunish.

Palin has an interesting family background, which she describes in her book “Going Rogue,” and I was hoping that she might explore that, and that she might reveal something profound about her avowed love of nature. I’ve seen only one episode of the show so far, but I’m not optimistic. We do meet her parents, but nearly every other moment comes across as calculated—including, in the first episode, the absence of her daughter Bristol—and we find out nothing about Alaska that we didn’t learn in elementary school. I know that some Americans think Palin is stupid, but I never realized that she thinks we’re stupid.

The first episode involves a couple of fun family outings. But before we leave the house let’s set outside a spell, shall we? Palin likes to do “a lot of my writing and researching, especially on a beautiful day . . . on our cement slab, where I get to take in the beauty of the lake.” The scene, it turns out, is really just an excuse to bring up a subject that infuriates her: the writer Joe McGinniss, who is working on an unauthorized biography of Palin, has naughtily rented the house next door. Palin’s husband, Todd, ambles onscreen and explains that “our summer has kind of been taken away from us” by this. Palin adds proudly that Todd and his buddies have put up a fourteen-foot-high fence—a fence that handily doubles as policy. “I thought that was a good example, what we just did. Others could look at it and say, ‘Oh, this is what we need to do to secure our nation’s border,’ ” she says.

The first excursion is to the Big River Lake area for fishing and bear-watching, with Todd, their nine-year-old daughter, Piper, and a niece. “I’m really hoping that Piper . . . will have that treat of seeing a mama grizzly,” Palin says. Nature, it seems, exists to provide her with a chance to use one of her signature terms. Only brown bears show up, but it turns out that they have something to teach us, too. Palin says, “I love watching these mama bears. They’ve got a nature, yeah, that humankind can learn from. She’s trying to show her cubs nobody’s going to do it for ya, you get out there and do it yourself, guys.” That sounds great, except that in this case the mother bear is doing all the fishing while her cubs splash around on a nearby rock, ignoring her. When a bear growls, Palin says, “You hear that? That is a growl.” And then, “Wow.” And then “Wow” again. And then “Wow” again. When they arrive back home, Palin attempts to poison Piper’s little mind with her mean-girl attitude. “See, we one-upped him, Piper,” she says of McGinniss. “We had a good day. And he’s stuck in his house.” (Actually, the camera finds him sitting outside on his porch, reading a book.)

Next, we go to Denali National Park. This time, Palin’s sixteen-year-old, Willow, gets dragged along, but when weather forces the plane to turn back, and the Palins have to postpone for a day, Willow is allowed to beg off. (“My back hurts,” she says. Right. What probably hurts is that she’s stuck in this family. We’ve already seen her mother make a big show of forcing a male friend of Willow’s to come down from upstairs, a “no boys” zone.) The plane alights on a glacier. Do you know about glaciers? They are made of ice. Perhaps for that reason, “pilots have to be so extremely careful in landing their bush plane up there on the glacier,” Palin tells us. “It’s not like landing on a gravel strip or a paved strip. Landing on a glacier is completely different, much more dangerous.”

I can’t say what Palin is really up to with this show. She seems to want viewers to think that she’s conflicted about public life. She says that she’d “rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office” and “a poor day of fishin’ beats even a great day of work.” In that spirit, I wish Palin many, many days—years—of fishin’, starting now. ♦


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2010/11/15/101115crte_television_franklin?printable=true#ixzz15KFVZtgI
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 15, 2010, 10:30:18 am
The two sections of the review that I like the best:

Quote
When it comes to Palin specifically, there is the fundamental problem that some of us don’t want to see or hear any more of her than we have to. And there are those whose objections have a physiological basis as well as an ideological one: the pitch and timbre of her voice, the rhythms of her speech, her syntax, and the way she coats acid and incoherence with cheery musical inflections join together in a sickening synergy that distresses the listener, triggering a fight-or-flight reaction. When Palin talks, my whole being wails, like Nancy Kerrigan after Tonya Harding’s ex-husband kneecapped her: “Why? Why? Why?”

And:

Quote
I know that some Americans think Palin is stupid, but I never realized that she thinks we’re stupid.

 :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

Thanks for posting the whole review, Meryl.  :D

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 23, 2010, 10:02:40 am
Really enjoyed "The First Kitchen" about Eleanor Roosevelt's attempts to set an example in commissioning local American food for the White House table. It didn't work. A popular dish at the time, Turkey Supreme, featured diced turkey mixed with nuts, whipped cream, crushed pineapple, and mayonnaise, spread on a tray and frozen.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 23, 2010, 11:27:44 am
Really enjoyed "The First Kitchen" about Eleanor Roosevelt's attempts to set an example in commissioning local American food for the White House table. It didn't work. A popular dish at the time, Turkey Supreme, featured diced turkey mixed with nuts, whipped cream, crushed pineapple, and mayonnaise, spread on a tray and frozen.

I did, too! Poor FDR: Liver and green beans four days in a row!  :laugh:

That Turkey Supreme sounds awful.  Whipped cream and mayonnaise? :P

This article sheds new light on a scene from one of my favorite movies, Yankee Doodle Dandy. In one scene, Jimmy Cagney, playing George M. Cohan, appears in a Broadway show by Kauffman and Hart, I'd Rather Be Right, where he portrays FDR. Cagney sings a song about FDR speaking to reporters "off the record." The song includes lines about the bad food in the White House, something about "sauer kraut and veal," and the stanza concludes with the plea, "If Mrs. R. would stay at home I'd get a decent meal!" Goes to show how well known it was that the White House food was bad if it made it into the lyrics of a Broadway show.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 23, 2010, 11:39:52 am
That Turkey Supreme sounds awful.  Whipped cream and mayonnaise? :P

And turkey and pineapple?  :P

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 23, 2010, 02:55:17 pm
yes, friend. Now I'm starting the article about root vegetables and it looks to be very good, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 23, 2010, 03:10:14 pm
yes, friend. Now I'm starting the article about root vegetables and it looks to be very good, too.

I'm looking forward to reading that one, too! I love root vegetables!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: MaineWriter on November 23, 2010, 05:55:44 pm
In the November 29th issue of The New Yorker, Mr. Peanut comes out.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2010/11/29/101129sh_shouts_rudnick

Enjoy....

L
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 27, 2010, 11:08:13 am
Mr. Peanut and Benson are hilarious in that article! Don't miss it! Also, strangely, I was entranced by James Wood's article on Keith Moon's drumming.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 28, 2010, 07:25:52 pm
Those who have dined at the Spotted Pig during various social events in New York may be interested in the profile, in the November 22 issue, of April Bloomfield, the kitchen talent half of the partners who founded the Spotted Pig and are credited with provoking a "gastropub revolution" in Manhattan.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on November 29, 2010, 01:17:22 am
Those who have dined at the Spotted Pig during various social events in New York may be interested in the profile, in the November 22 issue, of April Bloomfield, the kitchen talent half of the partners who founded the Spotted Pig and are credited with provoking a "gastropub revolution" in Manhattan.

Thanks for the info, Jeff.  I've just read part of it, and it's very enjoyable.  John, Amanda and I ate at the Spotted Pig once, and it's a cool place.  The food can be a bit odd, but it's good.

Here's the link to the article:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/22/101122fa_fact_collins?currentPage=all
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 01, 2011, 10:54:54 am
A very interesting issue this week. I'm now reading all about the Vatican Library. It's enormous! So many ancient text, both sacred and secular.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 01, 2011, 12:38:46 pm
Last night I read George Saunders' short story, "Escape from Spiderhead" in the Dec. 20/27 issue. Excellent, as Saunders' stories usually are. Such a creepy fictional metaphor for ... well, I'll let you see for yourselves.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 01, 2011, 02:49:20 pm
A very interesting issue this week. I'm now reading all about the Vatican Library. It's enormous! So many ancient text, both sacred and secular.

I haven't gotten to that article yet, but I'm really looking forward to it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2011, 09:56:23 pm
Well, I just found another whopper of a goof in The New Yorker that should have been caught. In the January 3 issue, I'm reading Jeffrey Toobin's article about Nicholas Marsh, the government prosecutor who committed suicide in the wake of the Ted Stevens prosecution.

Toobin writes that the family of Marsh's mother "settled in Kentucky in the seventeenth century." Well, perhaps, if the family is Native American. There were no white settlements in Kentucky until the 1770s--which, of course, is the eighteenth century.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on January 11, 2011, 02:01:39 pm



(http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/spidey.png)
“Spiderward”
by Barry Blitt




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on January 12, 2011, 03:05:10 am
Well, I just found another whopper of a goof in The New Yorker that should have been caught. In the January 3 issue, I'm reading Jeffrey Toobin's article about Nicholas Marsh, the government prosecutor who committed suicide in the wake of the Ted Stevens prosecution.

Toobin writes that the family of Marsh's mother "settled in Kentucky in the seventeenth century." Well, perhaps, if the family is Native American. There were no white settlements in Kentucky until the 1770s--which, of course, is the eighteenth century.


You know, in school I learned that the English way of counting the centuries is different from the German one:

1401 to 1500 = fifteenth century in German, but fourtheenth century in English.
The 1770s would consequently be in the seventeenth century, just like the article said.

And I remember quite some guided tours through British castles, ruins, manors in which it was referred to the centuries as I learned it as school.
Your comment about it being wrong made me curious and I googled. Found this on wikipedia:

In Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, centuries are typically not named ordinally, but according to the hundreds part of the year, and consequently centuries start at even multiples of 100. For example, Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish and Norwegian nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet) and Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. The same system is used informally in English. For example, the years 1900–1999 are sometimes referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). This is similar to the English decade names (1980s, meaning the years 1980–1989).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries)

There you go. While Toobin may not be technically correct, he's also not completely wrong, he's just being informally (now we can argue if The New Yorker's standard should require the formally correct counting method ;)).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 12, 2011, 09:13:26 am

You know, in school I learned that the English way of counting the centuries is different from the German one:

1401 to 1500 = fifteenth century in German, but fourtheenth century in English.
The 1770s would consequently be in the seventeenth century, just like the article said.

And I remember quite some guided tours through British castles, ruins, manors in which it was referred to the centuries as I learned it as school.
Your comment about it being wrong made me curious and I googled. Found this on wikipedia:

In Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, centuries are typically not named ordinally, but according to the hundreds part of the year, and consequently centuries start at even multiples of 100. For example, Swedish nittonhundratalet (or 1900-talet), Danish and Norwegian nittenhundredetallet (or 1900-tallet) and Finnish tuhatyhdeksänsataaluku (or 1900-luku) refer unambiguously to the years 1900–1999. The same system is used informally in English. For example, the years 1900–1999 are sometimes referred to as the nineteen hundreds (1900s). This is similar to the English decade names (1980s, meaning the years 1980–1989).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centuries)

There you go. While Toobin may not be technically correct, he's also not completely wrong, he's just being informally (now we can argue if The New Yorker's standard should require the formally correct counting method ;)).

I sense some confusion.  

While it's true that in English, we refer to 1900-1999 as the "nineteen hundreds", we also refer to it as the "twentieth century".  

So, something occurring in the 1770s can be said to be in the "seventeen hundreds" (informally), but it is the "eighteenth century" (ordinally). 

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on January 12, 2011, 10:03:46 am
I sense some confusion.  

While it's true that in English, we refer to 1900-1999 as the "nineteen hundreds", we also refer to it as the "twentieth century".  

So, something occurring in the 1770s can be said to be in the "seventeen hundreds" (informally), but it is the "eighteenth century" (ordinally).  

You're right, I confused it indeed.
I understand the difference between talking about the nineteen hundreds (same as the seventies) and the twentieth century. Thanks for pointing it out.  :) I had the above wrong. And my memory may be wrong about Brits counting as I stated above. They may have ineed talked aobut the "seventeen hundreds" and not the "seventeenth century" when talkling about 1701 - 1800.

But what I can bet on is that I learned at school that in English you have to count the centuries differently, as I stated above.
Of course, just because I learned it at school doesn't mean it has to be correct. After all, I also learned that there is no plural of chicken: one chicken - two chicken. ::) And I'm not the only one. My online dictionary discussion forum is full of Germans stating there is no plural to the word chicken, and native speakers arguing differently. :laugh:


But maybe, maybe, this could be a BE/AE difference?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2011, 10:11:11 am
I sense some confusion.  

While it's true that in English, we refer to 1900-1999 as the "nineteen hundreds", we also refer to it as the "twentieth century".  

So, something occurring in the 1770s can be said to be in the "seventeen hundreds" (informally), but it is the "eighteenth century" (ordinally). 

Agreed.

As we reckon time, the First Century of our era consisted of the years A.D. 1 through A.D. 100. Consequently, the Second Century was the years A.D. 101 through A.D. 200, and so forth and so on, so that the years 1701--1800 were the Eighteenth Century. Folks may remember this caused a lot of confusion a decade (!) ago over when the Twenty-first Century began, A.D. 2000 or A.D. 2001; it began January 1, 2001.

So I'm afraid Toobin wasn't being "informal"; he was just being wrong in his century--though I would add that my experience is that his error is not uncommon.

Having said all this, I will also add that despite all the reading I've done in Renaissance history, when somebody gets fancy and speaks or writes of the Italian Quattrocento (sp?), I'm still not sure if he or she is speaking of the Fourteenth Century (that is, the 1300s), or the 1400s (that is, the Fifteenth Century).  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 12, 2011, 10:55:48 am
Yes, technically we should have partied like it was Dec. 31, 2000.

My online dictionary discussion forum is full of Germans stating there is no plural to the word chicken, and native speakers arguing differently. :laugh:

To me, two makes it chickens. But what about shrimp? Or fish? Or lox?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 12, 2011, 11:04:44 am

Of course, just because I learned it at school doesn't mean it has to be correct. After all, I also learned that there is no plural of chicken: one chicken - two chicken. ::) And I'm not the only one. My online dictionary discussion forum is full of Germans stating there is no plural to the word chicken, and native speakers arguing differently. :laugh:


Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.   :laugh:


Having said all this, I will also add that despite all the reading I've done in Renaissance history, when somebody gets fancy and speaks or writes of the Italian Quattrocento (sp?), I'm still not sure if he or she is speaking of the Fourteenth Century (that is, the 1300s), or the 1400s (that is, the Fifteenth Century).  :-\

My Italian is minimal, but I believe quattrocento  refers to the 1400s.  There is a cute little shop in Florence called cose del novecento which meant "things from the 1900s". 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2011, 12:12:38 pm
To me, two makes it chickens.

Yes, but what about in German? I'll have to wait till I get home tonight to check my Langenscheidt's.

Quote
But what about shrimp? Or fish? Or lox?

Well, we do have Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2011, 02:07:45 pm
Bananas were introduced into the West by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. They were first imported into the United States in 1870. If you ate a banana with your breakfast this morning, as I did, it was of a variety known as the Cavendish. Ninety-nine percent of bananas exported are Cavendishes.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 12, 2011, 02:33:21 pm
So, "ain't nobody here but us chickens" is a grammatical sentence? Whew, I was so worried!  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2011, 03:27:13 pm
So, "ain't nobody here but us chickens" is a grammatical sentence? Whew, I was so worried!  :P

Now you can sleep soundly tonight!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 15, 2011, 05:00:48 pm
The Jan. 17 issue is the best I've read in a long time. David Brooks' Social Animal is entertaining and enlightening. This is the 1st thing I've read by him although I understand he is well known. Who Owns the Snow was funny, The Lamb Roast was a sweet memoir of a party-giving couple in NY that reminded me of the BBQ. Anthony Lane's critique of Another Year was scathing, and the crowning piece was The cult of the Constitution by Jill Lepore. Was it ever on target (sorry for the bad pun)!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 15, 2011, 05:28:38 pm
The Jan. 17 issue is the best I've read in a long time. David Brooks' Social Animal is entertaining and enlightening. This is the 1st thing I've read by him although I understand he is well known.

He's a conservative columnist at the New York Times. I don't always like his politics (though he's very moderate), but he's an excellent analyst of class, culture, behavior, etc. I loved his book, Bobos in Paradise. This article, which I've only just started, is apparently an excerpt from his new book.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 19, 2011, 02:10:40 pm
I'm currently reading the article about Freudian psychoanalysis in China in the January 10 issue. It was interesting to learn that, evidently, traditionally, the Chinese believed that there were seven emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, fear, love, hatred, and desire. Apparently these emotions needed to be kept in balance for you to be healthy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 23, 2011, 04:50:38 pm
The Jan. 17 issue is the best I've read in a long time. ... The Lamb Roast was a sweet memoir of a party-giving couple in NY that reminded me of the BBQ.

I'm reading this story now. A sentence in the paragraph where the author describes going to the circus at Madison Square Garden rang memory's bell:

Quote
"We met Gunther, the lion tamer, and marvelled at this blond hair, deep tan, and amazing ass--high, round, and firm, like two Easter hams--in electric blue tights."

That could only describe one person, someone I hadn't thought of in years: Gunther Gebel-Williams, who was a big circus star when I was a kid. I never saw him in person, only on TV. He was basically the headliner for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. He performed his animal act dressed in flamboyant costumes--including, indeed, electric blue tights--and no shirt, which showed off his equally amazing abs, instead of the safari gear often associated with a lion tamer.

With my memory jogged, I googled him, and I came up with quite a few images of him in those electric blue tights and no shirt. Sadly, I also learned that he died, of cancer, in Florida, in 2001 at the age of 66 years.

Before there was Seigfreid and Roy, there was Gunther Gebel-Williams.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 23, 2011, 05:52:06 pm
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_K1FelheB4h8/TNBn_-oK23I/AAAAAAAAAFo/KiJsO2KB3PY/s1600/Picture+4.png)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2011, 02:17:03 pm
I finished The Lamb Roast over lunch today. It sure would be nice to have a barbecue like that one.  :)

On the basis of the geographic references, I presume the author grew up in or very near to New Hope, Pennsylvania. I know New Hope well, or did, anyway; I haven't been up there in years, now. It's an artsy place--appropriate for the author's scenic designer father and former dancer mother, and something of a haven for gay Philadelphians with automobiles. Her father's studio was in Lambertville, New Jersey, which is directly across the Delaware River from New Hope, and she writes about walking to Jersey after school for music lessons. You can do this by walking across the bridge between New Hope and Lambertville.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2011, 02:31:07 pm
I just noticed that the back cover of the January 24 issue includes an ad for Annie Proulx's memoir.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 01, 2011, 03:02:21 pm
I just noticed that the back cover of the January 24 issue includes an ad for Annie Proulx's memoir.

Do I have to turn in my Brokie card if I say that her memoir doesn't sound very good?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 01, 2011, 03:51:25 pm
Not in my book, friend. Brokeback Mountain stands out among all the works I've read by Proulx as unique. She is famously regarded as one of the most unreadable great writers, right up there with Pynchon, Joyce, and Faulkner. I have the CD reserved at the library and I will go pick it up as soon as the weather clears. I'm planning to skip past all the real estate stuff. I'm sure there will be plenty of interesting bits about Wyoming and its fascinating characters.

I read all of Postcards, but only because I was in the hospital at the time. I've never been able to make it to the end of Accordion Crimes or Shipping News. I've read two or three of her short story collections, but those are easy. Yet I've read Brokeback Mountain about a gazillion times.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2011, 04:18:33 pm
Do I have to turn in my Brokie card if I say that her memoir doesn't sound very good?

If I get around to reading it as quickly as I've read the short story collections, there's little danger of me ever actually reading it.  ::)  But if it reads like the essay "Getting Movied," it might have some entertainment value.

She is famously regarded as one of the most unreadable great writers, right up there with Pynchon, Joyce, and Faulkner.

Really? Jeez, I never got the memo. Did somebody actually compare her to Faulkner? That's interesting!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 01, 2011, 04:43:40 pm
Really? Jeez, I never got the memo. Did somebody actually compare her to Faulkner? That's interesting!  :D

The only Faulkner novel I've read is "The Sound and the Fury." I would say it was much more difficult than understand than Proulx (or his own short stories) -- I used a Cliff's Notes to help decipher it. But personally, I found it more rewarding.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 01, 2011, 05:08:22 pm
Really? Jeez, I never got the memo. Did somebody actually compare her to Faulkner? That's interesting!  :D

Yes, I did.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2011, 07:46:47 pm
Yes, I did.

My dear, your critical sense is sound, but your opinion alone does not make someone or something "famously regarded."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 01, 2011, 08:31:22 pm
Well, quite a lot of people have moaned and complained about her style and Dwight Garner writes:

"What is that signature style? Reading Ms. Proulx’s prose is like bouncing along rutted country roads in a pickup truck with no shock absorbers. Her books are packed with arcane flora and fauna and eccentrically named towns and characters. Many writers employ unusual verbs and adjectives; Ms. Proulx likes weird nouns. Her cluttered style is, in a kind of reverse way, as jewel-encrusted as Gustav Klimt’s."

This is from our thread entitled Annie Proulx's Memoir:
 http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,46240.msg599654.html#msg599654 (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,46240.msg599654.html#msg599654)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2011, 09:21:57 pm
My dear, your critical sense is sound, but your opinion alone does not make someone or something "famously regarded."

That was badly and baldly said. I apologize. I should have said something like, "My dear, I respect your critical sense, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that one opinion alone does not make something 'famously regarded.'"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 02, 2011, 06:08:58 pm
We're getting off topic, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to quote from a reviewer of The Shipping News by lisaMariaClark that is illustrative of how legions of readers feel about Annie Proulx's style:

Quote
Proulx is the author of the short story "Brokeback Mountain" which was made into the film of the same name. I read that short story soon after seeing the movie and remember finding it moving. But Proulx might be one of those authors whose extreme styles are more effective (at least for me) at the shorter lengths. I love several short stories by James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, for instance, but hate the novels by them I've tried.

In the case of Proulx, her style quickly wore on me. I'm truly not a Grammar Nazi; fiction is not meant to be an essay. But she uses sentence fragments so frequently she doesn't flow, and boy she piles on the metaphors in her drawn-out descriptions. But the worse part is the protagonist: Quoyle. This is a paragraph of how he's described early on which should give you an idea of Proulx's characterization and style:

A great damp loaf of a body. At six he weighed eighty pounds. At sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as kissed fingertips. Eyes the color of plastic. The monstrous chin, a freakish shelf jutting from the lower face.

Note the choppy syntax. That could be effective done sparingly but the entire book is written like that. (And er...plastic has a color? Kissed fingertips are bunched? Really?) Quoyle's a lump of a character in every way who has never been able to hold a job long. His wife, Petal Bear, who thankfully is killed off early in the novel, sold their two young girls to a pornographer. (The girls are found before they can be harmed.)

The pace is slooooow and about a third of the way I knew I'd had enough. I struggled to get that far. Painful. If you don't love Proulx's style--and I hated it--there's no reason to stay.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 02, 2011, 07:47:56 pm
We're getting off topic, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to quote from a reviewer of The Shipping News by lisaMariaClark that is illustrative of how legions of readers feel about Annie Proulx's style:

I still think your own use of nouns is a bit overblown ("Legions"? C'mon. ...), but at least you are offering evidence besides your own opinion. This is a good thing.  :)

I don't think you get to be an award-winning author if "legions" of readers find you, well, unreadable.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 02, 2011, 08:41:42 pm
Well, legions or no, I'm in the group. I couldn't get far into TSN either, for pretty much the reasons that writer describes (though I DO get the "kissed/bunched fingers" imagery).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: oilgun on February 07, 2011, 08:05:42 pm
This article is pretty long but is so far (five pages of 26) a great read.

The Apostate
Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology.
by Lawrence Wright February 14, 2011

On August 19, 2009, Tommy Davis, the chief spokesperson for the Church of Scientology International, received a letter from the film director and screenwriter Paul Haggis. “For ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego,” Haggis wrote. Before the 2008 elections, a staff member at Scientology’s San Diego church had signed its name to an online petition supporting Proposition 8, which asserted that the State of California should sanction marriage only “between a man and a woman.” The proposition passed. As Haggis saw it, the San Diego church’s “public sponsorship of Proposition 8, which succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California—rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state—is a stain on the integrity of our organization and a stain on us personally. Our public association with that hate-filled legislation shames us.” Haggis wrote, “Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.” He concluded, “I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright#ixzz1DJxVwgdk


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 14, 2011, 11:02:11 pm
Yes I only read 5 pages too. Everything you never wanted to know about Scientology...and more!!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 14, 2011, 11:38:41 pm
In typical fashion for me, I've got more than one issue going at once. I'm reading the Paul Haggis/Scientology article at home, and I'm finding it fascinating.

(If nothing else, I'm learning a lot about Paul Haggis's career. I'd never even heard the name, as far as I can remember, until the Crash win, but he's been involved in a lot of productions I have heard of.)

Meanwhile, over lunch I've been reading Ben McGrath's article in the January 31 issue about head injuries in football. One of the experts mentioned in the article was Dr. Robert Cantu. During my brief stint as a copy editor at the W.B. Saunders company, I edited a book by Cantu, Neurologic Athletic Head and Spine Injuries, published by Saunders in 2000, so I've been aware of this issue for more than ten years.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 16, 2011, 02:15:08 pm
Here's a puzzlement.

Over my lunch today, among other things, I read the capsule review for a production of Moliere's The Misanthrope in the February 7 issue. The review includes the sentence, "The story involves a young nobleman disgusted by the phoniness and superficiality around him in the courtly circles of Louis XVI."

Hunh?  ???

Moliere lived and worked at the court of Louis XIV, in the 17th century. So, is that XVI an error for XIV, or is this productionn set a hundred years after Moliere, maybe because someone likes the clothes better?  ???

I also got a kick out of David Denby's descriptions of Ashton Kutcher (in Denby's review of No Strings Attached) as resembling "a pensive mushroom," and as "pointlessly tall."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 16, 2011, 03:11:21 pm
So, is that XVI an error for XIV, or is this productionn set a hundred years after Moliere, maybe because someone likes the clothes better?  ???

I also got a kick out of David Denby's descriptions of Ashton Kutcher (in Denby's review of No Strings Attached) as resembling "a pensive mushroom," and as "pointlessly tall."  ;D

As much as I respect the NY fact checkers, I vote for it being an error.

Yes, I loved that review too. It seems the negative reviews are always so much more entertaining than the positive ones.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 16, 2011, 03:44:35 pm
As much as I respect the NY fact checkers, I vote for it being an error.

Clearly the fact checking ain't what it used to be. Mr. Shawn would never accept a boo-boo like this one.  :(

Quote
Yes, I loved that review too. It seems the negative reviews are always so much more entertaining than the positive ones.

I've always wanted to know what a pointlessly tall, pensive mushroom looked like. Now I know!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: chowhound on February 16, 2011, 03:56:00 pm
I finished the New Yorker article last night on Paul Haggis and his 35 years in Scientology. At the private and personal level, it is intriguing but what I couldn't figure out was the structure of this mysterious cult and who manages the considerable sums of money that are generated by all these courses and the child labour available on Sea Org. A young man, apparently, called Miscavige took over as head of the cult when Hubbard died but that's all we really find out about him except that he is prone to violence. There are suggestions that he himself has become enormously wealthy but this, of course, the organization denies. But who are all the others beneath him who must be busy counseling members, forcing them into courses, demanding that they cut themselves off from their families, and handing out discipline in one way or another. There must be a large group of these "officials" who, presumably, are getting well paid for what they do. Anybody here have any insights into  how this cult is structured or know of a book where this is described? The Paul Haggis article has certainly left me curious about this strange and possibly sinister cult.  
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 23, 2011, 02:14:21 pm
From Anthony Lane's review of The Eagle in the Feb. 14--21 issue:

Quote
There is a rare but distinctive strain of actors whose necks are wider than their heads, and who seek to compensate for this, when the time is right--and sometimes when it is not--with a look of pensive nobility. Vin Diesel is the elder statesman of the breed, but coming up fast behind him are Taylor Lautner, of the "Twilight" saga, and [Channing] Tatum, an affable Southern boy who went into acting from modelling, scored a hit with "Step Up," and now bears the deeply puzzled expression of someone who never expected to be standing in the rain wearing a leather skirt. His eulogy to fallen comrades--"May your souls take flight and soar with the Eagle of the Ninth"--is declaimed as if he were advising passengers to stow their tray tables and restore their seats to the upright position.

 :laugh:

How's that for a skewering of beefcake "actors"?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2011, 02:20:24 pm
Here's a wonderful line from Adam Gopnik's article, "The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us," in the Feb. 14--21 issue:

"Our trouble is not the over-all absence of smartness but the intractable power of pure stupidity, and no machine, or mind, seems extended enough to cure that."

"The intractable power of pure stupidity"--now, there's a phrase for the ages.  :D

On the other hand, I also found a sentence fragment in the article, and a reference to "the postage stamps that let eighteenth-century scientists collaborate by mail." I'm not exactly sure what Gopnik means by that, but I think most people associate the term postage stamp with the little pieces of paper with glue on the back that you buy at the post office, or out of a machine, or even at a special counter at the super market, and put on a letter before you mail it, and they were a nineteenth-century invention. Is this another failure of The New Yorker's once-vaunted fact checking? :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 24, 2011, 02:49:13 pm
What's the sentence fragment? Personally, I have nothing against sentence fragments. Not usually, anyway. Depends.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2011, 03:14:04 pm
What's the sentence fragment? Personally, I have nothing against sentence fragments. Not usually, anyway. Depends.

Ha ... ha. Does it really matter? I'm sure Mr. Shawn would not have suffered it.

Added:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shawn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shawn)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 24, 2011, 05:19:54 pm
I'm reminded that The New Yorker was where Brokeback Mountain first appeared, and that has sentence fragments galore!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 24, 2011, 05:48:36 pm
I'm reminded that The New Yorker was where Brokeback Mountain first appeared, and that has sentence fragments galore!!

I think it's quite possible that Mr. Shawn would not have suffered Brokeback Mountain. He didn't even allow swearing, did he?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2011, 09:24:09 pm
I'm reminded that The New Yorker was where Brokeback Mountain first appeared, and that has sentence fragments galore!!

I think it's quite possible that Mr. Shawn would not have suffered Brokeback Mountain. He didn't even allow swearing, did he?

First of all, "Brokeback Mountain" is fiction. Adam Gopnik's article is not; it's a commentary piece, written by a staff writer. They are quite different things, and I suspect even Mr. Shawn would have treated them differently.

Second, can you imagine any editor telling AP she couldn't do something?  ;D

He probably wouldn't have suffered "Brokeback Mountain" because of its subject matter.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2011, 12:42:15 pm
(I can't believe my last post on this thread was a month ago today.)

I'm now into the article in the March 4 issue about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

I have just read about how upset and fearful some people were about the use of dihydrogen monoxide in the efforts to disperse the oil.

Dihydrogen monoxide is water. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 24, 2011, 12:52:17 pm
That's funny, Jeff. You mean they used water to disperse the oil in the Gulf? Trying to visualize how that would work.

I went all the way back to January 24 to read "Books as Bombs" about the impact of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique on mid-century American women. I often am inspired to go back to an earlier issue after I read a letter commenting about an article in a later issue. Thus, the piles of NYMs squirreled away in my dressing room.

But I was also very moved by the cover of this latest issue. At first it seems to be cherry blossoms, but when you look more closely, the blossoms are actually radioactive symbols. I was shocked to read that crisis plans for US nuclear industry cover not the disasters most likely to happen, but those that are "reasonable" to defend against. How short-sighted!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2011, 02:19:02 pm
That's funny, Jeff. You mean they used water to disperse the oil in the Gulf? Trying to visualize how that would work.

Dihydrogen monoxide was one of the components of the dispersant that was used.

One thing that I've learned from this article is that there are actually microorganisms in the ocean water that really do "eat" oil.

Quote
I went all the way back to January 24 to read "Books as Bombs" about the impact of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique on mid-century American women. I often am inspired to go back to an earlier issue after I read a letter commenting about an article in a later issue. Thus, the piles of NYMs squirreled away in my dressing room.

I enjoyed that article about Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique, too.

Even if I fall weeks behind, I take every issue in order, and when I've finally finished one, I pass it on to a friend at work.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 24, 2011, 02:25:12 pm
I have a different method. When a new issue arrives, I stop reading any old issues and start to devour the new one. Thus, I have quite a few half-read issues by my bed at any one time, but at least I am up to date on the latest news.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2011, 02:29:40 pm
I have a different method. When a new issue arrives, I stop reading any old issues and start to devour the new one. Thus, I have quite a few half-read issues by my bed at any one time, but at least I am up to date on the latest news.

I usually read the theater/TV/movie/book reviews as soon as an issue arrives, because those articles are generally comparatively short and can be read while I eat dinner. But then I go back and read the longer articles in each issue in the order in which the issues arrived.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 24, 2011, 04:05:48 pm
I just renewed my subscription and am getting a free tote bag!! Yee-haw!!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2011, 09:14:59 pm
I just renewed my subscription and am getting a free tote bag!! Yee-haw!!  :D

I've got two of them. Use them for hauling groceries. Not ideal for that.  :-\

I couldn't resist. After dinner this evening I "jumped ahead" to read Malcolm Gladwell's article about the book about Helena Rubinstein and the man who founded L'Oreal, whose name I've already forgotten (he was some French guy with a German name).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 24, 2011, 11:28:02 pm
My method is, I look through every issue when it first comes. Then I set it aside in the piles of other magazines and stuff waiting to be read or attended to. When I have some free time to read, I randomly grab whatever issue is handy. I read the easy things -- the movie reviews and "Shouts and Murmurs" -- first, sometimes the contributors' notes and letters to the ed, plus whatever bylines I know I'll like (Sedaris, Lepore, Gladwell, Levy, Lane, etc.). If something else really grabs me, I might read it right away. Otherwise, the issue gets added to a towering slippery stack of magazines that just keeps getting bigger and bigger until I can't stand the clutter anymore. Then I go through the stack, trying to be ruthless but repeatedly getting sucked into actually opening each magazine, however old the issue is, and glancing through the table of contents. I try to force myself to throw it out no matter what, especially if it's from a previous year. But I find myself thinking, geez, I really should read that article about the oil spill, or Hillary Clinton's chances in the presidential election, or whatever, and rip it out. Then I have a stack of articles that I think I will read when I'm stuck waiting in line at the bank or something. Some of them, I do get to. But others  get tossed around the car or purse until they're so ragged and dirty I finally decide can't stand to have them around anymore. So, finally, I toss them.

That's the life cycle of a New Yorker article for me.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2011, 08:47:51 am
That's the life cycle of a New Yorker article for me.

I'm so happy that I have someone to whom I can give my copies when I'm finished with them. Somehow I could never bear to put a New Yorker out for recycling.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 25, 2011, 11:06:22 am
That would be hard for me to do as well. I tend to leave copies at the gym, in the doctors office or at the old folks home. Katherine, I understand your mixed feelings at looking at a pile of unread magazines. I used to spend most of my free time reading, but then I got interested in writing my own stuff, and now I have piles of unread magazines too. But that's a good thing! That means I'm spending less time reading and more time writing and...living!! I see those piled up magazines as insurance in case I become unemployed again or worse, laid up recovering from some illness or accident. So as far as I am concerned, they can stay there!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 25, 2011, 01:57:40 pm
For me, I still spend most of my free time reading. The difference is that I'm doing it on the internet instead of on paper.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2011, 02:20:12 pm
For me, I still spend most of my free time reading. The difference is that I'm doing it on the internet instead of on paper.

I don't know how, or why--seriously--but I never seem to have the time to read that I did formerly. The New Yorker I read over lunch and dinner, and maybe I get a few pages in a book read, in bed, before I turn out the light.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2011, 12:59:49 pm
Today I was entertained at lunch by reading about the differences between seals and sea lions. Also, I was surprised to learn that seals can pick up language, like parrots. The New England Aquarium once had a seal that spoke with a Boston accent.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 28, 2011, 09:43:26 pm
Another great article was "Just in Time for Spring" by Ellis Weiner in the March 28 issue about an innovative concept called Going Outside.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 29, 2011, 09:02:33 pm
Oh, and if you missed Tina Fey's "Confessions of a Juggler" in the February 14 and 21 issue, do not pass Go, go back and read it NOW! (Although it's not very original; our own Crayonlicious was first on the topic!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 31, 2011, 03:18:11 pm
Oh, and if you missed Tina Fey's "Confessions of a Juggler" in the February 14 and 21 issue, do not pass Go, go back and read it NOW! (Although it's not very original; our own Crayonlicious was first on the topic!!

And here it is!!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_fey (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_fey)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 31, 2011, 03:44:19 pm
I just finished the article about Barry Bonds' forthcoming trial for lying about his use of steroids.

But I have to say, if he wants to shrivel his baby-makers in order to hit more home runs, I really don't care. (Shrugs)

Apparently a lot of people do care about it, though.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 01, 2011, 08:56:41 am
I finished The Lamb Roast over lunch today. It sure would be nice to have a barbecue like that one.  :)

On the basis of the geographic references, I presume the author grew up in or very near to New Hope, Pennsylvania. I know New Hope well, or did, anyway; I haven't been up there in years, now. It's an artsy place--appropriate for the author's scenic designer father and former dancer mother, and something of a haven for gay Philadelphians with automobiles. Her father's studio was in Lambertville, New Jersey, which is directly across the Delaware River from New Hope, and she writes about walking to Jersey after school for music lessons. You can do this by walking across the bridge between New Hope and Lambertville.

Interesting. I learned--or, rather, deduced--from an articile in this morning's Metro that "The Lamb Roast" was culled from the new autobiography of chef Gabrielle Hamilton, who did, indeed, grow up in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Her book is called Blood, Bones & Butter.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 01, 2011, 09:25:06 am
Interesting. I learned--or, rather, deduced--from an articile in this morning's Metro that "The Lamb Roast" was culled from the new autobiography of chef Gabrielle Hamilton, who did, indeed, grow up in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Her book is called Blood, Bones & Butter.

BB&B has drawn a lot of attention. It's supposed to be good.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 01, 2011, 01:29:46 pm
Looks like we have a new Sherlock and Dr. Watson on the case!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 05, 2011, 01:11:40 pm
So I learned from the March 28 issue that Cyndi Lauper is big in Japan. Who knew?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 05, 2011, 09:32:12 pm
Oh, and if you missed Tina Fey's "Confessions of a Juggler" in the February 14 and 21 issue, do not pass Go, go back and read it NOW! (Although it's not very original; our own Crayonlicious was first on the topic!!

Can't wait to read her new memoir Bossy Pants. It will be interesting to contrast it with Annie Proulx's, the most recent memoir I've read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2011, 01:22:24 pm
I don't know how I've managed to do this, but I'm actually reading the April 4 issue the week of April 4!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2011, 06:38:13 pm
Well, whaddya know!?!?! When I got home today, the April 11 issue was in my mailbox, and it includes a profile of none other than our own LaShawn Malone! Yes, indeed, a profile of Anna Faris!

However, making a cursory skim of the article, focusing on quotation marks, since that's what The New Yorker uses where traditional practice calls for italics, I noticed no mention of Brokeback Mountain.  :(

The issue also has reviews of Jake's The Source Code and Michelle Williams's Meek's Cutoff.

So many Brokeback connections in one issue!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 06, 2011, 08:07:41 pm
However, making a cursory skim of the article, focusing on quotation marks, since that's what The New Yorker uses where traditional practice calls for italics, I noticed no mention of Brokeback Mountain.  :(

That would be an unfortunate omission, since her work in BBM constitutes, as far as I know, her only role in a drama, albeit as a figure mostly there to provide comic relief. She was really good in that small role, and otherwise she seems to mainly appear in silly (though sometimes worthwhile) comedies. I seem to recall some critic -- it might have been the New Yorker's Anthony Lane, in fact -- saying something like, her casting was another example of Ang Lee's apparent project of elevating B-movie starlets to A-list actors in respected movies.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2011, 09:35:55 pm
That would be an unfortunate omission, since her work in BBM constitutes, as far as I know, her only role in a drama, albeit as a figure mostly there to provide comic relief. She was really good in that small role, and otherwise she seems to mainly appear in silly (though sometimes worthwhile) comedies. I seem to recall some critic -- it might have been the New Yorker's Anthony Lane, in fact -- saying something like, her casting was another example of Ang Lee's apparent project of elevating B-movie starlets to A-list actors in respected movies.

It might, however, be an understandable omission. The article appears under the heading, "Annals of Comedy," and the title is "Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's Woman Problem." Tad Friend is the author.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 07, 2011, 08:46:01 am
It might, however, be an understandable omission. The article appears under the heading, "Annals of Comedy," and the title is "Funny Like a Guy: Anna Faris and Hollywood's Woman Problem." Tad Friend is the author.

Oh, then I can't wait to read it. Hollywood does indeed have a woman problem, and that headline hints at part of it -- at least the comedy part. Women in comedies almost always play the sensible, responsible, dull straight man to the wild, crazy, funny guy. Anna Faris is one of the few exceptions.

So I guess I can see how, if the context is anything like that, the LaShawn role isn't quite on topic.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 07, 2011, 09:36:18 am
The Anna Faris and Tina Fey articles are perfect complements to each other!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 07, 2011, 09:42:23 am
The Anna Faris and Tina Fey articles are perfect complements to each other!!

OT, I guess, but Tina Fey must have gotten over her motherhood and career issues. I heard this morning that she's pregnant again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 07, 2011, 01:08:57 pm
Well, what was it Heath said about how Matilda came to be? "We let biology take over" or something like that!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 07, 2011, 08:02:37 pm
Aha! Happily, I was wrong! Brokeback Mountain does get mentioned in the Anna Faris profile:

Quote
Though she had arresting cameos in "Lost in Translation" and "Brokeback Mountain," her more usual task, in fare like "The Hot Chick," has been to perform CPR on such dialogue as "It's not every day that your best friend grows a penis."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 07, 2011, 09:16:49 pm
Gives new meaning to "Woman talks a blue streak."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 10, 2011, 05:16:56 pm
Here's a 2006 NYT Magazine profile of Anna Faris that I just stumbled on (it was linked to compare it to the New Yorker piece). It mentions BBM in more detail, saying her performance as Lashawn landed her a starring ole as a stoner.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/magazine/12wwln_encounter.html?scp=6&sq=anna%20faris&st=cse (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/magazine/12wwln_encounter.html?scp=6&sq=anna%20faris&st=cse)

Quote
She made a memorably dizzy appearance in Sofia Coppola’s Oscar-winning “Lost in Translation” as Kelly Strong, a hypervacuous starlet last seen in the lounge of the Park Hyatt in Tokyo belting out an off-key karaoke version of “Nobody Does It Better.” Even “Brokeback Mountain” had a dumb blonde in the form of Lashawn Malone, ably played by Faris, a fast-talking, hump-haired Texan who in a scene at a dance hall is too busy prattling on about sororities and clothes shopping to notice that her husband is deftly seducing Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Jack Twist, right under her pert little nose.

“In a really small part, she just popped off the screen,” says the director Gregg Araki, who saw Faris in “Brokeback Mountain” and consequently cast her as the lead in “Smiley Face,” an independent comedy about a struggling actress who accidentally eats her roommate’s pot brownies.






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 11, 2011, 01:24:49 pm
Jonathan Franzen's latest article "Farther Away" is on the Internet for a limited time. It tells about his sojurn on Selkirk Island reading the novel that was inspired by a Scotsman's stay there, Robinson Crusoe. Here's a quote:

"I’d been ... feeling more and more like the graphical lozenge on a media player’s progress bar. Substantial swaths of my personal history were going dead from within, from my talking about them too often. And every morning the same revving doses of nicotine and caffeine; every evening the same assault on my e-mail queue; every night the same drinking for the same brain-dulling pop of pleasure."

http://www.facebook.com/newyorker?sk=app_199738353381002 (http://www.facebook.com/newyorker?sk=app_199738353381002)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 13, 2011, 05:23:11 pm
Tina Fey on Fresh Air today...here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/freshairwithterrygross (http://www.facebook.com/#!/freshairwithterrygross)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 14, 2011, 01:27:45 pm
I just finished "Just Write It!" by Laura Miller, in the April 11 issue, about George R. R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones. I found it very interesting, especially the parts about members of on-line fan communities. ...  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 20, 2011, 12:39:26 pm
Jonathan Franzen's latest article "Farther Away" is on the Internet for a limited time. It tells about his sojurn on Selkirk Island reading the novel that was inspired by a Scotsman's stay there.

I started to read this article over lunch today. I'm finding it very rewarding and thought-provoking.

Plus, I'm relieved to learn that R.E.I. sells a stainless-steel martini glass with a removable stem. No camping trip should be without one!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 21, 2011, 12:20:26 pm
Of course, what really interested me about the Franzen article was to notice, early on, that he seems to have diagonosed my own problem: I am bored in a major way.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 23, 2011, 01:31:03 pm
Does this mean you'll be heading off to the Galapagos Islands without your phone, TV or computer soon, friend Jeff?

I'm reading the article The Possibilian now. Neurologists seem to have all the fun these days! A quote: "It's hard to describe the taste of a sound, the color of a smell or the scent of a feeling. (Unless, of course, you have synthesthesia--another of Eagleman's obsessions.)" I think Annie Proulx must have synthesthesia, when I read things like "flying in the bitter euphoric air"!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 26, 2011, 02:06:33 pm
Does this mean you'll be heading off to the Galapagos Islands without your phone, TV or computer soon, friend Jeff?

Not likely.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 26, 2011, 02:58:25 pm
Then you'll just have to find another cure for your boredom, friend! I hope the cure is not worse than the disease!

I read Laura Miller's article on your recommendation (below) and I found it entertaining, enlightening and quite scary!! I'm glad I haven't gotten sucked in to the George R. R. Martin mania, it makes Brokeholism look quite mild in comparison (even my case). I could not believe the passion and extremes those fans are willing to go to, inspiring one of Martin's supporters to protest that "GRRM is not your bitch." And the growth of the detractor sites...so scary (aside: they're called GRRuMblers lol). Seeing the persecution Martin suffers helped me to understand Annie Proulx's position seeking her privacy. One thing I marvelled at was that all the people mentioned who maintain chat rooms, sites, and fan clubs devoted to the Land of Fire and Ice series, not one was associated with holding a job or having a career in Real Life!!

One time in the 1990s, I had a similar idea to create a series called WOAD (World on a Disc). I never saw it through, though. If only...!!

I just finished "Just Write It!" by Laura Miller, in the April 11 issue, about George R. R. Martin, author of A Game of Thrones. I found it very interesting, especially the parts about members of on-line fan communities. ...  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 26, 2011, 06:55:23 pm
I'm glad I haven't gotten sucked in to the George R. R. Martin mania, it makes Brokeholism look quite mild in comparison.

I thought that, too, when I read the article.

Quote
Seeing the persecution Martin suffers helped me to understand Annie Proulx's position seeking her privacy.

It does give a perspective on AP's position, doesn't it?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 27, 2011, 12:42:55 pm
Does anybody copy-edit or proofread this magazine anymore?

Here's a sentence from page 107 of the April 18 issue:

"The twenty-seven-dollar entry free ... provides full-day access to the beach. ..."

OK, I read that sentence three times to make sure I was really seeing what I thought I was seeing:

"Twenty-seven-dollar entry free."

Geez. ...  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 18, 2011, 09:44:43 pm
Guess what's on the cover this week?!

(http://www.divshare.com/img/2661689-d12.JPG)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 19, 2011, 12:13:56 am
You are??! Oh no, wait, I'm guessing it's the library.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 19, 2011, 12:17:02 pm
More specifically, Patience and Fortitude, the lions of the library!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 23, 2011, 01:36:34 pm
Well, here's a cheery thought from the June 27, issue, courtesy of someone called Richard Florida: The more gay-friendly a city is, the more it's likely to be economically successful.  :D

For once I'm actually caught up in my New Yorkers, but that's because there was one issue that literally had only one article in it that interested me, the piece about Harriet Beecher Stowe, so I passed that issue on to my friend here at work quite quickly.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 25, 2011, 11:48:20 am
Well, here's a cheery thought from the June 27, issue, courtesy of someone called Richard Florida: The more gay-friendly a city is, the more it's likely to be economically successful.  :D

So now maybe NYC will make it after all!  ;D

I've heard of Richard Florida. He's written a lot about the link between a city's economic success and the size of its creative class. And it stands to reason that more creative cities would be more gay-friendly, both as a cause and effect.

Quote
For once I'm actually caught up in my New Yorkers, but that's because there was one issue that literally had only one article in it that interested me, the piece about Harriet Beecher Stowe, so I passed that issue on to my friend here at work quite quickly.

I haven't seen the HBS article yet, but that sounds interesting. I've been reading short stories in the fiction issue.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 26, 2011, 10:18:22 pm
Yes, I've read his book The Rise of the Creative Class.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: chowhound on June 28, 2011, 02:11:22 pm
Richard Florida is an American who is currently living and teaching in Toronto:

     

ROTMAN NEWS

1

Creative Class Thinker Joins Rotman School of Management

Toronto, July 16, 2007 -- A noted researcher, whose discovery of the “creative class” has been lauded by the Harvard Business Review as a major breakthrough idea, has joined the faculty of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Richard Florida will be a professor of business economics and the Academic Director of the newly established Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School.

Prof. Florida is well known for his work on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation. In the last five years, he has penned the international bestseller, The Rise of the Creative Class and also The Flight of the Creative Class, which launched an intellectual revolution that has changed the way companies, nations, and communities compete and thrive.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 28, 2011, 02:14:43 pm
Prof. Florida is well known for his work on economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation. In the last five years, he has penned the international bestseller, The Rise of the Creative Class and also The Flight of the Creative Class, which launched an intellectual revolution that has changed the way companies, nations, and communities compete and thrive.

Gee. I don't have the issue any more, but I'm sure I remember that some of the other authors discussed in that issue did not think so highly of Prof. Florida.

Professional rivalry, I guess.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 28, 2011, 02:20:25 pm
Gee. I don't have the issue any more, but I'm sure I remember that some of the other authors discussed in that issue did not think so highly of Prof. Florida.

Professional rivalry, I guess.  :-\

That blurb reads like it was written by his publicist!! I was a little underwhelmed by the book myself, which seemed an unnecessary elaboration of a rather thin idea.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 28, 2011, 02:46:17 pm
That blurb reads like it was written by his publicist!!

It is a bit over-the-top, isn't it?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Brown Eyes on July 02, 2011, 11:59:24 pm

This is a horribly embarrassing question for a long-time Brokie to be asking... but could you remind me what date BBM first appeared in The New Yorker?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 03, 2011, 12:03:24 am
Happy to oblige: October 13, 1997. A date that is incised in my memory!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Brown Eyes on July 03, 2011, 12:35:54 am
Thanks Lee!

I've been having a Brokie nostalgia trip lately.  Just tonight I un-earthed a bunch of my Brokie memorabilia from boxes.  It's been fun.  I don't own a copy of that New Yorker.  Seems like one of the best pieces of Brokie history/ material probably.
:)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 09, 2011, 02:57:24 pm
The July 11/18 edition is wonderful. So far I've read a hilarious David Sedaris essay that had me cackling so loudly while sitting on the patio I thought the neighbors might wonder what's up, an interesting profile of a kind of oddball tech visionary named Jaron Lanier, and another interesting profile of Sheryl Sandberg, a top executive at Facebook, that examines the reason for the scarcity of women in the tech industry.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 09, 2011, 03:42:19 pm
The July 11/18 edition is wonderful. So far I've read a hilarious David Sedaris essay that had me cackling so loudly while sitting on the patio I thought the neighbors might wonder what's up.

I read that while I was eating lunch today. Chrissi would love the section on learning German.  ;D 

The article reminded me very much of a James Thurber piece called "There's No Place Like Home," about learning to speak French from a phrase book. I know the Thurber piece from its inclusion in the collection called My World--And Welcome To It (anybody else remember that short-lived TV series?), but like as not the article first appeared--where else?--in The New Yorker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 09, 2011, 09:12:55 pm
I read that while I was eating lunch today. Chrissi would love the section on learning German.  ;D 

Yes! I thought of Chrissi when I read ... hold on, I'm going to go get the magazine so I can quote it correctly ... OK, here it is:

"The first time I went [to Germany], in 1999, I couldn't bring myself to say so much as a Guten Morgen. The sounds felt false coming out of my mouth, so instead I spent my time speaking English apologetically. Not that apologies were needed. In Paris, yes, but in Berlin people's attitude is 'Thank you for allowing me to practice my perfect English.' And I do mean perfect. 'Are you from Minnesota?' I kept asking."

Also, I know exactly what he means about feeling like foreign languages sound false coming out of one's own mouth. In order to pronounce things correctly, you have to get out of your own way and get over feeling fake about putting on someone else's accent.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2011, 01:25:26 pm
I finished the Sheryl Sandberg article over lunch today (then passed the magazine on to my coworker). As I was working my way through the article, I thought the part on the issue of mentoring was interesting, but by the time I finished the article I felt vaguely annoyed with myself for wasting my time on the "issues" facing this enormously fortunate and privileged woman and the others like her mentioned in the article.

I preferred the article about the bicyclists in Rwanda.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 14, 2011, 08:41:40 pm
by the time I finished the article I felt vaguely annoyed with myself for wasting my time on the "issues" facing this enormously fortunate and privileged woman and the others like her mentioned in the article.

Wow, you read it differently than I did. Obviously she is fortunate. I thought that was the point -- she's an extreme anomaly.

In other words, what I thought was the "issue" is that so few women in general are able to become as enormously fortunate as she is by rising through the ranks in the technology industry, as the statistics mentioned early in the piece pretty clearly showed. The ones who have issues, consequently, are not the Sheryl Sandbergs, it's the ones we don't hear about because they don't have those jobs.

Quote
I preferred the article about the bicyclists in Rwanda.

I skimmed that one. I like Philip Gourevitch, but it was pretty long and it didn't grab me right away.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2011, 09:05:36 pm
Wow, you read it differently than I did. Obviously she is fortunate. I thought that was the point -- she's an extreme anomaly.

In other words, what I thought was the "issue" is that so few women in general are able to become as enormously fortunate as she is by rising through the ranks in the technology industry, as the statistics mentioned early in the piece pretty clearly showed. The ones who have issues, consequently, are not the Sheryl Sandbergs, it's the ones we don't hear about because they don't have those jobs.

Yes, I guess I did end up reading it differently. Part of my point was that Sheryl Sandberg was "enormously fortunate" from the get-go: Ivy League education, Lawrence Summers as her mentor, and so forth. For me, as a child of the Working Class, I ended up asking myself, Do I really give a flip whether women can rise to the top ranks of the technology industry? No. That's an issue for an extremely small, privileged group of people to begin with.

Do I really care who's in the top ranks of the technology industry, male or female? No.

Understand that I'm not denying the existence of a glass ceiling. I would just be more engaged, and more sympathetic, to an article, for example, about women trying to become middle managers at Walmart, rather than an article like this one, about a small handful of women becoming millionaires in the technology industry.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 14, 2011, 11:11:02 pm
I actually had similar feelings as you, Jeff, as I read the article. I wasn't able to finish it, either.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 14, 2011, 11:37:50 pm
Yes, I guess I did end up reading it differently. Part of my point was that Sheryl Sandberg was "enormously fortunate" from the get-go: Ivy League education, Lawrence Summers as her mentor, and so forth. For me, as a child of the Working Class, I ended up asking myself, Do I really give a flip whether women can rise to the top ranks of the technology industry? No. That's an issue for an extremely small, privileged group of people to begin with.

Do I really care who's in the top ranks of the technology industry, male or female? No.

Understand that I'm not denying the existence of a glass ceiling. I would just be more engaged, and more sympathetic, to an article, for example, about women trying to become middle managers at Walmart, rather than an article like this one, about a small handful of women becoming millionaires in the technology industry.

I don't know for sure, and I could easily be wrong, but I would guess it's possible that by now it's not that hard for women to become middle managers at Walmart.

In fact, my feeling is that in most professional fields women are represented at many levels -- especially on the lower rungs, like middle managers at Walmart -- except at the very top, where they are still a tiny minority. And apparently the minority is even smaller in the tech industry, which isn't known for being particularly female-friendly in the first place. But it happens in other big companies, as well as in public office and other areas.

That doesn't directly affect me in any way I can think of (my own profession is fairly woman-friendly; the editor of the newspaper where I work is a woman; I'm not a millionaire; I'm not all that interested in the tech industry; I don't have daughters, etc.). But it's important to me in the same way, say, marriage equality is important to me even though it doesn't affect me directly, because I want everybody to have the same opportunities.

What's the solution, in this case? I think it's structural and institutional and societal. Sandberg thinks it's more personal -- that the problem is that women aren't stepping forward and grabbing the bull by the horns. I disagree with her, but I found it interesting to hear her side.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 15, 2011, 08:44:41 am
Well, here's an odd one: I'm actually "ahead" of my New Yorkers!

I guess because that one issue had only one article (the piece on Harriet Beecher Stowe) that I wanted to read, and the last issue being a two-week issue, I've actually finished up all the issues in my queue. Today being a Friday, I'll read a newspaper at lunch, but after that, I don't know what I'll read until the next New Yorker arrives.

Incidentally, I've also started a file of editing/proofreading goofs in the magazine. Eventually I will send them to the editor. The last straw that made me start this file was actually the Sandberg article. Sombody's name went from Hewlett to Hewitt and back again within the space of two paragraphs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 15, 2011, 08:46:30 am
I don't know for sure, and I could easily be wrong, but I would guess it's possible that by now it's not that hard for women to become middle managers at Walmart.

That might be true. I don't know. When I dreamed up that hypothetical topic, I was thinking of that class-action lawsuit over pay that was recently thrown out of court. I do have it somewhere in my memory that Walmart has been accused of not being particularly woman-friendly.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 15, 2011, 10:01:29 am
That might be true. I don't know. When I dreamed up that hypothetical topic, I was thinking of that class-action lawsuit over pay that was recently thrown out of court. I do have it somewhere in my memory that Walmart has been accused of not being particularly woman-friendly.

That could be.

But, and not to prolong this quibble forever, now that I think about it, even if the Walmart workers did have a problem I doubt that an article about them would be inherently more interesting to me than an article about people at the upper echelons of the tech industry. I've worked at Kmart and at Macy's, so I feel fairly familiar with what life is like in the former group. Whereas the latter is a group I'll never be a part of, so that article to me was a peek into that world. It was interesting, to me, to see what kind of people wind up there.

Today being a Friday, I'll read a newspaper at lunch, but after that, I don't know what I'll read until the next New Yorker arrives.

Wow, that never happens to me. In just about every room of my house there are stacks of books and magazines waiting to be read. In fact, I'm halfway into at least five books as we speak and have several more in the queue. I'll never even put a dent in the whole collection, of course, but at the same time it's hard to throw them away.

Quote
Incidentally, I've also started a file of editing/proofreading goofs in the magazine. Eventually I will send them to the editor.

Maybe they'll hire you!  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2011, 08:52:48 am
Yee-haw! Finally, I've got a New Yorker to read again! No more dragging a heavy book to work just to have something to read over lunch!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2011, 01:01:30 pm
Now, here's something that I really like about The New Yorker: So often, it seems to me, reviews are so much more than just reviews. The Hilton Als review in the July 25 issue of the new production of Terrence McNally's Master Class, with Tyne Daly as Maria Callas, is a case in point.

Als begins with a reminiscence of the opera queens he knew in the 1980s, many of whom are now dead of AIDS. Then he gives us benighted provincials some biographical information on Callas herself. Only then does he turn to the new production of McNally's play and Daly's performance as Callas. He speaks very highly of both.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on July 21, 2011, 10:07:32 pm
Now, here's something that I really like about The New Yorker: So often, it seems to me, reviews are so much more than just reviews. The Hilton Als review in the July 25 issue of the new production of Terrence McNally's Master Class, with Tyne Daly as Maria Callas, is a case in point.

Als begins with a reminiscence of the opera queens he knew in the 1980s, many of whom are now dead of AIDS. Then he gives us benighted provincials some biographical information on Callas herself. Only then does he turn to the new production of McNally's play and Daly's performance as Callas. He speaks very highly of both.  :)

I saw Master Class a few weeks ago, largely to support a colleague of mine who directed it, and thought it was really good, and Tyne Daly also.  But no matter how good the play and performances, the best parts are the monologues, during which the lights dim and you hear Callas's actual voice fill the theater in excerpts from La Sonnambula and Macbeth.  She can still make the hair stand up on my neck.  What a great artist.  8)

I'm so glad Terrence McNally wrote that play so that people outside the opera world can get a glimpse of the power of great artistry and be reminded of who and what Callas was. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on July 22, 2011, 01:13:57 pm
I loved Master Class too.  I saw it many years ago in Boston, with Faye Dunaway--brilliaint! 

Meanwhile, David Sedaris's article in the current New Yorker on learning languages is hilarious.  I love how he describes German: "It's like English, but sideways."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 22, 2011, 01:44:26 pm
Meanwhile, David Sedaris's article in the current New Yorker on learning languages is hilarious.  I love how he describes German: "It's like English, but sideways."

All those people from Minnesota. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 23, 2011, 11:08:46 am
Calvin Trillin's memoirish article about the Freedom Riders in the most recent issue is really good.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 23, 2011, 01:29:54 pm
Calvin Trillin's memoirish article about the Freedom Riders in the most recent issue is really good.

I'm looking forward to that one. This issue has a lot of good stuff. The article on Wilkie Collins is good, too. I knew the name and the titles of his two most famous works, but I knew nothing about his life.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 25, 2011, 01:14:07 pm
I liked Alec Wilkinson's article on the Tiny House Movement. I'd like to know more about that--like, What do you do about plumbing?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 27, 2011, 01:25:31 pm
Yesterday at lunch I finished Cavlin Trillin's article about the Freedom Rides. Today at lunch I finished Jane Kramer's article about the French intellectual Elisabeth Badinter.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 27, 2011, 02:37:44 pm
Yesterday at lunch I finished Cavlin Trillin's article about the Freedom Rides. Today at lunch I finished Jane Kramer's article about the French intellectual Elisabeth Badinter.

I read and enjoyed both. Though I also thought the Badinter piece was kind of all over the place; when I finished I wasn't sure I had a really cohesive idea of what Badinter's main points are. I would have liked a tiny bit less objectivity, too -- perhaps more of Kramer's analysis of the ideas.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 27, 2011, 02:56:00 pm
Though I also thought the Badinter piece was kind of all over the place; when I finished I wasn't sure I had a really cohesive idea of what Badinter's main points are. I would have liked a tiny bit less objectivity, too -- perhaps more of Kramer's analysis of the ideas.

She came across to me as something of a privileged dilettante, though the main points that stick with me are her support for the French law to ban the burqa and her opposition to anything that puts "motherhood" ahead of a woman's right to self-accualization.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 27, 2011, 05:26:47 pm
She came across to me as something of a privileged dilettante, though the main points that stick with me are her support for the French law to ban the burqa and her opposition to anything that puts "motherhood" ahead of a woman's right to self-accualization.

Right, but I felt like the article kind of jumped around rather than making a cohesive point or flowing in some logical direction. She opposes anything that puts "nature" ahead of women's advancement! Oh, and she's privileged and has had a cushy life! Oh, and she wants to ban the burqa! Oh, and here's what some American feminist has to say about her! Oh, and she doesn't really like to socialize, but does occasionally! Oh, and here's how her husband liked writing with her! Oh, and here's what she has studied about the 18th century! Oh, and this is her favorite philosopher!

I would have chosen one thing to focus on -- my choice would be the first, the nature vs. women's advancement, which I personally find fascinating -- and delved into that. Most of the other stuff would be mentioned only in passing or omitted altogether.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 28, 2011, 02:56:02 pm
Today I read the article about the hedge fund guy. Totally beyond me.  :(

I think I'd rather read about overly privileged French feminists.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 28, 2011, 06:42:00 pm
I read and enjoyed both. Though I also thought the Badinter piece was kind of all over the place; when I finished I wasn't sure I had a really cohesive idea of what Badinter's main points are. I would have liked a tiny bit less objectivity, too -- perhaps more of Kramer's analysis of the ideas.



My thoughts exactly! Although I couldn't stop reading out of a fascination for the bizarre and disorganized. It was kind of like watching a bear run away, all disjointed like he's falling apart.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 06, 2011, 12:07:06 pm
I've read the Alex Ross piece on Oscar Wilde in the August 8 issue--makes me want to go back and reread The Picture of Dorian Gray to look for all the discreet gay allusions that I don't remember seeing when I read it years ago.  ;D

Also makes me want to look up Alex Ross; apparently he's gay and married to his partner.

Anyway, what really fascinated me was to learn that Arthur Conan Doyle knew Oscar Wilde, and they both published in Lippincott's magazine, which was published here in Philadelphia--the Lippincott name endured in publishing for well over a hundred years, actually. I had never thought about Conan Doyle and Wilde moving in the same circles.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 06, 2011, 04:08:01 pm
If you had seen the new PBS Sherlock (I know, I know, you're not interested) the gay theme would rocket right out at you and you'd see Wilde's influence on Doyle!! Also, it's insightful to go back and read the original stories or watch the earlier TV versions after seeing the latest incarnation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 07, 2011, 09:40:15 pm
Pooh! Sherlock Holmes and John Watson ain't queer. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 07, 2011, 11:01:10 pm
Pooh! Sherlock Holmes and John Watson ain't queer. ...  ;D

Nobody's business but theirs.  ;D

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on August 08, 2011, 12:08:03 am
Pooh! Sherlock Holmes and John Watson ain't queer. ...  ;D

Well, Sherlock sure seems to think he has good gaydar:

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zG8CbCiBD4[/youtube]
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Monika on August 08, 2011, 08:19:56 am
I had never thought about Conan Doyle and Wilde moving in the same circles.
I wouldn´t have guessed it either. Cool to know.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 08, 2011, 08:43:14 am
Nobody's business but theirs.  ;D

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 08, 2011, 01:41:44 pm
Last night I was reading Murder in Baker Street: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes, a kind of collection of fan fiction. The first story by Stuart Kaminsky, "The Man From Capetown" had the climactic murder scene set at the Cadogan Hotel, described as "known to be the London residence of Lilly Langtree and rumoured to be an occasional hideaway of the notorious playwright Oscar Wilde. "

It is too soon to say since I'm just on the second story, but so far the writing doesn't measure up to Doyle. But it is interesting to see how the various authors interpret his work.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 08, 2011, 01:57:07 pm
Last night I was reading Murder in Baker Street: New Tales of Sherlock Holmes, a kind of collection of fan fiction. The first story by Stuart Kaminsky, "The Man From Capetown" had the climactic murder scene set at the Cadogan Hotel, described as "known to be the London residence of Lilly Langtree and rumoured to be an occasional hideaway of the notorious playwright Oscar Wilde. "

It is too soon to say since I'm just on the second story, but so far the writing doesn't measure up to Doyle. But it is interesting to see how the various authors interpret his work.

It happens. For years I wanted to read the stories where Holmes goes after Dracula and then after Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. When I finally found a copy of the book, I found both stories kind of disappointing.

OTOH, I enjoyed Nicholas Meyer's "editions" of a few long-lost manuscripts of Dr. Watson.  ;D

I suppose all True Believers still hope for the discovery of the manuscript of the case involving the Giant Rat of Sumatra.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 09, 2011, 01:03:32 pm
I am currently reading the article in the August 8 issue about the mission to take out Osama bin Laden. All American taxpayers should be pleased to learn that the White House orders sandwich platters from Costco instead of from some place more expensive.  ;D

On a much, MUCH more serious note, it troubles me to read the quotations indicating that the bin Laden raid was carried out "for God and Country." For "Country" by all means, but, to keep this short, the "God" part troubles me because I think every reference to the Almighty lends credence to claims by radical Islamic fundamentalists that the West is on some sort of "crusade" against Islam.

I simply won't go into what I as a Christian feel about that reference to God, but I will assure you that I'm not in favor of it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 09, 2011, 11:48:39 pm
I am currently reading the article in the August 8 issue about the mission to take out Osama bin Laden.

I've heard this is a really good piece. Looking forward to it.

Quote
All American taxpayers should be pleased to learn that the White House orders sandwich platters from Costco instead of from some place more expensive.  ;D

Yes, and thank goodness that meanwhile the Tea Party is preserving the right of the wealthy-American community to order their sandwiches from [insert name of restaurant so swanky that I've never even heard of it because I won't be able to afford to eat there in my lifetime].

Quote
On a much, MUCH more serious note, it troubles me to read the quotations indicating that the bin Laden raid was carried out "for God and Country." For "Country" by all means, but, to keep this short, the "God" part troubles me because I think every reference to the Almighty lends credence to claims by radical Islamic fundamentalists that the West is on some sort of "crusade" against Islam.

I simply won't go into what I as a Christian feel about that reference to God, but I will assure you that I'm not in favor of it.

Excellent point. That's troubling to read as a non-Christian, too. For the reason you mention, but also because people holding the notion that there is a God who takes sides in the ridiculous wars on Earth have always disgusted me. Even when, from my POV, my own side seems clearly morally superior (the North in the Civil War; the Allies in WWII) it is disgusting to assume that God would be monitoring things from on high and have an opinion on the preferred outcome (in which case, why wouldn't God intervene on behalf of the "good" side and avoid the war entirely?).

And it's particularly repulsive in this case, because when Americans hear Islamic terrorists say they're fighting on behalf of Allah or because they expect to get 72 virgins in Heaven or whatever, Americans typically find it ridiculous. But -- and here's the repulsive part -- not because it's ridiculous for anyone to think that God's on their side exclusively, but because they think it's ridiculous to think that God is on THEIR (Islam's) side, when clearly (they think) God is on their own side. And they might not have 72 virgins in Heaven, but gosh darn it they'll have wings and a harp.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2011, 08:43:20 am
I've heard this is a really good piece. Looking forward to it.

It really is very good.

Quote
And it's particularly repulsive in this case, because when Americans hear Islamic terrorists say they're fighting on behalf of Allah or because they expect to get 72 virgins in Heaven or whatever, Americans typically find it ridiculous. But -- and here's the repulsive part -- not because it's ridiculous for anyone to think that God's on their side exclusively, but because they think it's ridiculous to think that God is on THEIR (Islam's) side, when clearly (they think) God is on their own side. And they might not have 72 virgins in Heaven, but gosh darn it they'll have wings and a harp.

When "they" try to turn their fight, not to say their episodes of mass murder and atrocity, into whatever is the Islamic equivalent of a "crusade" on behalf of Allah, it can be very, VERY difficult not to respond in kind.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 10, 2011, 09:19:13 am
When "they" try to turn their fight, not to say their episodes of mass murder and atrocity, into whatever is the Islamic equivalent of a "crusade" on behalf of Allah, it can be very, VERY difficult not to respond in kind.  :(

Perhaps. But of course the mature response is to note the flaw in the idea itself, not to indulge in it equally.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2011, 10:31:59 am
Perhaps. But of course the mature response is to note the flaw in the idea itself, not to indulge in it equally.

Of course. My point is really the struggle against the knee-jerk, gut-level urge to respond likewise, to respond, in effect, "OK, you want a Holy War? We'll give you a Holy War!"

Heh. Even without indulging in the rhetoric of Holy War and Crusade, after the events of last weekend I think there is a visceral desire to bomb Afghanistan back into the Stone Age--and to wonder whether anybody other than the Afghanis, and maybe the Pakistanis, would really care?  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 10, 2011, 03:27:34 pm
I am currently reading the article in the August 8 issue about the mission to take out Osama bin Laden. All American taxpayers should be pleased to learn that the White House orders sandwich platters from Costco instead of from some place more expensive.  ;D

On a much, MUCH more serious note, it troubles me to read the quotations indicating that the bin Laden raid was carried out "for God and Country." For "Country" by all means, but, to keep this short, the "God" part troubles me because I think every reference to the Almighty lends credence to claims by radical Islamic fundamentalists that the West is on some sort of "crusade" against Islam.

I simply won't go into what I as a Christian feel about that reference to God, but I will assure you that I'm not in favor of it.

That phrase was regrettable. The person who said it, who had just killed "Geronimo" was probably not thinking about the full ramifications of what he was saying. Perhaps he just meant that what was done was for moral as well as political reasons.

The article was one of those that you just can't put down!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2011, 03:48:59 pm
The article was one of those that you just can't put down!!

You can say that twice and mean it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 10, 2011, 05:04:11 pm
Here's a link to the article, everyone:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 13, 2011, 03:25:17 am
I actually really liked the article immediately after that, the one by Adam Gopnik about how dogs became dogs (it's thought that wolves started hanging around human settlements to scavenge food; the more friendly ones got fed and rewarded and eventually taken in and, through inadvertent selective breeding of the friendlier ones, become more and more pet-like). I read a National Geographic article a few weeks ago that indicates scientists are now deliberately doing the same thing with foxes. You can't usually take a wild animal in and train it to behave like a pet, but in some cases apparently you can breed it to become a pet after several generations. So they've created foxes that act like friendly dogs.

An interesting but unmentioned sidenote to that piece: At one point, Gopnik mentions that some people tend to describe dog thinking in really mechanical terms (e.g., they act loving to their owners because they get rewarded with food, etc.), and notes that at one time we thought babies didn't have much in the way of nuanced thoughts and feelings, either. But now scientists have discovered that babies actually do complex inner lives (though, like dogs, they aren't based on language). What he doesn't say is that his sister, Alison Gopnik, is a nationally renowned researcher in this very field. She co-wrote "The Scientist in the Crib." I interviewed her a couple of times.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 13, 2011, 05:17:26 pm
I actually really liked the article immediately after that, the one by Adam Gopnik about how dogs became dogs.

I liked that article, too. I rather like the notion that perhaps humans didn't choose dogs, that instead dogs chose us.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 14, 2011, 02:15:37 am
I liked that article, too. I rather like the notion that perhaps humans didn't choose dogs, that instead dogs chose us.  ;D

Apparently some plants have done the same thing. A fascinating book I read a few years back is Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire (Pollan normally writes for the NYT magazine, not the NYer, so this is slightly OT), in which he talks about plants that have evolved to interact with humans. Here's the description from his website:

The Botany of Desire
A Plant's-Eye View of the World


In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed reciprocal relationships similar to that of honeybees and flowers. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 14, 2011, 09:31:04 pm
I've read the Alex Ross piece on Oscar Wilde in the August 8 issue--makes me want to go back and reread The Picture of Dorian Gray to look for all the discreet gay allusions that I don't remember seeing when I read it years ago.  ;D

Also makes me want to look up Alex Ross; apparently he's gay and married to his partner.

Anyway, what really fascinated me was to learn that Arthur Conan Doyle knew Oscar Wilde, and they both published in Lippincott's magazine, which was published here in Philadelphia--the Lippincott name endured in publishing for well over a hundred years, actually. I had never thought about Conan Doyle and Wilde moving in the same circles.

There's a new book coming out about Dorian Gray by Nicholas Frankel this year and yesterday he recommended books of "decadent writing of the 19th century." The first was a book by my ancestor, Robert Louis Stevenson, called The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. Doyle...Wilde...Stevenson...the game is afoot!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 15, 2011, 08:55:31 am
The Botany of Desire
A Plant's-Eye View of the World


In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed reciprocal relationships similar to that of honeybees and flowers. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings. And just as we’ve benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?

Potatoes = control?  ???  I guess I need to read the book.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 15, 2011, 12:31:55 pm
Potatoes = control?  ???  I guess I need to read the book.  ???

I can't remember the exact argument regarding potatoes, other than that they're, obviously, food. The overall point is that plants that provided something useful to humans flourished, while those that didn't didn't, so it was like they "learned" through evolution to please humans.

Or something like that.  ::) ;D

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 30, 2011, 01:14:00 pm
I'm reading the articled about Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the Aug. 29 issue. I would never have imagined that I would ever have anything good to say about Clarence Thomas, but I actually do approve his practice of hiring clerks from less prominent or lesser known law schools than Harvard and Yale. I think that's a good idea.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 06, 2011, 12:54:46 pm
Finished the Timothy Ferriss article (Sept. 5 issue) over lunch today. Sounds like a high-end snake oil salesman, you ask me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 06, 2011, 01:46:22 pm
Finished the Timothy Ferriss article (Sept. 5 issue) over lunch today. Sounds like a high-end snake oil salesman, you ask me.

Yes, especially the part about the 15 minute orgasm!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 07, 2011, 01:30:20 pm
Well, I had a great time at lunch today reading Louis Menand's piece on Dwight Macdonald in the September 5 issue. Makes me want to run out and read some Macdonald.

But then, I also always enjoying reading Louis Menand. I envy people who get to have him for English at Harvard. I love sentences like this:

Quote
A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist.

 ;D

Of course, with regard to Macdonald's financial requirements, Menand does mention that Macdonald married a woman who had a trust fund.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 07, 2011, 08:59:14 pm
But then, I also always enjoying reading Louis Menand. I envy people who get to have him for English at Harvard. I love sentences like this:

He has claimed he never rewrites, that the sentences you read are exactly what he wrote the first time.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 07, 2011, 09:10:13 pm
He has claimed he never rewrites, that the sentences you read are exactly what he wrote the first time.

 :o

Actually, that sentence I quoted made me think of you, Katharine.  ;)

At least the part about the outsized curiosity and skepticism.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 07, 2011, 11:54:05 pm
:o

Actually, that sentence I quoted made me think of you, Katharine.  ;)

At least the part about the outsized curiosity and skepticism.  :)

 :laugh:  8)  Thanks -- I think.

You could throw modest financial requirements in the mix, too. Indifference to reputation? Well, that depends, I guess.  ;D

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 08, 2011, 01:59:31 pm
:laugh:  8)  Thanks -- I think.

You're welcome, I'm sure. Of course "outsized curiosity and skepticsm" is a good thing!

Quote
You could throw modest financial requirements in the mix, too.

I left it out because you have kids.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 08, 2011, 05:51:54 pm
I left it out because you have kids.

True, my financial requirements are no longer so modest. Still too modest for their taste, though.  ::)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 08, 2011, 07:48:23 pm
True, my financial requirements are no longer so modest. Still too modest for their taste, though.  ::)



Isn't that the truth!! Today my son sold one of his bikes for $1K which he pocketed. The price we paid for it new: $7999.00  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2011, 01:01:45 pm
Anybody else checked out the schedule for this year's New Yorker Festival, published in the Sept. 15 issue?

Wow. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 14, 2011, 05:12:44 pm
Anybody else checked out the schedule for this year's New Yorker Festival, published in the Sept. 15 issue?

Wow. ...

I did. I thought I might watch some of it online later. I have watched videos of past segments, including talks by Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2011, 06:34:56 pm
I did. I thought I might watch some of it online later. I have watched videos of past segments, including talks by Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki.

I'm sure they're both fascinating to hear!

One of these days I'll get around to reading The Tipping Point. ...  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 14, 2011, 07:23:45 pm
I'm sure they're both fascinating to hear!

Yes. That's where I first heard that, up until the Reagan Administration or so, the highest income-earners were taxed at 75 percent or whatever it was. Nowadays, that's more widely known, but it was news to me at the time.

Quote
One of these days I'll get around to reading The Tipping Point. ...  ::)

You should! It's good. So is "Outliers."


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: louisev on September 14, 2011, 08:23:09 pm
Yes. That's where I first heard that, up until the Reagan Administration or so, the highest income-earners were taxed at 75 percent or whatever it was. Nowadays, that's more widely known, but it was news to me at the time.



90% actually.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2011, 10:07:50 pm
You should! It's good. So is "Outliers."

Oh, well, at least I've read the New Yorker articles based on The Tipping Point and Outliers.  ;D

Funny, I would be kind of interested to hear Jon Lee Anderson and Dexter Filkins. Or, rather, I have to admit I'm curious as to what they look like. I don't exactly like Jon Lee Anderson's articles; they're too long, and they put me to sleep, but I slog through them anyway because I figure they're good for me. And I just like to know what someone with a neat name like "Dexter Filkins" looks like.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 14, 2011, 10:23:12 pm
I always imagine him looking like the Jon Anderson of Yes fame.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 15, 2011, 08:15:39 am
90% actually.

Right, but the last time it was 90% was in the '50s. Since I was making reference to the Reagan Administration, which was the turning point, I went lower and sort of split the difference. Actually, in 1980 it was 70%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 15, 2011, 09:08:17 am
I always imagine him looking like the Jon Anderson of Yes fame.

I don't know who he is, but I figure someone named "Jon Lee" must be from the South.

Edit to add: Well, his mother taught in Florida. ...  ;D

At least this answers my question about what he looks like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lee_Anderson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lee_Anderson)

Dang. No picture of Dexter Filkins.  >:(

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Filkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Filkins)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 20, 2011, 01:11:02 pm
From my blog, today:

Quote
At lunch today I read Gay Talese's article in the Sept. 19 New Yorker about Tony Bennett recording "The Lady is a Tramp" as a duet with Lady Gaga. I loved the article! I loved that Tony Bennett called Lady Gaga "a sweet little Italian-American girl who studied at N.Y.U."   I thought it was very interesting that Lady Gaga has a vocal coach; somehow, I just don't associate in my mind singers like her having vocal coaches, yet, according to the article, her coach has also worked with Mick Jagger, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Bono, and Jon Bon Jovi.

I also learned a bit about the song. Possibly I knew it was Rodgers and Hart and had just forgotten it, but I'm pretty sure I didn't know it was a show tune, from Babes in Arms (1937).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 20, 2011, 01:55:50 pm
The only thing I didn't like about it was that it seemed to be a manufactured story.

So, TB had his birthday party in New York on the night of the Emmys and apparently Alec Baldwin, pissed that a joke he told about Rupert Murdoch was cut, went to the party instead of the Emmys. I missed the show because I had a slight eye infection. Looks like I didn't miss much!!

There's an upcoming story about the lone pharmacist in Nucla, Colorado that is very much worth a look.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 20, 2011, 02:02:48 pm
The only thing I didn't like about it was that it seemed to be a manufactured story.

I haven't read the story, but I'm curious about what you mean. Manufactured how?

Quote
I missed the show because I had a slight eye infection. Looks like I didn't miss much!!

I didn't see it either, though I did see some clips posted on blogs and so on the next day that were amusing.

Quote
There's an upcoming story about the lone pharmacist in Nucla, Colorado that is very much worth a look.

I'll look for it!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 20, 2011, 02:39:30 pm
I haven't read the story, but I'm curious about what you mean. Manufactured how?


Oh, it was just a mash-up of Talese, Bennett, and Gaga, as if there was an editorial meeting and someone said, "What can we do to promote Tony Bennett with his birthday coming up?"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 21, 2011, 04:58:07 pm
I really enjoyed Alice Munro's short memoir "Dear Life" and am looking forward to reading about how T.S. Eliot became T.S. Eliot and about Wilhelm Reich and the sexual revolution. The fiction based on Pat Nixon, not so much.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 21, 2011, 08:29:57 pm
I really enjoyed Alice Munro's short memoir "Dear Life" and am looking forward to reading about how T.S. Eliot became T.S. Eliot and about Wilhelm Reich and the sexual revolution. The fiction based on Pat Nixon, not so much.

I read the Alice Munro piece over lunch today. I enjoyed it. I didn't get the T.S. Eliot article, and I found the sexual revolution article only so-so. The Pat Nixon fiction doesn't interest me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 23, 2011, 08:37:57 pm
Over coffee and dessert after my dinner this evening I jumped ahead to the Sept. 26 issue to read Peter Hessler's piece about the man who runs the drug store in Nucla, Colorado. I first got out my atlas to see exactly where Nucla is. I wasn't that terribly far from it on my Durango ramble back at Memorial Day.

Anyway, the story had a surprisingly prominent gay angle. The druggist's older brother had been gay and basically went away to Chicago and became estranged from the family because his father was not accepting of his sexual orientation. He died of AIDs, but according to his wishes, the family scattered his ashes where he directed in Colorado. (The article didn't say whether anybody put a stone up anywhere.)

And then there was the story of the elderly closeted gay man who turned out to be connected to the once-powerful Penrose family of Philadelphia (in the first half of the 20th century, Boies Penrose of Philadelphia was a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania and a political boss of Pennsylvania). He was also estranged from his family because he was gay.

I thought this was a good article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 23, 2011, 08:45:19 pm

There's an upcoming story about the lone pharmacist in Nucla, Colorado that is very much worth a look.

Glad you liked it, friend!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 23, 2011, 08:48:15 pm
Glad you liked it, friend!

I can imagine what Annie Proulx might have made of the story of Mr. Brick.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 23, 2011, 09:13:45 pm
If you liked that story, you might like Emus Loose in Egnar, (http://www.amazon.com/Emus-Loose-Egnar-Stories-Small/dp/0803230168) which is about small town journalism in Colorado.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 23, 2011, 10:28:56 pm
I'm still reading the September 19th issue, and found a Brokeism in Ariel Levy's review of books about sexual evolutions of the past: "On warm spring evenings, [George Boyce] and a companion would roam around town looking for anonymous action with amenable young women. Their pursuits were almost always fruitful. Often ...a bold stare would suffice."

...like Aguirre's!!  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2011, 01:25:08 pm
Granted it's in an ad for MSNBC, but has anyone noticed the statement in the Sept. 19 issue that presumably really does come from Chris Matthews?

"Over time, people who advance liberties tend to win the argument, whether it's for women, African Americans, immigrants, or the gay community. In the end, America takes the side of the people looking for rights. That's one of the wonders of this country. Eventually, we live up to our ideals."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2011, 01:28:45 pm
Over lunch today, I read the Sept. 19 article about the playwright Katori Hall. Imagine, she's got Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett doing her play, The Mountaintop, on Broadway!

As a fan of hats myself, I was charmed by the author's comment that Hall "doesn't shy from hats."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 01, 2011, 10:18:58 am
Oct. 3 is one of the best New Yorkers in memory. I have already read Mindy Kaling's funny and true piece about romcoms, and Elizabeth Kolbert's review of Steven Pinker's book, which I've been interested in. Now I'm starting Atul Gawande, who is never not interesting, and looking forward to Clapinto and Collins. and will probably even read Thomas McGuane's fiction (read the opening, and it looks promising). Oh, and the Current Cinema is about two movies I want to see: Moneyball and 50/50.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 03, 2011, 12:56:51 pm
I gave up on Janet Malcolm's article (Sept. 26) on the guy who took the photo of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Boring. ...

I like the photograph, except that the color and fabric texture of the dress the queen is wearing reminds me of my La-Z-Boy recliner.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 03, 2011, 10:06:22 pm
I like the photograph, except that the color and fabric texture of the dress the queen is wearing reminds me of my La-Z-Boy recliner.

They were never known for being fashion icons, were they?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Monika on October 04, 2011, 02:22:58 am
Annoying. I can't pay to only access the magazine's web edition. It's not likely that people abroad will pay for the paper edition since the shipment would cost as much as the magazine itself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 05, 2011, 05:51:31 pm
There are actually quite a few international subscribers. But the subscription price is $112 for a year...kind of expensive!! Yes, they should definitely have online subscriptions, at least for international readers!

Continuing in the Swedish theme...I read the long article about IKEA on Monday evening and then went to the new store in South Denver yesterday! There was just one thing I wanted to get. A set of wire cookie cooling racks. But...would you believe they didn't have any?? Amazing!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 06, 2011, 01:07:20 pm
... the Sept. 26 issue to read Peter Hessler's piece about the man who runs the drug store in Nucla, Colorado. I first got out my atlas to see exactly where Nucla is.

Just learned that Hessler received a MacArthur "genius" grant:

http://www.cpr.org/article/Ridgway_Writer_Wins_Genius_Grant (http://www.cpr.org/article/Ridgway_Writer_Wins_Genius_Grant)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 06, 2011, 02:22:13 pm
I'm finally more-or-less finished with that issue. Over lunch today I read the "bullet-proof couture" article.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2011, 09:28:57 pm
Over dessert this evening I finished Atul Gawande's article about coaching. I love his writing.

If I ever need a thyroid operation, I wish I could go to Boston and have him do it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 07, 2011, 10:24:00 pm
He was rather self disparaging, but it was an interesting article.

I'm in the middle of the Taylor Swift bio now.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 07, 2011, 11:41:48 pm
Over dessert this evening I finished Atul Gawande's article about coaching. I love his writing.

If I ever need a thyroid operation, I wish I could go to Boston and have him do it!

Me too!

He was rather self disparaging,

Yes, that's one of the things I like most about him. He's a 46-year-old hotshot surgeon, a Harvard professor, a regular writer for the New Yorker ... and he's totally able to admit being flawed and human.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2011, 11:48:33 pm
Yes, that's one of the things I like most about him. He's a 46-year-old hotshot surgeon, a Harvard professor, a regular writer for the New Yorker ... and he's totally able to admit being flawed and human.

I like that about him, too. I think in his writing he comes across as being very well grounded, with a very honest and realistic view of himself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 10, 2011, 01:28:57 pm
I read the long article about IKEA on Monday evening and then went to the new store in South Denver yesterday! There was just one thing I wanted to get. A set of wire cookie cooling racks. But...would you believe they didn't have any?? Amazing!

I finished that article over lunch today. Company sounds like a cult. I've never been to an IKEA store and I have no desire to visit one. I get a catalog in the mail, and IKEA's stuff is just not to my taste.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 10, 2011, 11:10:21 pm
I'm most of the way through that one. Kind of interesting, though it's a little more than I really need to know about IKEA.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 11, 2011, 08:45:37 am
I'm most of the way through that one. Kind of interesting, though it's a little more than I really need to know about IKEA.

The thought crossed my mind as I was reading it that the article is longer than it really needs to be.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 11, 2011, 08:16:43 pm
The thought crossed my mind as I was reading it that the article is longer than it really needs to be.

Admittedly I still haven't finished it. But frankly, the article reads to me like she felt she needed some tension -- IKEA is a cult! Its founder is weird! They try to control their employees! They want to make everybody in the world the same, and their nefarious scheme to do that is tweaking their catalog displays depending on the country! -- and couldn't find more than a few little minor things, but milked them for all they were worth. So far, my takeaway is that IKEA makes cheap, reasonably attractive, environmentally questionable furniture that a lot of people seem to like. Which is approximately how I felt about the company going in.

Unless of course, there's some big reveal in the last fifth or so that I haven't reached yet.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 11, 2011, 09:23:01 pm
Admittedly I still haven't finished it. But frankly, the article reads to me like she felt she needed some tension -- IKEA is a cult! Its founder is weird! They try to control their employees! They want to make everybody in the world the same, and their nefarious scheme to do that is tweaking their catalog displays depending on the country! -- and couldn't find more than a few little minor things, but milked them for all they were worth. So far, my takeaway is that IKEA makes cheap, reasonably attractive, environmentally questionable furniture that a lot of people seem to like. Which is approximately how I felt about the company going in.

It did seem a little "forced." On the other hand, it also seemed to me to take the usual New Yorker attitude to Europeans: "See the amusing foreigners? Aren't they so quaintly ... amusing?"

Quote
Unless of course, there's some big reveal in the last fifth or so that I haven't reached yet.

I won't spoil the ending for you.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 17, 2011, 11:23:53 pm
I just finished the 16-page article "The Fallout" by Evan Osnos in the October 17 issue. It's a very powerful story from beginning to end about the Japanese tsunami and ensuing nuclear disaster.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 20, 2011, 12:38:33 pm
I'm in the middle of the Taylor Swift bio now.  8)

I finished that article over lunch today. It was interesting, but I found it kind of creepy, too. I'm not sure why.  ???

Maybe it's because teenage girls scare the liver 'n' lights out of me.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 20, 2011, 04:16:36 pm
Maybe it's because teenage girls scare the liver 'n' lights out of me.  ;D

The wha' ...?  :o

I've always heard it as, "scare the living daylights out of me."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 20, 2011, 04:27:42 pm
I finished that article over lunch today. It was interesting, but I found it kind of creepy, too. I'm not sure why.  ???

Maybe it's because teenage girls scare the liver 'n' lights out of me.  ;D

hehe, I feel similarly Jeff, ever since those teenage (Tween age, actually) girls held me down in the church bathroom and made me inhale on a cigarette!!  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 25, 2011, 01:23:32 pm
Goes to show how far behind I am, or, rather, that I have three issues going at once, but at lunch today I finished the Oct. 10 article about Art Pope in North Carolina. It was a very good, though scary and depressing, example of why social conservatives with lots of money are a danger to the country.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 29, 2011, 02:12:36 am
Did you see the ad for "big ass fans" in the back of the latest issue? Double Brokeism!!!  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 29, 2011, 11:36:24 am
Just finished David Sedaris' piece in the Oct. 24th issue. Man, he has really gotten good at combining irreverent humor with deep but subtle poignancy. The last line is a killer.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 15, 2011, 02:15:21 pm
Ordinarily I find Jon Lee Anderson's articles ponderous, tedious, and overly long, but I liked his story on the rise, history, and fall of Muammar Qaddafi (Nov. 7 issue).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 18, 2011, 10:39:45 am
Hurrah, the annual food issue has arrived!!  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 18, 2011, 11:13:38 am
Speaking of food, I loved the article on chef Sean Brock in the Oct. 31 (Cartoon!) issue. (Loved the pic of him with the piglet on page 44!  :D )

Made me hungry to try some Hoppin' John!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 21, 2011, 02:00:53 pm
Jill Lepore's article on the attack on Planned Parenthood in the Nov. 14 issue is absolutely essential reading.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 21, 2011, 06:04:44 pm
Jill Lepore's article on the attack on Planned Parenthood in the Nov. 14 issue is absolutely essential reading.

I'm in the middle of reading it now.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 21, 2011, 10:57:28 pm
Yes I agree about the Planned Parenthood article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2011, 09:38:43 am
Yes I agree about the Planned Parenthood article.

I'm going to be saving this one for the historical points that Lepore makes, such as the one about the percentages of Americans in 1972 who favored leaving the control of a woman's body up to her self and her doctor.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 22, 2011, 11:10:39 am
I'm going to be saving this one for the historical points that Lepore makes, such as the one about the percentages of Americans in 1972 who favored leaving the control of a woman's body up to her self and her doctor.

I'm still reading it. But it's amazing how much our attitudes toward contraception have changed over a century -- whereas once it was immoral and criminal, it's now acceptable or even favorable (even to many -- or most? -- Catholics).

Without drawing any explicit parallels (at least as far as I've read) Lepore subtly suggests how drastically today's opinions might eventually be similarly overturned.

(Also, not that I should need an article for this, but it caused me to pause and marvel at the fact that today we're further from 1960 than 1960 was from 1910 -- at least in time if not in culture.)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2011, 11:44:36 am
I'm still reading it. But it's amazing how much our attitudes toward contraception have changed over a century -- whereas once it was immoral and criminal, it's now acceptable or even favorable (even to many -- or most? -- Catholics).

And not only that. Once it was Republicans who were in favor of "a woman's right to choose" (my words, not Lepore's or the Republican Party's), and now the Party has reversed itself solely in the quest for political power.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 28, 2011, 02:29:27 pm
I liked Malcolm Gladwell's article on the new biography of Steve Jobs in the November 14 issue. I'm not surprised that the genius was also a perfectionist who continued to tweak everything (Gladwell makes Jobs sound like someone I know), but, miserable offender that I am, I must confess to some schadenfreude in learning that the genius was also a jerk and a bully, and someone who stole other people's ideas and also took credit for other people's ideas. He is not someone I would have liked to have known personally.

And I thought it grandly ironic that Jobs, who stole the mouse and the screen icons from IBM, claimed that Bill Gates never created anything new, just stole from other people.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 29, 2011, 12:07:19 am
Malcolm Gladwell had a piece a couple of months ago about how genius is rarely all about one person coming up with some great invention in isolation. The central anecdote was about how IBM developers in a lab setting came up with some great ideas for computers but didn't know how to produce and market them effectively to the masses, and Jobs took those ideas and turned them into consumer-product gold.

I smell a book in the works. Something about how creative genius doesn't exist in isolation, but relies on building upon other people's ideas.

Too bad Steven Johnson recently published a book about that same idea.

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 (http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 29, 2011, 09:38:23 am
Malcolm Gladwell had a piece a couple of months ago about how genius is rarely all about one person coming up with some great invention in isolation. The central anecdote was about how IBM developers in a lab setting came up with some great ideas for computers but didn't know how to produce and market them effectively to the masses, and Jobs took those ideas and turned them into consumer-product gold.

I smell a book in the works. Something about how creative genius doesn't exist in isolation, but relies on building upon other people's ideas.

Too bad Steven Johnson recently published a book about that same idea.

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1 (http://www.amazon.com/Where-Good-Ideas-Come-Innovation/dp/1594485380/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1)

I remember that article, and I agree with you about a forthcoming book.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 29, 2011, 02:34:40 pm
I'm really enjoying the Food Issue (November 21). Over dinner last night, I read, "The King's Meal," and I got quite a kick out of Lucy Worsley (who seems to be quite a dish herself) calling David Starkey "a cross owl" in the jacket photos on his books.  ;D

Starkey wrote Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne, the best book on Elizabeth I that I've ever read, and conceivably the best book ever on Elizabeth I.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 02, 2011, 10:37:53 pm
I liked the cover of this week's issue: a man goes into a bookstore, looking for something. The saleslady directs him to a corner where, on an obscure shelf are...some books! Also I liked the poem "Falling for Her" in which the poet writes about her mother.

Now, back to the food issue...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 04, 2012, 02:26:44 pm
For sheer weirdness, I suggest "Higher, Faster, Madder" in the Dec. 19, 26, 2011, issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 04, 2012, 08:25:57 pm
I went through a big stack of magazines a few weeks ago. I made what is usually a mistake: glanced through the tables of contents of each one before putting it in recycling. I wound up keeping a (much smaller) pile of issues containing stories I'd overlooked or never got around to the first time but which still looked interesting. Normally when I do that, THOSE sit around forever unread. But this time, I opened the magazines to the interesting articles and stacked them that way, opened, on my bedside table. Now, whenever I'm near them with time to read, I grab one of those. I've been reading stuff from as far back as July that I might have missed but am glad I found. Then when I've finished the good pieces, I throw the magazine into the recycling bag.

For example, there was a Nick Paumgarten piece on internet dating, and one by I can't remember who on Han Han, the Chinese superstar novelist. A short essay by Nora Ephron about "almost" becoming an heiress -- great ending, BTW. Something by Malcolm Gladwell, which is weird -- I usually make a point to read Gladwell's pieces (along with David Sedaris, George Saunders and a few others) right when they come out.

And I just finished a fascinating piece -- this is actually from as recently as October -- by Philip Gourevitch about how humanitarian aid, counterintuitively, can actually increase atrocities, how although we all naturally consider those good deeds beyond blame or reproach they actually can wind up aiding genocidaires and dragging out atrocity-filled conflicts -- an outcome predicted, fascinatingly, by Florence Nightingale.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 04, 2012, 09:00:47 pm
And I just finished a fascinating piece -- this is actually from as recently as October -- by Philip Gourevitch about how humanitarian aid, counterintuitively, can actually increase atrocities, how although we all naturally consider those good deeds beyond blame or reproach they actually can wind up aiding genocidaires and dragging out atrocity-filled conflicts -- an outcome predicted, fascinatingly, by Florence Nightingale.

I remember that one. Fascinating article!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 05, 2012, 12:21:08 am
For sheer weirdness, I suggest "Higher, Faster, Madder" in the Dec. 19, 26, 2011, issue.

I'm reading a great, though long, article about the quest to build a greenbelt across sub-Saharan Africa of billions of trees.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 05, 2012, 09:39:12 am
I'm reading a great, though long, article about the quest to build a greenbelt across sub-Saharan Africa of billions of trees.

I've read that one, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 05, 2012, 10:24:55 am
I also read the Margaret Atwood story Stone Mattress, which was great, and started Reality Effects about essaying, in the same issue. I seem to be stuck on this issue!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 06, 2012, 10:37:54 am
and started Reality Effects about essaying


I'm so glad you drew my attention to this, which I hadn't noticed. I'm in the middle of reading the book of essays he reviews.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 06, 2012, 10:39:27 am
It made me think of you!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 08, 2012, 07:57:17 pm
To get me in the mood for the season premiere of Downton Abbey, I'm reading "The King's Meal" by Lauren Collins, in the food issue (from November 21). It's a lovely piece about the curator of Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley. Cool name, cool job, cool lady!! Is this the year of 15 minutes of fame for the curators of the world? I hope so. Reading about her BBC programmes, I realize I'd be watching a lot more TV if I lived in Britain!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2012, 02:28:36 pm
Even though the New Hampshire primary has come and gone, I think Nicholas Lemann's commentary, "Enemy of the State," in the January 9 issue, is a good read. He sets out the implications of Republican anti-government in a lucid and succinct way.

I also like the following: "On the small isues, ... the triumph of anti-government rhetoric has been a real impediment for President Obama. It gives the Republicans justification to oppose, by rote, every appointment and every expenditure, which helps make their belief in public-sector inefficiency self-fulfilling but otherwise doesn't do anybody much good."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: ifyoucantfixit on January 12, 2012, 07:28:04 pm
   I agree with your statement Jeff.  I just cannot understand, how none of the people that vote Republican, can not see it.  That it is the Tea Party folk, and the rest of the people, that follow their lead.  That are causing the congress, and the Country to be in this stalemate.  It is not the President.  He inherited the problems that we are facing.  It was the fault of GWB.  He got out before he got all the derision that he deserved.  I guess
that a lot of people are just plain stupid.  Even in the face of facts to the contrary.  They refuse to place the blame where it belongs.  I suppose it is the fault of the so called "LIBERAL MEDIA?"  I don't know even where that kind of media resides.  Even here in Portland..  Liberal as it is.  The local newspaper.  The Oregonian is very conservative.  It endorses every conservative candidate that runs for office.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 15, 2012, 02:23:03 am
As I'm working through my past issues, I started a piece from July by Alec Wilkinson, about people who live in tiny (REALLY tiny) houses. In the opening, he says, "I used to dream sometimes that I had found rooms in my apartment that I didn't know were there, and, as I explored them, I felt a serenity that I did not feel in my waking life."

I suspect Wilkinson is revealing more in that sentence than he knows. Houses, in dreams, typically don't stand for actual living spaces, but represent one's own mind. Dreaming of finding previously unknown rooms in his home most likely means he has been discovering unknown aspects of himself -- coming upon a bear, so to speak.

It might sound a little crazy, but dreams tend to be really symbolic, and often in an oddly literal way.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2012, 08:18:23 pm
As I'm working through my past issues, I started a piece from July by Alec Wilkinson, about people who live in tiny (REALLY tiny) houses.

I remember that article, though, by now, not a lot of the details. I remember when I read it being concerned about bathroom space.  ;D

I wouldn't mind living in a small space, though not too small. I have fond memories of the studio that was my first apartment in Philadelphia.

The only trouble is lack of space for my model trains. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2012, 12:19:56 am
The only trouble is lack of space for my model trains. ...  ;D

Couldn't you run a track on the wall near the ceiling, at plate-rail level?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 17, 2012, 10:20:07 am
Couldn't you run a track on the wall near the ceiling, at plate-rail level?

From what I remember from reading the article, I'm not sure the "tiny houses" would even have room for that.

And my collection has grown way too large. ...  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 19, 2012, 02:24:50 pm
I just finished Peter Hessler's article in the Jan. 9 issue about the guy he grew up with in Missouri who has Marfan syndrome and is a crime reporter in Japan. I found it fascinating. In contrast to the way the yakuza are often portrayed on American TV, Hessler makes them sound almost ... quaint.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 19, 2012, 07:10:39 pm
I can't remember where I saw it, but somewhere I read that many New Yorker pieces start out, usually in the first sentence, by mentioning a specific date, or a month and year, or at least establishing a time frame of some sort. Since then, I've noticed how true that is. For example, here are the opening words from some of the articles in the Jan. 16 issue:

"Last week,"

"On a dark winter evening"

"In 2011,"

"On a rainy night in late November,"

"In the eighteen-sixties,"

"A few weeks after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak,"



And here are some from the Oct. 11 issue (I just grabbed these two issues at random from the pile on my nightstand):

"Since September 11, 2001,"

"The other day,"

"Over the course of the past four years,"

"When Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street' came out, in 1987,"

"On a warm night during a trip to Beijing last month,"

"Two months before I was to leave Bombay for Toronto,"

"In 1980,"

"On April 20, 2010,"

"In the early nineties,"

"When Marvin Miller took over as the head of the Major League Baseball Players Association, in 1966,"

"In Biafra in 1968,"

"Some years ago,"



Once you become aware of this pattern, it's both amazing and slightly tiresome. It's not just occasional -- literally almost all of the articles excluding the reviews and fiction start out with a time reference. I don't have, say, a Harper's or Atlantic handy for comparison, but I bet they don't do it as often.

Maybe it's a Remnick influence? I don't remember if this was the pattern back in the Brown or Shawn eras.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 19, 2012, 07:44:07 pm
I can't remember where I saw it, but somewhere I read that many New Yorker pieces start out, usually in the first sentence, by mentioning a specific date, or a month and year, or at least establishing a time frame of some sort. Since then, I've noticed how true that is.

That's an interesting observation. I'd never heard that, or noticed. I'll have to look for it in future issues.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 20, 2012, 11:32:01 pm
Over dinner tonight (what else?), I read Patricia Marx' article in the Jan. 16 issue about shopping for food in New York. What a fun article!  :D

I loved her description of a store called Fairway. What's not to love about a place that stocks 600 varieties of artisanal cheese from all over the world but isn't too snooty to also carry Velveeta and Spam?  ;D

(Incidentally, the article begins, "In the eighteen-sixties. ..."  ;D)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 21, 2012, 12:19:01 am
Over dinner tonight (what else?), I read Patricia Marx' article in the Jan. 16 issue about shopping for food in New York. What a fun article!  :D

I loved her description of a store called Fairway. What's not to love about a place that stocks 600 varieties of artisanal cheese from all over the world but isn't too snooty to also carry Velveeta and Spam?  ;D

(Incidentally, the article begins, "In the eighteen-sixties. ..."  ;D)


 ;D

I love her writing. Her shopping topics aren't always all that compelling, but she makes them fun with her wry humor.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 21, 2012, 04:16:47 pm
Okay, I decided to test your very interesting theory with the latest issue. I skipped the political scene article but I'm sure it's good, because it's by Ariel Levy. I did notice, however, that it began "Eight days before Christmas..." Bingo! Ditto with the next article, "Out the Window", bu Donald Hall, which began "Today it is January..." I skipped it but will probably go back to it if I have timje. I was most intrigued by the 4th article, "Slow and Steady" by William Finnegan. The photo is wonderful...two guys staring at the camera from a grassy perch. Only one of the giuys is a plowshare tortoise!! It begins, "One smuggler wore a trilby, which with a black band..." and then it goes on to describe two other smugglers. So, it breaks the rule by leading with character development.

Then comes a fiction piece, "Labyrinth" by Roberto Bolano. From what I can tell by a quick scan, it is all character development and little else! Written in the present tense and translated from Spanish, the storyt appears to take place sometime in the 1980s or 1990s. Obviously, if you want your article to be up front in the New Yorker, begin with a calender reference by all means!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 21, 2012, 05:55:22 pm
I wish I could find the article or blog post or whatever it was where I first read about this. I tried googling various relevant terms, but unfortunately they're all too common to pull it up.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Ellemeno on January 23, 2012, 04:08:34 am
I just spent the last few days reading the last twenty or so pages of this thread.  I miss reading the New Yorker.  I kept not keeping up, and when it became time to renew, I wouldn't let myself.  So I enjoyed the Malcolm Gladwell and David Sedaris vicariously through your posts.

I feel kind of pleased, because I had independently observed that articles often start out with a date or time reference.  One time it popped out at me, and I watched for it ever since.

Jeff, here's Dexter Filkins:

(http://www.academyofdiplomacy.org/images/Filkins,%20Dexter%20Baghdad.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 23, 2012, 04:58:53 pm
Jeff, here's Dexter Filkins:

(http://www.academyofdiplomacy.org/images/Filkins,%20Dexter%20Baghdad.jpg)

So that's Dexter Filkins! Thanks!  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 25, 2012, 02:27:49 pm
Over lunch today I enjoyed William Finnegan's article in the January 23 issue about Eric Goode and the plowshare tortoise of Madagascar.

I like tortoises. They look so wise. And they must be the longest-lived fauna on earth. Finnegan mentions a tortoise that Captain Cook gave to the king of Tonga in 1777 that didn't die until 1966, which is 189 years later (and presumably the creature was full grown when Cook gave it to the king).

Incidentally, this article begins, "One smuggler wore a trilby, white with a black band."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 25, 2012, 10:45:04 pm
Finnegan mentions a tortoise that Captain Cook gave to the king of Tonga in 1777 that didn't die until 1966, which is 189 years later (and presumably the creature was full grown when Cook gave it to the king).



Mind-boggling!  :o


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 26, 2012, 12:19:20 am
I was most intrigued by the 4th article, "Slow and Steady" by William Finnegan. The photo is wonderful...two guys staring at the camera from a grassy perch. Only one of the giuys is a plowshare tortoise!! It begins, "One smuggler wore a trilby, which with a black band..." and then it goes on to describe two other smugglers. So, it breaks the rule by leading with character development.

Yes, I wrote that already...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 30, 2012, 11:29:03 am
Interesting...In the article "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer, he throws out the counter theory that it is the process of debating and discussing ideas generated by a group that produces even more ideas. Without the debate, people are more creative on their own.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 30, 2012, 11:14:36 pm
Interesting...In the article "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer, he throws out the counter theory that it is the process of debating and discussing ideas generated by a group that produces even more ideas. Without the debate, people are more creative on their own.

Looking forward to that! Jonah Lehrer is a writer I like. He's really good at exploring psychology topics in clear, entertaining ways. He appears to be about 23.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 31, 2012, 02:11:40 pm
I enjoyed Ariel Levy's article on Callista Gingrich in the Jan. 23 issue (I always enjoy Levy's articles). I especially liked the part where the guy in Iowa took the Newt by the hand and called him an asshole to his face.  ;D

Levy says that the Newt converted to Roman Catholicism to please Callista. One assumes that Callista was raised Catholic, but Levy doesn't say so. Yet she attended a Lutheran church-affiliated college. This puzzles me. ???

I just don't associate in my mind someone for whom being Roman Catholic is an important part of who they are (Levy directly quotes Callista saying, "When Newt became a Catholic, it was one of the happiest moments of my life") attending a Lutheran-affiliated school. Perhaps Callista's religion became more important to her as she got older. Or maybe she got a good scholarship deal (the reason I went to a college affiliated with the Church of the Brethren) (Levy says money was always tight in Callista's family). Levy doesn't address this, so I guess I'll remain puzzled.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 02, 2012, 09:31:32 am
Did everyone notice that the latest New Yorker has an article about Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who killed himself after his roommate videotaped him? I haven't read it yet, but am looking forward to seeing what the reporter found out about that sad, mysterious case.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 02, 2012, 09:36:24 am
Did everyone notice that the latest New Yorker has an article about Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers student who killed himself after his roommate videotaped him? I haven't read it yet, but am looking forward to seeing what the reporter found out about that sad, mysterious case.

Is that the issue with the President watching "the Big Game" on the cover? As of yesterday's mail, my copy hasn't arrived yet.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 02, 2012, 10:16:55 am
Mine has arrived and I've read half the article already. There are misconceptions concerning the case. Loved the cover!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 02, 2012, 01:52:23 pm
Is that the issue with the President watching "the Big Game" on the cover? As of yesterday's mail, my copy hasn't arrived yet.

Yes.

Mine has arrived and I've read half the article already. There are misconceptions concerning the case. Loved the cover!!

You mean there are misconceptions in the article, or the article exposes misconceptions by the public?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 02, 2012, 09:03:25 pm
That issue arrived in today's mail. I began reading the article over dinner tonight. I'll probably comment on it on my blog. ...  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 07, 2012, 02:16:52 pm
Interesting...In the article "Groupthink" by Jonah Lehrer, he throws out the counter theory that it is the process of debating and discussing ideas generated by a group that produces even more ideas. Without the debate, people are more creative on their own.

I finished this over lunch today. The part I liked best was the history of Building 20 at M.I.T. I'd never heard any of that before.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 09, 2012, 01:16:33 pm
I have received the annual anniversary issue, the one with Eustace Tilley on the cover.  ;D

I immediately read Jonathan Franzen's article on Edith Wharton, who is an author I'm more interested in reading about than reading.  ;D  ::)

I managed to get through high school and college without reading Ethan Frome. The closest I've come to Edith Wharton was the movie of The Age of Innocence, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeifer, some scenes of which were filmed at the venerable Academy of Music here in Philadelphia.

Though I must say, after reading Franzen's article, I am a bit curious about a book whose main character is named Undine Spragg.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 09, 2012, 02:11:42 pm
I have received the annual anniversary issue, the one with Eustace Tilley on the cover.  ;D

I immediately read Jonathan Franzen's article on Edith Wharton, who is an author I'm more interested in reading about than reading.  ;D  ::)

I managed to get through high school and college without reading Ethan Frome. The closest I've come to Edith Wharton was the movie of The Age of Innocence, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeifer, some scenes of which were filmed at the venerable Academy of Music here in Philadelphia.

Though I must say, after reading Franzen's article, I am a bit curious about a book whose main character is named Undine Spragg.  ;D

I turned to that right away, too. I'm about halfway through it. I read AoI maybe a decade ago and read HoM just three years ago. Loved both. I haven't read any of her others. I also am generally a Franzen fan.

But I'm finding Franzen's piece annoying. And the constant, constant harping on EW's looks strikes me as sexist -- I can see how her appearance would be a factor in her life, and is undoubtedly worth mentioning, but I think he's overplaying it in implying it's sort of the defining fact of her life and writing. From the photo accompanying the story, she's not a gargoyle, just not out-and-out beautiful. Lots of writers aren't. How would he analyze George Eliot? Eudora Welty? Would he use the same lens to analyze Henry James? Jean-Paul Sartre?

I should add that he does make some excellent points about the way we sympathize with characters in fiction. But I don't extend that to the authors themselves -- I think a character can be sympathetic even if his/her author is not. Who cares whether Edith Wharton was rich, plain or non-charming, as long as you enjoy her novels?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 15, 2012, 02:20:01 pm
Over lunch today I read Ian Frazier's article in the Feb. 6 issue about the fate of the Stella D'Oro and Archway cookie companies (I love Ian Frazier's articles). I found it very interesting. Growing up in Central Pennsylvania, I knew both brand names, though my family was not a user of Stella D'Oro products. We were an Archway family, and we always--well, almost always--had Archway cookies in the house. Archway soft molasses cookies were the next best thing to homemade, and as a small boy I also particularly liked Archway's "Icebox" chocolate chip cookies (I never really understood that name, "Icebox"; I always assumed it came from the shape of the cookie  ;D ). As an occasional treat, before I was allowed to drink coffee, my mother would make a cup of coffee and let me dunk Archway sugar cookies into the coffee.  :D

Frazier's article I guess sort of explains why for a while it was impossible to find Archway cookies in the stores, and why, before this past Christmas, I began to notice some of them in stores again--though, sadly, not the soft molasses cookies.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 15, 2012, 02:33:12 pm
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that "icebox" cookies are chilled in a solid block (or cylinder) and then sliced off and put on a cookie sheet. Non-icebox cookies (like typical chocolate-chip cookies) are glopped by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.

I've started reading the one about the guy who lost his face after being electrocuted. I've gotten as far as where the doctors have carved off the burn-damaged tissue until he's just a bare skull on top of a body. The photo shows him with a face, though an odd looking one, so I'm waiting to see what they'll do next.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 15, 2012, 02:54:22 pm
I could be wrong, but my understanding is that "icebox" cookies are chilled in a solid block (or cylinder) and then sliced off and put on a cookie sheet. Non-icebox cookies (like typical chocolate-chip cookies) are glopped by spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.

That makes sense because the Archway cookies were rectangular in shape, as if they were sliced off a solid block and then baked.

Quote
I've started reading the one about the guy who lost his face after being electrocuted. I've gotten as far as where the doctors have carved off the burn-damaged tissue until he's just a bare skull on top of a body. The photo shows him with a face, though an odd looking one, so I'm waiting to see what they'll do next.

Haven't gotten to that one yet. As usual I have three issues "going" at once.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 16, 2012, 02:54:04 am
Serious, I'm totally with you on the Edith Wharton article. I really like Franzen, but he was sort of out in left field here.

I couldn't resist the article about the man with the new face. I sort of felt guilty reading it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 16, 2012, 09:22:50 am
As usual I have three issues "going" at once.  :)

Only three? I've got some from last summer in my stack.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2012, 02:07:50 pm
Over lunch today I finished "The Plagiarist's Tale." I have to admit I'm somewhat in awe of what this person did. Someone quoted in the article mentioned the amount of work involved, and it does seem to me that stealing a whole bunch of text from a whole bunch of different authors and stitching it all together to make a coherent tale is kind of, well, awe-inspiring.

Not that I'm condoning it, because I'm not.

I've now started the face transplant story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2012, 04:04:43 pm
I've now started the face transplant story.

It's a longy. I'm only partway through it, but it's interesting -- an examination of the history and difficulties involved in transplants in general and face transplants in particular.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2012, 04:18:16 pm
It's a longy. I'm only partway through it, but it's interesting -- an examination of the history and difficulties involved in transplants in general and face transplants in particular.

Yeah, that's sorta why I left it for last. I tend to read the short articles--pieces that can be completed in one or two lunches or dinners--first, and then read the long stuff.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2012, 05:39:59 pm
Yeah, that's sorta why I left it for last. I tend to read the short articles--pieces that can be completed in one or two lunches or dinners--first, and then read the long stuff.

Me too, sort of. I start with the back page (if I remember to), then go to the "Shouts and Murmurs" and "Current Cinema," then to anyone whose byline is an immediate must-read -- Sedaris, Gladwell, Levy, Gawande, Lepore, etc. -- then I turn to to either the shortest or the most accessible piece (like, some light thing about American culture would come before reportage about fighting in Afghanistan -- what can I say? I'm a typical American airhead). If nothing jumps out, it goes onto The Stack.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 21, 2012, 06:02:47 pm
Sort of like eating an Oreo, everyone has their own way of reading The New Yorker. I like to read in bed but I often read at the bathroom counter while drying my hair in the morning. Sometimes I put the latest issue in my computer bag, but I can't recall ever having the time to read it while I'm about during the day.

I start at the beginning and go straight through. I skip all of the political articles and some of the Middle East fiasco articles. If an issue seems particularly uninteresting, which is rare, I just start looking at the cartoons. I often skip over the fiction and come back to it later. I try to discipline myself to read the poems which are usually quite good.

Then, when the new issue comes, I drop the old one by my bed and start the new one. Otherwise, I'm not up on the latest news and happenings, which would be a disaster!!  ::) The half read issues pile up until I lose my job or get sick. Right now, there are only two issues by my bed! I feel very efficient!!

I take old issues over to my mom's retirement home, where the residents look at them like they are made out of some poisonous material.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2012, 07:33:42 pm
Me too, sort of. I start with the back page (if I remember to), then go to the "Shouts and Murmurs" and "Current Cinema," then to anyone whose byline is an immediate must-read -- Sedaris, Gladwell, Levy, Gawande, Lepore, etc. -- then I turn to to either the shortest or the most accessible piece (like, some light thing about American culture would come before reportage about fighting in Afghanistan -- what can I say? I'm a typical American airhead). If nothing jumps out, it goes onto The Stack.

That's actually pretty close to the way I read the magazine. Usually the movie-TV-theater-books stuff first, then the "by-lines." Actually, I usually skip "Shouts and Murmurs" and the back page. If nothing jumps out, I give it to my co-worker.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2012, 08:37:41 pm
Mine is almost the opposite of  how I grew up reading it. As a child, I read only the cartoons (and usually didn't get them -- sometimes I would ask my dad to "get them to me."). As a 20-somethng, I focused on the fiction (which I didn't always get, either -- still don't, to be frank) and the movie reviews, which were great -- say what you like, Pauline Kael and Penelope Giliatt were plenty accessible and interestingly analytical.

Now I rarely read either the fiction or the cartoons. I read the reviews only if they're not so hopldessly art housy that they would never make their way to Minneapolis of that, if they even did, I'd never have a chance of seeing them

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2012, 09:50:18 pm
Wow. ... Your folks got The New Yorker when you were a kid?  :o

Anyway, the Feb. 27 issue was in my mailbox when I got home today. Very uncharacteristically, I went right for the Thomas McGuane short story and read it. The reason really was the photograph accompanying the story. I can notice no indication where the picture was taken, but it so reminded me of Riverton that I read the story over my dinner (I'm sure the picture isn't actually of Riverton, but I don't know where it is).

The story has one very Brokeback line in it, which I won't spoil by revealing.  ;D

This McGuane story makes me think of Annie Proulx with more standard punctuation.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 29, 2012, 09:35:55 pm
I highly recommend Calvin Trillin's "Three Scenes Inspired by the Gingrich Campaign" in the Feb. 27 New Yorker. HI-larious, and pointed.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 01, 2012, 10:04:51 am
In the March 5 issue I went directly to Adam Gopnik's article on Elaine Pagels' new book on the Biblical book of Revelations.

Pagels' books on Scripture, canonical or otherwise, are books I know I'd enjoy reading and ought to read, but somehow I never get around to looking for them.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 01, 2012, 08:25:52 pm
In the March 5 issue I went directly to Adam Gopnik's article on Elaine Pagels' new book on the Biblical book of Revelations.

Pagels' books on Scripture, canonical or otherwise, are books I know I'd enjoy reading and ought to read, but somehow I never get around to looking for them.  :(

Yes, she seems really fascinating.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 08, 2012, 12:53:40 pm
In the March 5 issue I went directly to Adam Gopnik's article on Elaine Pagels' new book on the Biblical book of Revelations.

Heard her on Fresh Air yesterday; it was really interesting. I liked the part about the monster with 7 heads named 666 referring to the Roman empire, and the theory that some of the writing was politically motivated.

In the same issue, I tried to read Nick Paumgarten's article about the World Economic Congress in Davos, Switzerland. I was disappointed that he didn't cover any of the subjects of the sessions. There are hundreds of sessions but he seemed to imply that attendees are too blase to actually pay attention to them. I was also disappointed that he didn't mention that the governor of my state, John Hickenlooper, was there.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 08, 2012, 01:27:09 pm
In the same issue, I tried to read Nick Paumgarten's article about the World Economic Congress in Davos, Switzerland. I was disappointed that he didn't cover any of the subjects of the sessions. There are hundreds of sessions but he seemed to imply that attendees are too blase to actually pay attention to them. I was also disappointed that he didn't mention that the governor of my state, John Hickenlooper, was there.  ::)

I didn't get to that article yet. I have to admit that the subject doesn't exactly grab me. OTOH, the "next issue" (March 12?--I don't have it here in front of me) has arrived, and I went immediately to the article about the book about Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case that overturned the decision on the case from Georgia and effectively made anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional. I was pleased to note that in the Lawrence case, former Madam Justice O'Connor issued a Concurring Opinion based on the reasoning that I've said all along will eventually legalize same-gender marriage: equal protection under the law.

Now, which justice was it (Stevens, maybe?) who actually said to his gay clerk that he didn't think he knew any gay people?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 12, 2012, 01:30:54 pm
I rarely read the fiction in The New Yorker, but I always seem to read Alice Munro's stories (March 5). I rarely get the "punch line," however. I like her stories, though.

Her descriptions of the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church of Canada puzzle me. Maybe things are different up North. In the U.S., "Church of the Hosannas" does not sound like a name for an Anglican/Episcopal church; it sounds more like a store-front church of some Baptist variety. And her description of members of the United Church feeling that you don't have to turn up every Sunday and can take a drink now and then sounds more like an Anglican attitude to me. When my grandparents, who were Methodists (yes, they really were  ;D ) were touring western Canada in 1966, they went on Sundays to United Church services. Methodists, of course, do think that you should turn up every Sunday, and drinking is a sin. Or at least they used to think that way.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 13, 2012, 08:44:42 am
my grandparents, who were Methodists

Sorry to correct you, but the proper grammar is:

My grandparents was Methodists.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 13, 2012, 10:17:36 am
Sorry to correct you, but the proper grammar is:

My grandparents was Methodists.

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 13, 2012, 03:08:28 pm
In the same issue, I tried to read Nick Paumgarten's article about the World Economic Congress in Davos, Switzerland. I was disappointed that he didn't cover any of the subjects of the sessions. There are hundreds of sessions but he seemed to imply that attendees are too blase to actually pay attention to them.

Read that article today over lunch. One word: Yawn.

Quote
I was also disappointed that he didn't mention that the governor of my state, John Hickenlooper, was there.  ::)

Maybe he doesn't realize that there are people in Colorado who read The New Yorker. Remember the famous cover of "A New York View of the World"?  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: ifyoucantfixit on March 13, 2012, 06:43:17 pm



rink now and then sounds more like an Anglican attitude to me. When my grandparents, who were Methodists (yes, they really were   ) were touring western Canada in 1966, they went on Sundays to United Church services. Methodists, of course, do think that you should turn up every Sunday, and drinking is a sin. Or at least they used to think that way.
Posted on: March 08, 2012, 01:27:09 pm Posted by: Jeff Wrangler


  Does anyone else think it is odd, how the church ideas and doctrines change, along with the common usage.  It would seem to me that the tenants of a church would (should) be immutable.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 13, 2012, 11:20:47 pm

  Does anyone else think it is odd, how the church ideas and doctrines change, along with the common usage.  It would seem to me that the tenants of a church would (should) be immutable.

I suppose I agree that there are certain core concepts that should never change, but there are a lot of things that must change. The human race no longer needs to reproduce itself ad nauseum, in fact if it does, it is doomed. This idea has many reverberations; for instance it is no longer important that everyone be heterosexual and "breeders."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 14, 2012, 08:46:26 am
I suppose I agree that there are certain core concepts that should never change, but there are a lot of things that must change. The human race no longer needs to reproduce itself ad nauseum, in fact if it does, it is doomed. This idea has many reverberations; for instance it is no longer important that everyone be heterosexual and "breeders."

Let's also not forget the role of women in the church--still an issue for some denominations, if not for others. I believe it was once universally held that women should keep silent in church. Fortunately, those days are gone in many denominations.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: ifyoucantfixit on March 14, 2012, 04:23:07 pm




   I suppose that I agree that it has to change.  I find that the problem is usually not the change, but the fact that they have interpreted the items, in such a way, that it now has to be changed.  I personally do not profess to be a religious person.  I do think the (morals and tenants) should be absolute.  Not the interpretations.  The morals.  I have a real issue with the things that the "church," has thought were so, that were only decided to be so. 
   I do not think that morals are a changeable thing.  If they are moral, they are moral.  If not then the same is true.  I never think that love, or caring is to be decided by an entity.  Any more than rights are changeable.  A right is a right.  Endowed at birth.  Period...  Others may interfere with that.  But it is still the true fact.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 14, 2012, 11:29:50 pm
I'm reading a fascinating profile of Christian Marclay, who created "The Clock" a 24-hour video mashup of timed scenes from movies.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2012, 09:17:53 pm
I'm reading a fascinating profile of Christian Marclay, who created "The Clock" a 24-hour video mashup of timed scenes from movies.

I must have skipped that one, accidentally or on purpose. I'm sure I didn't read it, and I have no memory of it.

Good grief, it's been almost a month since anyone had anything to say here.  ::) 

Today my copy of the April 9 issue arrived. Even though I have a lot to read in the April 2 issue (next/first up, the article by Robert Caro about LBJ), when I checked the table of contents of the April 9 issue, I went right to the article about the Karl May festival in a place called Bad Segeberg, in Germany.

I am probably one of the few Americans who has heard of Old Shatterhand and Winnetou.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 10, 2012, 01:32:25 pm
I am presently enjoying Lauren Collins's article on the Daily Mail in the April 2 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2012, 01:26:55 pm
At lunch today I was entertainingly appalled by another Lauren Collins article, this one in the April 16 issue, about Brits (specifically university students) on holiday in Croatia--or what we in the colonies should say, on spring break. In response to the article, all I can really say is, No wonder they lost the empire. ...  8)

OTOH, it's kind of comforting to know that spring breakers from the U.K. aren't very different from spring breakers in the U.S. I was afraid it was just us. ...  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 28, 2012, 02:37:39 pm
I'm in the middle of three New Yorker stories from three different issues simultaneously: the Robert Caro one about LBJ's experiences during Kennedy's assassination, Jill Lepore's article about the madness of our gun culture, and the one about whether Obama made missteps in handling the economy.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: ifyoucantfixit on April 28, 2012, 07:49:52 pm


   No wonder you have a hard time writing some times.   Wow, are you doing research?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 29, 2012, 01:59:28 pm
In the May 21 issue, I read the "Talk of the Town" mini profile of Dustin Lance Black (Milk). I was charmed to read there that according to the mother of author Pat Conroy, "All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.'"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 31, 2012, 09:18:12 pm
In the May 21 issue, I read the "Talk of the Town" mini profile of Dustin Lance Black (Milk). I was charmed to read there that according to the mother of author Pat Conroy, "All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.'"

That WAS funny.

I'm so pleased to see that the double fiction issue that just arrived has an article by Ray Bradbury and also one by Anthony Burgess of Clockwork Orange fame. The articles are both very good. Bradbury is still whip smart!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 07, 2012, 10:44:04 am
I'm so pleased to see that the double fiction issue that just arrived has an article by Ray Bradbury and also one by Anthony Burgess of Clockwork Orange fame. The articles are both very good. Bradbury is still whip smart!

Now I'm going to reread that article since it's probably the last thing we'll have the opportunity to read from him.  :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 18, 2012, 01:05:48 pm
I wonder whether Mr. Shawn ever permitted a deliberate sentence fragment, like this one:

(From the July 2 story by William Finnegan about the Mexican drug cartels fighting over Guadalajara)

"They were local people who had recently gone missing. Ordinary citizens, not narcos, kidnapped and murdered. Four were said to have been students at the University of Guadalajara."

At least, I assume it's deliberate.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 18, 2012, 04:02:36 pm
Well, there were lots of similar fragments in Brokeback Mountain, which was published by the New Yorker in 1997. But I think Tina Brown was editor then.

Is that really a sentence fragment? It has a subject and two verbs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 18, 2012, 07:07:08 pm
Is that really a sentence fragment? It has a subject and two verbs.

Something is certainly wrong with it. Kidnap and murder are verbs--maybe transitive verbs--needing to pass their action on to a direct object? And they don't do that here. The meaning is that ordinary citizens were kidnapped and murdered, not that ordinary citizens kidnapped and murdered other people. But the were is missing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 18, 2012, 09:41:49 pm
I agree that something's wrong with it. But Annie Proulx uses wrong sentences effectively. However, this one's confusing too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 18, 2012, 10:26:51 pm
I agree that something's wrong with it. But Annie Proulx uses wrong sentences effectively. However, this one's confusing too.

Well, I never said it wasn't effective. It's a very conversational way of writing. I merely wondered whether a writer would have been allowed to do something like that during the decades-long editorship of William Shawn.

And I have to wonder whether William Shawn would have felt that Annie Proulx was a New Yorker kind of writer.

Times do change.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 18, 2012, 11:41:28 pm
Personally, I love them. Sentence fragments.

Though I'm sure Mr. Shawn and I would disagree about any number of things.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: TOoP/Bruce on July 19, 2012, 07:27:49 am
In the May 21 issue, I read the "Talk of the Town" mini profile of Dustin Lance Black (Milk). I was charmed to read there that according to the mother of author Pat Conroy, "All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.'"

Thanks, dude.  

Reading that just sent Starbucks coffee right up the back of my nose... :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 19, 2012, 09:19:19 am
Thanks, dude.  

Reading that just sent Starbucks coffee right up the back of my nose... :o

Don't thank me. Thank Pat Conroy's mother.  ;D

I'm sure that Starbucks swill will clean out your nasal passages. ...  8)

Personally, I love them. Sentence fragments.

Though I'm sure Mr. Shawn and I would disagree about any number of things.

They can be very effective. When used judiciously.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 19, 2012, 05:11:37 pm
The New Yorker has caught the Bucolic Plague. I'm up to page 21 of the latest issue and I've read a blurb on what the drought is doing to the corn crop, ELizabeth Gilbert's publication of her grandmother's cookbook, and rhapsodies about food.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 23, 2012, 01:48:26 pm
At lunch today I read the excerpts from Mavis Gallant's diaries, about being a (literally) starving writer in Madrid in 1952 (August 9, 16 issue).

Next up will be Dexter Filkins on Afghanistan.

I don't like Dexter Flikins' or Jon Lee Anderson's articles mainly because they're too long. However, I read them anyway because I figure they're Important and also good for me.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2012, 01:24:17 am
I don't like Dexter Flikins' or Jon Lee Anderson's articles mainly because they're too long. However, I read them anyway because I figure they're Important and also good for me.  :-\

I know what you mean. The New Yorker as cod liver oil.

I feel that way, too, but I resist it. There's only so much time in the world, and consequently I'm going to have to skip a lot of worthy articles. If I'm going to cross off "Worst Hollywood hairstyles" or whatever on the internet (and I do try to be pretty conscientious about limiting that shit), then I can cross of some boring Jon Lee Anderson article, too, and skip to something that's both important and actually interesting.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2012, 10:33:20 am
I know what you mean. The New Yorker as cod liver oil.

That's exactly the image I had in mind!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 29, 2012, 09:44:35 am
Interesting article on foresnsic linguistics that may come in handy during the trail of James Holmes. Which is expected to drag on for years now, I hear.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2012, 09:09:24 am
This just in from this morning's Metro:

Jonah Lehrer quit yesterday. Somehow it was discovered that he made up quotes from Bob Dylan for his book, Imagine: How Creativity Works.

David Remnick called it a "terrifically sad situation."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 31, 2012, 09:52:53 am
Oh, I saw that yesterday, and I agree with Remnick -- very sad.

Unlike other journalist-fabricationists like Stephen Glass or Janet Cook or Jayson Blair, Jonah Lehrer was really talented at writing that doesn't involve making stuff up. But he must have been super busy -- blogs, articles, bestselling books -- and maybe could not resist the temptation to cut corners.

Resigning in disgrace from the New Yorker is so unheard of I would imagine it would seriously threaten any future career. Plus, the publisher has stopped shipping his book and has pulled the electronic version.

It had sold 200,000 copies so far.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2012, 12:28:17 pm
Next up will be Dexter Filkins on Afghanistan.

I don't like Dexter Flikins' or Jon Lee Anderson's articles mainly because they're too long. However, I read them anyway because I figure they're Important and also good for me.  :-\

OK, well, in spite of myself, I actually enjoyed the Filkins piece on Afghanistan. It was still a bit longer than I thought was necessary, but it was interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 31, 2012, 04:24:15 pm
A more thorough account of the Jonah Lehrer debacle:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions?all=1 (http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jonah-lehrers-deceptions?all=1)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 31, 2012, 06:03:18 pm
And a scathing TNR review of his most recent book (published before the controversy):

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/103912/bob-dylan-jonah-lehrer-creativity?page=0,0 (http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/103912/bob-dylan-jonah-lehrer-creativity?page=0,0)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2012, 07:01:08 pm
Thanks, Katharine.

I'll have to check those articles out at work tomorrow. Links disagree with my antique PC.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 01, 2012, 09:20:26 pm
In defense of Jonah Lehrer:

http://observer.com/2012/08/laffaire-lehrer-sticking-up-for-jonah/ (http://observer.com/2012/08/laffaire-lehrer-sticking-up-for-jonah/)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 02, 2012, 09:39:12 am
In defense of Jonah Lehrer:

http://observer.com/2012/08/laffaire-lehrer-sticking-up-for-jonah/ (http://observer.com/2012/08/laffaire-lehrer-sticking-up-for-jonah/)

I think Tullis' point about the coverup seeming worse than the crime is worth noting.

And I love it that he calls Bill O'Reilly a fathead.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2012, 02:14:20 pm
I think Tullis' point about the coverup seeming worse than the crime is worth noting.

Too bad Lehrer didn't give Tullis a call before responding to the accusations. Tullis' proposed explanation is genius.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 02, 2012, 02:27:23 pm
Too bad Lehrer didn't give Tullis a call before responding to the accusations. Tullis' proposed explanation is genius.

Not that I'm trying to excuse Lehrer, but it does seem to me that if you do something like what he did, and get caught at it, you only make it worse for yourself when you lie about it. That's what I took away from my admittedly swift read of Tullis' defense.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 11, 2012, 10:47:28 am
Well, now that Romney has named Paul Ryan as "the next President of the United States,"  :laugh:  I'm going to have to read the Aug. 6-issue article about Ryan. The article's title is "Fussbudget."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 11, 2012, 11:40:43 am
Did you hear that Fareed Zakaria (!) was found to have lifted passages for a column in Time (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2121660-1,00.html) from Jill Lepore's piece on guns in America? (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_lepore?currentPage=all) He has apologized profusely ("terrible mistake," "serious lapse," "entirely my fault") and been suspended for a month. What next??! Do people not think readers have memories or internet connections?

You would think it must be a mistake -- maybe he had the paragraphs in his notes and somehow mistook them for his own writing or something. Because Fareed Zakaria is very high-profile and Jill Lepore is pretty high profile (she has a new book out!) and the article came out in April -- in fact, I read it only a couple of months ago. (If I didn't say so earlier, it's really good.)

The paragraph and Zakaria's changes read like a lazy midde-school student cribbing a school paper from Wikipedia:

Zakaria in "The Case for Gun Control":

    Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

And Lepore in "Battleground America":

    As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.

(Material above lifted from Slate (http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/08/10/fareed_zakaria_s_new_yorker_plagerism_time_columnist_apologizes_for_terrible_mistake_.html).)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on August 11, 2012, 11:50:29 am
That's so upsetting about Fareed Zakaria!  He's such a favorite of mine for his clear statement of the issues and fair approach.  His show on CNN is one of the best on cable.  I really hope he weathers this reasonably intact.  I would certainly miss him dearly during all this election hoo-ha and also for his knowledge of the Middle East.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 11, 2012, 02:36:46 pm
Tell you what, I'm certainly not an apologist for anybody's lapses (except, I hope, my own), but I can't help being a little bit suspicious that now in the digital age, when so much of everything, including researching of sources and taking of notes, is being done electronically, that it's going to get even easier and easier to accidentally plagiarize.

And I am talking accidentally. Deliberate plagiarizers will always be with us, but I'm talking about honestly forgetting to note the source for something copied and pasted from an on-line source--or even finding something on line that has included something not properly attributed.

That doesn't excuse Zakaria, who is not known to me, from being more careful in checking his work and his sources, but I'm just sayin'.

Meanwhile, I thought Lepore's article was very good, too, and I note that when Kentucky, Louisiana, and Indiana passed those laws, they were still essentially frontier states.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 19, 2012, 02:22:34 pm
I always rejoice when I open a new issue and see an article by Atul Gawande listed in the table of contents.

I'm currently enjoying his article in the Aug. 13 & 20 issue on the benefits of standardization in medicine. I haven't finished it yet.

When I do, I'll have to see whether I can find the location of the nearest Cheesecake Factory.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 19, 2012, 11:26:37 pm
I always rejoice when I open a new issue and see an article by Atul Gawande listed in the table of contents.

I'm currently enjoying his article in the Aug. 13 & 20 issue on the benefits of standardization in medicine. I haven't finished it yet.

When I do, I'll have to see whether I can find the location of the nearest Cheesecake Factory.  ;D

I am so with you on this. I'm in the middle of the Cheesecake Factory piece, too.

Yesterday, a Facebook friend asked for suggestions for creative nonfiction she could assign a class she's teaching. I gave several recommendations, then later thought, Atul Gawande! I gave her the link to his site, and particularly suggested the ones about aging and about end-of-life choices. He's brilliant.

And by the way, Cheesecake Factory is pretty good.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 20, 2012, 08:27:39 am
I'm reading that article as well now!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 20, 2012, 09:17:49 am
And by the way, Cheesecake Factory is pretty good.

So said Dr. Atul also.   ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2012, 01:36:58 pm
Well! I can hardly believe this. I'm actually caught up on my New Yorkers!  :o  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on August 21, 2012, 03:17:49 pm
Fareed Zakaria has been reinstated at CNN and Time, I'm glad to report.  He has resigned a position he had at Yale, possibly in an effort to allow himself more time to proof his work.  ;)


Fareed Zakaria and the Perils of Modern-Day Punditry

By Peter Osnos

Is it really is possible to do so many things at once -- columns, daily blog posts, television appearances, Internet videos, books, and speeches? The journalists of old certainly focused their efforts more.

I have been an admirer of Fareed Zakaria's work since he was recruited in 1992 by James Hoge, editor of Foreign Affairs to be that magazine's managing editor, shortly after he had completed a Harvard Ph.D. He proved to be an inspired choice for the position and moved on to Newsweek in 2000, gradually gaining visibility as a sophisticated commentator in a variety of venues. His 2008 book, The Post-American World, was a bestseller, and after a stint with PBS, he launched Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a show that has a dedicated following and an international audience. It is considered among the most thoughtful programs on global issues.

In 2010, he became a lead columnist for Time. He is also, I gather, in great demand as a paid speaker, and this year delivered the commencement addresses at both Harvard and Duke. He served as a trustee of Yale and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Board of Directors. Jon Stewart is clearly a huge fan, and Zakaria has probably appeared on the Daily Show more often than any other figure from our top tier of pundits.

If you followed the flap over Zakaria's failure to credit a paragraph from Jill Lepore of the New Yorker in a column about gun control -- and his resulting short-term suspension from Time and CNN -- you may well already have read about the extent of his professional activities. But listing them here is intended to provide a sense of just how productive he has been, at a consistently high level, and why I hoped this mishap -- widely described, and in my judgment, with exaggeration, as plagiarism -- would turn out to be a small-bore setback in what will be a long and distinguished run.

Now that Time and CNN have reinstated him beginning in September and found no further problems, Zakaria is back on track. He will also resume his column for the Washington Post. The backstory of the case seems to be a confusion in his transcription of notes. Zakaria's apologies were immediate and repeated, even after he was essentially forgiven, because he clearly realized that plagiarism is a cardinal offense for a writer.

An instance of picking up a small section of another person's work (which was quoting facts from a recently published book) didn't strike me as a major failing, although the sensitivities involved were reflected in the public flailing he endured. A clever headline at The Atlantic over a commentary by Jeffrey Goldberg sounded about right to me: "Fareedenfreude (or Alternatively, Schadenfareed)."

Coming so soon after the revelations about Jonah Lehrer's fabrications of quotes from Bob Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works, and a stream of other misrepresentations that cost him his reputation, the Zakaria case easily morphed into further evidence of the same pattern of serious malfeasance, which it certainly was not.

But the episode crystallized something I've been thinking about increasingly in recent years. Today's leading pundits and commentators have adapted to our current media culture in ways that too often seem over-programmed, to the point where it is a veritable certainty that some will eventually stumble. These blunders are taken all the more seriously because of the prominence media stars have attained.

I wonder if it really is possible to do so many things at once: columns, daily blog posts, a full schedule of television appearances and Internet videos, speeches around the country (and the world), and books intended to make a splash. There are also outside activities (or jobs) that take administrative or editorial time. The aggregation of all these activities can be enormously lucrative, but there is also a competitiveness among the cohort -- and their principal employers -- that seems to drive them to take on more roles than frankly makes sense.

Zakaria acknowledged as much in comments to the New York Times: "This week has been very important because it made me realize what is at the core of what I want to do." His goal, he said, is to "help people to think about this fast-moving world and to do this through my work on TV and writing." Other activities, he added, "will have to go away. There's got to be some stripping down." The first resignation was his position at Yale.

Zakaria is by no means the only one of these journalistic polymaths. I am not going to make a list because until there is certifiable wrongdoing, it is fair to assume that they are capable of pulling off so many successes. But the trend toward multi-faceted hyper-productivity is definitely a feature of our age.

The influential columnists of the 1950s through the 1980s -- James Reston, for example, or Russell Baker, the Alsop brothers, and Joseph Kraft, among others -- intently focused on their outstanding output and, while celebrated for their work, spent fewer of their formidable energies on being visible in other arenas. In their day, they probably would not have been recognizable anywhere outside downtown Washington. Television's biggest names -- David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite come to mind -- wrote books only after their anchoring days were over.

Surely there must be examples of media personalities of that time who could juggle columns, articles, books, and broadcasts. But today's demands definitely feel greater than those of the past. Rather than attachment to a single platform, the premium seems to be placed on entrepreneurial diversity.

There is so much of the media in our lives in this digital era that it is less than surprising that a number of the more ambitious and talented of the journalists want to master it all. Spreading your efforts across the many opportunities being offered is considered the best way to build a brand name that will flourish apart from being associated with any single employer. But brands are vulnerable to being undone. "This guy is his own brand," Jim Kelly, a former top editor at Time said in the New York Times, "so . . . you have to be really careful at how you extend yourself. The American corporate landscape is littered with disastrous brand extensions."

The monitors of gaffes, glitches, and writing shortcuts are powerful and have the Internet's resources to track every misstep. Public vilification for mistakes that come from trying to do too much is the downside of stardom. Zakaria's problem turned out to be minor, but nonetheless valuable -- as a warning to others with his ambitions and talents to take extra care in pursuit of acclaim.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/fareed-zakaria-and-the-perils-of-modern-day-punditry/261371/
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 26, 2012, 07:35:07 pm
I'm sure I've said somewhere along the line that I'm not much for the short fiction in The New Yorker, but on the other hand, I do always read Alice Munro. I recommend her story in the current (Aug. 27) issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 26, 2012, 08:36:25 pm
This quote from the violinist Christian Tetzlaff was wonderful:

"Bach's music confronts the player and the audinece in a very personal situation, in a very alone way. And I try at that moment to put away pretensions of being a strong man, of being invulnerable--and instead say, 'This is where all of us have common ground.' Most of the time, we try to tell ourselves 'I'm confident' or 'I'm doing well'. But then, in a moment alone at home, you feel how close you are to some kind of abyss.

Music, even at terrible moments, can make you accept so much more--accept your dark sides, or the things that happen to you. Maybe it's just because you see that this is a common trait for all of us. You see that we are not alone.

. ...It's about communication. I almost want to say communion, As a player, you really don't interpret anymore. You listen, together with the audience."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 27, 2012, 12:45:20 am
This is how much I like Atul Gawande and the New Yorker. I was still reading his defense, from an issue ago, of "Cheesecake Factory"-style medical delivery. When the latest issue came, I paged immediately to the comments section because I knew there'd be some experts writing in to poke holes in his theory. And there were, but I think his theory still holds up.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 27, 2012, 04:02:38 pm
Did anyone read the article about the neurologist Oliver Sacks's intense experience with psychotropic drugs? As I read through it, I thought about James Holmes, the neurology student who went off the deep end and killed or wounded 80 people in Aurora, Colorado, wondering if he had also experimented with chemicals as Sacks did. I was relieved at the happy ending to the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 27, 2012, 10:58:52 pm
Did anyone read the article about the neurologist Oliver Sacks's intense experience with psychotropic drugs? As I read through it, I thought about James Holmes, the neurology student who went off the deep end and killed or wounded 80 people in Aurora, Colorado, wondering if he had also experimented with chemicals as Sacks did. I was relieved at the happy ending to the article.

I know! I figured it had a happy ending, since of course Sacks went on to a brilliant career. But that sounded like an awful lot of drugs. And powerful ones.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 29, 2012, 01:11:01 pm
I always read Jane Mayer. Her article on Obama and campaign financing is horribly depressing, but I did have one chuckle, wondering to myself, What would Mr. Shawn have said about a sentence like this:

"[Chris] Hughes and his husband, Sean Eldridge, have decided not to give money to any SuperPACs. ..."

(Boldface obviously added.)

 ;D

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 29, 2012, 01:20:06 pm
wondering to myself, What would Mr. Shawn have said about a sentence like this:

I was just wondering the exact same thing about Lena Dunham's profanity-riddled essay in the Aug. 13/20 issue. Sample sentence: "What the fuck is this shit?"



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 29, 2012, 02:01:01 pm
I was just wondering the exact same thing about Lena Dunham's profanity-riddled essay in the Aug. 13/20 issue. Sample sentence: "What the fuck is this shit?"

(Nods head) I remember thinking more or less the same thing when I read that piece.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 31, 2012, 03:11:14 pm
Loved the "Bromance" cover in this week's issue. And "How to Win at Conversations" by Paul Simms made me laugh out loud!! (LOL)  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 01, 2012, 05:12:08 pm
I'm sure I've said somewhere along the line that I'm not much for the short fiction in The New Yorker, but on the other hand, I do always read Alice Munro. I recommend her story in the current (Aug. 27) issue.

It was a good story; however, I'm getting a little tired of Munro's often used theme. What's wrong with Canadian men anyway that they are always taking advantage of women so? I also read the T. C. Boyle story in this week's issue, (Something) Wood. It started out promisingly but ended strangely, as if he had to rush off to an appointment.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 01, 2012, 09:42:03 pm
It was a good story; however, I'm getting a little tired of Munro's often used theme. What's wrong with Canadian men anyway that they are always taking advantage of women so? I also read the T. C. Boyle story in this week's issue, (Something) Wood. It started out promisingly but ended strangely, as if he had to rush off to an appointment.

I have something terrible to confess: I never really "get" Alice Munro. She's revered among all writers, but I read her stories and come to the end and think, "OK, so?" I know -- shameful! Also, from what I've read of her she sounds very nice. I'd probably like her. What's wrong with me?

T.C. Boyle I have much better luck with. He exudes such authorial authority that he usually carries me along. But I haven't yet read, or seen, the story you mentioned. And I did bail on his fairly recent George Saunderish one about the giant guy in some Latin American dictatorship being kept in captivity for breeding a race of giants.

Fiction used to be the part of the New Yorker I would most reliably read (well, that and movie reviews). Now I rarely read it unless at first glance it looks easy (lots of dialogue and short paragraphs) and short. I rarely read stories that refer to their protagonists primarily by their last names. I rarely read stories with long paragraphs of dialogueless prose. I rarely read stories unless I can get into them within the first couple of paragraphs.

Now the parts of the New Yorker I most reliably read are still movie reviews (especially Anthony Lane's), James Surewiecki's (sp?) columns, the main editorial if I'm interested in the topic, Shouts and Murmurs (unless I start them and they seem too far-fetched -- I love Bob Odenkirk on Breaking Bad, but his recent S&M lost me midway through). The book reviews sometimes, if I have any interest in the book.

After that, it's hit and miss depending on the writer and subject.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 03, 2012, 05:18:49 pm
Your reading patterns over the years are interesting. I take a different approach...I usually begin with Talk of the Town at the beginning and barrel right through to the critical reviews at the end. If I skip anything, it's usually the fiction. I also skip political stories, especially during election season, and sometimes Middle East or Africa stories.

This odd approach means that I'm sometimes not done with an issue when the new one comes. When that happens, I drop the half-read issue by the side of my bed and take up the new issue. I save the half-read issue for long winter nights or if I get sick.

I rarely read the fiction, but when the annual fiction issue comes out I force myself to read at least a few of the stories. Why? I think you know why...not a single story has hit me with anything near the force of our beloved Brokeback Mountain. The state of fiction today seems to be pretty sad to me. Sir Arthur is the Boyle I prefer to read, rather than T. C.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 03, 2012, 07:25:00 pm
I have something terrible to confess: I never really "get" Alice Munro. She's revered among all writers, but I read her stories and come to the end and think, "OK, so?" I know -- shameful! Also, from what I've read of her she sounds very nice. I'd probably like her. What's wrong with me?

I read her for the tone. I think the latest evokes what must have been the very chilly atmosphere of World War II-era Canada. Most of her stories also seem to take place in small towns, and as a kid I spent a lot of time in the small town where my parents grew up, so I sort of relate to that atmosphere. I don't know if that qualifies as "getting" her, but there you have it.

Quote
Shouts and Murmurs (unless I start them and they seem too far-fetched -- I love Bob Odenkirk on Breaking Bad, but his recent S&M lost me midway through).

I'n't that funny? I almost never read "Shouts and Murmurs." I don't really know why. Maybe I've just read too many of them that struck me as, well, dumb.  :-\

Sir Arthur is the Boyle I prefer to read, rather than T. C.

Who's Sir Arthur Boyle? What did he write?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on September 03, 2012, 07:45:25 pm


Who's Sir Arthur Boyle? What did he write?  ???
(http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/images/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-1.jpg)
Sir Arthur  [Conan D]oyle, maybe!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 03, 2012, 09:05:29 pm
Most assuredly, Dr. Watson!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 03, 2012, 09:43:36 pm
I'n't that funny? I almost never read "Shouts and Murmurs." I don't really know why. Maybe I've just read too many of them that struck me as, well, dumb.  :-\


I know. Many of them strike me as dumb, too.

But I'll have to say, the most recent one (or the most recent one I've seen -- the one with little pictures of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan on the front, I think it's Sept. 3) had me laughing out loud numerous times. It's titled "How to Win at Conversation" or something like that. Still, the parts that struck me the funniest, oddly, aren't the punchlines of each section, but the second lines of each section.

Years on years ago, I saw a S&M that was so amazing I clipped and saved it (not forever, unfortunately). It was a little story about a guy going to a party that was packed with positive versions of verbs and adjectives we almost exclusively use the negative versions of. "Plussed" instead of "nonplussed," for example. Chalant. Nerving. And so on.

In subsequent years, I've tried in vain to find it again. I don't remember the author and have no idea how I'd search for it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 03, 2012, 09:52:00 pm
(http://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/images/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-1.jpg)
Sir Arthur  [Conan D]oyle, maybe!

Most assuredly, Dr. Watson!!

 ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 03, 2012, 09:54:31 pm
Years on years ago, I saw a S&M that was so amazing I clipped and saved it (not forever, unfortunately). It was a little story about a guy going to a party that was packed with positive versions of verbs and adjectives we almost exclusively use the negative versions of. "Plussed" instead of "nonplussed," for example. Chalant. Nerving. And so on.

In subsequent years, I've tried in vain to find it again. I don't remember the author and have no idea how I'd search for it.

I don't remember that one, but I'd wager "kempt" was probably at that party, too.

Of course I do have to stop and replus myself when I see it referred to as "S&M." That generally means something else where I come from.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 03, 2012, 10:40:43 pm
Loved the "Bromance" cover in this week's issue. And "How to Win at Conversations" by Paul Simms made me laugh out loud!! (LOL)  :laugh:

As you can see, Katherine, we're definitely on the same page!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 03, 2012, 11:53:00 pm
As you can see, Katherine, we're definitely on the same page!

Hey yeah! I didn't know what you were referring to before today.


I don't remember that one, but I'd wager "kempt" was probably at that party, too.

Bet you're right!

Quote
Of course I do have to stop and replus myself when I see it referred to as "S&M." That generally means something else where I come from.  ;D

For a moment, I considered calling it a Shout and Murmur, singular.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 10, 2012, 01:18:59 pm
How timely is the article on the making of CLOUD ATLAS in the latest issue! It's great to read all about the brother/sister duo who made the movie as well as the Matrix series. At the debut in Toronto (covered in another thread here in the Culture Tent), Lana had her first credit as a director. Before this she was listed as Larry.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 10, 2012, 01:27:54 pm
It was also exciting to read of James Schamus's pivotal role!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 10, 2012, 01:37:15 pm
How timely is the article on the making of CLOUD ATLAS in the latest issue! It's great to read all about the brother/sister duo who made the movie as well as the Matrix series. At the debut in Toronto (covered in another thread here in the Culture Tent), Lana had her first credit as a director. Before this she was listed as Larry.

I haven't seen that story yet (but I'm also not sure it interests me). I went directly to Ariel Levy's article about Naomi Wolfe's new biography of the vagina.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 10, 2012, 08:03:35 pm
Wow! John Gallagher has posted the story here (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,50143.msg637997.html#msg637997). Yay, John!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 10, 2012, 09:56:48 pm
Ariel Levy's review of Naomi Wolf's book about her vagina [Sept. 10 issue] is a brilliant model of deadpan humor.

I was going to say dry humor, but decided not to.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 10, 2012, 10:38:57 pm
Ariel Levy's review of Naomi Wolf's book about her vagina [Sept. 10 issue] is a brilliant model of deadpan humor.

I was going to say dry humor, but decided not to.

Occasionally I have wondered whether Andrea Dworkin is really a sex-negative, man-hating lesbian, but let be, let be. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 02, 2012, 01:15:34 pm
Well, that made for a depressing lunch, reading Jerome Groopman's article about the emergence and spread of cephalosporin-resistant strains of gonorrhea (Oct. 1).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 02, 2012, 01:40:18 pm
Yes, I read that last night before bed and it made for fitful sleeping too!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 05, 2012, 10:05:49 pm
Over dinner this evening I finished Jill Lepore's article on the beginnings of political advertising ("The Lie Factory," Sept. 24). I like Leport's articles. I always learn something from them, and I find them entertaining, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 10, 2012, 01:19:24 pm
Interesting (to me, anyway) that in conversation J.K. Rowling is apparently given to using the rather homely phrase, "believe you me" ("Mugglemarch," by Ian Parker, in the Oct. 1 issue).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 10, 2012, 10:57:19 pm
Interesting (to me, anyway) that in conversation J.K. Rowling is apparently given to using the rather homely phrase, "believe you me" ("Mugglemarch," by Ian Parker, in the Oct. 1 issue).

When you say "homely," which definition do you mean? I think, arguably, it's both.

home·ly/ˈhōmlē/
Adjective:   

    (of a person) Unattractive in appearance.
    (of a place or surroundings) Simple but cozy and comfortable, as in one's own home.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 11, 2012, 07:52:23 am
Gee, I have homely phrases (homilies?) aplenty but no one wants to interview me! One I have started using lately is "up the yin yang" and I can't seem to quit myself of it.

I have tried to not verbize nouns and hold back the tide. Was thinking that one of the earliest instances of verbizing was when Richard Harris sang "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for happy-ever-aftering, here in Camelot." Anyone recall an earlier example?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 11, 2012, 09:13:32 am
When you say "homely," which definition do you mean? I think, arguably, it's both.

home·ly/ˈhōmlē/
Adjective:   

    (of a person) Unattractive in appearance.
    (of a place or surroundings) Simple but cozy and comfortable, as in one's own home.

I don't find it unattractive, just very old-fashioned and surprising in an Englishwoman (she lives in Scotland now but she was raised in the West of England, near Bristol) who is younger than I am.

Gee, I have homely phrases (homilies?) aplenty but no one wants to interview me! One I have started using lately is "up the yin yang" and I can't seem to quit myself of it.

Try harder. Maybe put a dollar in a coffee can or something every time you use it. That phrase isn't homely; yin-yang is just a euphemism for anus.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 11, 2012, 07:29:27 pm
I have tried to not verbize nouns and hold back the tide. Was thinking that one of the earliest instances of verbizing was when Richard Harris sang "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for happy-ever-aftering, here in Camelot." Anyone recall an earlier example?

I don't know any offhand, but I'd be surprised if earlier word-playing songwriters like Cole Porter hadn't verbized.


I don't find it unattractive, just very old-fashioned and surprising in an Englishwoman (she lives in Scotland now but she was raised in the West of England, near Bristol) who is younger than I am.

Those Brits have all kinds of homely sayings. I work with a man who's my age but British, and he spouts lots of funny ones.

One thing he says a lot is "a shed load," to indicate mass quantities. I've often wondered if he's actually unintentionally misusing a cruder Americanism that he misheard.

Quote
Try harder. Maybe put a dollar in a coffee can or something every time you use it. That phrase isn't homely; yin-yang is just a euphemism for anus.

You can't judge a homely euphemism entirely by what it's euphemizing; "Jiminy Cricket" and "dad blast it" are pretty homely.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 11, 2012, 07:39:19 pm

One thing he says a lot is "a shed load," to indicate mass quantities. I've often wondered if he's actually unintentionally misusing a cruder Americanism that he misheard.


This reminds me of the scene where Meryl Streep in her Academy Award winning role in Sophie's Choice admired Kevin Kline's "cocksucker" (instead of seersucker) suit.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 22, 2012, 11:17:22 am
I'm about midway through the article on microbes in the Oct. 22 issue. Fascinating!  :o :)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2012, 11:40:40 am
I'm even further behind than I usually am. I took an issue with me on my ramble and then didn't even open it.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 24, 2012, 08:36:35 pm
Well, I think I've achieved a new personal record: I now have four issues of The New Yorker "on the go" at once.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 11, 2012, 02:10:30 am
Alex Ross' Nov. 12 piece about the political evolution of the gay community is riveting.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 11, 2012, 02:28:26 am
Alex Ross' Nov. 12 piece about the political evolution of the gay community is riveting.

Absolutely. As soon as that issue arrived and I saw that article, I dropped all my other New Yorkers to read it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 12, 2012, 10:44:32 pm
I am pretty behind on my New Yorker reading, but not hopelessly. Recently I reread the fiction "The Semplica Girl Diaries" by George Saunders. It is haunting and grows on you. It's a diary written by a well meaning but financially strapped dad and is set in the near future, so it's a little sci-fi. Anybody else read it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 12, 2012, 11:40:10 pm
Absolutely. As soon as that issue arrived and I saw that article, I dropped all my other New Yorkers to read it.

It read like it could be an excerpt from a book. It's so amazing how much has changed for gay people (and black people, and women) over the course of our lifetimes.


I am pretty behind on my New Yorker reading, but not hopelessly. Recently I reread the fiction "The Semplica Girl Diaries" by George Saunders. It is haunting and grows on you. It's a diary written by a well meaning but financially strapped dad and is set in the near future, so it's a little sci-fi. Anybody else read it?

I haven't read that yet, but I will. Love George Saunders.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2012, 10:18:35 am
I am pretty behind on my New Yorker reading, but not hopelessly. Recently I reread the fiction "The Semplica Girl Diaries" by George Saunders. It is haunting and grows on you. It's a diary written by a well meaning but financially strapped dad and is set in the near future, so it's a little sci-fi. Anybody else read it?

I have not.

I'm now working my way through the issue (Oct. 29 & Nov. 5) with the cover cartoon of Mitt Romney getting the tatoos of all this former positions crossed off.

It's interesting to read articles intended for before the election after the election.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 14, 2012, 02:08:14 pm
I'm reading George Packer's profile of Jeff Connaughton in the Oct. 29--Nov. 5 issue. I have not yet finished reading the article. In passing the article paints a rather unflattering portrait of Vice President Biden, I believe.

It's also got me wondering whether this Connaughton guy is gay. The article seems conspicuously silent on his personal life, and it also strikes me as ... unusual ... for someone who "played" at the level in Washington that Connaughton did to be unmarried (to a woman, I mean).

Not that Connaughton's sexuality matters, of course. I'm just sayin'.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 15, 2012, 11:35:47 am
It's also got me wondering whether this Connaughton guy is gay. The article seems conspicuously silent on his personal life, and it also strikes me as ... unusual ... for someone who "played" at the level in Washington that Connaughton did to be unmarried (to a woman, I mean)

I recently used similar logic to argue to my son that Keanu Reeves is gay. A handsome, A-list actor who has been famous since the 1980s, and I've never seen him linked to any woman; in fact, his entire personal life is far more obscure and low-profile than other actors of roughly his age/fame/level of attractiveness: Matthew McConaughey, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Ashton Kutcher,Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Dennis Quaid, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Mark Ruffalo, George Clooney, etc. etc.

In all of those cases, I have heard of at least one wife or girlfriend (couldn't necessarily name them, but at least am aware of their existence). That doesn't prove the star in question is NOT gay (cough Tom Cruise cough); it just shows that the modern celebrity media usually keep us at least vaguely posted on stars' romantic involvements. If they've done that with Keanu, I missed it.

I guess there are a few other male stars with similarly low-profile private lives -- John Cusack, and um, well, I'm sure there are others. Maybe they're gay, or maybe in some cases the media/public just aren't that interested for one reason or another. With Keanu, I'm pretty sure it's the former, FWIW.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on November 15, 2012, 02:56:10 pm
I always thought Keanu was a robot.  Maybe he's a gay robot.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 15, 2012, 04:10:05 pm
I always thought Keanu was a robot. 

I guess that's another possible explanation for the lack of celebrity-media information about his private life. When he's not making a movie they turn him off and pack him away in a ... um, closet.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Monika on November 15, 2012, 04:23:32 pm
Gotta say that Keanue Reeves doesn´t show up on my gaydar.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 15, 2012, 08:05:17 pm
Gotta say that Keanue Reeves doesn´t show up on my gaydar.

Wow, that's either some pretty well-tuned gaydar or some pretty bad acting, if it can penetrate the heterosexual role an actor is playing.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 15, 2012, 10:25:38 pm
I have a bad cold so I'm settling down with Demeter by Maile Meloy in the latest issue. If I make it through that, I'll go to Cloud Atlas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Monika on November 16, 2012, 01:19:53 am
Wow, that's either some pretty well-tuned gaydar or some pretty bad acting, if it can penetrate the heterosexual role an actor is playing.


Now, you do understand  "gaydar" isn´t an exact science, do you not? 8)

the heterosexual role an actor is playing.


that´s a pretty bold statment


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 16, 2012, 09:01:37 am
that´s a pretty bold statment

How so? I think of it as a simple statement of fact: Keanu usually plays heterosexuals.

I guess I can think of one role in which, as I recall, Keanu played a gay man (My Own Private Idaho), so if you were thinking of that one, or some other role in which he's gay that I'm not thinking of, or maybe even some role in which his sexual orientation is not specified, then my statement was simply incorrect. Still not particularly bold, though.

The larger point I was making is, unless you've spent time with Keanu outside of his movies, you haven't seen what he's really like, so how would he set off your gaydar or not? And as I said earlier, I don't see much about Keanu outside of his movies -- haven't seen him on talk shows or red-carpet interviews or things like that. But maybe you watch different shows than I do and you have seen him as himself.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Monika on November 16, 2012, 09:29:52 am
How so? I think of it as a simple statement of fact: Keanu usually plays heterosexuals.

I guess I can think of one role in which, as I recall, Keanu played a gay man (My Own Private Idaho), so if you were thinking of that one, or some other role in which he's gay that I'm not thinking of, or maybe even some role in which his sexual orientation is not specified, then my statement was simply incorrect. Still not particularly bold, though.

The larger point I was making is, unless you've spent time with Keanu outside of his movies, you haven't seen what he's really like, so how would he set off your gaydar or not? And as I said earlier, I don't see much about Keanu outside of his movies -- haven't seen him on talk shows or red-carpet interviews or things like that. But maybe you watch different shows than I do and you have seen him as himself.





Uhm...of course I don´t personally know Keanue Reeves. If I had, you´d definately know by now.... O0

I have as much to go on as you do when you say you think he might be in the closet.

I thought by playing "the heterosexual role" you implied something more than just characters he portrays on screen. If an actor portrays a heteresexual man on-screen it doesn´t neccessery impact my thoughts on the person´s sexual orientation. I have a recent example - I have just started watching an old favorite tv-show of mine again - The Pretender - that I haven´t watched in more than 10 years. I used to be ADDICTED to it in the late 90´s. I´m delighted that I still love it. Back then - in the late 90´s - I wasn´t very aware of the chance that I guy I liked might be gay. It was simply never on my mind.  This time around though - more than 10 years - and many experiences - later - my gaydar was set off instantly regarding the very good-looking male lead - Michael T Weiss. A quick google search later and yes - indeed he´s gay. And I might add that, on the show, he portrays a heterosexual man. It´s difficult to know what exactly sets the gaydar off, but it usually works.
So no, Keanue Reeves doesn´t show up on my gaydar. Simple as that. But might he still be gay? Of course.


Michael T Weiss. The eyes...they eyes.....mmmmm
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 16, 2012, 10:08:45 am
The larger point I was making is, unless you've spent time with Keanu outside of his movies, you haven't seen what he's really like, so how would he set off your gaydar or not?

I think gaydar doesn't necessarily work that way. Everyone's gaydar seems to have its own way of functioning.

Neil Patrick Harris set off mine years before I learned that he actually is.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 16, 2012, 12:15:12 pm
I think gaydar doesn't necessarily work that way. Everyone's gaydar seems to have its own way of functioning.

Neil Patrick Harris set off mine years before I learned that he actually is.  ;D

That's a point. Plus, I would guess that gaydar functions best for people or in situations where it's useful or important to distinguish whether someone is gay or not. In most cases, for me, it doesn't affect my life in any way, so maybe it's not as strong. When it does go off, it's like noticing a person's ethnicity or age -- an interesting characteristic, but not a significant factor in most situations.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 19, 2012, 03:41:28 pm
Something I hardly ever do is to read ahead electronically rather than waiting for my print copy to arrive. But I just had to read what David Denby said about "Life of Pi." I'll wait until Thursday to read about David Petraeus.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 05, 2012, 02:27:25 pm
Jill Lepore is another author I always read when she has an article in the magazine. Her article on the history of taxation in the Nov. 26 issue is amazing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 06, 2012, 09:06:21 am
Slightly OT, but I mysteriously started getting New York magazine in the mail for some reason. I must have received a magazine subscription with something I purchased, but I swear I don't remember ordering it.

I love New York too --- compared to the New Yorker, it's a little edgier and more risk-taking, though not generally as deep, and of course more pop-culture focused. Either way, though, there's a whole nother pile of weekly magazines to accumulate.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2012, 09:45:09 am
For some reason, probably the fault of the postal service, I got the December 10 issue before the December 3 issue.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 07, 2012, 01:59:38 am
I spent an hour this afternoon in the company of Calvin Trillin! He was in town to promote his latest book, and he stopped by the paper and talked to reporters, mostly about the New Yorker, where he became a staff writer in 1963. He talked a lot about his "U.S. Journal" series, which he wrote every three weeks, from the late '60s to the mid-'80s. He'd go through newspapers and find an interesting story somewhere in the country, travel to the place and spend a week there talking to folks, then return to NY and write a 3,000 word evocative charming memorable piece. Of course, that's not how he described them. He was low key, mild-mannered, non-assuming and pretty funny.

He name-dropped William Shawn and John McPhee, the latter of whom he said had a really elaborate writing system that involved bringing home his draft (typed on paper, in those days) and stuffing it into some niche in his house that he felt was unlikely to succumb in case of fire. "Is that neurotic?" McPhee asked Trillin. "Nah," Trillin told him. Not if that's what works for him.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2012, 10:03:08 am
I spent an hour this afternoon in the company of Calvin Trillin! He was in town to promote his latest book, and he stopped by the paper and talked to reporters, mostly about the New Yorker, where he became a staff writer in 1963. He talked a lot about his "U.S. Journal" series, which he wrote every three weeks, from the late '60s to the mid-'80s. He'd go through newspapers and find an interesting story somewhere in the country, travel to the place and spend a week there talking to folks, then return to NY and write a 3,000 word evocative charming memorable piece. Of course, that's not how he described them. He was low key, mild-mannered, non-assuming and pretty funny.

He name-dropped William Shawn and John McPhee, the latter of whom he said had a really elaborate writing system that involved bringing home his draft (typed on paper, in those days) and stuffing it into some niche in his house that he felt was unlikely to succumb in case of fire. "Is that neurotic?" McPhee asked Trillin. "Nah," Trillin told him. Not if that's what works for him.

Wow! Lucky you!  :D

Of course, I spent some time with him yesterday, too--reading his piece on food in Oaxaca (sp?).  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 07, 2012, 03:47:29 pm
Katherine, that is so amazing to hear! Did he happen to tell you the most unusual thing he's ever eaten, what he likes to cook for himself as comfort food, or what his favorite cookbook is? I have always wanted to ask him how he made the transition from Kansas City to New York City. If I ever made that move, I would probably go to every restaurant and play and exhibit and performance until I dropped dead of exhaustion!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2012, 12:48:53 am
Katherine, that is so amazing to hear! Did he happen to tell you the most unusual thing he's ever eaten, what he likes to cook for himself as comfort food, or what his favorite cookbook is? I have always wanted to ask him how he made the transition from Kansas City to New York City. If I ever made that move, I would probably go to every restaurant and play and exhibit and performance until I dropped dead of exhaustion!!

He didn't talk much about food. Someone asked him if he'd eaten any interesting food since arriving in our city, and he immediately said "No." But to be fair, he'd just gotten off the plane.

I was curious about whether he ever still missed the Midwest. But I agree with you about New York. I was fortunate to live there for nine months. It wouldn't be a good fit for me long term, probably, but I loved having that extended stay.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 18, 2012, 02:37:13 pm
The December 3, 2012, issue is just full of Wyoming attachments.

There is Judith Thurman's account of cooking trout while participating in a two-week wilderness living course offered by an outfit in Lander.

Then, having been to Dubois, on Roundup, I was tickled over lunch today to read Philip Gourevitch's account of his very brief career as a skinner of bears in Dubois.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 27, 2012, 01:08:12 am
Thanks for the info, friend. I've unburied that issue so I can peruse it again. Right now I'm reading an interesting article about the rewilding movement in Europe. Possible to bring back the aurochs? Intriguing!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 06, 2013, 10:46:21 pm
I highly ... highly ... HIGHLY recommend Daniel Mendelsohn's account of his "corresponding friendship" with Mary Renault (Jan. 7, 2013, issue).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 07, 2013, 03:33:17 pm
Thanks for the info, friend. I've unburied that issue so I can peruse it again. Right now I'm reading an interesting article about the rewilding movement in Europe. Possible to bring back the aurochs? Intriguing!

Finished that one over lunch today. Aurochs is an interesting word. Apparently it's both singular and plural: one aurochs, two aurochs, a herd of aurochs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 08, 2013, 09:03:07 am
I highly ... highly ... HIGHLY recommend Daniel Mendelsohn's account of his "corresponding friendship" with Mary Renault (Jan. 7, 2013, issue).

OK, good. I've started it, but hadn't actually been hooked yet. Essays by successful writers fondly recalling youthful correspondences with other writers have come to seem kind of cliched. But Mendelsohn is a good writer. With that high recommendation, friend, I'll stick with it.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2013, 10:17:41 am
OK, good. I've started it, but hadn't actually been hooked yet. Essays by successful writers fondly recalling youthful correspondences with other writers have come to seem kind of cliched. But Mendelsohn is a good writer. With that high recommendation, friend, I'll stick with it.

Of course, my high recommendation is also based on my being a Mary Renault fan. Someone who doesn't enjoy her books may find Mendelsohn's essay just plain boring. Plus, it's also yet another coming out story (groan).  ::)

Also, since I finished the article, I've been thinking, "Well, I guess I'm really not a writer, then, because I could never be as self-dramatizing as Mendelsohn is in this essay!"  :laugh:

But the article "spoke" to me for a couple of reasons. I figure from the dates and school years that he mentions, Mendelsohn is about three years younger than me, but that still puts us fairly close in age. I came to Mary Renault's novels at a few years older than he did, but I love them, too, and Mendelsohn has got me wondering what influence they may have had on my own ideals of love and gay relationships (I might be a little older than Mendelsohn, but, hey, I was a late bloomer). It's rare that I can say that a magazine article has stayed with me after I've completed it the way Mendelsohn's essay has.

I've also found myself wondering how and why it is, that so many of my favorite authors are English women: Alison Weir (Tudor history), Mary Renault, Ellis Peters (real name: Edith Pargeter).  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 09, 2013, 11:49:50 am
I've started the article too but before I could finish it I got distracted by the account of Sebastian Junger's group RISC which means Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues. As a journalist, the article leaped out at me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 09, 2013, 12:22:32 pm
Finished that one over lunch today. Aurochs is an interesting word. Apparently it's both singular and plural: one aurochs, two aurochs, a herd of aurochs.

What is the weird sensation called when a word keeps popping up? Today, I was reading a review of the new movie Beasts of the Southern Wild (recommended by Dave Cullen) when aurochs appeared yet again: http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_21055216/bracing-beauty-beasts-southern-wild-triumphs-child-hero (http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_21055216/bracing-beauty-beasts-southern-wild-triumphs-child-hero)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2013, 12:20:44 am

I haven't read that yet, but I will. Love George Saunders.


I just heard that he has published a book of short stories...sounds like a must-read!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2013, 02:35:20 pm
OK, well, that made for depressing lunchtime reading, Rachel Aviv's article, "The Science of Sex Abuse," in the Jan. 14 issue.

It was particularly depressing to me because the principal subject of the article has been a member of the Society for Creative Anacronism, and he isn't the only "SCAdian" I've heard of to be a pedophile. The Society was almost destroyed because of civil judgments arising from a case that occurred right here in Pennsylvania, where a member who was actually celebrated for his involvement in "youth activities" turned out to be a serial child molester.

And the part in the article about offenders essentially telling therapists what the therapists wanted to hear (because the therapists wouldn't believe the truth) reminded me yet again of accused "witches" telling their prosecutors what the prosecutors wanted to hear.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2013, 07:01:00 pm
What is the weird sensation called when a word keeps popping up? Today, I was reading a review of the new movie Beasts of the Southern Wild (recommended by Dave Cullen) when aurochs appeared yet again: http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_21055216/bracing-beauty-beasts-southern-wild-triumphs-child-hero (http://www.denverpost.com/movies/ci_21055216/bracing-beauty-beasts-southern-wild-triumphs-child-hero)

Well, now I've seen the movie and when the aurochs appeared, I was like "Wait a minute, those look like pigs and that's wrong!" I knew from the New Yorker story that cows are descended from aurochs, not pigs. And I had just been to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science where I saw an aurochs skeleton. In the following article the special effects guy admits that in using Vietnamese pot belly pigs for the aurochs they were taking poetic license with evolution:

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/17/exclusive-the-secret-of-the-aurochs-those-beasts-of-the-southern-wild/ (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/17/exclusive-the-secret-of-the-aurochs-those-beasts-of-the-southern-wild/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2013, 07:47:07 pm
Well, now I've seen the movie and when the aurochs appeared, I was like "Wait a minute, those look like pigs and that's wrong!" I knew from the New Yorker story that cows are descended from aurochs, not pigs. And I had just been to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science where I saw an aurochs skeleton. In the following article the special effects guy admits that in using Vietnamese pot belly pigs for the aurochs they were taking poetic license with evolution.

I'd say that's a lot of license.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 04, 2013, 02:08:14 pm
Over lunch today I finished the Jan. 28 article about the illegal export and sale of a Mongolian dinosaur fossil. The author mentioned a fossil show held annually at the Denver Merchandise Mart. A fossil show sounds almost as much fun as a train show. Have you ever gone to the fossil show, FRiend Lee?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 07, 2013, 02:06:45 pm
I don't ordinarily pay much attention to the ads in The New Yorker, but in the Jan. 28 issue I noticed an ad for ceiling fans. The company's name is Big Ass Fans.  ;D

The ad is on page 33.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 07, 2013, 02:31:53 pm
The profile of Dr. Oz in the Feb. 4 is pretty good. It's mystifying that a doctor with his credentials would present what sound like snake-oil sellers as credible guests on his show. I've long mistrusted Oz, if nothing else for his ubiquitous presence in Facebook ads hawking questionable weight-loss treatments.

Still, the article failed to penetrate Oz's seemingly blithe self-assurance or explain his willingness to endanger his well-founded professional reputation. You're left still not really understanding why he does that. Maybe it's just not possible to explain any further.

 

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 07, 2013, 02:50:41 pm
The profile of Dr. Oz in the Feb. 4 is pretty good. It's mystifying that a doctor with his credentials would present what sound like snake-oil sellers as credible guests on his show. I've long mistrusted Oz, if nothing else for his ubiquitous presence in Facebook ads hawking questionable weight-loss treatments.

Still, the article failed to penetrate Oz's seemingly blithe self-assurance or explain his willingness to endanger his well-founded professional reputation. You're left still not really understanding why he does that. Maybe it's just not possible to explain any further.

I've had a chance to read only the first few pages of that article, and it was interesting to me to learn about his background (I was a bit baffled by the comparison to George Clooney; I don't see that at all  ;D ). In general I don't trust "celebrity doctors."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2013, 03:51:42 pm
Last night I sat by the fire and read about the female mass shooter Amy Bishop (http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2013-02-11&email-analytics=newsletter130211p070#folio=070 if you're a subscriber). What a sad and yet compelling story, especially the part about her shooting her brother several years before the mass shooting. It's becoming increasingly clear that young people can develop this murderous tendency if genetics and environment go haywire.

I've also been reading about John Hinkley Jr., who shot Pres Reagan and Jim Brady. There are some intriguing conspiracy stories that I was not aware of before about his father's friendship with the Bush dynasty. Bush was running against Reagan for the presidency at the time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2013, 07:05:57 pm
In this week's issue (it's the double anniversary issue) there is also a review of Steven Soderburgh's Side Effects which opens tomorrow. I'm interested in seeing the movie, not least because it has Rooney Mara (sister to Kate) and other good actors in it. The review mostly covers Soderburgh's body of work and his announced retirement from filmmaking. That would be sad but he has some exciting plans for the future.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 08, 2013, 11:22:51 pm
I finished the Dr. Oz profile today. Seems like he's turned into a bit of a snake oil peddlar himself. Too bad.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 09, 2013, 01:34:53 pm
I finished the Dr. Oz profile today. Seems like he's turned into a bit of a snake oil peddlar himself. Too bad.  :(

His is a familiar face on Facebook, in ads hawking unrealistic diet plans. For example, I just went there now and quickly saw this:

Dr.Óz Diet: Lose 27 lbs Monthly

(http://creative.ak.fbcdn.net/hads-ak-prn1/s110x80/735313_6007245457704_12587_n.png)

Its beén called the hollywood diét and it rapidly melts belly fat like nothing else ! DrÓz


(Not sure why all those accents aigus appeared.)

Rachel Ray is on there a lot, too, in ads claiming she lost tons of weight with this one little secret.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2013, 02:52:40 pm
Over lunch today I started to read Jon Lee Anderson's article in the Jan. 28 issue about Hugo Chavez and Venezuela. The part early in the article about the rise and fall of Caracas really made me sad.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 18, 2013, 11:29:43 am
Last night I sat by the fire and read about the female mass shooter Amy Bishop.

I read that article over the weekend. What a tragedy.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2013, 02:17:09 pm
Today I finished Ian Frazier's article on Staten Island after Sandy. I was struck by his use of a comment about the beeping of trucks backing up as a kind of refrain.

Of course I've also greatly enjoyed Kelefa Sanneh's article on Islay scotch. I'm sure I'll never find any Bruichladdich in a Pennsylvania liquor store (the sale of spirituous liquors is a state monopoly here).

(Feb. 11 and 18 issue, the annual anniversary issue)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 20, 2013, 03:30:14 pm
Of course I've also greatly enjoyed Kelefa Sanneh's article on Islay scotch. I'm sure I'll never find any Bruichladdich in a Pennsylvania liquor store (the sale of spirituous liquors is a state monopoly here).

I'm reading that article too. I'll start hunting around. There's a British pub here that boasts the largest collection of single malt Scotches in the US. I'd check there but I heard they were shut down recently for license violations.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2013, 04:24:15 pm
I'm reading that article too. I'll start hunting around. There's a British pub here that boasts the largest collection of single malt Scotches in the US. I'd check there but I heard they were shut down recently for license violations.  >:(

We must remember that it's Eye-lah and Brook-laddy.  ;D

Incidentally, I've been wondering about Kelefa Sanneh since I started seeing his by-line in The New Yorker. I forgot that he wrote the article about Jeremiah Wright.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelefa_Sanneh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelefa_Sanneh)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 28, 2013, 01:47:24 pm
At lunch today I read Dexter Filkins' article in the Feb. 25 issue. I'm glad I did; I didn't know that in the Syrian civil war, Hezbollah is fighting for the Assad regime.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 28, 2013, 07:02:09 pm
I've had to go back and read some of the issues from over the holidays because I was too busy and crazy to read them when they came out. I'm currently reading "Utopian for Beginners" by Joshua Foer in the Dec 24-Dec 31 double issue. It's great...I love any article about words, language, and linguists. This issue also has "Recall of the Wild" by Elizabeth Kolbert and an article about being gay in Africa.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 04, 2013, 09:53:49 pm
I'm reading that article too. I'll start hunting around. There's a British pub here that boasts the largest collection of single malt Scotches in the US. I'd check there but I heard they were shut down recently for license violations.  >:(

Pints Pub has reopened; yay! I was there yesterday and noticed that they have not one but four Bruichladdiches on the menu. I was attending a meeting that had a test as part of it, and was driving besides so I wasn't able to partake. Here's the website for the place: http://www.pintspub.com/ (http://www.pintspub.com/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2013, 11:32:00 pm
Pints Pub has reopened; yay! I was there yesterday and noticed that they have not one but four Bruichladdiches on the menu. I was attending a meeting that had a test as part of it, and was driving besides so I wasn't able to partake. Here's the website for the place: http://www.pintspub.com/ (http://www.pintspub.com/)

I must remember this place next time I get to Denver. I don't know when that might be.  :( After a visit there, you and OCD might have to carry me out.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 04, 2013, 11:49:31 pm
It wouldn't be the first time we have done that! Looking forward to tipping a glass with you at Pints Pub some day. I was reading their web site and they make a tall claim: the most single malt Scotches this side of Edinburgh!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2013, 10:16:35 am
It wouldn't be the first time we have done that! Looking forward to tipping a glass with you at Pints Pub some day. I was reading their web site and they make a tall claim: the most single malt Scotches this side of Edinburgh!

As Jack Benny used to say, "Now, cut that out!"  :laugh:  You and OCD have never carried me out of anywhere!  :laugh:

(That I can remember. ...)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2013, 11:25:32 am
I remember him saying that! I knew I should have reworded that statement. It wouldn't be the first time OCD and I have carried someone out of a bar. And the last time, I believe it was the Mint Bar in Sheridan, Wyo!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2013, 01:04:43 pm
I remember him saying that! I knew I should have reworded that statement. It wouldn't be the first time OCD and I have carried someone out of a bar. And the last time, I believe it was the Mint Bar in Sheridan, Wyo!

Well, that wasn't me. On Roundup I walked back to the motel under my own power.  ;D

Maybe it was that fella who downed all the liquid marijuanas.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 11, 2013, 10:31:43 am
I keep thinking about this article from last October 22:

 Michael Specter on the benefits of bacteria (http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2012-10-22&email-analytics=newsletter121022p032#folio=032)

and wondering, are we individuals who harbor colonies of bacteria, or are we bacteria universes, with human beings just the packaging or infrastructure?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2013, 02:07:46 pm
Today I finished the March 4 article about Steven Zeitels, the phonosurgeon who has treated Julie Andrews, Adele, Steven Tyler, and Roger Daltry.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 13, 2013, 12:09:36 pm
and wondering, are we individuals who harbor colonies of bacteria, or are we bacteria universes, with human beings just the packaging or infrastructure?

Depends on whom you ask: us or the bacteria.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 19, 2013, 09:37:00 am
I just started the article on the horrible attack on the artistic director of the Bolshoi.  :(

I didn't know he was once a principal dancer there, but it makes sense.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 19, 2013, 10:40:20 am
You're braver than me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 19, 2013, 01:28:01 pm
I'm also reading the article about Aaron Swartz, the computer genius who ended his own life.

I'm reading a lot of downers right now.  :-\

I can understand Swartz's feelings that his life was an imposition on the planet, and his dislike of imposing on other people, even people like librarians, who exist to be imposed upon (because their job is to help people find things).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Monika on March 19, 2013, 01:35:02 pm
I´ve read that article too and have watched a number of youtube videos with Aaron.
He was great and a true visionary.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 20, 2013, 05:55:46 pm
Here's an article about fact-checking the inaccuracies Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" series in the New Yorker, which of course ironically is known for scrupulous fact-checking and accuracy. Among other things, it mentions that William Shawn himself scrawled "How know?" about a scene describing solo actions by someone who'd been murdered.

Needless to say, the standards for nonfiction applied to ICB would not hold up today, at the New Yorker or a lot of other places.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/03/fact_checking_in_cold_blood_what_the_new_yorker_s_fact_checker_missed.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/03/fact_checking_in_cold_blood_what_the_new_yorker_s_fact_checker_missed.html)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2013, 01:03:20 pm
I'm now reading the profile of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (March 11). This article is a good illustration of why I like The New Yorker: the profiles. Even now, 20 years after she joined the Supremes, I really knew nothing about her background until I began to read this article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 22, 2013, 12:56:27 pm
It's interesting to see the similarities and contasts between Ginsburg and O'Connor. O'Connor was just interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air show in connection with her autobiography. O'Connor was a difficult interview subject for Terry Gross. She refused to answer several questions, including some that seemed totally innocuous.

I'm reading the profile of Australia's mining heiress. It's kind of squalid, I mean sordid.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 22, 2013, 01:40:01 pm
I just started the article on the horrible attack on the artistic director of the Bolshoi.  :(

I didn't know he was once a principal dancer there, but it makes sense.

I've finished this article, and it turned into a real rip-snorter. Who needs Black Swan when you've got this real-life drama at the Bolshoi? This story has it all: flamboyant, jealous, temperamental artists, fat Russian oligarchs who are "patrons" of ballerinas (like something right out of the 19th century), money, conspiracy, violence. It's like an episode of Murder, She Wrote only without Jessica Fletcher!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 04, 2013, 01:00:40 pm
OK, how annoying is this? As difficult as it is for me to keep up with my New Yorkers, yesterday I finished one issue, and today I forgot to bring the next issue with me to read at lunch!  >:(  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 06, 2013, 10:19:11 am
OK, how annoying is this? As difficult as it is for me to keep up with my New Yorkers, yesterday I finished one issue, and today I forgot to bring the next issue with me to read at lunch!  >:(  :laugh:

"Yesterday, I finished one issue" ... words that, sadly, I never hear myself say! I read an article or two, but they never get "finished" until I get into my most ruthless possible mood and go through the pile and start tossing.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 06, 2013, 10:21:34 am
David Sedaris' piece in the newish one is pretty good. I mean, he's never NOT good. This particular subject isn't as exciting as some -- it's about the red tape involved when he and Hugh renew their permanent-resident status in England -- so maybe his life is just so settled down and successful that he's running short on experiences with comedic possibilities. But I did LOL a few times, as usual.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 06, 2013, 10:40:18 am
I like my friends' diverse styles of reading TNY. Jeff scrupulously studies while Katherine only selects the cream of the crop to read. My style used to be to start at the very beginning and read through to the end, or when the new issue comes, drop the old one like a hot potato and just finish it if I got laid off or sick. After a major election is over, I usually toss the stack of older issues, sending them to my mom's retirement home or the hospital waiting room. Lately, however, I just carry my issue around in my briefcase until it's obsolete, never having time to crack it open. I read specific stories online sometimes.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2013, 12:04:00 pm
David Sedaris' piece in the newish one is pretty good. I mean, he's never NOT good. This particular subject isn't as exciting as some -- it's about the red tape involved when he and Hugh renew their permanent-resident status in England -- so maybe his life is just so settled down and successful that he's running short on experiences with comedic possibilities. But I did LOL a few times, as usual.

Yes, I jumped ahead and read that article, too. He's one of the authors I always turn to immediately.

For all his pissing and moaning, it still sounds to me like it's easier to get permanent residency status in England than it is in the U.S.

Of course, when I say that I've finished an issue, that sometimes means that I've exhausted the articles in it that I'm interested in reading. Sometimes I pass the magazine on with half the contents unread by me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 07, 2013, 03:50:56 pm
Talk about ripped from the headlines.  :-\

I'm currently reading the April 1 story about allegations of decades-long sexual abuse of boys by teachers at the elite Horace Mann private school. I was only about a page and a half into the article when it all began to sound eerily familiar. Then it hit me: this was essentially the plot from an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit that aired this past fall.

The similarity went so far as to have a character in the show, a teacher at a school for boys that was being investigated for decades of sexual abuse, say pretty much what one actual teacher from the Horace Mann School actually said: "Everything I did was in warmth and affection and not a power play. In those days it was very spontaneous and casual, and it did not seem really wrong."

According to The New Yorker, an article about the allegations of abuse at Horace Mann was published in the Times Magazine last June, and there was a follow-up story in the Times itself. Allegations of improper behavior went as far back as the 1960s and continued into the 1990s, and the headmaster and the board of trustees did absolutely nothing. The plot of the L&O: SVU episode followed the story of the events concerning the Horace Mann School almost exactly.

(And this all goes to show that the cover-up of abuse of minors is not limited to the Roman Catholic Church.)

ETA: It also goes to show that an elite education isn't everything. One individual discussed obviously had the elite private school education at Horace Mann, and then also at the New England Conservatory of Music, and he still ended up as a hustler ("escort in a gay bar") and a porn performer (never having seen him--that I know of  ;)  ::) --I won't call him a "porn star.")
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 20, 2013, 10:11:36 pm
I highly recommend John Le Carre's account in the April 15 issue of his experiences during the filming of the movie version of his novel The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, with Richard Burton.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2013, 01:21:10 pm
Today at lunch I enjoyed the article in the April 15 issue about the improbably named puppeteer Basil Twist--whose name really is Basil Twist; in fact, he's Basil Twist III.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 11, 2013, 03:48:56 pm
That was a great article, Jeff. This week's issue (the one with the two moms on the cover reading their Mother's Day Card) has an article about our governor, John Hickenlooper. It's not really very well written and it overdramatizes his latest crisis associated with prisons, but it's worth a scan.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 18, 2013, 10:58:45 am
Finally finished the April 29 books article comparing writing about the Depression to writing about the recent recession. Fascinating. I'm going to type my favorite passage, partly to help myself commit it to memory:

"The Great Depression left people more helpless and isolated -- Agee's sanctified tenant farmers are passionate and alone -- but the new depression seems to have produced less hope. Over the years, the structures that were built during the Roosevelt Republic to secure Americans against another catastrophe -- banking regulations, collective bargaining, federal credit, business-labor coöperation [ ;D] public education, a scrupulous press -- have steadily eroded. So has the public's faith in institutions, and the idea of sure upward movement through each successive generation. Americans have been thrown back on their oldest belief of all, the cult of the individual. Its current deities, objects of worshipful fascination, are celebrities and entrepreneurs who preach the native philosophy of mind-cure, handed down from Emerson by way of Napoleon Hill to Oprah Winfrey and Timothy Ferris: if you can think it, you can do it -- you are responsible for your own success, your own failure."


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 18, 2013, 11:26:37 am
Hmmm, I'm definitely going to have to read that article! I currently hold similar views but am more hopeful because of the new tools, chiefly the Internet, that make individual influence and power more accessible to the general population.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 19, 2013, 01:49:33 am
Hmmm, I'm definitely going to have to read that article! I currently hold similar views but am more hopeful because of the new tools, chiefly the Internet, that make individual influence and power more accessible to the general population.

Me too, and I think it helps. Look at what has happened in the Middle East. Or even in the U.S., you can see instances where the freedoms of the internet have helped unleash opinions that might have been repressed by the previous rigid gatekeepers -- and I say this knowing that the gatekeepers were mass media and I was essentially a (low on the ladder) one of them. The internet has opened the door to many more opinions, and that's ultimately liberating for all. But it's still too slow a process for my taste.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on June 09, 2013, 05:55:27 pm
Annie P. has a story in the new fiction issue.  It's titled "Rough Deeds".

She even uses the word "whoreson". 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 17, 2013, 01:39:49 pm
Annie P. has a story in the new fiction issue.  It's titled "Rough Deeds".

What's with Western writers and tire irons? Sherman Alexie mentions one in his story in the same issue as A.P.'s story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 23, 2013, 01:11:19 pm
I enjoyed Deborah Friedell's short article in the June 24 issue on the origins of Superman. I'm glad I got to read it before I saw Man of Steel last night.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 25, 2013, 06:16:57 am
Finally finished the Larissa McFarquahar (sp?) piece on suicide in Japan. Fascinating and genuinely enlightening. Took me forever, since I'm traveling and my son was reading it, too, but worth it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2013, 09:10:36 am
Finally finished the Larissa McFarquahar (sp?) piece on suicide in Japan. Fascinating and genuinely enlightening. Took me forever, since I'm traveling and my son was reading it, too, but worth it.

I read that over lunch yesterday, I found it fascinating as much for its description of the life of a Buddhist monk and priest as for what it had to say about suicide in Japan.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 25, 2013, 09:28:09 am
Yes, and the shocking part about the growing number of hikikomori...shut-ins who "play video games and surf the Web and are served meals on trays by their parents". (How do they get their parents to do that?) Japan is like looking into a mirror of our future! Maybe...

The article on Alzheimers research was also very good. I thought I was up to date on this topic since I contribute funds and get reports from the Alzheimers Foundation all the time. But nothing has been presented so clearly as this article by Jerome Groopman.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2013, 09:55:35 am
Yes, and the shocking part about the growing number of hikikomori...shut-ins who "play video games and surf the Web and are served meals on trays by their parents". (How do they get their parents to do that?) Japan is like looking into a mirror of our future! Maybe...

That part really surprised me. And why do the parents do it?  ???

Quote
The article on Alzheimers research was also very good. I thought I was up to date on this topic since I contribute funds and get reports from the Alzheimers Foundation all the time. But nothing has been presented so clearly as this article by Jerome Groopman.

Haven't read that one yet. Groopman's articles are usually quite good, in my view.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 27, 2013, 05:09:01 am
Yes, and the shocking part about the growing number of hikikomori...shut-ins who "play video games and surf the Web and are served meals on trays by their parents". (How do they get their parents to do that?) Japan is like looking into a mirror of our future! Maybe...

I found that part interesting, too, because I know an American hikikomori -- a relative of my ex-husband's, an intelligent young man in his mid-20s who won a National Merit Scholarship and then lost it because he fought with a teacher and refused to turn in a paper. So he never attended MIT as planned, eventually did attend a few semesters in Texas (where the family lives), but didn't come close to finishing. He lives at home and sits at his computer. He has never had a job, a driver's license or a girlfriend and, from what I gather, has few or no friends, at least in real life. His behavior has mystified the extended family for years, but I've always just assumed he has major depression or some similar illness. His parents don't talk about it, so nobody knows whether he's getting treated or what.

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The article on Alzheimers research was also very good. I thought I was up to date on this topic since I contribute funds and get reports from the Alzheimers Foundation all the time. But nothing has been presented so clearly as this article by Jerome Groopman.

As someone who had a parent who died of Alzheimer's and who also writes about it from time to time at my job, I was a little disappointed. It laid out the schools of thought but, like conflicting schools of thought over weight loss and other medical mysteries, it didn't really point to any clear new direction in treatment or prevention. I just hope the researchers keep busily working on it, but from what I hear -- for example, from the head of the Alzheimer's department at the Mayo Clinic or an official at the Alzheimer's Association -- research money is getting scarcer and scarcer, even as cases, of course, are ever increasing.

I like Groopman, too, although to be honest when it comes to medical writers for the NYer I prefer Atul Gawande.



 




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 27, 2013, 09:31:47 am
I found that part interesting, too, because I know an American hikikomori -- a relative of my ex-husband's, an intelligent young man in his mid-20s who won a National Merit Scholarship and then lost it because he fought with a teacher and refused to turn in a paper. So he never attended MIT as planned, eventually did attend a few semesters in Texas (where the family lives), but didn't come close to finishing. He lives at home and sits at his computer. He has never had a job, a driver's license or a girlfriend and, from what I gather, has few or no friends, at least in real life. His behavior has mystified the extended family for years, but I've always just assumed he has major depression or some similar illness. His parents don't talk about it, so nobody knows whether he's getting treated or what.

As a nonparent, I probably have no business commenting, but it seems to me that these are situations where the whole family needs "treatment" of some sort. After all, the parents are "enabling" by providing the hikikomori with food and a bed and a roof over his head, not to mention the electricity to run that computer. I'm sure that sounds harsh, but. ...

Quote
As someone who had a parent who died of Alzheimer's and who also writes about it from time to time at my job, I was a little disappointed. It laid out the schools of thought but, like conflicting schools of thought over weight loss and other medical mysteries, it didn't really point to any clear new direction in treatment or prevention. I just hope the researchers keep busily working on it, but from what I hear -- for example, from the head of the Alzheimer's department at the Mayo Clinic or an official at the Alzheimer's Association -- research money is getting scarcer and scarcer, even as cases, of course, are ever increasing.

I'm only half way through--no time to read yesterday--but my impression so far is because right now there are no clear new directions in treatment of prevention. That's unfortunate, but my impression from what I've read so far is that we need to learn more about the plaques and so forth and how they form and how they work to creat the disease before we can treat it or preven it--but maybe I'll have a different impression when I get to finish the article. From what I've read so far, the biggest revelation in the article--because I see so much about the use of them in my work--is that donepizil and memantine don't really do much.

Quote
I like Groopman, too, although to be honest when it comes to medical writers for the NYer I prefer Atul Gawande.

Agreed. Plus I've seen Dr. Gawande on the Today show, and I think he's hot.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 30, 2013, 08:43:41 am
As a nonparent, I probably have no business commenting, but it seems to me that these are situations where the whole family needs "treatment" of some sort. After all, the parents are "enabling" by providing the hikikomori with food and a bed and a roof over his head, not to mention the electricity to run that computer. I'm sure that sounds harsh, but. ...

I guess it comes down to what causes people to become hikokomori. That's why I say the son seems to need treatment: diagnosis, medication, counseling, or whatever. Let's assume he's got depression, an actual clinical disease. Are the parents "enabling" by caring for him and providing a home? Without their support, would he pull himself up by his bootstraps -- that is, are they in some sense making him worse by sheltering him from the responsibilities of life -- or would he just go untreated and perhaps face some worse fate -- suicide, homelessness? I don't know, to be honest, but I do know that if the case of disabling physiological disease, others are far less likely to criticize a family for supporting the afflicted, or blame them for "enabling" the person to be sick.

Quote
I'm only half way through--no time to read yesterday--but my impression so far is because right now there are no clear new directions in treatment of prevention. That's unfortunate, but my impression from what I've read so far is that we need to learn more about the plaques and so forth and how they form and how they work to creat the disease before we can treat it or preven it--but maybe I'll have a different impression when I get to finish the article. From what I've read so far, the biggest revelation in the article--because I see so much about the use of them in my work--is that donepizil and memantine don't really do much.

Right. I'm not really blaming Groopman for failing to provide any earth-shattering news if there isn't any to report. But without it, the piece becomes simply a look at how things are going with Alzheimer's research. An informative piece, to be sure, but more like a good, in-depth newspaper story than groundbreaking magazine journalism.

Quote
Agreed. Plus I've seen Dr. Gawande on the Today show, and I think he's hot.  ;D

Agreed on that, too!



That whole issue of the New Yorker is packed with good stuff. Yesterday, I read Jill Lepore's fascinating look at the history of privacy, secrecy and mystery. The perspective she takes is as philosophical as it is historical. Malcolm Gladwell's review of a biography is good, too, mainly because the man profiled was intriguing. Now I'm reading the short piece about the original artist and writer of "Superman," also good.

Always enjoy Anthony Lane, haven't yet gotten to the review of Kanye West's album but will probably at least skim it because I like Kanye. I'll probably skip the Gang of Eight thing and, most likely, the Thomas McGuane story (I think he's good and all, just not really my cup of tea).

One disappointing part, as is so often the case, was the Shouts and Murmurs column. It seems like there'd be much better ways to skewer the Boy Scouts' homophobia, and this seemed slightly tasteless besides.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 30, 2013, 04:44:07 pm
I guess it comes down to what causes people to become hikokomori. That's why I say the son seems to need treatment: diagnosis, medication, counseling, or whatever. Let's assume he's got depression, an actual clinical disease. Are the parents "enabling" by caring for him and providing a home? Without their support, would he pull himself up by his bootstraps -- that is, are they in some sense making him worse by sheltering him from the responsibilities of life -- or would he just go untreated and perhaps face some worse fate -- suicide, homelessness? I don't know, to be honest, but I do know that if the case of disabling physiological disease, others are far less likely to criticize a family for supporting the afflicted, or blame them for "enabling" the person to be sick.

I guess I still see it as "enabling" if they aren't doing anything to get help for the hikikomori. Maybe that's not strictly speaking considered "enabling" behavior, but that's how I see it--one thing to provide that kind of support for someone who is making an effort at recovery, another thing altogether if they're just letting their kid go on that way indefinitely. And if they are just allowing their kid to drift and not make any effort to recover--well, that's why I say the whole family needs therapy.


Quote
That whole issue of the New Yorker is packed with good stuff.

I agree.

Quote
I'll probably skip the Gang of Eight thing.

That's my "duty article" in this issue. I'm reading it because I think it's probably important and good for me and all that.

And there is one important reminder that I'm taking away from that article: While the media tends to focus mainly, I think, on interparty conflict, the article reminds me how much conflict and rivalry can exist within each party's caucus.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 01, 2013, 09:41:26 am
I guess I still see it as "enabling" if they aren't doing anything to get help for the hikikomori. Maybe that's not strictly speaking considered "enabling" behavior, but that's how I see it--one thing to provide that kind of support for someone who is making an effort at recovery, another thing altogether if they're just letting their kid go on that way indefinitely. And if they are just allowing their kid to drift and not make any effort to recover--well, that's why I say the whole family needs therapy.

Oh, I agree with the getting help part. If they're not actively seeking treatment of whatever kind, they're not just enabling but ignoring a mental-health problem, which is on par with ignoring a physiological illness.

Quote
That's my "duty article" in this issue. I'm reading it because I think it's probably important and good for me and all that.

And there is one important reminder that I'm taking away from that article: While the media tends to focus mainly, I think, on interparty conflict, the article reminds me how much conflict and rivalry can exist within each party's caucus.

My "duty articles" are the ones I never quite get around to. Finally, when I weed through a stack of old issues, I rip out the duty articles and staple them and keep them in a pile and still never get around to them. If all goes well, by the time I go through the pile again there'll be a new president in office, the issues will have changed or been resolved, and I can throw the duty article into the recycling.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 01, 2013, 10:05:23 am
My "duty articles" are the ones I never quite get around to. Finally, when I weed through a stack of old issues, I rip out the duty articles and staple them and keep them in a pile and still never get around to them. If all goes well, by the time I go through the pile again there'll be a new president in office, the issues will have changed or been resolved, and I can throw the duty article into the recycling.

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 11, 2013, 08:43:56 am
The Jill Lepore piece in the July 8/15 issue is another gem. She alternates between accounts of her mother's life, her own, and that of Jane Franklin, Ben's sister, to suggest ideas about how women's family responsibilities, historically, have constrained their lives and limited their potential achievements.

I also started reading the one about voting rights in the South and the one about an epidemic of self-immolation in Tibet. Both important subjects, both with interesting openings, but both have gradually wandered into duty-article territory. I haven't quite given up on them, though.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 11, 2013, 09:16:20 am
The Jill Lepore piece in the July 8/15 issue is another gem. She alternates between accounts of her mother's life, her own, and that of Jane Franklin, Ben's sister, to suggest ideas about how women's family responsibilities, historically, have constrained their lives and limited their potential achievements.

I also started reading the one about voting rights in the South and the one about an epidemic of self-immolation in Tibet. Both important subjects, both with interesting openings, but both have gradually wandered into duty-article territory. I haven't quite given up on them, though.

Jill Lepore is always a good read.

The voting rights article was not a duty article for me, but for some reason right now it was very depressing to be reminded of the things that were done within my own lifetime by Americans down South just to prevent other Americans from exercising their right to vote.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 11, 2013, 09:37:37 am
The voting rights article was not a duty article for me, but for some reason right now it was very depressing to be reminded of the things that were done within my own lifetime by Americans down South just to prevent other Americans from exercising their right to vote.  :(

Depressing and shocking. Even though I've watched Eyes on the Prize, and heard about those days time and time again, every new account -- and this piece includes a number of incidents I hadn't heard about before -- is sort of freshly astonishing. What racists got away with back then. How could people -- I don't mean just racist murderers, but the police and judges and juries that ignored or acquitted them -- live with themselves?

And I certainly didn't realize how blithe the Kennedy Administration was about the situation until it became internationally awkward. I just assumed, or felt I had been told, that the Kennedy Administration considered civil rights a moral priority.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 11, 2013, 10:43:13 am
Depressing and shocking. Even though I've watched Eyes on the Prize, and heard about those days time and time again, every new account -- and this piece includes a number of incidents I hadn't heard about before -- is sort of freshly astonishing.

I can't say why, but as I was reading this I kept thinking things like, "Wait, I was 6 when that happened," or, "Wait, I was 7 that year." This isn't "history," this is "current events"--"current" to my own lifetime.

Quote
What racists got away with back then. How could people -- I don't mean just racist murderers, but the police and judges and juries that ignored or acquitted them -- live with themselves?

Got me. Another thing I was thinking as I read it was that these people must have been operating from some very deep-seated fear--fear of what might happen if they lost control because they knew that in so many places they were in the minority.

Quote
And I certainly didn't realize how blithe the Kennedy Administration was about the situation until it became internationally awkward. I just assumed, or felt I had been told, that the Kennedy Administration considered civil rights a moral priority.

Me, too. I guess they did once it became internationally awkward.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 11, 2013, 10:42:31 pm
I can't say why, but as I was reading this I kept thinking things like, "Wait, I was 6 when that happened," or, "Wait, I was 7 that year." This isn't "history," this is "current events"--"current" to my own lifetime.

Mine too, since you and I are the same age. It's mind-boggling.

When I lived in the South, I was always amazed whenever I would see two older people -- one black, one white -- conversing cordially. I would think, wow, they've really managed to change with the times. Now I think maybe they were just both socialized to be polite, and that there still might have been plenty of racism involved, underneath the surface. Thanks for that enlightenment, Paula Deen!

Not that there's not racism in the North, as well. There is, but it just takes a somewhat different form: more segregated, more about "the other."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2013, 09:09:19 am
When I lived in the South, I was always amazed whenever I would see two older people -- one black, one white -- conversing cordially. I would think, wow, they've really managed to change with the times. Now I think maybe they were just both socialized to be polite, and that there still might have been plenty of racism involved, underneath the surface.

I think you may well be right about the people being socialized to be polite. Your comment reminds me of my experiences when I went to graduate school in Williamsburg, Virginia, now more than 30 (  :o  ) years ago. As a Yankee who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies I had been "socialized" to expect black people to have chips on their shoulders toward white people. But, as best I can remember after all these years, I never met a single black person while I was in graduate school who acted that way. Everyone was friendly.

(I write this recognizing that Williamsburg is a tourist town, where it's in everyone's interest to act friendly toward outsiders and visitors, but, still. ...)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 12, 2013, 10:08:39 am
I think you may well be right about the people being socialized to be polite. Your comment reminds me of my experiences when I went to graduate school in Williamsburg, Virginia, now more than 30 (  :o  ) years ago. As a Yankee who grew up in the Sixties and Seventies I had been "socialized" to expect black people to have chips on their shoulders toward white people. But, as best I can remember after all these years, I never met a single black person while I was in graduate school who acted that way. Everyone was friendly.

(I write this recognizing that Williamsburg is a tourist town, where it's in everyone's interest to act friendly toward outsiders and visitors, but, still. ...)

I had the same exact experience in New Orleans.

Now and then I did encounter some fairly shocking racism by white people, though -- strangers like store owners or cab drivers who would make racist comments to me in a comradely way, I guess assuming I would agree. I had never experienced that in Minnesota, but then again, Minnesota at the time was about 95 percent white, whereas NOLA was 65 percent black. White Minnesotans had less reason to spout hate speech.

When looking for our first apartment, I would call about a listing and, among other questions, ask the person on the phone what kind of neighborhood it was in. What I meant was, is it a quiet residential street or a more urban setting, are there lots of cute little restaurants and coffee shops, is it near a park or the river. They would answer something like, "Well, it's mixed." I stopped asking.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 29, 2013, 01:30:38 pm
I just finished the July 22 article about British egg collectors. Weird. I knew the Brits were nuts about birds, but. ... Weird.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2013, 01:39:51 pm
I was fascinated by the July 29 article about Ira Aldridge (1807-1867), an African American actor who had great success in Europe, and his daughter Luranah (1860-1932), an opera signer who apparently would have sung at Bayreuth if she hadn't gotten sick. What really struck me, however, was the note that another of Ira Aldridge's daughters, Amanda, a singer, composer, and teacher, taught no less than Paul Robeson and Philadelphia's own beloved Marian Anderson.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 18, 2013, 04:16:14 pm
Over supper last night I finished Ariel Levy's Aug. 5 article about the Steubenville, OH, rape case and the woman who blogged about it.

OT, but are teenagers stupider today than in my day, or have advances in technology just made it easier for them to exhibit the same level of stupidity that was always there?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 19, 2013, 09:39:52 am
It took me days, but I finally finished the long piece about civil asset forfeiture in Aug 12-19 issue. It sounds like a duty article, but it's actually fascinating and horrifying. It will shake your faith in the United States. A friend had something similar happen to him -- on a much smaller scale -- so I know how widespread this seemingly unconstitutional yet widely "legal" practice is.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 19, 2013, 11:39:35 am
It took me days, but I finally finished the long piece about civil asset forfeiture in Aug 12-19 issue. It sounds like a duty article, but it's actually fascinating and horrifying. It will shake your faith in the United States. A friend had something similar happen to him -- on a much smaller scale -- so I know how widespread this seemingly unconstitutional yet widely "legal" practice is.

That was a very scary article to read.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 19, 2013, 01:36:47 pm
So, over lunch today I read Robert Gottlieb's (Aug. 12 and 19) review of Boris Kachka's Hothouse, about Roger Straus and his publishing house, Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Clearly to have had a career in publishing, I picked both the wrong ancestors and the wrong half of the twentieth century in which to be born.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 20, 2013, 11:16:13 am
I didn't read that review but I read the one in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday and concluded that Hothouse is a must-read!

I just look longingly at my New Yorkers covers these days. Between spiffing up the house to sell, my rental housing, and a couple of groups I am member of that have textbook assignments, and my own book I am writing, I don't even have time to peruse the Hamley's Saddle Catalogue! But I did leaf through the latest issue briefly and was delighted that almost every cartoon was quite funny. I even LOLed a couple of times! Is it just when you're in the right mood that many of the cartoons seem funny, or is it something they do at the magazine?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 21, 2013, 01:27:11 am
I even LOLed a couple of times! Is it just when you're in the right mood that many of the cartoons seem funny, or is it something they do at the magazine?

Yeah, some weeks the cartoon editor says, "Know what? Let's use funny ones this week!"  :laugh:

I actually feel that way sometimes, but about the written content. Some issues I find half a dozen pieces that look really enticing. Other issues, everything looks meh or "duty." Most, of course, are in between.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2013, 09:12:43 am
I actually feel that way sometimes, but about the written content. Some issues I find half a dozen pieces that look really enticing. Other issues, everything looks meh or "duty." Most, of course, are in between.

Yup, I feel exactly the same way. Some weeks it seems there is nothing that I'm really interested in, others like I need to read the entire magazine from cover to cover.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2013, 01:24:34 pm
At lunch today I really enjoyed Ben McGrath's Aug. 12 and 19 story about women's professional softball.  :D

Makes me want to run right out to see A League of Their Own, which I've never seen.  :-\

Bull Durham, too. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 21, 2013, 04:45:11 pm
Makes me want to run right out to see A League of Their Own, which I've never seen.  :-\

I saw just yesterday that that was airing on some cable channel late at night. I was on my way to record a different show and thought about recording it, but didn't. I saw it when it came out, and didn't feel compelled to see it again. Maybe I'll read the article and change my mind.

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Bull Durham, too. ...

That I've seen, probably three times. Which means it's really good -- the only movie I've seen more than three times is, well, the one I saw 22 times.

I've said it before, but Kevin Costner is always enjoyable in light romantic comedies (less so in dramas).

But of course, BD isn't about women's professional softball.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on August 21, 2013, 06:28:18 pm
Makes me want to run right out to see A League of Their Own, which I've never seen.  :-\

I can highly recommend this film as a fun evening's entertainment.  A great film by Penny Marshall, with Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell (!), Tom Hanks, and Madonna, in a supporting role.  She plays "All the Way May" LOL.  With a bizarre cameo by Jon Lovitz. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2013, 07:06:04 pm
I can highly recommend this film as a fun evening's entertainment.  A great film by Penny Marshall, with Geena Davis, Rosie O'Donnell (!), Tom Hanks, and Madonna, in a supporting role.  She plays "All the Way May" LOL.  With a bizarre cameo by Jon Lovitz. 

A League of Their Own has always struck me as a fun movie. It's just one of the myriad that I've somehow never gotten around to seeing.  :-\

I'm glad to have your recommendation, Paul. Thanks!  :)

(Jon Lovitz is always bizarre.  ;)  ;D )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 27, 2013, 12:32:15 pm
Well, this is a first. I got a postcard from The New Yorker saying that their latest issue would reach me a week late. I wonder what happened.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2013, 01:15:45 pm
I got two issues within less than a week of each other! Maybe they're all busy getting ready for the New Yorker Festival.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2013, 02:26:45 pm
You've noticed that the interior has been redesigned?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 27, 2013, 03:41:26 pm
I found that quite jarring.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2013, 09:35:39 pm
I found that quite jarring.

It was quite a surprise, wasn't it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 27, 2013, 10:34:12 pm
Yes! Those angle irons are...weird!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 03, 2013, 01:35:29 pm
Everyone must read Ariel Levy's Sept. 30 article about Edith Windsor and her lawsuit that brought down DOMA.

(Indicentally, I received no postcard, and none of my issues has been late.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 14, 2013, 10:23:04 am
Oi, I'm sure behind in my issues now! I read hardly anything at all the entire week I was on vacation. Now here we are in the middle of October and I'm still reading the last issue from September (duty article about the Iranian military guy).  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 15, 2013, 11:00:08 pm
Ha! I'm still reading articles from 2012.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 16, 2013, 09:16:02 am
Ha! I'm still reading articles from 2012.

I don't have room to hold on to issues that long.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 16, 2013, 09:40:04 am
I don't have room to hold on to issues that long.  :-\

When the stacks start to tilt and slide off onto the floor, I go through and rip out the articles I still think are worth reading and throw out the rest of the magazine. That greatly reduce their volume. I staple each article separately, and keep the pile of articles handy. I grab one when I'm looking for something quick to read, or I stuff a little bunch in my purse for when I have to wait somewhere and my iPhone isn't getting a good signal.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 16, 2013, 10:46:38 am
I suppose it could be interesting to read political articles long "after the fact"--to see whether or not the author was correct.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 17, 2013, 09:16:22 am
Still trying to figure out if Bill Clinton did the right thing with the welfare program. Oh, and that "don't ask, don't tell" idea? That's idiotic. I sure hope they change that soon.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2013, 01:31:52 pm
I'd hardly say I'm catching up on my issues, but over lunch today I did enjoy the Oct. 14 issue article on Henry Wallace. Previous to reading this article, Wallace had been only a name to me, the vice president to FDR who came before Harry Truman. Now I know something about him.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 25, 2013, 06:10:05 pm
Just finishing Louis Menand's Norman Mailer profile. What a weird guy. Norman, I mean, not Louis.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 25, 2013, 07:56:41 pm
Just finishing Louis Menand's Norman Mailer profile. What a weird guy. Norman, I mean, not Louis.

Really? I figured you wouldn't get to that one for a few more years.  ;D

I"m reading it now. Yeah, Mailer sure was a strange character.

How come he never ended up in jail for stabbing his wife?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 25, 2013, 08:46:24 pm
I enjoyed the article about Alexander Payne and I thought it might inspire your son, Katherine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 25, 2013, 11:51:51 pm
Really? I figured you wouldn't get to that one for a few more years.  ;D

 :laugh:

No, I always read a few articles right away. It's the rest of them, the more "dutiful" articles, that sit around until the next presidential administration.

Quote
How come he never ended up in jail for stabbing his wife?  ???

I know! On the contrary, it seems only to have enhanced his reputation!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 25, 2013, 11:52:23 pm
I enjoyed the article about Alexander Payne and I thought it might inspire your son, Katherine.

I bet so! Thanks. I'll try to get him to read it.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 11, 2013, 02:22:17 pm
If you have not yet read Dana Goodyear's Nov. 4 article "Beastly Appetites," I recommend that you not read it over lunch.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 11, 2013, 08:12:36 pm
If you have not yet read Dana Goodyear's Nov. 4 article "Beastly Appetites," I recommend that you not read it over lunch.  :P

I haven't. Thanks for the heads up! Is it worth reading away from the table?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 11, 2013, 11:23:24 pm
I haven't. Thanks for the heads up! Is it worth reading away from the table?

Yes, I think so. I found it interesting. It does kind of go all over the place from the international politics of whale fishing to how people in many countries other than the U.S. eat horse meat, but I still found it interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 12, 2013, 08:11:44 pm
Yes, I think so. I found it interesting. It does kind of go all over the place from the international politics of whale fishing to how people in many countries other than the U.S. eat horse meat, but I still found it interesting.

I often wonder about how different foods become acceptable in one country and not others.

I'm sure people in India are horrified that we eat cow.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 12, 2013, 09:47:51 pm
Jumping ahead to the Nov. 11 issue, I'm being charmed by the article about the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who, but being generally culturally aware, I have heard of Doctor Who, and I have a general idea about the show. I've even heard of the Daleks, although until I started reading the article, I had no idea what a Dalek was. Or a Tardis. ...  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 12, 2013, 11:54:55 pm
I often wonder about how different foods become acceptable in one country and not others.

I'm sure people in India are horrified that we eat cow.

I think it has a lot to do with the lifestyles of the ancient people. For example, I have heard that kosher eating forbids eating pork because raising pigs requires staying in one place and the early nomadic Jewish people did not want to be rooted down. And if a social rule morphs into a religious rule, how much more effectively it can be enforced. Not sure how to explain the meat/milk issue, though.

I've always thought Catholics don't eat meat on Friday due to a slaughtering or selling schedule that meant that by Friday the (unrefrigerated) beef would go bad. Maybe fishermen came in late in the week.

As for cows in India, it makes sense that an animal that can provide milk, cream, cheese, butter and yogurt might be considered worth more alive than dead. Again, making the animal sacred is a stronger deterrent than just saying it's not fiscally prudent.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 13, 2013, 09:12:53 am
I've always thought Catholics don't eat meat on Friday due to a slaughtering or selling schedule that meant that by Friday the (unrefrigerated) beef would go bad. Maybe fishermen came in late in the week.


I had a friend who told me that the a decree was issued by the church to abstain from meat on Friday in an effort to help the fishing market, but I'm not sure how true that is, I've never researched it myself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2013, 09:56:46 am

I had a friend who told me that the a decree was issued by the church to abstain from meat on Friday in an effort to help the fishing market, but I'm not sure how true that is, I've never researched it myself.

That sounds plausible. In any case, that religious food rules would have developed to serve some practical social function, rather than being handed down from God -- makes sense (to me).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2013, 10:22:20 am
I had a friend who told me that the a decree was issued by the church to abstain from meat on Friday in an effort to help the fishing market, but I'm not sure how true that is, I've never researched it myself.

I've heard that, too, with a slight variation for post-Reformation England: It was to support the fishing industry, because it was from the fishing industry that the navy derived extra sailors needed in time of war.

But that certainly didn't apply to the Mediterranean world of the early first millenium. Perhaps it had something to do with the value of cattle and sheep for other things besides their meat (dairy products, wool), but I don't know where hogs would fit into that scheme. (Muslims also don't eat pork.)

I'm sure the idea of fasting on Friday because it's the day of the Crucifixion must factor into the justification somewhere, but why fish should be considered permissable on a fast day when other forms of animal protein aren't brings us full circle back to the question again, I guess.

The meat/milk prohibition is a puzzle, too, especially when you think of it in terms of not boiling a calf or kid in its mother's milk, but maybe that was originally some twist on not butchering a cow or sheep or goat while it was still good for dairy products. Today farmers send cows to slaughter when they're no longer good milk producers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2013, 07:26:06 pm
The meat/milk prohibition is a puzzle, too, especially when you think of it in terms of not boiling a calf or kid in its mother's milk, but maybe that was originally some twist on not butchering a cow or sheep or goat while it was still good for dairy products. Today farmers send cows to slaughter when they're no longer good milk producers.

Well, that seems logical. If you have a cow and a calf, and you've killed the calf (for meat) and kept the cow (for dairy), then in terms of livestock value you've probably killed the wrong animal. Maybe originally they wanted to encourage people to give up the milk in favor of the meat until the calf was old enough to produce milk. Therefor, keep the two foods separate. Or sumpn' like that.  ???

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2013, 08:04:41 pm
Well, that seems logical. If you have a cow and a calf, and you've killed the calf (for meat) and kept the cow (for dairy), then in terms of livestock value you've probably killed the wrong animal. Maybe originally they wanted to encourage people to give up the milk in favor of the meat until the calf was old enough to produce milk. Therefor, keep the two foods separate. Or sumpn' like that.  ???

Not being a farm boy, I don't know about these things, but it just occurred to me to wonder whether, in primitive agricultural situations, if you take a calf away from a cow ("boil it in its mother's milk"), will the cow continue to produce milk if she doesn't have a calf to nurse?  ???

But to bring this back to The New Yorker, at lunch today I finished Jane Kramer's Nov. 4 article about the Italian chef Massimo Bottura. I always read Jane Kramer, and the part I liked best about this story wasn't about the chef himself but about the Italian mamas and nonnas that he learned from.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 13, 2013, 09:17:06 pm
Not being a farm boy, I don't know about these things, but it just occurred to me to wonder whether, in primitive agricultural situations, if you take a calf away from a cow ("boil it in its mother's milk"), will the cow continue to produce milk if she doesn't have a calf to nurse?  ???


Yes, if you continue to milk the cow after you've taken the calf away, she will continue to produce milk for a given amount of time. Then, in the farmer's language, you have to "freshen" her by breeding and having her produce another calf.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 14, 2013, 02:42:52 am
What Lee said about cows.



Re eating horses:
I grew up eating horse and donkey salami. Horse goulash also every now and then. Consequently I don't have a problem eating horse meat, albeit I don't do it now.
I don't like salami anymore at all, no matter the animal, and it never occurred to me to look for a horse butchery around here. I don't cook meat anyway. Meat products, like sausages, yes. But raw meat is totally yuck for me. All 'real' meat in our household is cooked by Jens. But a friend of ours had horse Bratwurst (fried sausage) at his BBQ some years ago, and I ate them.

Eating horse meat is by far not as common as the regular stuff like pork, beef, poultry, etc. I'd say it's somewhat rare, but not totally exotic (if that makes any sense, lol). Most common is the salami, which you can often get at regular butcheries. But for whole pieces of horse meat you have to go to specialized horse butcheries.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 14, 2013, 09:55:27 am
Yes, if you continue to milk the cow after you've taken the calf away, she will continue to produce milk for a given amount of time. Then, in the farmer's language, you have to "freshen" her by breeding and having her produce another calf.

Thanks, FRiend! Never imagined you know so much about cows.  :D

With your experience of chickens and what you know about cows, maybe you should have bought a house in the country where you could keep chickens and cows. You could have your own farm-fresh, organic, free-range eggs and milk whenever you wanted.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 14, 2013, 11:07:04 am
There are a lot of interesting links in this, but unlike the talented John Gallagher I'm only doing the first one, to the original news story. If you want to see some of the others, go to the Slate page.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2013/11/12/man_and_dog_vs_bears_and_the_wild_outrage_that_a_starving_man_ate_his_dog.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2013/11/12/man_and_dog_vs_bears_and_the_wild_outrage_that_a_starving_man_ate_his_dog.html)

Nov. 12 2013 11:00 AM
A Lost Hiker Ate His Dog To Survive. Why Does This Infuriate Us So?
By Rebecca Onion


Canadian outdoorsman Marco Lavoie spent three months stranded (http://www.torontosun.com/2013/11/01/man-apparently-ate-his-dog-to-stay-alive-in-quebec-woods) in the wilderness of the Nottaway River in Western Quebec. His plight began when a bear attacked and wrecked his boat, ravaging his supplies. Lavoie’s pet German shepherd apparently helped drive off the bear. Eventually Lavoie, starving and dehydrated, struck his dog on the head with a rock and ate him.

Lavoie’s actions earned him a torrent of criticism when he was finally found, 90 pounds thinner and dogless, earlier this month. While survival experts supported his decision, Lavoie told authorities immediately after the rescue that he wanted another dog, and this wish provoked particular ire. On the Huffington Post, for example, one commenter wrote “I would rather eat my own limbs than my dogs.”

I wrote a master’s thesis on dog-in-the-wilderness stories, so the Lavoie tale, and the outraged public reaction, piqued my interest. Of the “Man and Dog vs. the Wild” genre, popular at the turn of the 20th century, we mostly remember the works of Jack London, a writer so loved that a new biography merits a long review in the New Yorker. Parents may be familiar with the real-life tale of Balto the sled dog, who brought diphtheria medicine to snowbound Nome, Alaska in 1925 and has been memorialized in children’s books, animated movies, and a statue in Central Park.

But many of the “Man and Dog” stories from the 1900s to 1930s now reside on the lower layers of the cultural landfill. Ever heard of Arthur Bartlett’s Spunk: Leader of the Dog Team (1926)? Ernest Harold Baynes’ Polaris: The Story of an Eskimo Dog (1924)? Esther Birdsall Darling’s Baldy of Nome (1916)? Probably not. Even John Muir’s story “Stickeen,” about a dog who traversed a dangerous Alaskan glacier at the explorer’s side, is now relatively unfamiliar.

What all of these stories have in common is a careful balancing of ideals of wildness and domesticity. Historian Gail Bederman, whose book Manliness and Civilization shaped a lot of my ideas, describes key conflicts within turn-of-the-century ideas of white masculinity. At a time of urbanization and modernization, Bederman argues, people were obsessed by wildness and tameness. Fears of the bad effects of soft city living were joined by equal fears of descent into total “savagery.” (This was a time when eugenics and cultural chauvinism were quite mainstream.)

Summer camps, wilderness recreation, and cultural tourism on Southwestern reservations, all of which were newly popular, were inoculations against softness. What all of these activities had in common was the promise that participation might give you just enough of that taste of wildness to get you through your everyday “civilized” life. 

The dog in the wilderness was a perfect literary metaphor for the times. Dogs like London’s Buck in The Call of the Wild found their wild interior when they were forced up against the harsh realities of Alaskan travel. Dogs learned to fight, to eat wild game, and to persevere on long runs.

But through all of this exertion, they always loved their masters. Their wildness was never so complete as to foreclose that affection—and, indeed, many of the fights they engaged in were on behalf of those masters. Like Lavoie's dog, they stepped between the dangers of the great North and their masters' hides, turning "red in tooth and claw," but for a purpose. The dogs in these stories, like the men they accompanied into the wilderness, were brawny, with a solid core of morality.

In using dogs as transportation, white explorers, missionaries, and prospectors were adopting a practice of the native Alaskan, but they staunchly held that they were doing it better. Hudson Stuck, a missionary who wrote a memoir called Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled, argued that native Alaskans had never figured out how to run dogs in teams, and it took white immigrants to perfect the concept. (Musher Scotty Allan and game warden Frank Dufresne agreed, taking credit for the invention of the harnesses and sleds that made rapid dog transportation possible.)

Sourdoughs in any number of stories contrasted white kindness to animals with native cruelty. At a time when the anti-animal cruelty movement gained traction nationwide, the stories embraced this particular emblem of “civilization” as one that differentiated white from native in the frozen North.

In a 1905 story by Addison Powell in Alaska Magazine, “The Alaska Partners,” a prospector’s dog, Summit, is kidnapped by native Alaskans, who have covetously observed his hunting prowess. Summit’s fate,  “tied to a post with no food except an occasional raw salmon that a squaw threw to him,” shows the inferiority of native treatment. In Katherine Reed’s story “The Klondike Nugget,” published in Alaska Yukon Magazine in 1907, the heroic Prospector Dave’s very character is tied up in this difference. The narrator observes: “‘Go to Hell yourself but be white to your dogs’ was one of [Dave’s] favorite proverbs.”

Dog-eating, an extreme form of this kind of cruelty, was in these fictions a practice observed only by native Alaskans. In the 1933 film Eskimo, for example, Mala, the Inuit star, eats his dogs one by one when he’s lost on the ice. In a 1930 skit in which he played a sourdough, W.C. Fields made a joke at Balto’s expense, telling an inquirer that he “just et Balto,” and adding “Right good he was with mustard, too.” That joke worked because white prospectors were not supposed to eat their heroic companions, no matter how hard things got.

People angry at Marco Lavoie aren’t explicitly mad that he wasn’t “being white to his dogs.” But the long history of the “Man and Dog vs. the Wild” story can shed some light on the fury his action provoked. Taboos about the treatment of particular species, as Dana Goodyear explored in her recent story aboout eating and loving animals in the New Yorker, are wrapped up in a lot of cultural baggage. In the case of Marco Lavoie, we have years of stories telling us that we should starve rather than violate the man-dog bond.

That doesn't mean the reactions to his case were uniform. Some of the most interesting responses to the Lavoie story can be found in the comments section of the conservative site The Blaze. Here, some commenters compared Lavoie to Obama, repeating the story that Obama ate dog meat in Indonesia while growing up. Other commenters shrugged, saying “Let’s just say he was resourceful.” One added: “If [Lavoie] would have died before eating his dog, his dog would have surly [sic] ate him.”

Rebecca Onion, who runs Slate’s history blog The Vault, is a writer and academic living in Philadelphia. Send her an email or follow her on Twitter.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 14, 2013, 12:01:39 pm
Geez. That doesn't infuriate me. It makes me sad, but I would have thought Lavoie a fool if he had chosen to die himself rather than eat his dog.

I wonder what the dog was surviving on before Lavoie killed him? There probably wasn't much left to the dog by the time Lavoie ate him.

In the Jamestown colony, during the "Starving Time" of 1609-10, people ate horses, dogs, rats, and, finally, each other.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 14, 2013, 12:48:11 pm
What is the most unusual thing you ever ate? For me, I guess it would be sea urchin. It was wonderful, but I wouldn't eat it often. In Scotland I ate (and loved) haggis and in Nepal I ate yak meat. That was pretty bland. There are more off-putting dishes here in America, IMHO. Okra! Fried pickles! In fact, anything fried kind of turns my stomach.

Thanks, friends, for talking about the Nov. 4 issue. It got lost in the chaos at my house. I dug it out of a pile of magazines that were going to the retirement home and now am enjoying reading through it. If I had missed it, it would be the first time in more than 15 years that I didn't read the food issue from cover to cover!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: milomorris on November 14, 2013, 02:50:02 pm
On the Huffington Post, for example, one commenter wrote “I would rather eat my own limbs than my dogs.”

Yeah...right. I'll believe that when it happens. Smack talk from HuffPuffers is often entertaining


Back when I was at Verizon, we had a software enginner on the web team who grew up in rural China. When he was a boy, his family made a move from one farming community to another. They had 2 dogs. His father was able to give one of the dogs away to a neighbor. Nobody wanted the second dog. The engineer's father killed it, his mother cooked it, and the family ate it. Nobody thought anything of it. Apparently, the Chinese do not look at pets the same way we do here in the west.

I would say that Lavoie is a brave man, and displayed a great deal of courage in this ordeal. He must have felt absolutely horrible about having to kill and eat a dog that he no doubt loved. Sometimes one has to make difficult choices.   
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: milomorris on November 14, 2013, 02:52:37 pm
What is the most unusual thing you ever ate?

White trash.

And, BTW, Okra happens to be one of my favorite things in the world.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 14, 2013, 03:37:44 pm

Quote
On the Huffington Post, for example, one commenter wrote “I would rather eat my own limbs ....”


I wonder if anyone has ever done that. Move over, James Franco, a movie about that would be far grosser than 127 Hours.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 14, 2013, 03:44:47 pm
What is the most unusual thing you ever ate? For me, I guess it would be sea urchin. It was wonderful, but I wouldn't eat it often. In Scotland I ate (and loved) haggis and in Nepal I ate yak meat. That was pretty bland. There are more off-putting dishes here in America, IMHO. Okra! Fried pickles! In fact, anything fried kind of turns my stomach.

I usually like to try anything unusual I have the opportunity to eat. So ostrich, rattlesnake, alligator, nutria, raw oysters, crawfish, fried pig's tail (like if bacon were shaped like a pig's tail), all the stuff they put in sushi. Plenty of okra. And fried pickles, at a restaurant in Wyoming in the company of Brokies!  :D

Someone recently circulated a list of 100 "unusual" foods on Facebook (most but not not all them unusual to the average American) and I scored 71.

I added a couple to my list, Lee, at that restaurant in Denver that possessed the city's first liquor license and where the walls are covered with animal heads. That dinner was kind of a disaster, though -- my younger son was a vegetarian at the time, and a restaurant covered literally floor to ceiling in multiple rooms with severed animal heads is not the ideal setting.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 16, 2013, 02:01:40 pm

I added a couple to my list, Lee, at that restaurant in Denver that possessed the city's first liquor license and where the walls are covered with animal heads. That dinner was kind of a disaster, though -- my younger son was a vegetarian at the time, and a restaurant covered literally floor to ceiling in multiple rooms with severed animal heads is not the ideal setting.

Oh, that would be the Buckhorn Exchange (http://www.buckhorn.com/). What did you have there? The BBQer's went there in 2007 before departing Denver for Estes Park. I didn't go because I was picking up Chrissi at the airport. However, I did go back there with Luigi a year or so later and we had a rattlesnake appetizer. And there's a fellow Wyoming-loving friend who I meet there in the upstairs bar for a drink every once in a while.

I can see how your vegetarian son would have been freaked out by the animal heads. There are getting to be some nice vegetarian restaurants in Denver now. And many of the regular restaurants are adding vegetarian dishes. When I am out with my vegetarian friends I always follow their dietary preferences but, secretly, I miss fish and seafood when I can't order it...meat, not so much.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 16, 2013, 06:25:47 pm
I could understand vegetarianism, although I am not one. But I could never understand veganism until recently. Then I realized that we have an abundance of milk and other dairy products because the calf is taken away from its mother shortly after it is born. That seems cruel, maybe even more cruel than eating meat. I still drink milk and eat cheese but I am careful not to waste it. Milk is so cheap that we oftentimes just grab a gallon of it and then end up pouring half down the drain at the end of a week.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: milomorris on November 16, 2013, 07:05:13 pm
Milk is so cheap that we oftentimes just grab a gallon of it and then end up pouring half down the drain at the end of a week.

We were having that issue too. Then we started down-sizing. We finally figured out about 3 years ago that 1 quart would get used regularly before any of it spoiled.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 16, 2013, 08:22:00 pm
We were having that issue too. Then we started down-sizing. We finally figured out about 3 years ago that 1 quart would get used regularly before any of it spoiled.

I actually never buy milk unless I know people are coming over and want it for coffee.  I don't drink coffee, and almost never use milk.  If I buy it I end up wasting it, so better not to have it at all.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 17, 2013, 04:21:41 am
We were having that issue too. Then we started down-sizing. We finally figured out about 3 years ago that 1 quart would get used regularly before any of it spoiled.


Good thinking. "Just grab a gallon" - that's something one can't do over here. We don't sell beverages in gallons, but in liter packages (tetra paks for non-carbonated beverages, bottles for carbonated). One liter is almost exactly a quart. Even if we could buy a gallon of milk, nobody could put it into their fridge. Not enough space in there for huge gallon packages. :laugh:
That's actually something I started wondering about in the 90ies, watching the TV show Roseanne. They always took those huge plastic containers out of the fridge. Who can even empty such a big container before the contents get spoiled?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 17, 2013, 10:12:22 am
Sometimes I think I was born on the wrong continent. I agree with you that those gallon jugs are awful. They're even a pain when empty. Finally the recyclers now accept them. But they take up so much room! My daughter buys milk at Costco, which comes in a box of two gallon jugs. Even that doesn't last a week at her house! She does make yogurt and buttermilk. She also buys cream by the quart and makes sour cream and cheese.

Meat is another matter. I'm trying to clean out the fridge in preparation for moving. That means coping with big hunks of meat that have been chilling in there since forever. Fortunately, EDelMar and OCD have scheduled a movie night tonight. I know I can count on them to eat bunches of this meat!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2013, 11:17:13 am
I don't drink coffee


What? Chuck, you're not from Texas!  8)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2013, 11:49:29 am
Oh, that would be the Buckhorn Exchange (http://www.buckhorn.com/). What did you have there? The BBQer's went there in 2007 before departing Denver for Estes Park. I didn't go because I was picking up Chrissi at the airport. However, I did go back there with Luigi a year or so later and we had a rattlesnake appetizer.

I think we had the rattlesnake, too. And somebody had ostrich, and somebody I'm sure had buffalo, and I can't remember what all else.

Quote
I can see how your vegetarian son would have been freaked out by the animal heads. 


He's no longer a vegetarian. It only lasted a couple of years, but man while he did it he was intense. I had to make two batches of spaghetti sauce, and if the spoon from the meat one went into the non-meat one, the non-meat one was ruined. He wouldn't sit on a leather chair. He made himself throw up when he found he had eaten Ceasar salad dressing containing anchovy paste. Couldn't eat lots of pies and most Hotess items because they contain lard. No gelatin-containing candy. Had to have a non-leather baseball glove.

Then one day he started right back eating meat.

Quote
There are getting to be some nice vegetarian restaurants in Denver now. And many of the regular restaurants are adding vegetarian dishes. When I am out with my vegetarian friends I always follow their dietary preferences but, secretly, I miss fish and seafood when I can't order it...meat, not so much.

I have to eat a lot of animal products because I avoid carbs. But I'm always happy to eat a vegetarian meal here and there. I find these days that most nice restaurants have at least one vegetarian dish on the menu. During Jack's vegetarian days he at some really delicious meals in restaurants. Sometimes I would join him. My then-husband and son always had to have meat.


But I could never understand veganism until recently. Then I realized that we have an abundance of milk and other dairy products because the calf is taken away from its mother shortly after it is born. That seems cruel, maybe even more cruel than eating meat.

It gets a lot crueler than that in the world of factory farming. Take the chickens who spend their entire lives in wire cages the size of shoeboxes, stacked by the thousands in big dark warehouses, their entire existence devoted to being egg-laying machines. And a "cage free" label usually just means they're packed by the thousands into big dark warehouses but without the wire cages.

I'm less familiar with the lives of cows but I'm sure all factory farmed animals endure various forms of hell. If you want to understand more about the moral argument for veganism, I highly recommend Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals.

So here's a thought I had last night. I went with some friends to see 12 Years a Slave, and as always with a movie like that, you have to examine your conscience -- what would I have done if I'd lived in those times? And of course I always like to think I would have been a progressive abolistionist and not a slaveholder (and by the way, this exercise doesn't just apply to white Americans whose ancestors were here back then -- unless you want to argue that different ethnic groups have different moral capabilities, then it applies to everybody). But of course you can never know -- if I'd grown up as a white person in rural Louisiana in the 19th century, I'd be highly unusual if I even thought to object to slavery. Even if I weren't entirely comfortable with it (as clearly some of the white characters aren't in the movie), I wouldn't necessarily do anything about it.

Now I'm someone who thinks that factory farming is evil, but I continue to eat eggs, dairy and meat. I do always grab the "cage free" eggs (figuring that's better than the alternative) and buy eggs and meat from a small farm at the farmer's market whenever I go, and look for sausage in the grocery story from this one company that even JSF kind of approved of because they raise their pigs so humanely. But those are pretty lame actions compared to the larger principle.

To be very clear, I'm not equating the lives of humans and animals, or saying factory farming is just as bad as slavery or anything like that. I'm just wondering: how far are average people (myself, for example) willing to go on behalf of their moral beliefs? Not that far, usually.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 17, 2013, 11:54:55 am
What? Chuck, you're not from Texas!  8)


Nope!  Jersey through and through!   I do enjoy a mug of hot chocolate on occasion.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2013, 11:56:31 am
That's actually something I started wondering about in the 90ies, watching the TV show Roseanne. They always took those huge plastic containers out of the fridge. Who can even empty such a big container before the contents get spoiled?

I'll tell you who -- my two sons. Together, they are capable of going through nearly a gallon a day. That's without me drinking any.

One reason I had to go to the grocery store so often when they were both home is because my fridge and car and grocery cart can only hold so many gallons of milk. (My fridge is the smallest I could find and it's still pretty big, but most current American fridges would not fit under the cabinets in my 1948 kitchen.)

Now with just one son here we go through maybe a gallon and a half of milk a week, plus a gallon jug of apple cider and other juices in smaller containers.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 17, 2013, 03:56:05 pm
Had to have a non-leather baseball glove.

I didn't even know there was such a thing.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 18, 2013, 02:05:37 am
I'll tell you who -- my two sons. Together, they are capable of going through nearly a gallon a day. That's without me drinking any.


 :laugh:
Okay, I take my question back. ;D
We need roughly one liter a day. But I'm restricting milk (rather cocoa) for my kids first because I think it's food, not a beverage for quenching your thirst. And second they don't drink pure milk anyway, only sweet cocoa. I think one or two cups a day is enough of the sweetness.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 18, 2013, 10:03:33 am
:laugh:
Okay, I take my question back. ;D
We need roughly one liter a day. But I'm restricting milk (rather cocoa) for my kids first because I think it's food, not a beverage for quenching your thirst. And second they don't drink pure milk anyway, only sweet cocoa. I think one or two cups a day is enough of the sweetness.

I can understand that. For myself I can't imagine drinking milk as a thirst quencher.  :P  The only way I can stand to drink it is with chocolate in it  ;D  or along with eating something, preferably something sweet. Otherwise I can't stand the taste of the stuff, especially if it isn't whole milk.

Incidentally, I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is a school of thought that a fluid intended to nurture baby bovines is not something humans should be consuming.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: brianr on November 18, 2013, 01:39:52 pm
Milk is my favourite thirst quencher. However I buy lite milk and about 1 litre per week. I often put strawberry flavouring in it or make hot chocolate in winter. I love milk shakes and it is one thing I find hard to buy when travelling in Europe. I now use SoGood (soy milk) on my cereal for breakfast. I always have a cappuchino when out (probably about 4 times per week Dunedin is famous for its coffee culture) but only drink black coffee at home. I cannot start my day without a black coffee.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 18, 2013, 02:30:40 pm
I just finished Adam Gopnik's Nov. 4 article about baking bread with his mother. Almost makes me want to go out and do it.

Although his mother's habit of referring to yeast as "little bugs" might tend to curb one's appetite a bit.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 18, 2013, 06:49:57 pm
Although his mother's habit of referring to yeast as "little bugs" might tend to curb one's appetite a bit.  :-\

Yay think?  :laugh:

Now, whenever I hear 'yeast' I think of Glee.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 18, 2013, 11:30:54 pm
Now, whenever I hear 'yeast' I think of Glee.

Hunh?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 19, 2013, 09:17:20 am
Hunh?  ???

:laugh:

Three of the 'students' on Glee have graduated (Kurt, Santana, & Rachel) and the show divides its time between the students still in school, and these three.   Well, the three of them made a friendly bet to see who would be the first to book acting/singing jobs.

Santana won the bet, explaining she had been picked to do a commercial for a product called "Yeast-I-Stat".

She then played the commercial for them, and it's a take-off on all those bad feminine hygene commercials, she's running through fields of grass, swinging on a swing,......I thought it was hysterical.

The best line in her commercial comes close to the end, when she's hosting a breakfast gathering, and holding a tray of bagels.



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d67hYDaWcwc[/youtube]
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 19, 2013, 10:46:15 am
I'm restricting milk (rather cocoa) for my kids first because I think it's food,

 :laugh:  That's exactly why I let my kids drink it in unlimited quantities. Well, to be honest I let them drink just about anything (nonalcoholic) in unlimited quantities. But milk is so much more nutritious and less sugary (they drink it plain) than beverages they might choose instead.

While we're on the topic, or rather so far off topic I can't even see the tracks from here, can I ask you one more quick non-New Yorker question? How do you introduce your kids to alcohol over there? Do you wait until they're 18 and then they just drink as older people do? Or do they drink at home at younger ages? I'm interested in your family, but also your culture in general.

The drinking age here is 21. But when we were in Europe last summer, my then 18-year-old was old enough to drink. And my 17-year-old, while not yet strictly legal, had absolutely no problem obtaining a mojito when the two went to the beach together in Barcelona, or buying a beer when he stopped into the corner bodega in France. I decided to play it when-in-Rome, loosening the rules for my younger son also, and let them drink a little bit, which they never do at home. They were very moderate: a mojito on the beach, a beer or vodka-orange juice late at night. My confidence in their alcohol use was actually increased over what it would be if I had banned it entirely and then had no idea whether, given half a chance, they might drink until they were blotto.

The other night my son and I went to my stepmother's for dinner. She, after asking my permission, poured him a third of a glass or so of wine. She's American but very Europhillic, and her husband is Hungarian. I had no problem with it. It seems a much better approach than the standard American approach to alcohol, to absolutely prohibit it until the magic age is reached, and then ... time to binge like crazy!!

In Wisconsin, about an hour's drive from here, the culture is somewhat different. The state was settled mainly by Germans, and there's a very bar-friendly, beer-friendly culture there. Kids accompanied by their parents can drink in bars in unlimited quantities -- until they're 18. Then they can't drink publicly under any circumstances until they're 21. Sound bizarre? It's because at 18 they're adults, as everyone in the country is, so their parents aren't in charge of them, but Wisconsin's drinking age is 21, as it is everywhere in the country, so they can't legally drink.

When I was a teenager, both the age of adulthood and the drinking age were 18 (i.e., like almost everywhere else in the developed world), but a few years later they raised the drinking age. The federal government did not force states to raise their drinking ages, but would not give federal highway funding to any state below 21. Thus, all states are now 21.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 19, 2013, 11:00:40 am
Incidentally, I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is a school of thought that a fluid intended to nurture baby bovines is not something humans should be consuming.  8)

That's more than a school. It's the explanation for why some demographic populations have high rates of lactose intolerance. If your genetic heritage comes from a part of the world where cows weren't widely cultivated for milk, there's a good chance your body lacks the enzymes needed to digest it properly.

But the way you phrase your comment, it sounds like you're getting at something broader, an idea based on logic rather than enzymes. Like, if it's designed for baby cows to drink, it can't be good for humans. By that logic, though, we'd probably better avoid not just all dairy but also eggs, because yuck, and even honey, because it's produced for insects, not humans.

And by that logic, we'd be at least somewhat better off drinking human milk. We could end dairy farming and repace it with breast factories, offering employment opportunities for countless otherwise unskilled young women.

And indeed, I have heard of places that sell cheese and ice cream and things like that made of human breast milk (not sure how it was obtained). But tell you what, I don't think those products were flying off the shelves.

BTW, of course, baby humans can not drink plain baby cow's milk. It's amazing to think how tied down women were, how dependent babies were on their mothers, and the important role in some cultures of wet nurses, in the many many millennia of human history before the invention of infant formula.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 19, 2013, 11:49:04 am
The position of wet nurse was a very popular one for women who needed to work back in the day. Another option was to get a couple of goats, as Robert Duvall did when he played a man whose wife died in childbirth (I forget the name of the movie). Sure, babies can't drink cow's milk but zillions managed to survive somehow when they didn't have a mother, as often happened in the days pre-obstetricians and maternity wards.

In this interesting discussion, I'm reminded of another New Yorker article about the bacteria that live in our bodies and allow us to live. One of the things I learned from that article is that babies are born without this colony of bacteria and have to build it up over time. Thus, they even have trouble digesting mother's milk, and that leads to the dreaded "spit-up" situation. Now you can thank me for tethering the discussion, if ever so slightly, back to the title of the thread!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2013, 12:29:15 pm
But the way you phrase your comment, it sounds like you're getting at something broader, an idea based on logic rather than enzymes. Like, if it's designed for baby cows to drink, it can't be good for humans. By that logic, though, we'd probably better avoid not just all dairy but also eggs, because yuck, and even honey, because it's produced for insects, not humans.

I believe there are some vegetarians who do just that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 19, 2013, 01:47:43 pm
The position of wet nurse was a very popular one for women who needed to work back in the day.

Years ago, I read a book on the history of motherhood by a renowned anthropologist. In the old days, rich people could hire wet nurses and poorer people could leave their babies at group homes to be nursed. But the latter were so disease-ridden they were virtually a death sentence and even the former was risky. Some families who couldn't feed or otherwise support another child -- this was before birth control was fine-tuned or widely used and abortion methods, herbal or otherwise, were crude and dangerous -- would do basically what Hansel and Gretel's parents did: abandon the kid in the forest. This was not uncommon.

Quote
Another option was to get a couple of goats, as Robert Duvall did when he played a man whose wife died in childbirth (I forget the name of the movie).

I haven't seen that Robert Duvall movie, and hadn't heard anything about newborns being able to survive on untreated goat's milk.

Quote
Sure, babies can't drink cow's milk but zillions managed to survive somehow when they didn't have a mother, as often happened in the days pre-obstetricians and maternity wards.

Zillions survived, and zillions more died. Almost all of the increase in life expectancy -- either between modern times and long ago, or between developed and underdeveloped countries now -- is due to improved infant and child mortality.

Quote
In this interesting discussion, I'm reminded of another New Yorker article about the bacteria that live in our bodies and allow us to live. One of the things I learned from that article is that babies are born without this colony of bacteria and have to build it up over time. Thus, they even have trouble digesting mother's milk, and that leads to the dreaded "spit-up" situation. Now you can thank me for tethering the discussion, if ever so slightly, back to the title of the thread!

There's fascinating research going on now on the functions of our bodies' biotic systems. They're treating digestive-tract disorders with fecal transplants. They've connected obesity to the presence or absence of specific bacteria in the gut, suggesting the possibility of treating obesity by introducing "good" bacteria. They gave fat mice bacteria from the guts of thin mice, and the fat mice lost weight.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 19, 2013, 02:05:23 pm
I believe there are some vegetarians who do just that.

Sure, they're called vegans! But the implication of the school of thought you said you'd recalled reading about was that while there's nothing questionable about eating meat or other animal products, there is something uniquely inappropriate about humans consuming fluid intended to nurture baby bovines.

I say, humans are designed to be omnivorous. If your conscience (or body, or disgust reflex) tells you to avoid meat, by all means avoid meat. Same with dairy and other animal products. If not, that's fine, too. I eat meat because if I eat too much sugar and starch I get fat, and if you cut out sugar and starch it's hard to cut out animal products. But I don't think there's anything inherently "wrong" with eating animals.

What I do think is deeply wrong is how farm animals are treated in this country. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to be a non-vegan American and not at least to some extent support factory farming. It's possible -- buy animal products produced by small farms, whose practices you're familiar with, rather than ordinary brands from the grocery store -- but as a busy single mom of two omnivorous teenage boys with gigantic appetites who restocks groceries multiple times a week, I can't take the time to drive out to family farms. Or at least I choose not to.

Maybe when my sons move out I'll start doing more of that. Or frequenting co-ops that set non-factory standards for the meat and dairy and eggs they sell.

Hunting and fishing for meat (not trophies), though not everybody's cup of tea as outdoors activities, should get the approval of any carnivorous person, IMO. It seems far less "wrong" to kill and eat a duck or deer than it does to keep a chicken in a dark shoebox its entire life. Or to pump a cow full of toxic antibiotics that are not only bad for the cow but also endanger all of humanity by weakening the effectiveness of antibiotics.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2013, 02:24:00 pm
Sure, they're called vegans! But the implication of the school of thought you said you'd recalled reading about was that while there's nothing questionable about eating meat or other animal products, there is something uniquely inappropriate about humans consuming fluid intended to nurture baby bovines.

You're taking this much too far. I was really just being a wiseass commenting on milk drinking. I wasn't saying anything about meat eating.

Meanwhile, if you haven't done so already, you must read the little piece "London Postcard: Mother Tongue" by Lauren Collins in the Nov. 4 issue. I just read it over lunch. You are in a unique position to enjoy it, and I'm sure you will.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 19, 2013, 05:00:32 pm
You're taking this much too far. I was really just being a wiseass commenting on milk drinking. I wasn't saying anything about meat eating.

Which was exactly my point, but ...  ::) Let be, let be. I missed the implicit "wiseass alert" in your post.

Quote
Meanwhile, if you haven't done so already, you must read the little piece "London Postcard: Mother Tongue" by Lauren Collins in the Nov. 4 issue. I just read it over lunch. You are in a unique position to enjoy it, and I'm sure you will.  :)

Thank you! I rarely read TotT, so I'm sure I would have missed it without your pointing me to it. For those who haven't seen it, it's about words and phrases that are often used by journalists but less often in ordinary conversation. Apparently there's a Twitter hashtag #journalese; I'll have to look it up. I'm surprised they didn't mention "solons" -- a once-common term you rarely see now that I've never heard anywhere else. It's synonymous with lawmakers and legislators (but, like so many favorite journalese terms, fits better in headlines).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2013, 05:18:05 pm
I'm surprised they didn't mention "solons" -- a once-common term you rarely see now that I've never heard anywhere else. It's synonymous with lawmakers and legislators (but, like so many favorite journalese terms, fits better in headlines).

Maybe nobody uses it anymore, even in headlines, because Webster's first definition of solon is "a wise and skillful lawgiver." When was the last time you saw one of those in U.S. politics?  ;D

Then again, who studies Ancient Greece in school anymore? I guess you have to be of a certain age to know who Solon was in order to get the meaning of the headline.  :-\

I usually skim TotT to see if there is anything interesting. I figured you'd like this one.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 20, 2013, 03:58:48 am
While we're on the topic, or rather so far off topic I can't even see the tracks from here,

 :laugh: You can say that twice and mean it. :laugh:
My apologies to all others, more OT coming.

Quote
:laugh:  That's exactly why I let my kids drink it in unlimited quantities. Well, to be honest I let them drink just about anything (nonalcoholic) in unlimited quantities. But milk is so much more nutritious and less sugary (they drink it plain) than beverages they might choose instead.

For my kids the alternative is water. Sugary beverages like lemonade, sodas, etc. used to be restriced to one bottle (0.75 liter) per child per week. Now Hannah is old enough to do what she wants, Helen isn't allowed any sugery stuff because of her Crohn's and Oliver simply doesn't like it (which I can't take credit for; just his personal quirk).



Quote
While we're on the topic, or rather so far off topic I can't even see the tracks from here, can I ask you one more quick non-New Yorker question? How do you introduce your kids to alcohol over there? Do you wait until they're 18 and then they just drink as older people do? Or do they drink at home at younger ages? I'm interested in your family, but also your culture in general.


Here's the legal situation:

(http://i575.photobucket.com/albums/ss192/Penthesilea09/Nach%20Neugestaltung%20der%20Website/alkohol_kl_01_zps202d56c7.jpg)

On the Y-axis is the age of kids, on the X-axis are (LTR) beer, wine, sparkling wine, alcopops and hard liquor.

Red = illegal
Red with dot = only allowed when accompanied by an adult in charge
Teal = allowed

From 18 on, everything is allowed.

For my kids, I'd say it's okay to have a little bit of the softer alcohols from about 13 on. You know, special occasions, all the family gathering and having a toast, yada, yada. In such situations I'd say it's okay for kids to have one glass of sparkling wine mixed with OJ, or wine mixed with sparkling water, such things. It's roughly the same with all of our extended family/relatives. In practise however Hannah never wanted any of it, Helen isn't allowed any alcohol (Crohn's again) and Oliver is still too young.

Hannah started drinking alcohol between 15 and 16 with her sports team. Every now and then they celebrate special occasions with sparkling wine in the locker room after the game. I find that completely okay. When she started going out at night (around 16) I've always told her "You can drink, but you can't get drunk."
To be honest, I wouldn't have had a problem with her getting drunk once (but I didn't tell her that! ;D). It's something we all have to go through I guess. So far she hasn't, at least that I know of. :laugh:

It was pretty much the same for me when I was a teenager. I started drinking a couple of sips at 12 on special occations. First time drunk was at 15. On purpose, to try it out. Didn't like the feeling/loss of control. In my whole life I was drunk exactly three times, and a little tipsy maybe once every five years or so. Mostly I just don't like the taste of alcohol.

The one thing I'm really strict about is drinking and driving. No way. I don't drive after a single alcoholic beverage, even though it would still be legal, and I await the same from my kids. For their driving friends the rule is one beer (or one wine). If the driver had more than that, my kids have to call me and I pick them up. Hasn't happened so far.


Quote
When I was a teenager, both the age of adulthood and the drinking age were 18 (i.e., like almost everywhere else in the developed world), but a few years later they raised the drinking age. The federal government did not force states to raise their drinking ages, but would not give federal highway funding to any state below 21. Thus, all states are now 21.


Now that's tricky!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 20, 2013, 04:16:19 am
Thank you! I rarely read TotT,

What is TotT in regard to the New Yorker? Topic of the - ?
(Yay, I'm back on topic again! ;))
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on November 20, 2013, 09:30:06 am
What is TotT in regard to the New Yorker? Topic of the - ?
(Yay, I'm back on topic again! ;))

"Talk of the Town".

What is alcopops?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 20, 2013, 10:44:56 am
What is alcopops?

I know! I'm not surprised there is such a thing, but am surprised that it's a big enough thing to be listed right up there in the big six with Bier and Wein! But also, what my imagination conjures from the word seems like it would be classified in the Bier/Wein/Sekt group rather than with Schnaps.

Thank you so much for that thorough explanation, Chrissi!  :)  I've always wondered about habits and norms in other countries. Do you think they're approximately the same in Germany as they are elsewhere in Europe? Or do they vary a lot from country to country?

It's interesting. Every single you wrote, aside from the legal age being 18 part, sounds approximately like what you might hear from a moderately permissive parent here, except this:

Hannah started drinking alcohol between 15 and 16 with her sports team. Every now and then they celebrate special occasions with sparkling wine in the locker room after the game.

A coach here who allowed teenagers to drink even a small amount of sparkling wine in the locker room after a game would be fired on the spot and it might even be literally a headline-making scandal. Youth athletes who are caught drinking any amount get suspended from their teams.

That's what I mean about alcohol being banned altogether until they reach the magic age. And then, bam -- all bets are off! My own paper's free arts & entertainment weekly section recently ran a cover story called "Which College Bar Are You?" -- depending on your traits and preferences, the article would match you with some popular college binge-drinking hangout. Of course, even many college students can't drink legally, but the article ignored that.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 20, 2013, 10:51:58 am
Ahem, so getting back to the New Yorker, TotT, a Paul said, is "Talk of the Town," a weekly section featuring an editorial about some major current issue followed by several shorter articles about people or events of note.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on November 20, 2013, 10:58:18 am
(I see that alcopop = wine cooler, etc.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 20, 2013, 12:07:33 pm
A coach here who allowed teenagers to drink even a small amount of sparkling wine in the locker room after a game would be fired on the spot and it might even be literally a headline-making scandal. Youth athletes who are caught drinking any amount get suspended from their teams.

Not to mention that said coach might find his or her ass in jail, since it's illegal to supply alcohol to minors. Here in Pennsylvania, anyway, parents who supply beer for their own kids' parties have gotten in trouble with the law.

(I see that alcopop = wine cooler, etc.)

Darn. I was hoping it might be a booze-infused popsicle.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 20, 2013, 12:08:45 pm
Ahem, so getting back to the New Yorker, TotT, a Paul said, is "Talk of the Town," a weekly section featuring an editorial about some major current issue followed by several shorter articles about people or events of note.

First place I ever heard of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal was in a TotT piece years ago.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 20, 2013, 12:24:47 pm
Both my children drank a small glass of wine at the family table during celebratory dinners. But then, my son stopped doing even that, because he is dedicated to his bicycling. When daughter was about 19 or 20 she started making wine with her dad and now, at 25, she makes beer with her husband. I've never seen her tipsy though and she and her husband are very careful to take public transportation or get a ride if they're going to drink. Of course, she didn't drink while pregnant either.


First place I ever heard of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal was in a TotT piece years ago.

Yes, I remember that piece. It wasn't very flattering to Maggie.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: brianr on November 20, 2013, 02:34:49 pm
(I see that alcopop = wine cooler, etc.)
Not really that seems to be a Canadian term. Downunder Alcopops are sweetened alcoholic beverages, usually sold in single-serving bottles or cans. Often fruit-flavored and/or carbonated, they closely resemble soda or energy drinks.
Many consider they are worse than beer as they easily lead teenagers into enjoying drinking and can have about 5 to even 12% alcohol.
I think the European rules are very sensible. Both NZ and Australia have big underage drinking problems.
However I thought it hilarious that I had to show my licence to buy an alcoholic drink in some parts of the USA including on Amtrak. I mean I like to think I look young but over 60 with grey hair ?????
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 20, 2013, 04:02:07 pm
I went to a restaurant just the other night -- in a lively entertainment area frequented by young people -- where the bouncer at the door not only demanded my ID (and those of my companions) but really gave it the once over, as if checking to see whether it might be a fake. I'm 56.  :laugh:

I once walked out of a California Pizza Kitchen (a national chain -- this was in a Minnesota mall) because I had forgotten my purse and ID at home and they refused to serve me a glass of wine. I was in my late 40s. I was with my then-husband, who had his ID and is five years younger, and my sons, who were about 10 and 12. The waitress refused. She summoned the manager, who also refused to serve me without ID. I was less angry about the wine itself than the rigidity of their stupid rule -- even a manager was not allowed to use plain common sense. I like to think of myself as youthful-ish, but come on. I went to another restaurant in the same mall and ordered a glass with no problem.

I've seen that airport bars are extremely insistent about demanding IDs from everyone. I once stood next to a man who got carded and must have been around 80. He said, "Let me get out my wallet. Can I set my cane on the bar?"


(I see that alcopop = wine cooler, etc.)

I was hoping it might be a booze-infused popsicle.  ;D

I thought of both, but was surprised that either would be lumped with Schnaps rather than with Wein.

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Not to mention that said coach might find his or her ass in jail, since it's illegal to supply alcohol to minors. Here in Pennsylvania, anyway, parents who supply beer for their own kids' parties have gotten in trouble with the law.

Good point. It's an extremely serious offense. And if a kid who drinks your supplied alcohol then gets in a car accident ... you are doomed.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 20, 2013, 04:08:11 pm
Good point. It's an extremely serious offense. And if a kid who drinks your supplied alcohol then gets in a car accident ... you are doomed.

You bet!

(And maybe I should have clarified my comment that it's against the law to supply alcohol to your own minor kids to drink in your own home.)

And just to steer things back to The New Yorker again, I'll add that I enjoyed Joan Acocella's Nov. 11 article on a new translation of The Decameron.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 21, 2013, 03:36:58 am
I know! I'm not surprised there is such a thing, but am surprised that it's a big enough thing to be listed right up there in the big six with Bier and Wein! But also, what my imagination conjures from the word seems like it would be classified in the Bier/Wein/Sekt group rather than with Schnaps.


It's because they contain Schnaps. The law in Germany defines alcopops as beverages mixed from hard liquor and a fruit and/or soda component. They bacame very popular in youth culture over recent years because their sweetness covers the bitter taste of alcohol and because they're marketed aggressively to youth. Thus they got their own, new law within the laws for protection of the youth and they were burdened with a hefty extra-tax.
Other alcoholic mix-drinks, like pre-mixed beer and soda (what you would call coolers I guess), don't fall under this law. Technically they're not alcopops, but in everyday language they're often called exactly that.



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Thank you so much for that thorough explanation, Chrissi!  :)  I've always wondered about habits and norms in other countries. Do you think they're approximately the same in Germany as they are elsewhere in Europe? Or do they vary a lot from country to country?

Tough question. I know that it's different in Russia. I've read about it and have seen plenty Russian families (on vacation in Southern Europe) allowing much smaller kids to have wine/water mixes with meals and also having a share of their parents' vodka.
I've also read that in France it's common to let younger children have some wine (again mixed with water).



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A coach here who allowed teenagers to drink even a small amount of sparkling wine in the locker room after a game would be fired on the spot and it might even be literally a headline-making scandal. Youth athletes who are caught drinking any amount get suspended from their teams.

Not to mention that said coach might find his or her ass in jail, since it's illegal to supply alcohol to minors. Here in Pennsylvania, anyway, parents who supply beer for their own kids' parties have gotten in trouble with the law.


In Germany the law regulates drinking of alcohol by youth in public. A locker room of a sports club is not a public place. Same goes for private parties at people's homes. And since 16 year olds can drink legally even in public (and under 16 when their parents are with them), the situation is quite different.
Strange thing, those different cultures. What would be a scandal for you is absolutely acceptable over here. OTOH we get panic attacks at the mere thought of 16 year olds driving cars by themselves. :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 21, 2013, 01:55:07 pm
OTOH we get panic attacks at the mere thought of 16 year olds driving cars by themselves. :laugh:

We do too, but we let them do it anyway.  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2013, 10:08:36 am
Last night I started Ariel Levy's article about how she decided to have a baby--and then delivered it prematurely in the bathroom of a hotel room in Ulanbator, Mongolia.  :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 22, 2013, 10:27:04 am
Last night I started Ariel Levy's article about how she decided to have a baby--and then delivered it prematurely in the bathroom of a hotel room in Ulanbator, Mongolia.  :'(

I read it about a week ago online because I kept seeing so many people on Twitter linking it and talking about how powerful it is. And they're right. It is.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...SPOILERS
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 22, 2013, 10:53:00 am
I read that last night too. Shouldn't we add a big spoiler alert to your posts?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...SPOILERS
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2013, 11:40:15 am
I read that last night too. Shouldn't we add a big spoiler alert to your posts?

Well, we haven't said how it ends. I don't have the issue here with me at work, but the magazine itself sort of gives it away on the first page of the story, under the title.

And I agree, it's quite powerful.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...SPOILERS
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 22, 2013, 01:06:40 pm
When I began reading the story, the title said "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" and the subtitle said "Adventure and Heartbreak at the Edge of the Earth" so I thought maybe she tried to cook a turkey in Mongolia and it didn't come out well...or maybe she went for a hike and her hiking buddy disappeared or something like that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...SPOILERS
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2013, 01:29:14 pm
When I began reading the story, the title said "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" and the subtitle said "Adventure and Heartbreak at the Edge of the Earth" so I thought maybe she tried to cook a turkey in Mongolia and it didn't come out well...or maybe she went for a hike and her hiking buddy disappeared or something like that.

Ah, but the "Heartbreak" tells you it's not going to end well, and then it goes into her decision to have a baby, and how quickly she was able to become pregnant, and how she decided to go to Mongolia while enceinte. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2013, 09:56:47 pm
Well, I finished the story over dinner this evening. As I had read the story of Levy's wedding several years ago, I found it even more saddening that the loss of the baby apparently also led to the breakup of her marriage.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 23, 2013, 04:01:14 pm
Well, I finished the story over dinner this evening. As I had read the story of Levy's wedding several years ago, I found it even more saddening that the loss of the baby apparently also led to the breakup of her marriage.

Now that is a spoiler. I was going to mention something about that -- about how I felt more invested in her marriage than I usually am, because of that other essay -- and decided not to say anything to avoid spoilers. But now that you've let the cat out of the bag ...

I thought it was interesting that she never indicated the gender of her spouse. If you examine the writing, you can see she was careful to avoid using pronouns. I now know much more than I ever had about what it's like in Mongolia in November, but if I hadn't read that other essay I wouldn't know she was married to a woman. (Though of course it's possible that this is actually a different marriage.) Any theories on why she kept that undisclosed?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 23, 2013, 04:02:54 pm
I also have to say that I was in awe of the intrepidity of her travels. India alone at 22? I wouldn't go to India alone now.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 23, 2013, 05:37:15 pm
Now that is a spoiler. I was going to mention something about that -- about how I felt more invested in her marriage than I usually am, because of that other essay -- and decided not to say anything to avoid spoilers. But now that you've let the cat out of the bag ...

Well, yeah, but I figured the only people who read and post on this thread are going to read the article anyway, so. ...

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I thought it was interesting that she never indicated the gender of her spouse. If you examine the writing, you can see she was careful to avoid using pronouns.

I noticed that immediately, and I thought it was interesting, too. She also didn't go into the how of how she conceived the child.

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I now know much more than I ever had about what it's like in Mongolia in November.


I'd say more than I cared or needed to know about November in Mongolia.  :-\

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But if I hadn't read that other essay I wouldn't know she was married to a woman. (Though of course it's possible that this is actually a different marriage.) Any theories on why she kept that undisclosed?

Good point--I'm assuming it's the gay marriage--and assuming if she had a heterosexual marriage she would have written "my husband" instead of "my spouse" or "my partner." But I suppose she could have had more than one gay/lesbian marriage, too.

Perhaps she kept that undisclosed because it might have been a distraction to readers who didn't already know she's lesbian? Plus, in a way I think the gender of her spouse is kind of irrelevant to the story she's telling. I understand that the loss of a pregnancy sometimes leads to the breakup of heterosexual couples, too.

I am very, very sad for her, and also very relieved for her. She may have come closer to dying than she even realizes. Here we go with my spoilers agaiin  ;D but my jaw dropped when I read that she pulled out the placenta. If it had adhered to her uterus, she could have torn her uterus and bled to death in that Mongolian hotel room. As it was she probably came close.  :(

I also have to say that I was in awe of the intrepidity of her travels. India alone at 22? I wouldn't go to India alone now.

Yeah, me, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 23, 2013, 06:12:38 pm
I also have to say that I was in awe of the intrepidity of her travels. India alone at 22? I wouldn't go to India alone now.

If you're thinking about it from the standpoint of safety, India is a far safer country than the US. Every third person is not toting a concealed gun and Indians are such pacifist that they wouldn't harm a cow or even an ant. India is a very popular destination for college graduates who want to see a completely different culture.

If you're thinking that it's a long way away and an arduous plane trip, then it's better to go when you're young than when you're older and not as limber or flexible.

Depends on how you're approaching the idea.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 23, 2013, 06:14:00 pm
Well, yeah, but I figured the only people who read and post on this thread are going to read the article anyway, so. ...


When I first read your comment about the article, there were 2 members reading it and 5 guests.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on November 23, 2013, 06:32:54 pm
I thought it was interesting that she never indicated the gender of her spouse. If you examine the writing, you can see she was careful to avoid using pronouns. I now know much more than I ever had about what it's like in Mongolia in November, but if I hadn't read that other essay I wouldn't know she was married to a woman. (Though of course it's possible that this is actually a different marriage.) Any theories on why she kept that undisclosed?


I noticed that immediately, and I thought it was interesting, too. She also didn't go into the how of how she conceived the child.

I can confirm what you two said here. I read the article earlier today, but had never heard her name before that and thus didn't know anything about her. To be honest, I didn't notice she avoided pronouns and kept the language gender-neutral. Except once when I tipped over the expression "spouse" and found it somewhat - I don't know - strange might be a too strong word, but I noticed this one. Didn't give it a second thought though and only here on BM I learned she's lesbian.
 

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Perhaps she kept that undisclosed because it might have been a distraction to readers who didn't already know she's lesbian? Plus, in a way I think the gender of her spouse is kind of irrelevant to the story she's telling.

It is.


Quote
I understand that the loss of a pregnancy sometimes leads to the breakup of heterosexual couples, too.

Now here's the thing I really found strange. Her marriage was over within three weeks after the incident? I can picture this put a strain on their relationship, and I know many marriages don't survive the death of a child. But that's long term. At first I would imagine a couple clinging together all the closer in such a tragedy. Holding on even tighter to the other in times of overwhelming grief.
Maybe she didn't want to get into more details about her marriage because it's not the point of the story. Similar to what Jeff said about her non-use of pronouns. But still, this tidbit of fact remains strange.


Quote
I am very, very sad for her, and also very relieved for her. She may have come closer to dying than she even realizes. Here we go with my spoilers agaiin  ;D but my jaw dropped when I read that she pulled out the placenta. If it had adhered to her uterus, she could have torn her uterus and bled to death in that Mongolian hotel room. As it was she probably came close.  :(

Yeah, I had similar thoughts when reading the piece. :-\
I think nightmare doesn't even describe what she had to go thru. And she had to go through all of it alone. :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 23, 2013, 10:01:28 pm
Good point--I'm assuming it's the gay marriage--and assuming if she had a heterosexual marriage she would have written "my husband" instead of "my spouse" or "my partner." But I suppose she could have had more than one gay/lesbian marriage, too.

Five to ten years ago, if I heard a woman refer to "my partner" I would assume her partner was a woman, and sometimes would be mildly surprised to find it was a man. But these days it has become such a common locution that I don't make assumptions one way or another when someone says it.

(However, I have rarely if ever heard a straight man refer to his female partner as "my partner" -- if I did, I would probably assume he meant his business partner.)

Quote
Perhaps she kept that undisclosed because it might have been a distraction to readers who didn't already know she's lesbian? Plus, in a way I think the gender of her spouse is kind of irrelevant to the story she's telling. I understand that the loss of a pregnancy sometimes leads to the breakup of heterosexual couples, too.

( * * * SPOILER ALERT * * * )

I decided to retrieve the relevant passages. She doesn't appear to be quite bending over backward to avoid revealing gender -- the sentences feel graceful and natural -- yet the omission, over three mentions, doesn't feel quite random, either. Meanwhile, at least two men in the piece are referred to as having wives.

Quote
I could still feel spikes of adrenaline when I was back at my desk in New York, typing, while my spouse cooked a chicken in the kitchen.

My partner—who had always indicated that I would need to cast the deciding vote on parenthood—had come with me, and we were having one of those magical moments in a marriage when you find each other completely delightful.

Within a week, the apartment we were supposed to move into with the baby fell through. Within three, my marriage had shattered.



I agree that the partner's gender is not crucial to the story. But the essay is full of details that, strictly speaking, it could have lived without: the games she played as a child, what the Greek publisher and his wife (ahem) served for dinner in their apartment, Mongolia's mineral resources. I'm not saying they were excessive or padding, I'm saying that it seems significant that out of all the details she did include, one she didn't, apparently deliberately, is the gender of her (presumably) same-sex partner.

Given that one of the benefits of marriage equality is that it "normalizes" women having wives and men husbands in mainstream minds, it would have been nice to see a casual mention of her wife without further ado. I'm always happy to see same-sex couples portrayed in the media in ways that we're used to seeing straight couples portrayed, without fanfare.

Another possibility is that this is actually a later marriage, the spouse/partner this time is a man, and if she used male pronouns she feared she'd confuse people like us who are familiar with her wedding essay. But nor did she want to have to stop and explain ("Oh, by the way, in case you read my other essay, this is someone else ...").


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 23, 2013, 10:09:35 pm
If you're thinking about it from the standpoint of safety, India is a far safer country than the US. Every third person is not toting a concealed gun and Indians are such pacifist that they wouldn't harm a cow or even an ant. India is a very popular destination for college graduates who want to see a completely different culture.

If you're thinking that it's a long way away and an arduous plane trip, then it's better to go when you're young than when you're older and not as limber or flexible.

Depends on how you're approaching the idea.

No, I'm talking about having the self-confidence to navigate a foreign environment where I can't speak or read the language and am unfamiliar with the customs. I was pretty daunted planning trips to Spain and France last summer with my sons, even though at least one of us spoke the language in either place, I've been to Europe a number of times and their cultures are more similar to ours than India's is. I'm not a very intrepid traveler, I guess.

The idea of violence didn't enter my mind in regard to India, though I'm sure in some other countries that would be a concern. The plane ride would be arduous but that alone wouldn't stop me.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 24, 2013, 12:55:37 am
But, in India, as a former British colony, everyone speaks English!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Sason on November 24, 2013, 07:29:10 am
But, in India, as a former British colony, everyone speaks English!

Just like...ahem....USA....
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 24, 2013, 01:05:46 pm
I know. But I find travel challenging, though rewarding. Kudos to you for not being daunted!

Don't get me wrong -- I'd go to India, just probably not all by myself. I prefer to share my confusion with others.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 24, 2013, 05:34:10 pm
Five to ten years ago, if I heard a woman refer to "my partner" I would assume her partner was a woman, and sometimes would be mildly surprised to find it was a man. But these days it has become such a common locution that I don't make assumptions one way or another when someone says it.

I guess I don't hang around enough straight people. I've never heard a straight woman refer to the man in her life as her partner.

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I decided to retrieve the relevant passages. She doesn't appear to be quite bending over backward to avoid revealing gender -- the sentences feel graceful and natural -- yet the omission, over three mentions, doesn't feel quite random, either. Meanwhile, at least two men in the piece are referred to as having wives.

I'm sure it wasn't random.

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I agree that the partner's gender is not crucial to the story. But the essay is full of details that, strictly speaking, it could have lived without: the games she played as a child, what the Greek publisher and his wife (ahem) served for dinner in their apartment, Mongolia's mineral resources. I'm not saying they were excessive or padding, I'm saying that it seems significant that out of all the details she did include, one she didn't, apparently deliberately, is the gender of her (presumably) same-sex partner.

Sure, she obviously made a decision not to include the gender of her partner.

Meanwhile, what's the deal with Jackson Cox (see page 27 in the hardcopy magazine) and his "friend"? When she arrives at Cox's apartment, they're pouring champagne and listening to Beyonce? After dinner at a French restaurant, they take her to an "underground gay bar"?

First of all, it's interesting to learn that there are French restaurants and gay bars in Ulaanbaatar, but secondly, I'd like to know what she meant by "underground." Illegal, like a speakeasy? Or just in a basement somewhere?

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Given that one of the benefits of marriage equality is that it "normalizes" women having wives and men husbands in mainstream minds, it would have been nice to see a casual mention of her wife without further ado. I'm always happy to see same-sex couples portrayed in the media in ways that we're used to seeing straight couples portrayed, without fanfare.

I'm afraid marriage equality is never going to "'normalize' women having wives and men husbands" for this old buzzard. Those terms, wife and husband, are so heteronormative and gender-linked for me that I'll never be comfortable with their use by same-gender couples. They're also linked in my mind to sex roles--that is, roles in sex--that I don't like to think about. But that's me, so never mind. ...

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Another possibility is that this is actually a later marriage, the spouse/partner this time is a man, and if she used male pronouns she feared she'd confuse people like us who are familiar with her wedding essay. But nor did she want to have to stop and explain ("Oh, by the way, in case you read my other essay, this is someone else ...").

So you're speculating that she's actually bisexual, or she decided she wasn't a lesbian anymore (it's been known to happen)?

Edit to Add:

This just in: For what's worth, the Wikipedia article on Levy mentions only her marriage to Amy Norquist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Levy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Levy)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 25, 2013, 01:24:57 am
I'm afraid marriage equality is never going to "'normalize' women having wives and men husbands" for this old buzzard. Those terms, wife and husband, are so heteronormative and gender-linked for me that I'll never be comfortable with their use by same-gender couples.

It's probably a little difficult for all  of us old buzzards. But when I see even a few straight Republicans swinging over to at least a mildly same-sex-marriage-friendly stance, I know the culture has undergone massive change in a very short time, and when that happens it's amazing what people can become comfortable with and nonchalant about. When I lived in New Orleans, every time I would see a black person and white person over a certain age talking amiably and as equals, I marveled at how much people can change.

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So you're speculating that she's actually bisexual, or she decided she wasn't a lesbian anymore (it's been known to happen)?

Edit to Add:

This just in: For what's worth, the Wikipedia article on Levy mentions only her marriage to Amy Norquist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Levy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Levy)

I was speculating something of that nature. But I believe Wikipedia in this case. So now I'm back to square one for an explanation. She could have used a feminine pronoun at some point and not changed one other thing about the piece and it would have been just fine. But for some reason, she chose not to.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 25, 2013, 10:13:45 am
But when I see even a few straight Republicans swinging over to at least a mildly same-sex-marriage-friendly stance, I know the culture has undergone massive change in a very short time.

You can say that twice and mean it!

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I was speculating something of that nature. But I believe Wikipedia in this case. So now I'm back to square one for an explanation. She could have used a feminine pronoun at some point and not changed one other thing about the piece and it would have been just fine. But for some reason, she chose not to.

Yeah, who's to say? The best explanation I can come up with is still that for some reason she thought it would have been a distraction. Clearly it would not have been to her readers who already know she's lesbian, but maybe she thought it would be for others.  ???

Meanwhile, I'm still curious about those guys in Ulaanbaatar.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 25, 2013, 10:53:10 am
... when I see even a few straight Republicans swinging over to at least a mildly same-sex-marriage-friendly stance, I know the culture has undergone massive change in a very short time, and when that happens it's amazing what people can become comfortable with and nonchalant about.

Conservatives usually change their stance when they get to know a gay person personally or if there is someone in their family. Think Ronald Reagan, who was a friend of Rock Hudson and he and Nancy became near-advocates for equality. (Although he might not even be thought of as a Conservative today!) However, people like Dick Cheney are die-hards.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 25, 2013, 02:28:15 pm
The Nov. 18 article about the issues surrounding the legalization of marijuana in the state of Washington is very enlightening.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 25, 2013, 11:43:14 pm
Think Ronald Reagan, who was a friend of Rock Hudson and he and Nancy became near-advocates for equality.

Reagan was a California Republican, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clinton Eastwood -- fiscally conservative but not especially socially so.

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However, people like Dick Cheney are die-hards.

Actually, I'd always heard Dick Cheney was an exception because of his daughter.

But what I was thinking of was a video I saw online of Bill O'Reilly's on-air statements about same-sex marriage over the years, from likening it to beastiality, I think, to becoming more and more nonchalant about it to finally saying he wasn't opposed.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 26, 2013, 02:31:48 pm
The Nov. 18 article about the used grease business was fun to read over lunch.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 06, 2013, 11:18:58 am
The New Yorker's website has some nice Mandela coverage:

http://www.newyorker.com/search/query?keyword=Mandela (http://www.newyorker.com/search/query?keyword=Mandela)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 18, 2013, 09:31:32 pm
The "Snow Angel" Francis issue arrived today and I'm looking forward to reading about the Pope. I hope there is a lot about the Pope himself rather than mainly people's reactions to him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 01, 2014, 08:27:19 pm
The "Snow Angel" Francis issue arrived today and I'm looking forward to reading about the Pope. I hope there is a lot about the Pope himself rather than mainly people's reactions to him.

Jumping around among issues as I do, I finished James Carroll's article (Dec. 23-30, 2013, issue) about Pope Francis over supper this evening (I enjoy James Carroll's articles). I think there is a great movie, a love story if not a sexual one, about the future pope and the woman who mentored him in his secular career before he decided to become a priest and a Jesuit--the woman who was later murdered by an Argentine death squad.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2014, 02:21:51 pm
At lunch today I finished the Dec. 23-30, 2013, article about "plant neurobiology," so called. I found it very interesting. It makes me want to read The Secret Life of Plants, even if that book has been discredited.

Has anyone read The Secret Life of Plants?

Oh, yes, I also recommend Roz Chast's "Nondenominational Carols."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 09, 2014, 03:59:57 pm
I've read parts of it. I didn't know it had been discredited. I'm still reading that issue and there are three articles I'm especially interested in:

Elizabeth Kolbert's The Lost World, Part Two
Emily Eakin's The Civilization Kit (I've finished this one)
Michael Pollan's The Intelligent Plant

I wonder if they set out to do an environmental issue or it just happened that way!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 10, 2014, 12:10:04 pm
I haven't read The Secret Life of Plants, but now I'm curious about how it has been discredited.

I did read Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World and it is excellent.

I'm in the middle of a duty article about drug trafficking on the Mosquito Coast. It's sad and horrifying.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 10, 2014, 12:56:19 pm
I'm in the middle of a duty article about drug trafficking on the Mosquito Coast. It's sad and horrifying.

I just started that one. The whole subject sounds depressing.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 11, 2014, 11:25:19 am
I just started that one. The whole subject sounds depressing.  :(

It is.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 11, 2014, 01:13:07 pm
I'm in the middle of a duty article about drug trafficking on the Mosquito Coast. It's sad and horrifying.

I just started that one. The whole subject sounds depressing.  :(

It is.

Figured as much.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 12, 2014, 10:45:21 am
Meanwhile, I'm also reading the profile of Jennifer Weiner in the Jan. 13 issue. Much lighter, but I already follow the controversies surrounding male and female writers and literary vs. popular novels, so it's pretty old news to me. Plus, much of it is about events that took place online (which is why I'm familiar with them), which gives the piece and oddly airless and inconsequential-seeming quality.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 15, 2014, 03:05:48 pm
I'm puzzled.

In the Theatre/Now Playing section of the January 6 issue, I noticed an entry for "a musical entertainment with panache and precision" called A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. When I read the description, I immediately recognized the plot of an old (1949) and very delightful Alec Guinness movie called Kind Hearts and Coronets:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041546/?ref_=nv_sr_1 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041546/?ref_=nv_sr_1)

The similarity even extends to one actor playing eight different roles, as Guinness does in the movie.

There is, however, no recognition in The New Yorker of this relationship.

Is this because The New Yorker no longer employs anyone who would know such a thing? Or does The New Yorker no longer care? Or does The New Yorker think it no longer has any readers who would know or care?

 ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 15, 2014, 03:31:43 pm
Jeff, you are correct about the connection between the new musical and the Alec Guinness film.  IIRC, the original review surely recognized this fact.  The play opened in October/November and was reviewed earlier.  The "now playing" blurb is just that, a blurb. 

BTW, I saw this play last week and it was great fun!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 15, 2014, 03:52:02 pm
Jeff, you are correct about the connection between the new musical and the Alec Guinness film.  IIRC, the original review surely recognized this fact.  The play opened in October/November and was reviewed earlier.  The "now playing" blurb is just that, a blurb. 

BTW, I saw this play last week and it was great fun!

It ought to be. The movie is wonderful.

If one of the magazine's regular critics did a full-on review of it, I must have missed it.

I knew in a moment it was Kind Hearts and Coronets. Clever idea to make a musical out of it.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 15, 2014, 04:08:37 pm
It ought to be. The movie is wonderful.

If one of the magazine's regular critics did a full-on review of it, I must have missed it.

I knew in a moment it was Kind Hearts and Coronets. Clever idea to make a musical out of it.  :)

Jeff, I looked for the New Yorker review, but I don't have an online subscription.  Certainly Isherwood in the Times mentioned the connection; his review is very accurate (it's possible I never read a New Yorker review, actually, and was thinking of this one--I guess the New Yorker is better known for film reviews).  As he notes, the musical is even more farcical.  Jefferson Mays (who was astonishing in "I Am My Own Wife") has a wonderfully manic flair in the Alec Guinness role.  Bryce Pinkham, who plays Monty, is pretty easy on the eyes, and has a lovely tenor voice.

I recall seeing the film as a kid.  Perhaps, it's time to summon it on Netflix!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 15, 2014, 04:34:04 pm
Jeff, I looked for the New Yorker review, but I don't have an online subscription.  Certainly Isherwood in the Times mentioned the connection; his review is very accurate (it's possible I never read a New Yorker review, actually, and was thinking of this one--I guess the New Yorker is better known for film reviews).  As he notes, the musical is even more farcical.  Jefferson Mays (who was astonishing in "I Am My Own Wife") has a wonderfully manic flair in the Alec Guinness role.  Bryce Pinkham, who plays Monty, is pretty easy on the eyes, and has a lovely tenor voice.

I recall seeing the film as a kid.  Perhaps, it's time to summon it on Netflix!

Whoever wrote the magazine blurb praises Jefferson Mays.

The film is one of the many I've never got around to adding to my library, but it certainly is delightlful.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 15, 2014, 09:23:09 pm

BTW, I saw this play last week and it was great fun!

Lucky guy! I heard a review on NPR for it and considered going to New York especially to see this! (if I won the lottery).

I recently just saw the movie for the first time. I made a friend of mine watch Local Hero and in return, he made me watch KHAC. I think we both won.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2014, 09:30:33 am
Jeff, I looked for the New Yorker review, but I don't have an online subscription. 

I have one, but the longer review didn't come up in a search. That's not conclusive, but at least in the movie reviews the New Yorker will note the date of the initial full review, but in this case the blurb makes not mention of one.

Quote
I guess the New Yorker is better known for film reviews

I wouldn't have guessed that, but you may be right. For obvious reasons, I don't follow their theater reviews very closely.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2014, 10:22:55 am
I have one, but the longer review didn't come up in a search. That's not conclusive, but at least in the movie reviews the New Yorker will note the date of the initial full review, but in this case the blurb makes not mention of one.

I wonder why they don't do that? List the date of an original theater review, I mean.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 16, 2014, 11:00:22 am
I wouldn't have guessed that, but you may be right. For obvious reasons, I don't follow their theater reviews very closely.

It's funny:  I can easily name the New Yorker film reviewers (especially fond of Anthony Lane); and also the Times theatre reviewers.  But, not vice versa.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2014, 12:58:17 pm
Hilton Als (whom I've heard of for reasons not directly related to theater -- he writes about other stuff, too) and an older guy, something Lahr.

OK, the above was written pre-googling. I was right on both counts. Lahr is John Lahr (I always picture him as Bert Lahr, but he's not THAT much older; Bert Lahr would be turning 119 this year).


(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eKS87MPI4CQ/UKZtoyunEqI/AAAAAAAACCY/wa2lvxz-r1E/s320/cowardly-lion-oz.jpg)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 16, 2014, 01:50:13 pm
John Lahr is Bert Lahr's son!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 16, 2014, 02:07:04 pm
I highly recommend Anthony Lane's 2002 book Nobody's Perfect, a collection of film reviews and other related essays.  He has a delightfully wicked sense of humor.  The title refers to the last line of "Some Like it Hot".
(https://d3myrwj42s63no.cloudfront.net/180/037/541/448/7/0375414487.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2014, 02:19:16 pm
Meanwhile, I'm also reading the profile of Jennifer Weiner in the Jan. 13 issue. Much lighter, but I already follow the controversies surrounding male and female writers and literary vs. popular novels, so it's pretty old news to me. Plus, much of it is about events that took place online (which is why I'm familiar with them), which gives the piece and oddly airless and inconsequential-seeming quality.

I started this over lunch today. I remember when she was a writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hardly important, but I found it interesting to learn that apparently her name is supposed to be pronounced the proper German way, with a long "i." I've always heard people (mis)pronounce it with a long "e."

(Meanwhile, I thought everybody who read The New Yorker knew that John Lahr was the son of Bert; he's written about his father from time to time.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2014, 04:54:25 pm
John Lahr is Bert Lahr's son!

Hardly important, but I found it interesting to learn that apparently her name is supposed to be pronounced the proper German way, with a long "i." I've always heard people (mis)pronounce it with a long "e."

(Meanwhile, I thought everybody who read The New Yorker knew that John Lahr was the son of Bert; he's written about his father from time to time.)

 :-X What can I say? I don't read the theater reviews. Maybe I actually did know that at one time, but today at least I clearly should have read further into the Wikipedia page.


I highly recommend Anthony Lane's 2002 book Nobody's Perfect, a collection of film reviews and other related essays.  He has a delightfully wicked sense of humor.

Yes, the film reviews are often the first thing I read -- when Anthony Lane writes. When it's David Denby, I often skip them, even if I'm interested in the movie!

I remember him reviewing a Tom Cruise movie and prefacing some praise of Cruise by saying something like, "My bedroom walls aren't exactly shrouded in Tom Cruise posters, but ..."


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 16, 2014, 06:51:04 pm
I think my favorite Lane review is of "Contact": 

On a broiling day, I ran to a screening of Contact, the Jodie Foster flick about messages from another galaxy. I made it for the opening credits, and, panting heavily — which, with all due respect, is not something that I find myself doing that often in Jodie Foster films — I started taking notes. These went "v. gloomy," "odd noir look for sci-fi," "creepy shadows in outdoor scene," and so on. Only after three-quarters of an hour did I remember to remove my dark glasses.
...
She (Jodie Foster) does get laid in the film, but only by Matthew McConaughey, and that doesn't count.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2014, 07:30:57 pm
She (Jodie Foster) does get laid in the film, but only by Matthew McConaughey, and that doesn't count.

Anthony Lane is brilliant, but I would beg to differ with him about this.

Another favorite memory involving Anthony Lane -- he loved Speed! Or so I recall.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 16, 2014, 07:44:39 pm
Another favorite memory involving Anthony Lane -- he loved Speed! Or so I recall.

Yes, he did.  He even liked Titanic.   :P :-X

One of the reasons I like him so much is that his reviews describe the experience of seeing the particular film.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2014, 11:47:02 am
Seriously, the walls of my bedroom are not shrouded with Matthew McConaughey posters (there's no space between the Christian Bales), but this article from the New Yorker website captures exactly why I find him interesting lately. I love middle-aged self-reinventions.

Oh, and for those of you with HBO, I highly recommend True Detective, starring McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. It just started last Sunday and is intriguing so far.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/01/the-mcconaissance.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20%2899%29 (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/01/the-mcconaissance.html?utm_source=tny&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailyemail&mbid=nl_Daily%20%2899%29)

January 16, 2014
The McConaissance
Posted by Rachel Syme


This morning, Matthew McConaughey woke up to his first Oscar nomination. There’s no denying the McConaissance now, a bold second act in the American actor’s life which somehow feels as novel as it does deliberate. McConaughey’s return to the Hollywood firmament in the past two years has had an unusually organic quality to it, in that critics and audiences alike have quickly made room for his new oddball intensity and his desire to make interesting choices again after a decade of just livin’ and relying on his dimples and his baritone drawl.

Like everything else he does, McConaughey makes coming back look easy. It isn’t usually this way. Most actresses, after spending a decade in the romantic-comedy trenches in unchallenging movies buttered with cliché, do not get to return to the Hollywood winners’ circle. (Sandra Bullock is a notable exception—maybe the magic is in Texas.) Most actors who disappear for ten years and want to shine again must prove that they’ve been to Hell and back (see: Robert Downey, Jr., and Mickey Rourke). Their awards are a sobriety chip; the serious acting is a kind of thirteenth step of rehabilitation. McConaughey seems unfazed by his return, cool and buoyant and fully aware of where he’s been. In a sauntering speech at the Golden Globes, he winked at his iconic role in “Dazed and Confused,” his openness to the press about his lost, naked bongo years, and his unabashed and well-documented desire to “unbrand” himself and start anew. For years, McConaughey embodied complacency; he was an actor who bought too heavily into his own allure and therefore stalled out early on. The fact that he has been able to unravel that perception in a few roles shows how wrong we were. And it takes an actor who’s keenly aware of his own mythology to play games with his audience, to slash through his own persona with glee and abandon.

The McConaughey that we are getting now is casually weird and much darker than expected. He seems unshackled after decades of trying to be a matinée idol, an affable, guileless human glass of sweet tea. McConaughey has always used his body as an instrument, exuding sexuality in his work—in 1996, a review of “A Time to Kill” practically panted from the pages of the Times, with phrases like “Adonis factor” and “a profile that belongs on a coin”—but now his take on his own eroticism has turned sour, and his sensuality has become a weapon rather than a crutch. Consider his role in “Dallas Buyers Club,” for which he lost forty-five pounds and took on the look of a gangly bobblehead (standard Hollywood penance for a career resurrection). McConaughey was cast as a straight man named Ron Woodroof, who is given a diagnosis of AIDS in the early days of the epidemic and who goes on to become a kingpin distributor of unapproved remedies. In the film, Woodroof is gravely undone by his own sexuality. McConaughey plays Woodroof as virile and cocky, even while he is emaciated, with sunken cheekbones, and covered with sarcomas. Woodroof has paid the price for careless sex, and McConaughey offers his own sexuality as broad and unprotected. He somehow manages to swagger while looking gaunt as a whippet.

Or take “Magic Mike,” the film that kick-started McConaughey’s return. Everything that he had been mocked for—his well-documented love of shirtlessness, his moony love of the ladies, his chest-puffing, blustering self-regard—came together to make a tragic figure, one who flaunts these talents for dollar bills in a tawdry night club. What the McConaissance is about—if it is really about anything—is the clever (and purposeful) undoing of a mythos and the embrace of a more authentic McConaughey, even if that reveals something grimy and sad beneath the creamy Texas accent. It’s also about upholding that past self and twisting it into new combinations. In his small cameo in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” McConaughey, still rail thin, electrifies the film with a five-minute meditation on hedonism and underachievement. He convinces the bushy-tailed broker played by Leonardo DiCaprio that the stock-trading business is simply boys playing games with funny money, trying to walk taller than they are and possess the air. It is easy to apply this pep talk to Hollywood, that ethereal land of money-scented breezes, the ultimate fugazi for the hopeful and the lucky. After “A Time to Kill” came out, McConaughey became famous overnight. The entire country seemed to know the name of his dog (Miss Hud). He has spoken about feeling everyone in every place squeezing in on him, that old byproduct of instant stardom. “The world became a mirror very quickly,” he said in one interview. “Over the weekend, there were more mirrors in the world everywhere.” Mirrors can be fun, of course, when you look like McConaughey. But, after a while, too many can seem like a fun house.

When we think of the “lost” years that came after the heralded ones, the terrible, forgettable films (“Sahara,” “Fool’s Gold,” “The Wedding Planner”), we think of underachievement, dashed potential, and, worse yet, an actor recognizing the limits of his own ability and slowing to a resting heart rate. We felt the kind of disappointment that comes with the promise of a new Paul Newman or Steve McQueen melting into flabby, lucrative resignation. But McConaughey’s resurgence shows us that he was always a good actor; the ability was there. The years he lost now look like an active squandering of his position, a deliberate choice to be famous and handsome and wealthy without trying too hard, to reap the benefits of the indulgent side of fame. But even the most exotic tropical vacations grow wearysome, and McConaughey eventually decided, as we all must do, to get back to work. The starmaking machine loves nothing more than swallowing up its young stars, sometimes unspooling them completely (see: Shia LaBeouf). McConaughey’s lost years now look curiously like self-protection, a recharging of the batteries for a more dangerous late swell of desire. When he beats his chest with a primal grunt in “The Wolf of Wall Street”—an ad-lib originating in McConaughey’s pre-scene warmup exercise—he’s reconnecting with what’s weird and strange and sad about his embodiment of down-home American masculinity.

Though “A Time to Kill” made him a movie star, the younger McConaughey was really at his best in his first film, “Dazed and Confused,” from 1993. Languid, with a mop of blond hair and a slippery mustache, wearing tight salmon-colored pants and a white T-shirt with one sleeve rolled up to hold a pack of cigarettes, he was twenty-three and just getting started. His character, Wooderson, sleazy mustache and all, is a distillation of the raw material that is now being put to use. Some actors overcome their first roles, others never live up to them again. McConaughey seems to have fused with his: Wooderson was stuck in viscid, small-town adolescence, lascivious and joyful and going nowhere in a hurry, the Peter Pan of the prairie who was also a wise man. Whereas Ben Affleck (another actor who has managed to claw his way back from years stuck in the ether), as the other older hanger-on in the film, the raging meathead O’Bannion, channelled violence and vitriol into his lost youth, McConaughey exuded a calm acceptance of his slow pace and of the sense that everything was and would always be all right. He gives a group of angst-ridden teens some sage advice at the film’s end, staring down the length of a football field: “The older you get, the more rules they’re gonna try to get you to follow. You just gotta keep livin’, man, L-I-V-I-N.”

These words were also McConaughey’s own—a mantra he repeated to himself to deal with the death of his father, which happened just days into shooting—and they were clairvoyant. He named his foundation for at-risk youth Just Keep Livin’, but the words themselves (so blithe as to lack any real meaning) go beyond that when applied to his career. What moviegoers enjoy even more than an arc of redemption after a dramatic fall is a surge of energy after a period of prodigal wastefulness. McConaughey’s recent trajectory—which just keeps going (the excellent, eerie “True Detective” is on HBO now, and soon he will anchor a Christopher Nolan blockbuster)—is a joy to watch. McConaughey seems to be tapping into something essential, remaining himself while stretching, getting older while staying the same age.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on January 18, 2014, 06:57:18 pm
Well, the walls of my bedroom aren't exactly shrouded with Anthony Lane posters, LOL.  But his Contact snark was way before the McConaissance:  it was 1997.  Lane found casting MM as a philosopher/theologian rather laughable. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 19, 2014, 11:39:36 am
But his Contact snark was way before the McConaissance:  it was 1997.  Lane found casting MM as a philosopher/theologian rather laughable. 

Right. But who's laughing all the way to the Oscars now?

I sometimes detect a bit of snark among straight male critics toward extremely good looking actors, a hint that the actors are lightweights whether or not their performance deserves it. Another example: Bradley Cooper has been good in every movie I've ever seen him in. But in reviews he's often sort of shrugged off or ignored, getting far less praise than his costars (e.g., Jennifer Lawrence).

That said, I myself get impatient when I see supermodelish starlets cast as geophysicists and the like. Maybe that's a similar reaction. Except that those starlets' main purpose for filling those roles seems to be eye candy, which wasn't really the function of MM in Contact, as I recall.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 26, 2014, 03:19:19 pm
I was reading Ben McGrath's article on soccer in Brazil (Jan. 13). I thought it would be interesting, and it was, to a point, but the article was just too long, and I gave up about five pages from the end.

"It has too many notes words. ..."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 30, 2014, 02:42:23 pm
I'm now reading David Remnick's article about the President (Jan. 27). I know this reveals my own shallowness, but I liked the description of the presidential limo, and the breakfast menu on Air Force One.  ;D

On the other hand, as somebody who used to write history for a living, I'm tickled to learn that the President has dinners with historians.  :D

And I loved what Robert Caro, the biographer of LBJ, had to say: "No matter what the problems with the rollout of Obamacare, it's a major advance in the history of social justice to provide access to health care for thirty-one million people."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2014, 02:25:06 pm
As soon as I saw an article by Patricia Marx about traveling on a cargo ship (Feb. 3) I sat right down and read it.  :laugh:

It's ... OK.  :-\ Turned out to be not as long or, frankly, as funny as I might have expected from Marx, but it's still ... OK. And interesting to me that she sailed from the port of Philadelphia instead of from somewhere in the New York region.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2014, 02:27:54 pm
I don't read the theater reviews.

It's not as though I actually expect to get up to New York to see anything, but I always read them as part of my way of keeping "culturally current"--which, you could say, is one reason why I read The New Yorker in the first place.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 06, 2014, 02:07:21 pm
The Feb. 3 article about abortion predator Steven Brigham is disturbing, alarming, and saddening.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 06, 2014, 10:10:27 pm
Oooo, I imagine the Downton Abbey fans aren't going to like Emily Nussbaum's reference to their darling show in her Feb. 10 review of The Fosters: "Beneath the bright surfaces, it explores far more sophisticated themes than, say, 'Downton Abbey.'"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 25, 2014, 02:16:20 pm
Over lunch today I finished Kelefa Sanneh article in the anniversary issue (Feb. 17 and 24) about a very interesting character named Carl Van Vechten. I'm sure I've come across Van Vechten's name once or twice before, but I knew nothing about him. Turns out he was quite involved, in more ways than one,  8)  with figures of the Harlem Renaissance. I admit I also don't really know much in detail about the Harlem Renaissance, either, so it came as a surprise to me that Sanneh quotes no less a respected scholar than Henry Louis Gates that the Harlem Renaissance was "surely as gay as it was black."

Sanneh's article is accompanied by some amazing color photographs taken by Van Vechten of Billie Holiday, James Earl Jones (so young looking in 1961 that I would not have recognized him), James Baldwin, and Mahalia Jackson.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2014, 02:56:34 pm
At lunch today I read the Feb. 17--24 article by Roger Angell, age 93. I rather wish I hadn't as I found it quite depressing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 06, 2014, 09:39:07 pm
The March 10 issue arrived today, and over supper tonight I plunged right into Nicholas Lemann's article about revising the common understanding of the Kittie Genovese murder, which occurred 50 years ago this year. Among other things, I've learned that Kittie Genovese was lesbian.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2014, 11:24:49 am
The March 10 issue arrived today, and over supper tonight I plunged right into Nicholas Lemann's article about revising the common understanding of the Kittie Genovese murder, which occurred 50 years ago this year. Among other things, I've learned that Kittie Genovese was lesbian.

I'm reading that one and haven't reached that part yet. I'm also looking forward to the Roz Chast thing.

Meanwhile, I started a duty article from the last issue, about a enormously ambitious energy project in France that involves most of the countries in the world, is unfathomably expensive, and has the goal of creating, essentially, a small sun -- a thing as hot as the center of the sun, inside a core as cold as deep space. Sounds very scary and the article is well written and fascinating to a point, but like so many duty articles gives way more detail than I feel I really need to have about this project.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 07, 2014, 11:47:04 am
I'm reading that one and haven't reached that part yet. I'm also looking forward to the Roz Chast thing.

Meanwhile, I started a duty article from the last issue, about a enormously ambitious energy project in France that involves most of the countries in the world, is unfathomably expensive, and has the goal of creating, essentially, a small sun -- a thing as hot as the center of the sun, inside a core as cold as deep space. Sounds very scary and the article is well written and fascinating to a point, but like so many duty articles gives way more detail than I feel I really need to have about this project.

I'm looking forward to the Roz Chast thing, too.

Meanwhile, thanks to the two-week anniversary issue, I'm actually way behind as usual. I'm guessing you're referring to "Star in a Bottle" in the March 3 issue? The only article I've finished in that issue is Anthony Lane's movie review; right now I'm in the midst of David Remnick's article on Vladimir Putin and the Sochi Olympics. Thanks to Remnick I now know more about Putin than I did before. I knew he was former KGB and was mayor of St. Petersburg, but that was about it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 12, 2014, 01:07:31 pm
Meanwhile, I started a duty article from the last issue, about a enormously ambitious energy project in France that involves most of the countries in the world, is unfathomably expensive, and has the goal of creating, essentially, a small sun -- a thing as hot as the center of the sun, inside a core as cold as deep space. Sounds very scary and the article is well written and fascinating to a point, but like so many duty articles gives way more detail than I feel I really need to have about this project.

I'm reading that article now (I haven't had a lot of lunchtime reading time lately). Like so many of its type in The New Yorker, it's way too long, but I'm not finding it a "duty." Rather, with the immediate introduction of exotic, made-up words like tokamak, I'm finding it more than a little like reading a syfy fiction story. I'm enjoying it. Maybe it's a guy thing, although I'm not much of a syfy reader.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 13, 2014, 10:20:42 am
Maybe it's a guy thing, although I'm not much of a syfy reader.


I can tell, because if you're talking about the short term for "science fiction," it's actually spelled sci fi.  ;)  ;D

The sci fi stuff is interesting, but I could do with a lot less detail about all the international bureaucracy. Just tell me the thing has become a giant scary disastrous bureaucratic boondoggle; I don't need to know who sent what memo to whom seventeen years ago. Maybe it all gets cleared up later on -- I'm still struggling with it, about halfway through.

It could make a good movie, though!





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 13, 2014, 10:24:52 am
I can tell, because if you're talking about the short term for "science fiction," it's actually spelled sci fi.  ;)  ;D

I just used TV Guide's spelling for the channel.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on March 19, 2014, 08:40:19 am
LOL  I was just about to post that "Sy Fy" is how the SyFy networks spells it.

However, Catherine is right, the real abbreviation is "Sci fi".
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 19, 2014, 09:28:00 am
Hey, if I wanna spell it like they do on TV, I'm gonna spell it like they do on TV.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 20, 2014, 09:14:54 am
I've started reading the profile of Darren Aronofsky. I've yet to see Black Swan, but now, thanks to the profile, I know how it ends!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on March 20, 2014, 11:18:16 am
Hey, if I wanna spell it like they do on TV, I'm gonna spell it like they do on TV.  ;D

Just a follow up, lol ....I do the Star Ledger crosswords each day at lunch.  One clue from yesterday was:

"___-fi"

I instantly thought of you and this conversation!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 20, 2014, 11:22:14 am
Just a follow up, lol ....I do the Star Ledger crosswords each day at lunch.  One clue from yesterday was:

"___-fi"

I instantly thought of you and this conversation!

 :laugh:

Are you sure the answer wasn't "Hi"?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 20, 2014, 01:25:37 pm
I'm now reading Jon Lee Anderson's March 10 article about the proposal to build a canal across Nicaragua (less a "duty article" than most of Anderson's pieces). I admit I'm surprised to learn that Daniel Ortega is still around; now, there's a name out of the 1980s for you! (Oliver North and Fawn Hall get mentioned, too!) Ortega is now just your garden-variety corrupt banana-republic dictator.

Anderson himself offers an explanation for why I didn't realize Ortega was still around:

"Since the end of the Cold War, Nicaragua has been on a geostrategic par with Burkina Faso; in other words, it doesn't matter much."

 :laugh:

I wonder whether there are any New Yorker readers in Burkina Faso?  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2014, 01:09:12 pm
At lunch today I finished David Denby's (March 17) article about the new book about the five Hollywood directors who went to war and made films for the military during World War II, John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler, George Stevens, and Frank Capra, who had the rank of major and seems to have been in charge of the operation. Seems to me their experiences would make as good a subject for a movie as the Monuments Men. The article also seems to be nudging me to see certain movies, both vintage and contemporary, that I've never seen.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 25, 2014, 03:14:05 pm
I really enjoyed that article too, and it made me want to see the films they had made before and after the war, to contrast.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2014, 06:39:20 pm
I really enjoyed that article too, and it made me want to see the films they had made before and after the war, to contrast.

Every one that's mentioned is a classic. I haven't seen them all, but I have seen five of the seven John Ford films mentioned, the three Wylers, The Maltese Falcon (Huston), Gunga Din and A Place in the Sun (Stevens), and It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It's a Wonderful Life (Capra) (I've seen several of them several times). In a college poli sci class I even saw Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will--which is truly creepy and scary. I'm feeling now that I should see The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler) and They Were Expendable (Ford).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 02, 2014, 09:05:58 pm
Today the latest issue arrived and I sat down and read it cover to cover! I haven't done that in years! The cover appealed to me (see below). In Talk of the Town, I was pleased to see that Steven Soderbergh is forging ahead in his new theatrical career after hanging up his director's clapboard. (Do they still use clapboards?) I was even more thrilled to see that the inspiration for his play "The Library" came from the book Columbine by Brokie Dave Cullen! I hope it's successful and I bet it will be.

Just a passing thought: I don't see how anyone today can possibly say "Obamacare is hurting the American people" and actually believe that anyone is paying attention to them.

I read "Chemical Alley" about the lingering problems with the chemical spill in West Virginia. The story is very condemning of the Republicans who have turned back the Clean Water laws. It was rather sad. I read most of John McPhee's latest article "Elicitation" which was very interesting in parts, but jumped around a lot. It seems he's writing his memoirs lately. I just skimmed the other articles except for David Denby's review of Noah. Thank you, David. Now I don't have to see that movie. Gives me more time to spend with the Grand Budapest Hotel.

Sometimes I just don't get the cartoons and this was definitely one of those weeks!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2014, 01:14:57 pm
Over lunch I just read Anthony Lane's March 24 appreciation--I don't know what else to call it--of Scarlett Johansson. I found the article strange, almost like a verbal orgasm. I really didn't care much for it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 03, 2014, 02:23:22 pm
Over lunch I just read Anthony Lane's March 24 appreciation--I don't know what else to call it--of Scarlett Johansson. I found the article strange, almost like a verbal orgasm. I really didn't care much for it.

Yes, he certainly does gush in a very Anthony Lane-ish way. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2014, 06:37:26 pm
Today the latest issue arrived and I sat down and read it cover to cover! I haven't done that in years!

You didn't mention the article about death certificates. That one looks like lots of fun!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 03, 2014, 08:44:11 pm
Over lunch I just read Anthony Lane's March 24 appreciation--I don't know what else to call it--of Scarlett Johansson. I found the article strange, almost like a verbal orgasm. I really didn't care much for it.

I skipped that piece after reading a critique of it on Slate. I like Anthony Lane and I don't want to not like him. But the critic made that piece sound loathsome and supported her case very well.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 03, 2014, 10:13:36 pm
Well I remember when Pauline Kael went gaga over Last Tango in Paris. It happens sometimes. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 09, 2014, 08:50:12 pm
You didn't mention the article about death certificates. That one looks like lots of fun!  :D

I loved the April 7 article about bills of mortality and death certificates.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2014, 09:29:53 am
I'm working on the "duty article" now, the one about the chemical spill in West Virginia.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 11, 2014, 09:31:51 am
Actually I liked that article because I had heard the story on the radio and it brought up a lot of questions in my mind that the article answered.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2014, 11:56:26 am
Actually I liked that article because I had heard the story on the radio and it brought up a lot of questions in my mind that the article answered.

It's just that I expect I've read essentially the same story in The New Yorker any number of times over the past thirty years. Just substitute anything else that's harmful to the environment and to people for "chemical spill" and we've all read this story already. I'm not that far into the article but I expect there isn't anything really new here. It's like the saying, "Dog bites man" isn't news; "Man bites dog" is news. The article is The New Yorker equivalent of cod liver oil: you read (take) it because it's good for you.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 11, 2014, 08:40:06 pm
It's just that I expect I've read essentially the same story in The New Yorker any number of times over the past thirty years. Just substitute anything else that's harmful to the environment and to people for "chemical spill" and we've all read this story already. I'm not that far into the article but I expect there isn't anything really new here. It's like the saying, "Dog bites man" isn't news; "Man bites dog" is news. The article is The New Yorker equivalent of cod liver oil: you read (take) it because it's good for you.

Once you realize that and get your dutiful gist of the problem -- chemical spill in West Virginia, bad -- do you not feel you can move on to a different article?

I finally moved on from the one about the international project in France to build the most powerful whatchamajig ever. I kept thinking it was going to get interesting, because basically it sounded like they were trying to build a miniature enclosed sun here on earth, which sounded fascinating and terrifying (do they really know what they're doing? could the thing get out of control and destroy the planet?).

But the article kept dwelling on how all the complicated funding problems and red tape involved in a cooperative effort of that magnitude had bogged down the project, and finally I got sufficiently bogged down myself and gave up. Life is short, boring article, and I've got plenty more New Yorkers where you came from.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2014, 09:46:11 pm
Once you realize that and get your dutiful gist of the problem -- chemical spill in West Virginia, bad -- do you not feel you can move on to a different article?

Put that way, I didn't need to start it in the first place. I got all that from the television news just after the spill.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 11, 2014, 10:09:29 pm
One thing that's good about the new issue arriving...you are released from any articles you're reading in the past issue! At least, that's the way I look at it.

And now I'm off to peruse the latest issue that arrived today. Going to bed early. I'm getting up at 2:30 am to go to the mountains!!!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2014, 11:53:57 am
One thing that's good about the new issue arriving...you are released from any articles you're reading in the past issue! At least, that's the way I look at it.

Not me. I would miss too much interesting and educational if I treated the magazine that way. I simply do not have enough time in any week to get through an issue before the next arrives. Perhaps you're a faster reader than I am.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 23, 2014, 01:42:39 pm
Over lunch today I began reading Ryan Lizza's April 14 article on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. I was not at all surprised to read that even Christie's political mentor, former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, considers Christie a bully. How else would you interpret Kean's comment, "He [Christie] doesn't always try to persuade you with reason. He makes you feel that your life's going to be very unhappy if you don't do what he says," other than that even Kean considers Christie a bully?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 23, 2014, 10:24:53 pm
I just finished the February 17 & 24 anniversary issue. I enjoyed Roger Angell's "This Old Man" although I didn't think I would. I didn't enjoy the article "Starman" about Neil deGrasse Tyson as much as I thought I would. Also, the tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman left me cold. What I enjoyed the most was the article by Adam Gopnik, "The frankly faithless" about agnostic/atheists through the ages.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 24, 2014, 09:34:59 am
I just finished the February 17 & 24 anniversary issue. I enjoyed Roger Angell's "This Old Man" although I didn't think I would. I didn't enjoy the article "Starman" about Neil deGrasse Tyson as much as I thought I would. Also, the tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman left me cold. What I enjoyed the most was the article by Adam Gopnik, "The frankly faithless" about agnostic/atheists through the ages.

Those all sound worth reading! I'll have to dig that issue out of the pile.

I'm midway through a December article by Michael Pollan about scientists who believe that plants can "think." Once again, an interesting concept turns into a duty article. You kind of get the point early on -- plants interact with their environments and each other in far more complex ways than previously thought, showing awareness of conditions and responding with chemical changes or movement, which some scientists consider something like animals thinking, but others scoff at as not comparable -- and then the article goes on for pages and pages, reiterating and fine-tuning the concept, offering more evidence, quoting more people on both sides.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 26, 2014, 09:48:24 am
I'm reading Michael Kinsley's personal history about how his Parkinson's might or might not be affecting his cognitive abilities in the April 28 issue. (I skip around -- still plodding through Pollan's intelligent plants from December.)

Highly recommended so far. It's courageous -- what if a famous pundit gradually loses his intellectual edge? -- and, as always with Kinsley, measured and even-keeled and humorous. Kinsley has always been probably my favorite political writer.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 26, 2014, 10:19:34 am
I'm reading the Kingsley article too. It makes a nice complement to the Angell article I read last week.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 27, 2014, 09:04:35 am
Finished Kinsley. Highly recommended!  :)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 27, 2014, 10:31:40 am
Trudging through that duty article about horseshoe crabs.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 29, 2014, 01:26:00 pm
I am very eager to find out what women think of Elizabeth Warren (ref. Jill Lepore, April 21 issue).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 03, 2014, 08:56:51 pm
I found the story "Prescription for Disaster" by Rsachel Aviv, very gripping. And not just because it takes place in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 08, 2014, 02:27:44 pm
A quote from "Prescription for Disaster": "Deaths by opioids have quadrupled in the past ten years. Prescription drugs contribute to half of all deaths by overdose, accounting for more fatalities than heroin and cocaine combined." Our doctors are puppets of the pharmaceutical industry, killing people rather than healing them!

The great thing about this article is how objective it is. It doesn't paint doctors as villains and patients as helpless victims. It's quite a lengthy story but at the end you still don't know what is the truth.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 08, 2014, 02:44:23 pm
A quote from "Prescription for Disaster": "Deaths by opioids have quadrupled in the past ten years. Prescription drugs contribute to half of all deaths by overdose, accounting for more fatalities than heroin and cocaine combined." Our doctors are puppets of the pharmaceutical industry, killing people rather than healing them!

The great thing about this article is how objective it is. It doesn't paint doctors as villains and patients as helpless victims. It's quite a lengthy story but at the end you still don't know what is the truth.

I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I don't need Rachael Aviv to tell me the "truth" that people need to take responsibility for their own responsible use of medications, follow the instructions, and make sure their doctors know ALL the medications they're taking.

Of course, when I say things like that, I usually get accused of blaming the victim. ...

ETA: I'm looking forward to reading Aviv's article, however, when I get caught up to it. Next up is Michael Kinsley's (4/28).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 08, 2014, 06:07:15 pm
I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I don't need Rachael Aviv to tell me the "truth" that people need to take responsibility for their own responsible use of medications, follow the instructions, and make sure their doctors know ALL the medications they're taking.

Of course, when I say things like that, I usually get accused of blaming the victim. ...


I doubt it this time, Jeff, because people don't tend to think of patients who die of opioid overdoses as victims of their doctors. I don't need to read an article to not think of doctors as villains in these cases, except in cases where people die of overdoses while following the prescription to the letter. Opioids are widely abused, and I assume most people who OD are taking them recreationally and/or consciously excessively.

OTOH, when someone says about a rape victim, for example, that she shouldn't have been wearing such a short skirt or whatever, that's blaming the victim because rape victims are victims.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 08, 2014, 07:06:06 pm
Okay, here's another quote from the article: "He said that a specialist there told him 'You could stick multiple Actiq suckers in your mouth and rear end and you still wouldn't overdose.'"

Actiq is a flavored lollipop that contains fentanyl, which is 80 times more powerful than morphine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 08, 2014, 09:14:41 pm
Okay, here's another quote from the article: "He said that a specialist there told him 'You could stick multiple Actiq suckers in your mouth and rear end and you still wouldn't overdose.'"

Actiq is a flavored lollipop that contains fentanyl, which is 80 times more powerful than morphine.

That sounds like malpractice. The medication isn't responsible for the stupidity of the person prescribing it.

As a matter of fact, I just took a very cursory look at the article in question, and it looks very much like it's about the malpractice of one Stephen Schneider, O.D., not about problems with the drugs themselves. But I'll know more when I get to read the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 08, 2014, 09:54:04 pm
How strange that they would put something like that in lollipop form!




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 09, 2014, 09:34:57 am
How strange that they would put something like that in lollipop form!

Apparently this has something to do with speeding up the delivery of the medication when it's used for breakthrough pain for cancer patients.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl)

Meanwhile, I've got a question.

I always give my magazines to a friend at work when I've finished them--my version of recycling, so to speak--so I don't have back issues to go back to check, but did Rachel Aviv also write the article, some time back, about the criminally negligent abortion doctor? Does anyone remember?

If she did, I sense a theme here, and probably also a forthcoming book.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 09, 2014, 11:43:32 am
Here is a list of her contributions:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/rachel_aviv/search?contributorName=rachel%20aviv

I didn't see the abortion story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 09, 2014, 12:06:05 pm
Here is a list of her contributions:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/rachel_aviv/search?contributorName=rachel%20aviv

I didn't see the abortion story.

Thanks.

Did strike me as interesting that they ran two stories that feature doctors behaving badly in a fairly short time.

I remember the story about Linda Bishop. That was very sad.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 09, 2014, 04:57:19 pm
I remember this one:

Annals of Crime
The Science of Sex Abuse
ANNALS OF CRIME about sex offenders who download child pornography, but may never have molested children. Is it right to imprison them for heinous crimes they have not yet committed? Focusses on one man, John, who, as a thirty-one-year-old soldier stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, used the…
by Rachel Aviv


When I read it, I'd recently been in a conversation with a lawyer friend who said something similar -- that people who possess child porn were being unfairly targeted or something like that. I was skeptical at the time, but after reading this article I could see the point. When a crime is so stigmatized that nobody wants to defend it, the people who commit it can become scapegoats.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 12, 2014, 01:39:30 pm
At lunch today I started Margaret Talbot's April 28 article about "digital cloning of humans." I smiled when I came to her use of the phrase, "pixellated humans." She's using it to mean something like "humans rendered in pixels," and I knew that, but I was also familiar with the older meaning of pixelated (or pixellated, Talbot's spelling; Webster gives both) as "somewhat unbalanced mentally."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 13, 2014, 01:25:44 pm
Well, on to the next Duty Article, Dexter Filkins on Iraq (April 28).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2014, 02:11:25 pm
Well, on to the next Duty Article, Dexter Filkins on Iraq (April 28).

Gotta admit I'm actually glad I read the Filkins article. I had no idea of the shit that's been going on in Iraq since U.S. forces left. Not only did the U.S. lose that war, it seems we also lost the peace.  :-\

Anyway, at lunch today I read the May 5 article about the guy who conveyed Boeing trade secrets to the Chinese, and I've started the article on the hunt for El Chapo the Sinaloa drug lord. I'm actually finding that article interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 20, 2014, 01:36:10 pm
I've started the article on the hunt for El Chapo the Sinaloa drug lord. I'm actually finding that article interesting.

Finished it today. It was like an episode of N.C.I.S., only better!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 21, 2014, 10:07:43 am
Gotta admit I'm actually glad I read the Filkins article. I had no idea of the shit that's been going on in Iraq since U.S. forces left. Not only did the U.S. lose that war, it seems we also lost the peace.  :-\

Sigh. I guess I should read it, too. It sounds like something I should know about. It will definitely be in the line of duty, though.

Quote
Anyway, at lunch today I read the May 5 article about the guy who conveyed Boeing trade secrets to the Chinese, and I've started the article on the hunt for El Chapo the Sinaloa drug lord. I'm actually finding that article interesting.

These would be beyond the call of duty for me.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 21, 2014, 10:16:47 am
Sigh. I guess I should read it, too. It sounds like something I should know about. It will definitely be in the line of duty, though.

It might be useful to know what's going on over there.

Quote
These would be beyond the call of duty for me.

Unfortunately it might also be useful to know how the Chinese have been operating to steal trade secrets, some of which might impact U.S. defense. The El Chapo article reads like a good action story, with bits of humor thrown in (e.g., "el Chapo," the nickname for the head of a ruthless drug cartel, means "Shorty"  ;D ).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 21, 2014, 10:39:14 am
It might be useful to know what's going on over there.

Unfortunately it might also be useful to know how the Chinese have been operating to steal trade secrets, some of which might impact U.S. defense.

Actually, the latter wouldn't be useful for me. The former might help me, say, in my voting decisions. (It will help me realize that Republicans can be wrong and George W. Bush was not a great president.  ;D)

Plus it's kind of intrinsically interesting to see what happens when a country is basically broken and then puts itself back together -- in a way not intended by the people who broke it. And it's always interesting to see how differently people think in different parts of the world.

But if I knew more about the Chinese and U.S. defense, I wouldn't even know what to do that information and it sounds really boring.

At some point you -- and by "you" I don't mean you specifically, Jeff; I just mean "one" -- just have to face the fact that there are only so many free hours in your life, only so many articles you can read, so you might as well skip the ones that sound overly dutiful.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 21, 2014, 01:41:54 pm
Perhaps paradoxically, I found the May 12 "The End of Food" article to be a fun read over lunch.  :laugh: The author mentions some things I haven't heard in years: Whatever happened to Metrecal? And then there was, "A shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and then a sensible dinner."  ;D

It's no wonder that Rhinehart improved physically when he started living on his concoction: He was clearly malnourished to begin with.

I wondered at first if I could lose weight if I switched to Soylent, but then it seemed probably not. I think I would like it with chocolate. Almost everything is better with chocolate.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 22, 2014, 09:42:29 am
I've been reading a pretty good profile of Sam Shepard. It's from my pile of ripped-out articles -- when I want to clear a big pile of New Yorkers I keep individual articles that still look interesting and recycle the rest. Then, supposedly, I work through the pile at my leisure.

Halfway through the Shepard piece, I noticed it's from 2010.  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2014, 09:47:59 am
I've been reading a pretty good profile of Sam Shepard. It's from my pile of ripped-out articles -- when I want to clear a big pile of New Yorkers I keep individual articles that still look interesting and recycle the rest. Then, supposedly, I work through the pile at my leisure.

Halfway through the Shepard piece, I noticed it's from 2010.  :laugh:

Better late than never!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 03, 2014, 01:31:18 pm
OK, I gotta love Emily Nussbaum for coming right out and calling Bill O'Reilly a fathead (May 19).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 03, 2014, 10:06:30 pm
OK, I gotta love Emily Nussbaum for coming right out and calling Bill O'Reilly a fathead (May 19).

I do love Emily Nussbaum, even when I disagree with her, which does not include this case.  :)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 08, 2014, 03:25:56 pm
On my blog I posted a comment about Hilton Als' June 2 review of the monologue by Edgar Oliver, because it really struck me in a personal way.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2014, 02:10:14 pm
Spoiler Alert!

Brady Bunch fan fiction in The New Yorker!  :laugh:

I don't know what else you'd call it. The story "'Here's the Story,'" in the June 9 & 16 issue, is essentially a back story to The Brady Bunch. It's not a funny story, and it's also not too flattering of Mke and Carol (Robert Reed and Florence Henderson). I guess if you're a big-deal author you can write fan fiction and get it published in The New Yorker.  :-\

In other matters, the magazine tells me that these first two weeks of June were wonderful weeks for ballet in the Big Apple. NYCB performed Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream the first week, and ABT is performing Sir Frederick Ashton's Cinderella this week (with the hotties Cory Stearns and David Halberg alternating as the Prince).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2014, 07:09:55 pm
Spoiler Alert!

Brady Bunch fan fiction in The New Yorker!  :laugh:

I don't know what else you'd call it. The story "'Here's the Story,'" in the June 9 & 16 issue, is essentially a back story to The Brady Bunch. It's not a funny story, and it's also not too flattering of Mke and Carol (Robert Reed and Florence Henderson). I guess if you're a big-deal author you can write fan fiction and get it published in The New Yorker.  :-\

I haven't read it yet, but when I saw your post I glanced through it, and it looks a bit more ambitious than most fan fiction. No offense to fan fiction! Just that it seems -- on that quick skim, anyway -- to have more ambitious artistic goals. But now I'll have the fan fic fans and authors feeling insulted.

I'm trying to think of an analogy. I would say it's like calling GWTW a historical romance novel. But that's not really a good analogy, because basically that's what GWTW is.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2014, 07:18:51 pm
I haven't read it yet, but when I saw your post I glanced through it, and it looks a bit more ambitious than most fan fiction. No offense to fan fiction! Just that it seems -- on that quick skim, anyway -- to have more ambitious artistic goals. But now I'll have the fan fic fans and authors feeling insulted.

I'm trying to think of an analogy. I would say it's like calling GWTW a historical romance novel. But that's not really a good analogy, because basically that's what GWTW is.

Well, I'm being snarky in calling it "Brady Bunch fan fiction," but if somebody else, an amateur writer, wrote a back story or prequel to the TV series, I think that's what it would be, fan fiction.  :-\ And they might even have the lawyers of the show's producers, or their heirs, after them for copyright infringement.  ::)  I assume this guy got any necessary permissions, or The New Yorker wouldn't have published it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 11, 2014, 09:28:54 pm
I finished the article about David Green, whose novel was turned into the movie The Fault in our Stars, coming out this month. And I also read several of the My Old Flame short pieces. Now, I'll delve into the Brady Bunch prequel. I never saw that series, and in 1967 I was just starting out in high school and didn't have time for TV, what with schoolwork, dating and such. At first place it seems to be a paean to late 1960s pop culture and there is an awful lot about Don Drysdale.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2014, 10:39:22 pm
OK, I read it and thought it was genius. It was barely about The Brady Bunch. But it really cleverly used its relationship to the BB to express ideas about fate and chance and who gets to be "stars" and who stays in the shadows, and why some people are better as couples, etc. etc. If the BB references weren't woven into it (often pretty subtly), it would stand on its own. It did a good job of capturing its era, and also what it was like for people who were just a little too old to be hippies (my parents, for example, who were just a little older than Mike and Carol Brady). There was even an element of suspense.

Although, as you pointed out, it's not particularly flattering of Mike and Carol, those nonflattering portraits are entirely seen through the other characters' perspectives, so you get that the two might be OK people -- in fact, they didn't seem inconsistent with their characters on the show -- in another context, with other partners (i.e., each other!).

Like Lee, I was pretty busy in the years The Brady Bunch was on and never saw much of it. I would estimate I've seen, cumulatively, maybe two to three episodes. Maybe four. But that's certainly enough to get the gist of the show, and to understand the allusions in this story.

But I wonder what it would have been like to read it without having been clued in first. Frankly, I'm glad you told us, Jeff, spoiler or no, because I think the appreciation of it is greater when you do know than it would be if you had to wait until the end (or, if you were really clever, figure it out en route). So thanks for pointing the story out, Jeff. I'm fairly certain I would never have read it otherwise; I used to read all New Yorker fiction but I rarely do nowadays.

Well, I'm being snarky in calling it "Brady Bunch fan fiction," but if somebody else, an amateur writer, wrote a back story or prequel to the TV series, I think that's what it would be, fan fiction.  :-\ And they might even have the lawyers of the show's producers, or their heirs, after them for copyright infringement.  ::)  I assume this guy got any necessary permissions, or The New Yorker wouldn't have published it.

That's an impossible hypothetical, though. An amateur writer couldn't have written this. Would an amateur writer's backstory/prequel to a TV series get into the New Yorker? No, for the same reason amateur writers' stories about anything don't get published there, because they generally aren't good.

The question is, would this exact same story get into the New Yorker if it came over the transom and they'd never heard of the author and his agent didn't probably submit it in the first place? I suspect not. So that's another problem.

As for the legal issues, I'm sure they're well within their rights to mention widely known fictional TV characters in another context. But you can bet the New Yorker would be all over it if they weren't sure. I once saw David Sedaris speak, and he said he wrote something about a past boyfriend -- unnamed, but riding on the same train as him or something like that -- and the New Yorker fact checkers traced the guy to verify!



I finished the article about David Green, whose novel was turned into the movie The Fault in our Stars, coming out this month.

I'm reading this one, also. I think the movie might be already out. It's funny, I'd never heard of John Green until maybe a year ago, but apparently he's been hugely famous for years. And I've always been kind of baffled at how he can be both a YouTube celebrity and a YA author celebrity, but this piece helps straighten that out.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2014, 09:04:58 am
I finished the article about David Green, whose novel was turned into the movie The Fault in our Stars, coming out this month. And I also read several of the My Old Flame short pieces. Now, I'll delve into the Brady Bunch prequel. I never saw that series, and in 1967 I was just starting out in high school and didn't have time for TV, what with schoolwork, dating and such. At first place it seems to be a paean to late 1960s pop culture and there is an awful lot about Don Drysdale.

Drysdale was Big back then, and I think he may have made a guest appearance on the show--I'd have to look that up--as did, famously, Davy Jones of The Monkees.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2014, 09:20:46 am
That's an impossible hypothetical, though. An amateur writer couldn't have written this. Would an amateur writer's backstory/prequel to a TV series get into the New Yorker? No, for the same reason amateur writers' stories about anything don't get published there, because they generally aren't good.

I disagree, but only in the sense that I might better have said unpublished than amateur. I was thinking in the sense that everybody is an amateur until he or she has a book published and the book is a success. Then the amateur is a professional. I agree that the story as published is a bit too sophisticated for most amateurs.

Quote
As for the legal issues, I'm sure they're well within their rights to mention widely known fictional TV characters in another context. But you can bet the New Yorker would be all over it if they weren't sure. I once saw David Sedaris speak, and he said he wrote something about a past boyfriend -- unnamed, but riding on the same train as him or something like that -- and the New Yorker fact checkers traced the guy to verify!

Well, as for people being "within their rights to mention widely known fictional TV characters"--when I wrote that part about the lawyers I was thinking about the writers of Brokeback Mountain fan fiction who got "cease and desist" letters from Annie Proulx' attorneys, so I beg to be skeptical about them being "well within their rights."

David Sedaris' experience is interesting, and I wonder how long ago that was? These days The New Yorker would do well to invest less effort in fact checking and more in copy editing. The number of typos and missing articles and prepositions and so forth that I notice is very depressing. Mr. Shawn must be weeping in his grave.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2014, 09:43:19 am
I disagree, but only in the sense that I might better have said unpublished than amateur. I was thinking in the sense that everybody is an amateur until he or she has a book published and the book is a success. Then the amateur is a professional. I agree that the story as published is a bit too sophisticated for most amateurs.

Right, that's what I was trying to get at with my "over the transom" scenario. My understanding is that New Yorker stories these days are typically agented. Years on years ago, I used to write fiction, and I submitted things once or twice. I got the sense they read them before rejecting them, but I think you're right that it would be hard for an unknown writer to break in.

Quote
Well, as for people being "within their rights to mention widely known fictional TV characters"--when I wrote that part about the lawyers I was thinking about the writers of Brokeback Mountain fan fiction who got "cease and desist" letters from Annie Proulx' attorneys, so I beg to be skeptical about them being "well within their rights."

I know. But first off, I think the stories Annie Proulx went after were more focused on BBM characters, weren't they? This story barely mentions the Bradys, and then only kind of glancingly. It really could be referring to any California residents who happen to have those fairly common names (as opposed to Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar). It relies on readers' cultural literacy to fill in the so-called "real" identities, which is another interesting aspect of the story.

Second, Annie Proulx may be particularly litigious. Anyone can issue "cease and desist" letters, can't they? It's up to a court to decide whether copyright laws have been violated. It's hard to say what a court would do with fan fic. On the one hand, writing whole stories about characters that someone else created does seem an appropriation of intellectual property. On the other, if you're not making any money from the stories and basically just sharing them with like-minded people, where's the harm? But then I suppose AP could argue that a proliferation of BBM stories dilutes the brand or something ... Hmm, the more I go back and forth on it, the more I suspect she might have a solid case -- if a sort of silly one.

But I don't think "Here's the Story" will put much of a dent in the monetary value of Brady Bunch residuals. If anything, it made me kind of want to watch an episode (though not enough to actually do it).

Copyright laws allow others to reference the work up to a certain number of words. That's how reviewers can get away with quoting passages from a book verbatim. I'm not sure how this exception applies to other creative works as opposed to reviews, but "Here's the Story" is certainly well under the word count.

Quote
Mr. Shawn must be weeping in his grave.  :(

Over the swearing, too! Here's an interesting factoid from the John Green profile that Mr. Shawn wouldn't like: The Norwegian edition of Green's YA book "The Fault in our Stars," which is about teenagers dying of cancer, is titled "Fuck Fate."


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2014, 10:31:40 am
Over the swearing, too! Here's an interesting factoid from the John Green profile that Mr. Shawn wouldn't like: The Norwegian edition of Green's YA book "The Fault in our Stars," which is about teenagers dying of cancer, is titled "Fuck Fate."

Right. I forget which article I was reading recently, where someone was quoted using the F-bomb, and I thought to myself, "Mr. Shawn would never have allowed that."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 12, 2014, 11:48:16 am
Read David Gilbert's "Here's the Story" and glad I did. There were probably one gazillion references to the Brady Bunch and other pop icons of the '60s-'70s that I missed, but it was still a good story although chock full of brand names. Some virtuoso writing there. Check this out: "he hitched deliverance to a smile, in the mode of athletes and actors who squint at the light that glows from within" "the diamond might as well have been a classroom clock on the last day of school" "much of the pleasure of being here was walking with the spectre of his wife, defining himself in opposition to her attitude." As to whether it should be called fan fiction, I don't really think so. It seems to me like fan fiction is written for the benefit of the author, not the readers. It's a kind of therapy. IMHO.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2014, 01:11:15 pm
It seems to me like fan fiction is written for the benefit of the author, not the readers. It's a kind of therapy. IMHO.

Totally agree about the therapy, though from what I've seen  think readers get that benefit out of it, too.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2014, 03:39:11 pm
I think we're really straying into territory better covered on the old Fan Fiction thread, but I have to say, I was under the impression that Louise's stories started out as Brokeback Mountain fan fiction until she got her knuckles rapped by Annie Proulx' lawyers. I could be wrong about that--I only know about it second or even third hand--but if I'm not, I doubt her stories were "therapy." (They may have been for some of her readers.)

Meanwhile, I wish I'd kept The New Yorker issue where I found a to missing from a sentence, but I've already passed that issue on to the friend at work to whom I give all my New Yorkers when I'm finished with them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2014, 05:11:33 pm
Don't worry, I bet every time they do something like that they get flooded with tearsheets marked up in red and scrawled with reminders of what Mr. Shawn would think.  :laugh:



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2014, 05:29:19 pm
Don't worry, I bet every time they do something like that they get flooded with tearsheets marked up in red and scrawled with reminders of what Mr. Shawn would think.  :laugh:

 :laugh:  I should do that, too. I started a file, but I didn't keep up with it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 14, 2014, 11:00:34 am
Here's the story on "Here's the Story," from the New Yorker website:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/06/this-week-in-fiction-david-gilbert-2.html (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/06/this-week-in-fiction-david-gilbert-2.html)

Since the world of the Bradys is such an artificial world, I wanted the world of Ted and Emma to be absolutely real. That was very important to me, for them to fly above the construct of the show, to take on the appearance of living, breathing souls and perhaps, for a moment, gain their humanity and transcend their non-origin origins. I also liked exploring the idea of fate, of assuming your story is the story when, often, your story is merely a cog in a much bigger story.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 16, 2014, 09:26:44 am
Well, for once I am actually "caught up" with my New Yorkers. Kind of cheated, though. I never care very much for the fiction issues, so this morning I passed the issue with the Brady Bunch prequel on to a coworker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 16, 2014, 09:59:46 am
I usually skip the fiction in the regular issues but when the special fiction issue comes out, I save it to read all summer long. I don't have time to do "beach reading" but it's handy for bringing to the doctor's office. Now that my mom is living in town, I actually have to sit in doctor's offices.

The New Yorker's choice of fiction can be annoying sometimes, especially when many of the articles are translated from Polish or whatever. But I don't neglect the fiction altogether because, what if there's another Brokeback Mountain in there?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 16, 2014, 10:19:04 am
The New Yorker's choice of fiction can be annoying sometimes, especially when many of the articles are translated from Polish or whatever. But I don't neglect the fiction altogether because, what if there's another Brokeback Mountain in there?

I'm currently reading the Haruki Murakami story, translated from Japanese. Aside from whatever literary merit, those stories can be a convenient way to see what life is like in another country. Murakami's stories are very contemporary and make life in Japan sound a lot like life in the United States, actually.

But my fiction reading is pretty spotty at this point. I used to read the fiction above all else, and now I rarely read it at all. I missed "Brokeback Mountain" when it came out.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 16, 2014, 11:26:23 am
In a regular issue, I will read some fiction if I recognize the author's name, but that's about it. I think it's a good thing for The New Yorker to give exposure to writers who may be newer and out of the WASP main stream, but usually what they write doesn't interest me--immigrants in the New York region. I always used to read John Updike (funny thing, though, I never read any of his novels) (it seemed to me as though his short stories often took place in his home region, which, however fictionalized, is my home region), and I always read Joyce Carol Oates and Louise Erdrich. I can't think of any other names off the top of my head right now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 16, 2014, 12:04:48 pm
I like Salman Rushdie, Alice Munro, Stephen King, Jonathan Safren Foer, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, Dave Eggers, George Saunders, and Haruki Murakami. Those are all I can remember right now.

I never did enjoy Updike's work or any other writer who writes about the suburbs. Too close to home, I suppose.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 16, 2014, 07:38:23 pm
I always used to read John Updike (funny thing, though, I never read any of his novels)

Same here. I read a few of his novels and loved them. Never any of the Rabbit ones, though people always recommend them.

Quote
I always read Joyce Carol Oates and Louise Erdrich.

Me too. I interviewed Louise Erdrich once (for the Toronoto Globe & Mail). But I always read her before that.

I like Salman Rushdie, Alice Munro, Stephen King, Jonathan Safren Foer, Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, Dave Eggers, George Saunders, and Haruki Murakami.

I would look at all of these, but the only ones I'd for sure read are King, Franzen and especially Saunders. Maybe Eggers.

I read something by Sam Shepard recently. It was only OK. Actually, I had two stories of his, but the other one was missing pages (it was from my ripped-out pile) so I couldn't finish it. I had stapled these along with a profile of Shepard by John Lahr. That was more interesting than the stories.

I would read Jennifer Egan. I read something in the NYer by her about a year ago that was a story composed entirely of tweets. In fact, she had first "published" it on Twitter. I know it sounds hokey, but it was actually quite good. The tweets all represented brief, individual communiques from some kind of spy on a dangerous mission, either making notes on the mission or communicating with her team, so the form worked quite well. The story was so good it moved me to read Egan's novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I also really liked.

Sometimes i'll take a quick glance at a story to decide whether I want to read it. Frankly, I realize I'm looking for signs that the story will be easy to read: lots of dialogue, more short paragraphs than long dense ones, a recognizable setting and relatable voice and protagonist. I generally don't like stories in which the protagonist is referred to only by his (or sometimes her) last name.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 19, 2014, 01:30:12 pm
I am positively delighting in Janet Malcolm's June 23 article about the Argosy Bookshop.  :D Run, don't walk to read this one.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 30, 2014, 03:01:38 pm
David Sedaris' June 30 article about his life with a FitBit makes me want one.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 02, 2014, 01:35:48 pm
So, at lunch today, I began to read the profile of director Richard Linklater (June 30), and I suddenly became acutely aware of what I think is a characteristic New Yorker sentence structure with regard to direct quotations, which is beginning to annoy me because of its repetitive use.

The structure goes something like this:

Name, long or longish modifiying clause, says.

Examples (italics added by me):

"... Quentin Tarrantino, who calls 'Dazed and Confused' his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties, says."

"... Ethan Hawke, who has appeared in eight of Linklater's films, says."

"... Jack Black, who starred in it, says." (OK, that's not a particularly long clause, but it follows the pattern.)

Actually, the pattern in complete form is:

Direct quotation, name, modifying clause beginning with "who," says.

If I were king of the universe, or editor of The New Yorker (they're the same thing, aren't they?  ;D), I would at least vary that structure somewhat.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 02, 2014, 05:19:17 pm
Well, they do vary it. Later on in the article these appear:

Cathleen Sutherland, the film's production manager, looked around wistfully. "I used to go to summer camp--same girls for years," she said.

One of the film's admirers was Tina Harrison. She had grown up in the Bay Area and moved to Austin for graduate school in art history, but "found Austin rather dreary after San Francisco and Berkeley."

"It used to be just Linklater, Malick, and Rodriguez," Rebecca Campbell, the film society's executive director, says.

Hawke: "He wasn't just looking for two actors, in a way--he was looking for two partners."

Lorelei bounced down the stairs in a velvet cocktail dress. "This is one option," she said.

There are more examples if you need them. But the two examples you cited of Hawke and Tarantino follow each other so they seem rather prominent.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 02, 2014, 06:38:29 pm
Well, they do vary it. Later on in the article these appear:

Cathleen Sutherland, the film's production manager, looked around wistfully. "I used to go to summer camp--same girls for years," she said.

One of the film's admirers was Tina Harrison. She had grown up in the Bay Area and moved to Austin for graduate school in art history, but "found Austin rather dreary after San Francisco and Berkeley."

"It used to be just Linklater, Malick, and Rodriguez," Rebecca Campbell, the film society's executive director, says.

Hawke: "He wasn't just looking for two actors, in a way--he was looking for two partners."

Lorelei bounced down the stairs in a velvet cocktail dress. "This is one option," she said.

There are more examples if you need them. But the two examples you cited of Hawke and Tarantino follow each other so they seem rather prominent.

I've seen this structure used so often in so many articles, not just the Linklater profile (which is otherwise very interesting) that I'm stickin' to my story. And that Rebecca Campbell sentence follows the pattern--it ends with the says all by itself after the modifying clause.

I don't care if it is The New Yorker. It's bad writing. I don't know who does the magazine's actual copy editing, but I'm beginning to suspect that whoever it is can't edit himself or herself out of a paper bag.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 02, 2014, 08:48:53 pm
I've noticed this for years. I've assumed they have a rule that the verb "said" always has to follow the subject, whereas in most writing, you would go

"... says Quentin Tarrantino, who calls 'Dazed and Confused' his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties."

"... says Ethan Hawke, who has appeared in eight of Linklater's films."

"... says Jack Black, who starred in it, says."


It's not just some rogue copy editor; I'm fairly certain this is the magazine's preferred style, like the diaeresis over words like cooperate. It's still stupid, though. I think those attributions read very awkwardly, and what's the point of hanging onto a rule that makes your writing awkward?

Here's a piece about the diaeresis, by the way, that shows how stodgy the NYer can be about style:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 02, 2014, 10:41:16 pm
I've noticed this for years. I've assumed they have a rule that the verb "said" always has to follow the subject, whereas in most writing, you would go

"... says Quentin Tarrantino, who calls 'Dazed and Confused' his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties."

"... says Ethan Hawke, who has appeared in eight of Linklater's films."

"... says Jack Black, who starred in it, says."

Or else you start with the attribution and end with the direct quotation:

Quentin Tarrantino, who calls "Dazed and Confused" his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties, says, "With his first four or five films, you may have thought you had Rick pegged, and you would have been wrong."

Quote
It's not just some rogue copy editor; I'm fairly certain this is the magazine's preferred style.

"Actually, I agree," Jeff Wrangler, who reads the magazine faithfully, said.  ;D

Quote
It's still stupid, though. I think those attributions read very awkwardly, and what's the point of hanging onto a rule that makes your writing awkward?

I agree; it's stupid and awkward.

Quote
Here's a piece about the diaeresis, by the way, that shows how stodgy the NYer can be about style:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html)

I find the diaeresis amusingly quaint, but the magazine also violates everything I was ever taught about the use of italics in titles.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 03, 2014, 08:59:43 am
A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 03, 2014, 10:09:24 am
A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!

I agree. What's up with that? In fact, I was thinking exactly the same thing when I was typing nineteen-nineties in the Tarrantino quote in my last post--and that's nearly as bad as your example.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 03, 2014, 11:03:30 am
A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!

"I agree," serious crayons, who was born in one thousand nine hundred and fifty seven and is very coöperative, says.

P.S., my spellcheck objects to coöperate, though not to cooperate. Though what does it know? It also objects to spellcheck.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 03, 2014, 01:00:50 pm
Thanks for the laugh serious!

A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!

Shock! I violated one of my own rules, calling it "their convention" instead of "its convention". I don't want The New Yorker (or any business) to get the idea that it is a person!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 04, 2014, 11:40:47 am
I feel the need to apologize personally to Al Franken!  ::) Moving on...

It's interesting to contrast the Linklater article to the book review of a Stephen Crane biography by Caleb Crain (relation? I think not) in the same issue. The book review is the better written, IMO, and skips along merrily, pulling the reader effortlessly with it. In contrast, one must plod through the Linklater profile. I think part of the problem is that the author, Nathan Heller, overreached, and tried to quote too many people in the piece. It results in an overlong article with too many quotes. Did he think he must include at least one quote from each person he interviewed? You can usually tell when someone had fun writing something and these two articles illustrate that.

The Crane review is quite an eye-opener! Never realized what a revolutionary person he was. Like America's Byron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 07, 2014, 01:39:03 pm
Here's something that was interesting to me.

Early in Nathan Heller's article about San Francisco (July 7 & 14), he quotes an activist named Tommi Avicolli Mecca. Well, two decades ago, Tommi Avicolli Mecca lived here in Philadelphia, where he was also an activist (involved with Act-Up, if I remember correctly) and worked for the Philadelphia Gay News.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 07, 2014, 07:06:47 pm
I found the story about the 33 Chilean miners who survived underground for 56 days so inspiring that I gave the issue to my minister.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 07, 2014, 09:26:39 pm
I found the story about the 33 Chilean miners who survived underground for 56 days so inspiring that I gave the issue to my minister.

And I'm probably not even going to read that one.  :-\

The only other article in that entire issue that interests me is, I want to see what Adam Gopnik has to say about the 9/11 memorial.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 08, 2014, 01:42:25 pm
The only other article in that entire issue that interests me is, I want to see what Adam Gopnik has to say about the 9/11 memorial.

I read Gopnik's article today. Actually, what interested me most was his discussion of the history of public memorials (e.g., the Shaw memorial, by Saint-Gaudens).

I cannot believe the museum has loops of victims' last phone calls playing for anyone and everyone to hear. To me that seems such an invasion of the privacy of both the deceased and the person to whom the call was made. I guess the museum must have the permission of the calls' recipients, though; I suppose that's where the recordings came from.

On a lighter note, I took a look at David Denby's movie reviews, and I got a kick out of his "Seven Horsemen of the Multiplex."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 09, 2014, 09:05:20 am
I guess I might be reading that story about the miners after all. I'm out of stuff to read while I eat my lunch.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 09, 2014, 10:53:31 am
I guess I might be reading that story about the miners after all. I'm out of stuff to read while I eat my lunch.  :-\

I thought it sounded kind of interesting -- not totally duty. Report back!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 09, 2014, 11:21:01 am
I guess I might be reading that story about the miners after all. I'm out of stuff to read while I eat my lunch.  :-\

I thought it sounded kind of interesting -- not totally duty. Report back!

FRiend Lee found it very inspiring:

I found the story about the 33 Chilean miners who survived underground for 56 days so inspiring that I gave the issue to my minister.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 10, 2014, 09:05:47 pm
I thought it sounded kind of interesting -- not totally duty. Report back!

Well, I finished the article over dinner this evening. I was familiar with the story from news accounts when it happened, so you might say I knew how it was going to end. It was kind of like reading an adventure story that you know how it ends. It was "kind of interesting," but for myself, I'm afraid I can't call it "inspiring." It definitely wasn't a "duty article." For me "duty articles" are usually about the Middle East.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 11, 2014, 11:54:05 am
For me "duty articles" are usually about the Middle East.

Same here. Though I might extend that to pretty much any other continent besides North America, with the possible exception of Europe, unless it's about economics or politics, in which case Europe is duty, too.

I know, I'm sort of geocentric that way.  :-\

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 11, 2014, 12:12:29 pm
Same here. Though I might extend that to pretty much any other continent besides North America, with the possible exception of Europe, unless it's about economics or politics, in which case Europe is duty, too.

I know, I'm sort of geocentric that way.  :-\

Is there a word that means "focused on one's own continent or hemisphere"? Isn't that what you really mean?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 11, 2014, 05:23:14 pm
Is there a word that means "focused on one's own continent or hemisphere"? Isn't that what you really mean?

Sort of. I'm actually focused on my own culture, I think.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 11, 2014, 07:29:51 pm
I'm sort of geocentric that way.  :-\

Is there a word that means "focused on one's own continent or hemisphere"? Isn't that what you really mean?

Sort of. I'm actually focused on my own culture, I think.

Well, that word would be ethnocentric, wouldn't it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 12, 2014, 09:27:06 am
Speaking of culture, there must have been something that allowed 33 miners to all survive almost two MONTHS underground in a small refuge in a mine. That's why I found the article interesting. I would assume that after a couple of weeks they would start attacking each other. But according to this story they didn't even have much of any disagreements. And on the surface, I would think the rescuers would give up the search after a certain period of time. The big unknown in the story was how they persevered to the end, and I think the author did get to the bottom of it. When you are faced with your impending mortality, the mettle of your soul is proven.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2014, 10:39:45 am
Speaking of culture, there must have been something that allowed 33 miners to all survive almost two MONTHS underground in a small refuge in a mine. That's why I found the article interesting. I would assume that after a couple of weeks they would start attacking each other. But according to this story they didn't even have much of any disagreements. And on the surface, I would think the rescuers would give up the search after a certain period of time. The big unknown in the story was how they persevered to the end, and I think the author did get to the bottom of it. When you are faced with your impending mortality, the mettle of your soul is proven.

Well, they were underground for 69 days--about ten weeks--but they were out of touch with the surface for about three weeks. People survive in jail for a lot longer than that, and I would think it made some difference once they were in contact with the surface and food and other things could be passed down to them. It seems to me this is one failing of the article, it doesn't really go into what it was like for them after the rescuers made contact with them and they waited for the escape shaft to be drilled. Surely it made some difference. Surely it was difficult to wait for that shaft to be drilled, but surely it wasn't like it was during those first three weeks.

Edit to Add: Tell you what, it occurs to me that this is the sort of New Yorker story that ends up as a full-length book. I won't be surprised at all to see this one as a book. Perhaps the book will address what I see as the shortcomings of the magazine article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 13, 2014, 10:47:56 am
In the June 23 issue I'm reading "The Disruption Machine" by Jill LePore; she reviews Clayton M. Christensen's 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma, and the industry of disruptive innovation it has spawned. Two of his handpicked case studies are Morrison-Knudsen and Time, Inc. He blames MK's embrace of the mass transit business line for destroying the company, when, as I recall, it was the mismanagement and corruption of MK's leader at the time, William Agee. Christensen doesn't mention anything about Agee's infamous mis-leadership of the company.

Time, Inc. failed in its foray into new-media with the Pathfinder portal. I was involved in a company that invested hundreds of thousands into development of a "portal" which is just a glorified web site. Such facades failed because there was little or no content to make it worthwhile to access and navigate through their elaborate and counter-intuitive structures. LePore concludes that disruptive innovation for its own sake is merely a gimmick and I agree with her. I'm all for innovation, but it is not the goal in itself, it is merely a tool.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2014, 01:51:39 pm
LePore concludes that disruptive innovation for its own sake is merely a gimmick and I agree with her. I'm all for innovation, but it is not the goal in itself, it is merely a tool.

She really picks that theory apart, doesn't she?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2014, 01:31:43 pm
Well, I wasn't going to read Emily Nussbaum on Orange Is the New Black (July 7 & 14), but it was worth it for her quotation from the show:

"A lot of people are stupid and still live full, productive lives."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 16, 2014, 01:19:22 pm
I wasn't going to read Peter Schjeldahl on the Jeff Koons retrospective, but I'm just about out of anything in the magazine that interests me as I wait for the next issue. However, in the end I'm glad I read the piece for this wonderful pun:

"We might justly term the present Mammon-driven era in contemporary art the Koons Age."

 ;D

Actually, it's always kind of interesting to read that somebody from York, Pennsylvania, could become an internationally famous--some might say notorious--artist.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2014, 01:41:05 pm
Today I finished Rachel Aviv's July 21 article about the test cheating scandal in Atlanta, and I must say I'm not the least bit upset about it because it just seems to me that when you base everything in education on test scores, something like the Atlanta scandal is just waiting to happen. I actually feel sorry for the teachers caught up in it. But then, I think Aviv's article was written in a way to evoke sympathy for the teachers.

I've also gone on to start Louis Menand's article on "The Sex Amendment." I had a bit of a laugh. In his sermon yesterday, our rector made reference to the rather nasty and racist exchange between Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony back in 1869; now I think I know where he got it: from Menand's article.  ;D

David Remnick was on the Today show this morning. He doesn't look anything like I imagined he would look. I figured he would wear eyeglasses.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 23, 2014, 09:52:22 am
I'm reading Aviv's article too. It's really eye-opening. I must be naive...hard to believe those teachers and the principal engaged in such bald-faced cheating!

But meanwhile the new issue came and I devoured Elizabeth Kolbert's article on the Paleo fad: Stone Soup (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/28/stone-soup).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2014, 09:53:47 am
Does everybody here know that the New Yorker on Monday removed the paywall on its archives for the next three months?

Of course, we subscribers can look through its archives anytime, but I almost never do that unless I'm really desperate to look up a story because I find their archive access very user unfriendly. This makes it easier. (Though I still hate having to read by pushing around an image of a magazine page rather than scrolling through a regular html-type page, and I hate not being able to print out longer pieces.)

Here are a couple of places with lists of suggestions of articles to read.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/07/22/new_yorker_online_free_for_three_months_what_should_you_read.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/07/22/new_yorker_online_free_for_three_months_what_should_you_read.html)

http://longform.org/posts/our-25-favorite-unlocked-new-yorker-articles (http://longform.org/posts/our-25-favorite-unlocked-new-yorker-articles)

I know many people are excited about big names (David Grann! Seymour Hersch! John McPhee! Janet Malcolm!) or big topics, but I myself plan to reread Larissa MacFarquhar's 2001 profile of movie producer Brian Grazer. For whatever reason, that article, which I read purely by chance in an idle moment -- it came out a month after 9/11, so it was hardly the most pressing subject at the time -- has stuck with me all these years. Whenever I see Grazer's name on a movie or TV show my interest is slightly piqued and I'm more likely to watch it. (Luckily, Grazer's projects are usually pretty good -- he produces Ron Howard's movies, among other things.) Now I'm going to go back and find out what made that profile so influential. (http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2001-10-15#folio=176 (http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2001-10-15#folio=176), in case anyone else is interested.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 24, 2014, 11:34:31 am
I wondered why the link was so easy to access on Stone Soup! Hopefully, they'll open up access to their archive for everyone!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2014, 12:52:40 pm
Speaking of Stone Soup, I'm reading it right now and noticed this line (emphasis mine): "Livestock are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, not just because of the fuel it takes to raise them but also because they do things like belch out methane and produce lots of shit, which in turn produces lots of nitrous oxide."

Mr. Shawn must be turning in his grave knowing that swear words are now preferred to more formal terms in articles that are otherwise pretty straightforward journalism. I myself prefer "shit" to "excrement" or "feces" here, although "manure" might have been the best choice.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2014, 01:34:49 pm
Speaking of Stone Soup, I'm reading it right now and noticed this line (emphasis mine): "Livestock are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, not just because of the fuel it takes to raise them but also because they do things like belch out methane and produce lots of shit, which in turn produces lots of nitrous oxide."

Mr. Shawn must be turning in his grave knowing that swear words are now preferred to more formal terms in articles that are otherwise pretty straightforward journalism. I myself prefer "shit" to "excrement" or "feces" here, although "manure" might have been the best choice.

Or, perhaps, "waste material," which is somewhat euphemistic, I guess, but would still get the point across.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 05, 2014, 01:23:19 pm
I just enjoyed the July 28 article about Ronda Rousey, the M.M.A. fighter.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 07, 2014, 10:50:45 am
I enjoyed the profile recently of Richard Linklater -- a fascinating guy, and I'm looking forward to seeing Boyhood.

Now I'm reading Michelle Goldberg's article about the conflict between radical feminists and transgender women -- the "radfems" don't think transgender women should be allowed to play in their reindeer games because if they started out as men they had all of the privilege and power that maleness confers, even if they ultimately chose to waive it.

It's OK, but once you get the point it gets sort of repetitive. Or at least it has so far.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 07, 2014, 12:12:46 pm
Now I'm reading Michelle Goldberg's article about the conflict between radical feminists and transgender women -- the "radfems" don't think transgender women should be allowed to play in their reindeer games because if they started out as men they had all of the privilege and power that maleness confers, even if they ultimately chose to waive it.

It's OK, but once you get the point it gets sort of repetitive. Or at least it has so far.

I read that, and I almost feel that I should read it again, and this time "in one sitting." Reading it in parts at different times, I found myself being unable to remember who was who, and what were the various positions advocated.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 08, 2014, 10:51:11 am
I read that, and I almost feel that I should read it again, and this time "in one sitting." Reading it in parts at different times, I found myself being unable to remember who was who, and what were the various positions advocated.  :-\

I'm reading it in multiple sittings, too, but frankly I'm not intensely interested because the politics of the radical feminists seem so marginal. Most feminists, I think, support transgender people. Or at least "feminism" as a movement takes no stance against them.

Someone apparently wrote a piece triumphantly pointing to this article as evidence that "feminism is dead."  ::)  Yeahno.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 08, 2014, 11:05:40 am
I'm reading it in multiple sittings, too, but frankly I'm not intensely interested because the politics of the radical feminists seem so marginal. Most feminists, I think, support transgender people. Or at least "feminism" as a movement takes no stance against them.

Someone apparently wrote a piece triumphantly pointing to this article as evidence that "feminism is dead."  ::)  Yeahno.

I'm frankly puzzled by all the fuss over bathroom usage, but then I'm a guy, so. ...  :-\

Especially in the case of individuals who have had complete gender reassignment surgery.

Not that I think someone should be checking.  :-\

I was also vaguely bothered by a suspicion that some of the writers might have a point--at least, a bit of a point--with regard to individuals who take medications--hormones?--to grow breasts up top, but stop short of getting rid of their manparts down below.

The whole article was of interest to me because it seems lately that our local gay paper has had more articles about transgender issues than about gay issues--and at least to some extent there is a need for it, because in the last ten years or so transgender individuals in this city have been the victims of crimes--murders--that have been every bit as horrific as Matthew Shepard's, if not more so (at least Matthew wasn't dismembered)--and the police have not exactly been falling all over themselves to solve them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 09, 2014, 05:06:03 pm
I'm frankly puzzled by all the fuss over bathroom usage, but then I'm a guy, so. ...  :-\

Especially in the case of individuals who have had complete gender reassignment surgery.

Not that I think someone should be checking.  :-\

I think the idea is that the transgender people don't feel that bathrooms of either gender provide safe environments. I suppose if they've had reassignment surgery and don't "look transgender" it would be less of an issue.

But only a minority of transgender people have surgery. I imagine it's a combination of expense, the trauma of such major surgery and maybe the potentially disappointing results? I wrote a long profile of a trangender woman 20 years ago who worked, often undetected, as a fashion model, but had not had surgery (she once lost a modeling job when someone burst into her dressing room at the wrong time). She was in a long-term relationship with a guy who claimed to be straight but said he was fine with her anatomy.

Quote
I was also vaguely bothered by a suspicion that some of the writers might have a point--at least, a bit of a point--with regard to individuals who take medications--hormones?--to grow breasts up top, but stop short of getting rid of their manparts down below.

I guess since the whole is about having the person feel comfortable with their gender presentation, if that's what makes them most comfortable it doesn't matter to me one way or the other.

Quote
The whole article was of interest to me because it seems lately that our local gay paper has had more articles about transgender issues than about gay issues--and at least to some extent there is a need for it, because in the last ten years or so transgender individuals in this city have been the victims of crimes--murders--that have been every bit as horrific as Matthew Shepards, if not more so (at least Matthew wasn't dismembered)--and the police have not exactly been falling all over themselves to solve them.

Yes, from what I've heard at this point transgender people are subject to much more bias and violence than gay people. Which I guess shows some progress for gay people, at least.  :-\





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 18, 2014, 01:39:55 pm
David Remnick's article about Putin (Aug. 11 & 18) is a useful read, not exactly a duty article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 19, 2014, 11:10:24 am
Malcolm Gladwell's article (Aug. 11-18) about the difference between the fortunes of Italian gangsters vs. African-American gangsters is interesting. One big difference, apparently, is the treatment of the two groups by police -- with the first group, police often looked the other way. With the second, police are a constant fixture in their lives. It goes a long way toward explaining disproportionate black incarceration rates.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 27, 2014, 03:13:19 pm
Michael Spector's article (Aug. 25) about the crusader against genetically modified food plants and other plants (e.g., cotton) is very interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 27, 2014, 08:35:21 pm
I guess I'm going to have to read a book at lunch tomorrow. I'm actually caught up with all my New Yorkers.  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 19, 2014, 08:57:54 am
I was hanging out at a Swiss observatory during bad weather and picked up a National Geographic. There was an article by Elizabeth Kolbert about the anniversary of the Wilderness Act. It was a good article but I was shocked by how poor the writing was. It must have been the editing, because her writing for The New Yorker is very good. I was a little shaken by the abominable writing in NG, and am going to retreat back to my New Yorkers for the foreseeable future!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 19, 2014, 10:21:03 am
I was hanging out at a Swiss observatory during bad weather and picked up a National Geographic. There was an article by Elizabeth Kolbert about the anniversary of the Wilderness Act. It was a good article but I was shocked by how poor the writing was. It must have been the editing, because her writing for The New Yorker is very good. I was a little shaken by the abominable writing in NG, and am going to retreat back to my New Yorkers for the foreseeable future!

Gotta be bad editing at NG.

Similarly, I recently learned that Jill Lepore wrote a book on King Philip's War, a subject very different from what we usually see her writing on in TNY. I should try to track down a copy of her book.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 19, 2014, 11:17:33 am
On the other hand, i just came across a particularly egregious example of the New Yorker's ridiculous attribution-structure policy:

"It's just absolutely out there, surreal and brilliant," the actress Helen Mirren, whose husband, Taylor Hackford, directed the film, said. (in the John Lahr profile of AL Pacino in the Sept. 15 issue.)

Actually introducing a whole other person forces the reader top stop and think -- wait, who said this, Helen or Taylor?

Any other publication would have used the much clearer "said the actress Helen Mirren, whose husband ..." What is the NY's problem with that?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 19, 2014, 11:26:14 am
On the other hand, i just came across a particularly egregious example of the New Yorker's ridiculous attribution-structure policy:

"It's just absolutely out there, surreal and brilliant," the actress Helen Mirren, whose husband, Taylor Hackford, directed the film, said. (in the John Lahr profile of AL Pacino in the Sept. 15 issue.)

Actually introducing a whole other person forces the reader top stop and think -- wait, who said this, Helen or Taylor?

Any other publication would have used the much clearer "said the actress Helen Mirren, whose husband ..." What is the NY's problem with that?

Don't know, but I agree with you and I've said before how annoying I find that sentence structure, especially when it's repeated ad nauseum in the same article. That said just lands there with a thud, like a safe on Wile E. Coyote.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 20, 2014, 10:07:04 am
And what was the copyeditor thinking to let through this sentence construction -- by, of all people, the erudite Adam Gopnik?

"To see her as a victim of other people's cruelties is also to take an old-fashioned and romantic attitude toward the mental illness from which she suffered, even if the treatments for it in her day strike us as uncivilized and ignorant (as ours will in the future)." (from a piece about Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in the Sept. 22 issue)

Maybe I'm being picky, but the end of that sentence strikes me a non sequitur; in the future, it won't be "us." Either "even if the treatments for it in her day now seem uncivilized and ignorant (as ours will in the future)" OR "even if the treatments for it in her day strike us as uncivilized and ignorant (as ours will to people of the future)."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 20, 2014, 11:41:06 am
Yours is much better than Gopnik's, Katharine.

Sometimes I wonder whether TNY is even copyedited at all anymore.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 29, 2014, 01:40:42 pm
I found Meghan Daum's personal history piece in the Sept. 29 issue, which I read over lunch today, to be a real downer.

Fortunately, the movie listings section included a reprint of Pauline Kael's capsule review of A Streetcar Named Desire, where Kael had this to say about the film: "Elia Kazan's direction is often stagy, and the sets and the arrangement of actors are frequently too transparently 'worked out,' but who cares when you're looking at two of the greatest performances ever put on film and listening to some of the finest dialogue ever written by an American?"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 04, 2014, 12:44:25 am
I'm a Meghan Daum fan, but I didn't make it through the whole essay.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 14, 2014, 09:12:37 pm
I started gong through my old New Yorkers tonight to recycle them. I didn't even make it through the whole pile, which contained issues as old as Sept. 2013.

I kept ripping out articles I wanted to read. Not all of them duty articles, either! Now I'll staple those and keep them in a pile and they'll just sit there gathering dust while I don't get around to reading them.

No -- somehow I vow to find time to read at least some of them! Some looked pretty good!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 14, 2014, 09:35:32 pm
I took an issue with me to read when I had dinner out Saturday night. Turned out my waiter is also a reader, and a big fan of Jill Lepore.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 16, 2014, 10:56:45 pm
I'm enjoying Peter Hessler's story (Oct. 13) about his trash collector in Cairo.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 17, 2014, 09:36:22 am
I'm enjoying Peter Hessler's story (Oct. 13) about his trash collector in Cairo.

I need to go back and find this. At first glance, I dismissed it as a bit too "duty." (Sorry to sound so xenophobic, but "takes place on foreign soil" is one of the factors I associate with duty.) But I've heard it praised in several places now, so I will definitely give it a try.

I, meanwhile, am reading the article about fast-food workers trying to unionize, which is less duty than you might think. Their working conditions really are awful, and the ratio between the earnings of fast-food CEOs and the line workers is like 900-something to 1, which is outlandish even by American standards -- in the construction industry, for example, it's 90-something to 1. (I once read that Japanese CEOs consider it a mark of shame if they make more than maybe 30 times their employees, and even in the earlier days of the United States the ratio was something like 20 or 30 to 1.) $15 an hour may sound like a lot to earn for working at McDonald's, but in constant dollars it's about what fast-food workers made 30 years ago.

(All of the numbers in the above paragraph rely on my memory and are approximate at best.)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 17, 2014, 11:06:27 am
I need to go back and find this. At first glance, I dismissed it as a bit too "duty." (Sorry to sound so xenophobic, but "takes place on foreign soil" is one of the factors I associate with duty.) But I've heard it praised in several places now, so I will definitely give it a try.

Actually, it's the kind of "takes place on foreign soil" article that I really like, because it goes into what it's like to actually live in these places. It's not about the Muslim Brotherhood or what's going on in Tahrir Square--at least, not as far as I've read--or subjects like that.

Quote
I, meanwhile, am reading the article about fast-food workers trying to unionize, which is less duty than you might think. Their working conditions really are awful, and the ratio between the earnings of fast-food CEOs and the line workers is like 900-something to 1, which is outlandish even by American standards -- in the construction industry, for example, it's 90-something to 1. (I once read that Japanese CEOs consider it a mark of shame if they make more than maybe 30 times their employees, and even in the earlier days of the United States the ratio was something like 20 or 30 to 1.) $15 an hour may sound like a lot to earn for working at McDonald's, but in constant dollars it's about what fast-food workers made 30 years ago.

(All of the numbers in the above paragraph rely on my memory and are approximate at best.)

I guess we really do have different ideas about what makes a "duty article." I don't disagree with anything you say about the article or how awful it is for these people, and yet this is the sort of article that I find far more duty-ish than one about the life of a trash collector in Cairo.  :-\  (I did read that article, and it resonated because it appeared not too long after a protest right here in Philadelphia, but it's still the sort of article that I consider duty-ish. I guess anything even remotely political--even foreign political--is duty-ish for me. Plus it's probably true that  anything by Jon Lee Anderson or Dexter Filkins is duty-ish for me.  ;D)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 17, 2014, 10:44:47 pm
My reason for reading the New Yorker is to read excellent writing and so try to keep my own skills sharp. I've been in for a learning experience lately as it seems like the magazine is undergoing an overhaul, from the Talk of the Town to the cartoons and beyond. It's unsettling every time I open a new issue, and sometimes I am concerned that they're going in a wrong direction. But, then I come across a gem that inspires me.

Today, I was reading Anthony Lane's review of Gone Girl and I thought he nailed it when he said, "Nick remains, to put it gently, a lunkhead." Nick is the protagonist of the movie, played by Ben Affleck. There are many other examples of the new New Yorker approach. I'll post some of them here.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 17, 2014, 11:33:19 pm
My reason for reading the New Yorker is to read excellent writing and so try to keep my own skills sharp. I've been in for a learning experience lately as it seems like the magazine is undergoing an overhaul, from the Talk of the Town to the cartoons and beyond. It's unsettling every time I open a new issue, and sometimes I am concerned that they're going in a wrong direction. But, then I come across a gem that inspires me.

Today, I was reading Anthony Lane's review of Gone Girl and I thought he nailed it when he said, "Nick remains, to put it gently, a lunkhead." Nick is the protagonist of the movie, played by Ben Affleck. There are many other examples of the new New Yorker approach. I'll post some of them here.

Please do! Because I'm not sure exactly what you're talking about, though I'm not arguing with your point. I'm just curious about what you've seen that you find unsettling or that seems like part of an overhaul.

I find the New Yorker mostly excellent, but it does have its weaknesses. One is the problem we've discussed here, about how almost every story begins with a sentence establishing timeframe: "Last November, ..." or "On a cold day in April ..." or "In the spring of 1912 ..." or whatever. It gets so redundant.

Also, I once read a transcript of a discussion between David Remnick and, I think it was, Jonathan Franzen. They were discussing David Foster Wallace and I believe Franzen noted that Wallace's essays had never been published in the New Yorker. "Not for lack of trying," David Remnick replied, and I thought, "Really?? You're feeling smug about being too selective to publish a writer who was perhaps the greatest essayist of his generation? OK, then. Yippee for you."

The New Yorker did publish Wallace's fiction, but I think posthumously.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 18, 2014, 11:22:44 am
I find the New Yorker mostly excellent, but it does have its weaknesses. One is the problem we've discussed here, about how almost every story begins with a sentence establishing timeframe: "Last November, ..." or "On a cold day in April ..." or "In the spring of 1912 ..." or whatever. It gets so redundant.

Seriously, I do sometimes question whether the magazine gets any serious copyediting and proofreading any more.

And it occurs to me to wonder whether this has anything to do with having an editor or editors who also have their own writing career?

I mean, did William Shawn have his own writing career? Or was his job to edit The New Yorker? I've never heard Mr. Shawn remembered as a writer, only as the editor of The New Yorker--but that doesn't necessarily mean he wasn't also a writer.

Quote
Also, I once read a transcript of a discussion between David Remnick and, I think it was, Jonathan Franzen. They were discussing David Foster Wallace and I believe Franzen noted that Wallace's essays had never been published in the New Yorker. "Not for lack of trying," David Remnick replied, and I thought, "Really?? You're feeling smug about being too selective to publish a writer who was perhaps the greatest essayist of his generation? OK, then. Yippee for you."

The New Yorker did publish Wallace's fiction, but I think posthumously.

The magazine also published an article about him after he killed himself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 18, 2014, 11:34:43 am
I find the New Yorker mostly excellent, but it does have its weaknesses. One is the problem we've discussed here, about how almost every story begins with a sentence establishing timeframe: "Last November, ..." or "On a cold day in April ..." or "In the spring of 1912 ..." or whatever. It gets so redundant.

It's as if they have a template, and every article gets made to fit the template.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 18, 2014, 01:49:07 pm
The magazine also published an article about him after he killed himself.

Good point!

It's as if they have a template, and every article gets made to fit the template.  :-\

Good point. They do sometimes publish outside-the-box writers like Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham, Steve Martin or even David Sedaris, they're generally people who had already achieved fame and popularity elsewhere (such as show business).

Otherwise, they adhere pretty closely to a certain style and tone -- mostly serious though occasionally mildly amusing, erudite but modest, factual and detached and dispassionate. Not a lot of eccentrism or attitude. Writing, in other words, that doesn't call attention to itself as Writing. Exemplified by staffers like Adam Gopnik. Which is no doubt why David Foster Wallace didn't make the cut -- his stye was idiosyncratic and colorful and slightly neurotic; it just didn't fit the New Yorker mold.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 20, 2014, 10:40:58 pm
Good point. They do sometimes publish outside-the-box writers like Mindy Kaling, Lena Dunham, Steve Martin or even David Sedaris, they're generally people who had already achieved fame and popularity elsewhere (such as show business).

Well, speak of the devil! Apparently the new issue, which I have yet to receive, contains fiction by Tom Hanks.

A Slate columnist reveiwed the story and wasn't particularly impressed. Here's her most damning paragraph:

I certainly was not blown away by this story, which seems to exemplify a growing New Yorker trend of opening up certain sections to famous Hollywood types. Jesse Eisenberg, Mindy Kaling, Steve Martin, Lena Dunham, and Tina Fey have all recently appeared in the magazine’s pages. Not to reverse-discriminate, but how many of their pieces would have made the cut without the glittering byline? Perhaps it is enough for The New Yorker to deliver the minor thrill of a popular figure trying something new. (Not that Hanks is an entirely unpracticed literary hand: He also wrote the scripts for That Thing You Do and Larry Crowne.) But the world is full of rich, interesting, funny, moving fiction by people we’ve never heard of. It’s a shame to see the high-profile New Yorker fiction perch occupied by a mediocre story that breezed past the bodyguards because of its Hollywood pedigree. 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/20/tom_hanks_new_yorker_story_alan_bean_plus_four_is_not_very_good.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/20/tom_hanks_new_yorker_story_alan_bean_plus_four_is_not_very_good.html)

She asks a good question. I genuinely enjoyed the piece or two by Mindy Kaling that I read there. But then, Kaling was a writer before she was an actress -- she wrote the play Ben and Matt, she was a writer for The Office as well as an actress on it, and she has at least one book out that I think looks pretty decent (I gave it to my niece, along with another book, as a graduation present). But even in so, I wonder if the New Yorker would publish her if she weren't famous elsewhere.

The others, I bet, would not make the cut. I've read most of Lena Dunham's book and it was just OK (though I love Girls). I was never all that impressed with Steve Martin's writing and wasn't ever excited enough to read Tina Fey's book based on the few excerpts I did read. Again, Tina Fey was an SNL writer before she was a star, but still.

And I think I saw Jesse Eisenberg's "Shouts and Murmurs" piece and didn't think it was good.

Meanwhile, a year or so ago I read an interview in which David Remnick practically boasted about rejecting David Foster Wallace (or at least, about the magazine rejecting him; I'm not sure Remnick was editor when Wallace was alive). Anyway, Jonathan Franzen in this interview mentioned that DFW had never been published in the NYer. "Not for lack of trying," David Remnick said. I wanted to slap him.

Jesse Eisenberg clears the bar because he did a good job playing Mark Zuckerberg. But David Foster Wallace, one of the greatest essayists of the past 20 years, can't get in?



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 21, 2014, 09:35:49 am
Well, speak of the devil! Apparently the new issue, which I have yet to receive, contains fiction by Tom Hanks.

A Slate columnist reveiwed the story and wasn't particularly impressed. Here's her most damning paragraph:

I certainly was not blown away by this story, which seems to exemplify a growing New Yorker trend of opening up certain sections to famous Hollywood types. Jesse Eisenberg, Mindy Kaling, Steve Martin, Lena Dunham, and Tina Fey have all recently appeared in the magazine’s pages. Not to reverse-discriminate, but how many of their pieces would have made the cut without the glittering byline? Perhaps it is enough for The New Yorker to deliver the minor thrill of a popular figure trying something new. (Not that Hanks is an entirely unpracticed literary hand: He also wrote the scripts for That Thing You Do and Larry Crowne.) But the world is full of rich, interesting, funny, moving fiction by people we’ve never heard of. It’s a shame to see the high-profile New Yorker fiction perch occupied by a mediocre story that breezed past the bodyguards because of its Hollywood pedigree. 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/20/tom_hanks_new_yorker_story_alan_bean_plus_four_is_not_very_good.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/20/tom_hanks_new_yorker_story_alan_bean_plus_four_is_not_very_good.html)

Ouch!

Quote
And I think I saw Jesse Eisenberg's "Shouts and Murmurs" piece and didn't think it was good.

"Shouts and Murmurs" is the one feature I practically never read, unless maybe if it's by David Sedaris or Paul Rudnick. The few times I have read it when it was by other people, I found it not funny at all--downright amateurish, in fact, like a bad attempt at humor in a high school newspaper.

Quote
Meanwhile, a year or so ago I read an interview in which David Remnick practically boasted about rejecting David Foster Wallace (or at least, about the magazine rejecting him; I'm not sure Remnick was editor when Wallace was alive). Anyway, Jonathan Franzen in this interview mentioned that DFW had never been published in the NYer. "Not for lack of trying," David Remnick said. I wanted to slap him.

Jesse Eisenberg clears the bar because he did a good job playing Mark Zuckerberg. But David Foster Wallace, one of the greatest essayists of the past 20 years, can't get in?

I've never read DFW, so I'm really, really not equipped to comment. But I think your points about celebrity authors are well taken.

I suppose being a good writer for TV comedy (e.g., Tina Fey) doesn't necessarily make one a good writer for a magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 21, 2014, 10:32:32 am


"Shouts and Murmurs" is the one feature I practically never read, unless maybe if it's by David Sedaris or Paul Rudnick. The few times I have read it when it was by other people, I found it not funny at all--downright amateurish, in fact, like a bad attempt at humor in a high school newspaper.

I agree with you, Jeff. "Shouts and Murmurs" can be far-fetched sometimes. I still read it, but sometimes don't finish it. Comedy writing is difficult. I like a broad range of comedy and satire, especially Monty Python-style comedy, so I tend to like Steve Martin's writing as well as Tina Fey's. But it's not for everyone. Conspicuously absent from this lineup is Woody Allen. I usually don't like the pieces that he has in The New Yorker. Martin has been writing for TNY for quite a few years, I think. I remember seeing his work there when I started reading it back in the previous century!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 21, 2014, 11:05:15 am
I agree with you, Jeff. "Shouts and Murmurs" can be far-fetched sometimes.

"Far-fetched" is a good way to describe some of what I've seen in "Shouts and Murmurs." That's what made me think of a kid trying to write something funny for a high school newspaper--and failing miserably.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 22, 2014, 10:23:17 am
Somehow, The Onion manages to be pretty consistently funny on a weekly basis. But outside of TV, that's the only example I can think of. The Onion is working off the news, but then again so is "Shouts and Murmurs" sometimes. And I agree, it's only occasionally funny.

That said, I have occasionally happened on really good S&Ms by obscure writers. One, years ago, was so clever I ripped it out and saved it for years. Eventually I threw it away in a frenzy of organization and have regretted it ever since. It was an entire S&M written in the regular forms of words that we normally use only in prefixed forms. Not sure if those terms are right -- and I can hardly remember any examples, which is why I regret tossing it -- but basically it used "chalant" to mean the opposite of "nonchalant," "plussed" as the opposite of "nonplussed" and so on.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2014, 01:23:33 pm
That said, I have occasionally happened on really good S&Ms by obscure writers. One, years ago, was so clever I ripped it out and saved it for years. Eventually I threw it away in a frenzy of organization and have regretted it ever since. It was an entire S&M written in the regular forms of words that we normally use only in prefixed forms. Not sure if those terms are right -- and I can hardly remember any examples, which is why I regret tossing it -- but basically it used "chalant" to mean the opposite of "nonchalant," "plussed" as the opposite of "nonplussed" and so on.

I think I remember that "Shouts & Murmurs." Or maybe I just have a vague memory of some comedian somewhere doing a routine about the same subject (e.g., kempt is not the opposite of unkempt). The Oct. 20 article is by Paul Rudnick; I read it over lunch, and despite its author, I didn't find it very funny.

And I didn't quite know what to make of the Patricia Marx piece about "emotional-support animals."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 22, 2014, 07:30:22 pm
My NY came this afternoon finally so I had to sit down and read "Allen Bean Plus Four" by Tom Hanks. It was a breezy upbeat account of four madcap twenty-somethings who decide to make a figure eight voyage around the moon in their Rube Goldberg space capsule, just for fun. Kind of a Disney ride, science-fiction-lite saga. There were some interesting turns of phrase and the oft-expressed conceit that you can do anything with an iphone these days. Other than that, it was a bit of a waste of time, but at least I didn't end a NY fiction-reading session mired in existential angst as I so often do.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2014, 10:24:50 pm
Mine arrived today, too. I jumped right into the profile of Billy Joel. I didn't even notice Tom Hanks' name in the contents.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 23, 2014, 11:09:31 am
I am always the last person on the planet to get the latest New Yorker.  :(

Well, I should amend that. Once I was talking on the phone to a friend in New Orleans. This was about a year after Katrina. I mentioned something in the New Yorker and asked if she'd seen it. No, she said, because they still weren't getting magazine delivery.  :o

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 23, 2014, 11:49:22 am
I am always the last person on the planet to get the latest New Yorker.  :(

I thought I was the last one. Ordinarily, Lee seems to get hers days before I get mine. Annoys me because I'm only an hour and a half from New York, and she's 1500 miles away.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 23, 2014, 07:17:41 pm
Well, I didn't get mine today, either. I'll let you know when it comes, and you'll see what I'm talking about.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 23, 2014, 09:30:14 pm
Well, I didn't get mine today, either. I'll let you know when it comes, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Shit. That's hard.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 23, 2014, 11:53:00 pm
Shit. That's hard.  :(

 :laugh:  Well, a Brokieism always improves the situation.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 24, 2014, 09:04:41 am
:laugh:  Well, a Brokieism always improves the situation.

 ;D  I hope it gets there soon.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 29, 2014, 01:52:47 pm
Well, I'm now reading the Oct. 27 article on "The Ebola Wars." It reminds me of reading The Andromeda Strain, and I remember the article from years ago, about that hemorrhagic fever that broke out among the monkeys in the research lab in Reston, Virginia. It's absolutely riveting and absolutely terrifying.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 30, 2014, 09:21:38 am
Well, I didn't get mine today, either. I'll let you know when it comes, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I STILL don't have it.

By the time I read "The Ebola Wars," Ebola will have been cured.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 30, 2014, 10:20:55 am
I STILL don't have it.

By the time I read "The Ebola Wars," Ebola will have been cured.

I'd contact Customer Service and complain.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 30, 2014, 06:03:36 pm
I'll have to remember not to blab on about the latest issue until I'm sure everybody has received it. So, has everybody received the food issue (Nov 3)? This issue seemed strange because it was so focused on events within the U.S. borders. I'm not used to an issue where there is nothing about the Middle East or Africa. So far, I have enjoyed John Lancaster's piece "Shut Up and Eat" which launches the issue. We're in the age where we're supposed to laugh at ourselves for being so food-obsessed, which is okay except then we just go on with our obsession as normal. Not about food, but I also enjoyed the article about Bob Dylan's early work.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 30, 2014, 09:18:47 pm
I received the Nov. 3 issue this week, and I went directly to Adam Gopnik's piece on the cronut and the pretzel croissant. Cronuts don't interest me, but I'd like to try a pretzel croissant.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 30, 2014, 10:50:35 pm
I'll have to remember not to blab on about the latest issue until I'm sure everybody has received it.

Oh, you never need worry about that! It's not like we're giving away spoilers here.

Quote
So, has everybody received the food issue (Nov 3)? This issue seemed strange because it was so focused on events within the U.S. borders. I'm not used to an issue where there is nothing about the Middle East or Africa. So far, I have enjoyed John Lancaster's piece "Shut Up and Eat" which launches the issue. We're in the age where we're supposed to laugh at ourselves for being so food-obsessed, which is okay except then we just go on with our obsession as normal. Not about food, but I also enjoyed the article about Bob Dylan's early work.

So I finally I got a New Yorker in the mail today, and I was all set to come here and say at last I had the famous Tom Hanks issue -- except that's not it, it's the Food Issue. I think what happened was that I never got the Oct. 27 issue.

I have a few different piles of magazines (practically one in every room, actually), and although they go back to at least last summer I couldn't find the Oct. 27.

So I think I probably will call customer service and complain. Here's my dilemma: If they give me a choice between getting the Oct. 27 one and adding one at the end, which should I do? Note: I don't particularly care about reading the Tom Hanks thing at this point. Is the Oct. 27 worth it, or should I take a chance that I'd do better at the other end?





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 31, 2014, 01:29:53 am
I would vote for adding one to the end. The issue with the Hanks piece was largely forgettable, although I didn't read the ebola piece, so I'm hardly an authority.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 31, 2014, 09:15:00 am
So I think I probably will call customer service and complain. Here's my dilemma: If they give me a choice between getting the Oct. 27 one and adding one at the end, which should I do? Note: I don't particularly care about reading the Tom Hanks thing at this point. Is the Oct. 27 worth it, or should I take a chance that I'd do better at the other end?

No surprise here, I completely disagree with FRiend Lee about the issue being "largely forgettable."  :laugh:

The Ebola article is completely riveting, and Oct. 27 also has the profile of Billy Joel (but maybe you don't care for his music?). The article on the President and court appointments is important if duty-ish. (I don't even plan on reading Tom Hanks' story).

BUT:

If you can access those articles on line (I probably could but I've never bothered to learn how)--then perhaps you should read them on line and go for an extra issue on the end of your subscription, if you are given that option.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 31, 2014, 07:50:12 pm
the profile of Billy Joel (but maybe you don't care for his music?).

He's OK. True story: my uncle, who was probably in his 50s or early 60s at the time, but was pretty culturally aware and liked music and played the piano beautifully (though mostly classical) was once listing what he thought were the most important figures in rock 'n' roll history. "Elvis, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel ..." he said.

I had to hide my amusement. My uncle really liked Billy Joel.

Quote
The article on the President and court appointments is important if duty-ish.

That doesn't sound like it would pass the duty threshold for me. I know court appointments are important, but I just can't get very into them.

Quote
If you can access those articles on line (I probably could but I've never bothered to learn how)--then perhaps you should read them on line and go for an extra issue on the end of your subscription, if you are given that option.

Excellent point. Many of the articles aren't even behind paywalls, and though of course as subscribers we all theoretically have access to all of the New Yorker content on their website. But I absolutely hate using it for that -- I like their blogs and online columns, but not the magazine content, because it's really cumbersome to read. You have to read it in a PDF version on their site, meaning you have to open to the page, then scroll up and down the individual columns as you read because you can't enlarge it enough to read, while keeping it on a whole page of your computer (at least I can't on mine).

Long story short, I'll probably google the Ebola article and if it's not available as free content (in which case it's presented in an easy-to-use html format, all one column) I'll probably skip it.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 31, 2014, 11:05:36 pm
Update: I just ran across someone else's link to the Ebola story. It's not paywalled.

In case anyone reading this is curious and doesn't subscribe, here's the link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/27/ebola-wars# (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/27/ebola-wars#)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 01, 2014, 11:28:34 am
Thanks for the link. Yes, it was a good article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 01, 2014, 02:51:04 pm
You have to read it in a PDF version on their site, meaning you have to open to the page, then scroll up and down the individual columns as you read because you can't enlarge it enough to read, while keeping it on a whole page of your computer (at least I can't on mine).

Eeew.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 04, 2014, 02:32:54 pm
The Food Issue doesn't usually do much for me, but today I enjoyed the piece on cruise-ship dining (though it reinforced my lack of interest in going on a cruise), and I'm looking forward to the article on gluten-free eating.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 05, 2014, 02:28:49 pm
Well, I did find Michael Spector's article on gluten interesting, but also confusing. I get it that wheat, rye, and barley contain gluten, but what about corn, oats, and rice?

I was also kind of annoyed by a paragraph that had nothing to do with gluten. Spector denounces margarine as a bad fat, and goes on to say that for decades people were encouraged to eat it because the saturated fat in butter was considered even more dangerous. Then he goes on to say that data from the famous Nurses' Health Study showed that women who ate four teaspoons--teaspoons!--of margarine a day had a 50% greater risk for heart disease than women who ate no margarine. But he doesn't compare the margarine eaters to butter eaters.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 05, 2014, 08:09:47 pm
Well, I did find Michael Spector's article on gluten interesting, but also confusing. I get it that wheat, rye, and barley contain gluten, but what about corn, oats, and rice?

I was also kind of annoyed by a paragraph that had nothing to do with gluten. Spector denounces margarine as a bad fat, and goes on to say that for decades people were encouraged to eat it because the saturated fat in butter was considered even more dangerous. Then he goes on to say that data from the famous Nurses' Health Study showed that women who ate four teaspoons--teaspoons!--of margarine a day had a 50% greater risk for heart disease than women who ate no margarine. But he doesn't compare the margarine eaters to butter eaters.  :(

I can see where both would be annoying.

From what I know, I believe the answers are: corn, oats and rice don't have gluten, and margarine is worse for you than butter. Saturated fat is no longer thought to cause clogged arteries or heart disease. You might want to double-check both with Google. For more on the butter topic, look for a book called 'The Big Fat Surprise' by Nina Teicholz, a journalist who spent nine years investigating the standard weight-loss advice to avoid fat.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 05, 2014, 10:14:32 pm
I can see where both would be annoying.

From what I know, I believe the answers are: corn, oats and rice don't have gluten, and margarine is worse for you than butter. Saturated fat is no longer thought to cause clogged arteries or heart disease. You might want to double-check both with Google. For more on the butter topic, look for a book called 'The Big Fat Surprise' by Nina Teicholz, a journalist who spent nine years investigating the standard weight-loss advice to avoid fat.

Thanks. Well, I know that I lose weight when I really cut back on carbs, rather than on fat (meat).

I wonder whether it makes a difference if the margarine is made with olive oil?

I need to read more labels at the grocery store.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 06, 2014, 11:09:26 am
This discussion is getting really interesting, so I've created a new topic for it: On margarine/butter and the whole cholesterol thing (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,52905.new.html#new). Let's discuss this with a wider audience than just rabid New Yorker readers!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 12, 2014, 03:00:35 pm
Rachel Aviv is a writer for whom I am beginning to watch when The New Yorker arrives. I'm finding her article on sexual abuse in the Hasidic community in New York (Nov. 10) fascinating.

What's really fascinating to me is how the Hasidim are pretty much left alone to manage their own affairs, even when it comes to infractions of the civil law. That got me thinking about those Muslims who would impose Sharia law. It seems pretty clear that the difference is that the Hasidim stick to themselves and make no attempt to impose their ways on outsiders, whereas Islamic fundamentalists would impose Sharia on everybody.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 12, 2014, 08:59:08 pm
Rachel Aviv is a writer for whom I am beginning to watch when The New Yorker arrives..

Me too! So much so that last week I went to her website and looked up some of her old articles, for the New Yorker and elsewhere. I'd read a few of the New Yorker ones before and had been impressed.

Quote
I'm finding her article on sexual abuse in the Hasidic community in New York (Nov. 10) fascinating

Oh, I didn't know that's what it was about! I tend to find articles about Hassidim kind of dutiful, so I was going to skip it. But if there's sexual abuse involved, I'm more interested, for this reason: There were a wave of high-profile sex-abuse cases in the Amish community around here a few years ago, discovered only after some women left the community and disclosed it (as I recall). Same thing -- an insular, closed community. Same with Catholic priests, for that matter.

Those cases make me grateful for the current laws and attitudes about sex abuse, at least in this culture. Yes, sometimes people do go overboard or underboard with them, for sure. But when you see what happens in closed communities it's a reminder that, in the past, that was undoubtedly prevalent everywhere -- in mainstream communities,in many culture. It's mind-blowing to think how many people suffered as a result.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 12, 2014, 09:06:31 pm
I know that somewhere on this thread (perhaps more than once) I have discussed a great Shouts & Murmurs I saw years ago that was full of words that are normally used only with a modifying suffix (ex: nonchalant).

Here's a poem I saw on Slate the other day that does the same thing. It's not quite as good (maybe because I prefer prose to poem form, or maybe because this one is more cutesy), but it's pretty inventive. It's by David McCord.

    I know a little man both ept and ert.
    An intro-? extro-? No, he’s just a vert.
    Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,
    His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.

    When life turns sipid and the mind is traught,
    The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.
    Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,
    My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/11/10/_5_poems_with_fantastic_wordplay_prepositions_kempt_twinkle_twinkle_little.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/11/10/_5_poems_with_fantastic_wordplay_prepositions_kempt_twinkle_twinkle_little.html)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 13, 2014, 11:01:31 am
... by David McCord.

    I know a little man both ept and ert.
    An intro-? extro-? No, he’s just a vert.
    Sheveled and couth and kempt, pecunious, ane,
    His image trudes upon the ceptive brain.

    When life turns sipid and the mind is traught,
    The spirit soars as I would sist it ought.
    Chalantly then, like any gainly goof,
    My digent self is sertive, choate, loof.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/11/10/_5_poems_with_fantastic_wordplay_prepositions_kempt_twinkle_twinkle_little.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/11/10/_5_poems_with_fantastic_wordplay_prepositions_kempt_twinkle_twinkle_little.html)

 :laugh: It sounds faintly Gaelic!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2014, 09:20:53 pm
:laugh: It sounds faintly Gaelic!

I see what you mean. Of course, the "little man" automatically calls to mind a leprechaun-like figure.

Many of those must have been ordinary words at one point, don't you think? Then they were modified with in and un and non and the like, and somehow the root words fell out of use, perhaps because better words came along for the positive form of the adjective but no better negative forms emerged.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 14, 2014, 11:53:49 am
Yes, I agree. They also sound Shakespearean, especially "couth".
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 14, 2014, 05:52:28 pm
In this week's issue, the fiction offering is "The Alaska of Giants and Gods", by Dave Eggers. I have read his books before, and if this story is an excerpt from an upcoming book, I will probably read it. Although it is yet another commentary on the breakdown of families and civilization as we know it, he does manage to convey the depths of a woman's psyche admirably. The writing is rather quirky as it always is with Eggers. Stream of consciousness, but the exact opposite of Joycean. It can be offputting but I warmed up as the story went along and it had a very strong finish. I've often felt exactly like the protagonist, Josie, adrift (literally) and thinking "these people are nuts!"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 14, 2014, 09:06:27 pm
How did I miss that? I went through the table of contents and didn't notice his byline. I must be so used to skipping the "Fiction" section.

I see it now, though, and will probably also read it. I've read only one of his books, his memoir, but it was good. I'd rather read him than Tom Hanks any day (from what I heard about the Tom Hanks story).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2014, 02:47:48 pm
I highly recommend "Whipping Boy" (Nov. 17), Allen Kurzweil's account of tracking down the bully who bullied him in boarding school. I found it very entertaining. (The book comes out in January.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 21, 2014, 12:44:54 am
On your advice, I read the article and found it to be not at all what I expected. Quite a wild ride! I was thinking the author would confront the bully and there would be some kind of resolution...or not. But he would take solace in the fact that the guy was a lifelong loser. What an understatement!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 21, 2014, 09:11:45 am
Salon ran a series for a while in which people who'd been bullied wrote about finding and confronting them years later, as adults. Of course, most of them lacked all the intrigue involving high-flying international con artists and the like, but there were some interesting stories.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 02, 2014, 12:02:39 am
It's almost too late, but the New Yorker is running a cyber-Monday deal on 6 months' subscription!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 03, 2014, 05:50:49 pm
The December 8 issue has several articles that interested me. Of course I had to read "The View from a Bridge" by Adam Gopnik first, as I witnessed the scourge of "lovelocks" in Paris (and most other places) when I was there in September. I haven't read "The Ride of Their Lives" by Burkhard Bilger yet about rodeo children, but the photos are just heartbreaking.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 03, 2014, 07:30:57 pm
The December 8 issue has several articles that interested me. Of course I had to read "The View from a Bridge" by Adam Gopnik first, as I witnessed the scourge of "lovelocks" in Paris (and most other places) when I was there in September. I haven't read "The Ride of Their Lives" by Burkhard Bilger yet about rodeo children, but the photos are just heartbreaking.

My copy of the Dec. 8 issue arrived in today's mail. I can't wait to read Bilger's article about kids learning to be bull riders. I notice there is a picture of two kids who competed in "mutton busting," so I guess they still start them on the woolies.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 03, 2014, 08:43:45 pm
Moving backward to the Dec. 1 issue, I really liked the piece on fecal transplants. Though Jeff, it's not one I suggest you read on your lunch hour.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 03, 2014, 11:14:16 pm
Moving backward to the Dec. 1 issue, I really liked the piece on fecal transplants. Though Jeff, it's not one I suggest you read on your lunch hour.

It won't faze me. Remember what I do for a living. I've already read a lot about fecal transplants for people because antibiotics they've been taking for other infections wipe out the "good fauna" in their GI tracts.

But thank you for calling my attention to the article. Otherwise I might somehow have missed it.

Otherwise, I'm still slogging through the Steve Coll duty article about drone warfare (Nov. 24). Actually, pretty much that entire issue is "duty" for me.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2014, 02:01:27 pm
Otherwise, I'm still slogging through the Steve Coll duty article about drone warfare (Nov. 24). Actually, pretty much that entire issue is "duty" for me.  :-\

I found the Coll article very depressing. I guess I should read the Groopman piece and the McGrath piece, but I really just want to move on to the next issue.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 04, 2014, 11:20:48 pm
I'm still into the Dec. 1 issue. After fecal transplants (fascinating, as I said), I read the short story, which was OK even though it was set in Israel (though I didn't realize that until the end, and it probably has subtle political shadings to which I was oblivious). I'm usually kind of picky about foreign-set stories, as I've probably said, though I think the last New Yorker short story I read was set in Japan. Now I'm reading Nicholas Lehman's piece about books about Google's success and business-success books in general.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 08, 2014, 02:54:56 pm
I gave up on the tech issue and passed it on to my usual coworker. Just too boring to me. Ben McGrath's article was at least one-third longer than it needed to be. I never went back to Groopman's article on 3-D printing.

Over lunch today I read the Dec. 1 article on fecal transplants. Didn't faze me a bit. From my work I was already familiar with the concept of using poo-poo transplants to treat Clostridium difficile infections.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 09, 2014, 02:20:49 pm
Shame on Jill Lepore! Shame, shame, shame! And shame on The New Yorker's vaunted fact-checking!

Over lunch today I began to read Lepore's Dec. 1 article, "The Great Paper Caper," about the disappearance of the papers of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Near the end of the first page, I came to this statement:

Quote
The secrecy surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court derives from a policy set by the first Chief Justice, John Marshall, who wanted the Court to issue single, unanimous decisions and to conceal all evidence of disagreement.

John Marshall was not the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The first Chief Justice was John Jay, and as an American historian, Lepore should know that, and The New Yorker's fact checkers--if, indeed, the magazine still has any--should have caught that.

The mighty really have fallen.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 10, 2014, 12:42:08 am
Over lunch today I read the Dec. 1 article on fecal transplants. Didn't faze me a bit. From my work I was already familiar with the concept of using poo-poo transplants to treat Clostridium difficile infections.

I was kind of kidding about that. I'm fascinated with fecal transplants and the possibilities of medical breakthroughs based on something that we know so little about that up until recent years our only response to bacteria in our bodies was to kill them.

About a year ago, I read that fat mice who received fecal transplants from skinny mice got skinny themselves. Now where can I find some skinny mice??


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 10, 2014, 10:22:35 am
About a year ago, I read that fat mice who received fecal transplants from skinny mice got skinny themselves. Now where can I find some skinny mice??

Indeed! If you find any, let me know?  :laugh:

Incidentally, I was so ... moved ... by that blooper in Jill Lepore's article that I actually e-mailed the magazine yesterday. Since I'm so far behind in my reading, I figured they'd already heard about it--probably multiple times--but I wrote anyway. Very promptly I got an e-mail back thanking me and letting me know that the error had already been corrected on the web site and in the archive.

But still. My God. ...  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2014, 02:07:04 pm
I am way, WAY behind in my reading. It would not be accurate to say that I'm enjoying George Packer's Dec. 1 profile of Angela Merkel, but I am finding it interesting and informative. I mean, who is this leader of Germany with whom Dubya got overly familiar and thereby embarrassed the whole United States?

Still, I think Packer's article is at least twice as long as it need have been, if not even more than twice as long as it need have been. I guess The New Yorker no longer has anybody who knows how to edit.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 16, 2014, 10:16:43 pm
Still, I think Packer's article is at least twice as long as it need have been, if not even more than twice as long as it need have been. I guess The New Yorker no longer has anybody who knows how to edit.

Right, because the New Yorker has never been known to run long boring overly detailed articles about topics that are, at most, mildly interesting.  ::)  [/sarcasm]

I swore off forcing myself through duty articles the time I found myself about halfway through what seemed to be about a 10,000 word behind-the-scenes piece about a supermarket. "On Thursday, the dairy suppliers drop off milk, butter, cheese, yogurt ..." (At that point, it's not even duty! Who needs to know that much about grocery stores?)

Controversial as Tina Brown's editorship was, one of the many improvements she made was to require articles to be shorter and/or on more intrinsically interesting topics. She may have gone a bit overboard at times -- probably erred on the side of too pop culture-y -- and I think David Remnick has turned the pendulum back a bit. But sloggish New Yorker articles are not a recent invention.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 16, 2014, 10:43:00 pm
My thoughts exactly! javascript:void(0); :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2014, 10:46:05 pm
But sloggish New Yorker articles are not a recent invention.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought they were. Perhaps that didn't come out quite right because I had two other thoughts in my head as I was writing that. The first was the evident sorry state to which the magazine's much-vaunted fact checking has clearly fallen. The second was that when Mr. Shawn was the editor of The New Yorker, Mr. Shawn was the editor of The New Yorker. He wasn't pursuing his own writing while he was also the titular editor of the magazine.

And, yes, articles were shorter during the Tina Brown regime, and, where appropriate, that was a good thing--and the magazine could benefit from somebody who knows how to pare down an article like the Merkel profile. There doesn't seem to be anybody around right now who knows how to do that sort of thing--how to edit.

And, sarcasm or not, don't forget that what's only mildly interesting to you may be fascinating to someone else.  ::)  I do find the Merket profile, as I said, interesting and informative; it's just too long and repetitive.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2014, 11:00:30 pm
javascript:void(0);

 ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 16, 2014, 11:39:39 pm
And, sarcasm or not, don't forget that what's only mildly interesting to you may be fascinating to someone else.  ::)  I do find the Merket profile, as I said, interesting and informative; it's just too long and repetitive.

Oh, I wouldn't criticize them for running a profile of a pioneering world leader. Or really any world leader.

But a supermarket? Believe me, the audience for that one was limited to people who work in supermarkets.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 17, 2014, 10:22:47 am
But a supermarket? Believe me, the audience for that one was limited to people who work in supermarkets.

Was that the one about Whole Foods? I remember an article about Whole Foods, but I don't remember one about an ordinary supermarket.  ???

Not that it really matters.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 17, 2014, 08:33:00 pm
Was that the one about Whole Foods? I remember an article about Whole Foods, but I don't remember one about an ordinary supermarket.  ???

No, it was just some supermarket in Manhattan. This was a long time ago, pre-Tina Brown.

A Whole Foods profile would at least have some interesting political stuff in it. This was purely about how the store operated, at least as far as I got, which was about halfway. It was my turning point where I discovered that just because something's in the New Yorker doesn't mean it's worth reading.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 18, 2014, 12:09:49 am
A Whole Foods profile would at least have some interesting political stuff in it. This was purely about how the store operated, at least as far as I got, which was about halfway. It was my turning point where I discovered that just because something's in the New Yorker doesn't mean it's worth reading.

I seem to remember that it did, that Whole Foods and the guy who founded it aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 27, 2014, 08:32:02 pm
As usual, Elizabeth Kolbert's latest article is fascinating. This is about the quest to get rid of imported mammals in New Zealand to save birds and other native species that are dying out.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill?intcid=mod-most-popular (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill?intcid=mod-most-popular)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 29, 2014, 04:19:05 pm
At this site, Garrison Keillor sings a moving tribute to the unnamed "angel" who read the first story he sent in to the New Yorker in 1969:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/listen/?date=2014/12/27 (http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/listen/?date=2014/12/27)

He speaks for writers everywhere!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 03, 2015, 12:44:39 pm
The January 5 issue was fairly interesting except for the fiction and a long article about Armenia (even there, the photos were interesting). David Sedaris weighed in with "Leviathan". . . how does he create these pieces so effortlessly out of nothing? I would not get away with writing about my family so honestly. I wouldn't get invited to any other family functions! (Of course, in my nuclear family there are no family functions. My brother's in LA and, while he travels a lot, he comes here once a year or less. My sister's in SLC and never comes here.)

"The Virologist" exposes the superficiality behind Facebook, the Internet, etc. The subject, a twenty-something named Emerson Spartz, doesn't come across very well in the article. He probably thought being in The New Yorker would be a great opportunity for fame for him. (Maybe he still does!)

The satire one-pager about Sting was a little sad and underhanded. And dated. I see in the theater pages of that issue that The Last Ship isn't playing anymore.

Louis Menaud's article about the rise of the pulp paperbacks and the classics that piggybacked onto them, was very interesting. I was a teenager during the Peyton Place craze and was mystified by it. The television show starred Mia Farrow, Ryan O'Neal and Dorothy Malone. I was not allowed to see it but I did read about the stars and plot lines. The paperback sold 10 million copies! After hearing about Peyton Place and reading some bodice-rippers that my Mom had, I got a warped opinion about adults. They all seemed hypnotized and crazed by the opposite sex, just animals pretending to be grown-ups. I decided I wanted to stay a kid and I was definitely a late bloomer.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2015, 12:56:32 pm
The January 5 issue was fairly interesting.

Sounds like a real cracker-jack issue! I can't wait till I finish Dec. 22 & 29 so I can start it!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 03, 2015, 02:25:39 pm
Oh, Jeff, it sounds like you didn't take your issues with you when you went to your dad's for vacation. I'll try not to have any spoilers.

I'm not sure what to say about the review of the novelist Rachel Cusk. She apparently is very popular in England but I was put off by the description of her work as "autobiographical fiction." She writes about couples who have an occupational gender switch and subsequent divorce when that is her own recent experience. Plus, I wasn't cheered by her recent admission that she is experiencing writer's bloc and that she now finds fiction "fake and embarrassing." But there are a few passages in the review that make it worth reading, plus she is grappling with many of the same issues I am, so the words are relevant. I would suspect that in her "novels" the female protagonist is portrayed in too positive a light while the male is vilified. So what help would that be?

Last is "Button Pusher" a review of the British TV series "Black Mirror." The show sounds terrifying to me. Dystopian cautionary tales depress me but there have been a few good ones. I'll probably end up watching the series. About a third of the way into the review, Emily Nussbaum, the author, cautions that the rest of the review has spoilers. Did I stop reading? No.  :-X
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2015, 04:15:57 pm
Oh, Jeff, it sounds like you didn't take your issues with you when you went to your dad's for vacation. I'll try not to have any spoilers.

Ah, but I did. That's how come I'm caught up to Dec. 22 & 29.  :laugh:

(Over my week away I also read the latest--or maybe the latest in paperback--Wind River Mystery, Buffalo Bill's Dead Now, by Margaret Coel.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 06, 2015, 10:17:12 am
Louis Menand's article about the rise of the pulp paperbacks and the classics that piggybacked onto them, was very interesting.

Even though I still have to read the article about invasive species in New Zealand, I skipped ahead and read this one over supper last night. I thought it was very interesting, too. I really enjoyed it. Those old covers were a hoot! And imagine a time when you could buy a book for a quarter!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 06, 2015, 02:34:12 pm
What with its description of dead stoats disgorging maggots, I really wouldn't recommend that the New Zealand article be read over lunch, but all-in-all I found it quite interesting.

And for a change at least it isn't just the Europeans who are to blame.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 07, 2015, 02:22:56 pm
I finished "The Virologist" over lunch today. One phrase in the article tickles me: "memes with momentum." I like the alliteration, (I really don't understand what a meme is, even though Katherine, or somebody, explained it to me once a long time ago, during some election cycle, but I'm not bothered by my lack of understanding.)

Another thing about this article is that for some reason, while reading it, I found myself reflecting on the fact that there are now adults who have no personal experience of the predigital world.

I also read David Sedaris' piece. That leaves me with the Armenian genocide article to read; that one looks very long.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 07, 2015, 11:28:07 pm
(I really don't understand what a meme is, even though Katherine, or somebody, explained it to me once a long time ago, during some election cycle, but I'm not bothered by my lack of understanding.)

Gee, thanks for that endorsement of my explanation! Glad I could help.

I didn't read the article -- looked too tech-y for my taste -- but I did read the David Sedaris. And [*sigh*] I probably won't get to the Armenian one, which being extremely long and foreign and incredibly depressing has at least three "duty" factors against it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 08, 2015, 12:18:48 am
I skipped the Armenian article too! Although I did look at the pictures.

In the latest issue, I've delved into the fiction piece already!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2015, 10:17:51 am
Gee, thanks for that endorsement of my explanation! Glad I could help.

You're welcome! The more I think about it, the surer I am that it was you who explained meme.

Quote
I didn't read the article -- looked too tech-y for my taste -- but I did read the David Sedaris. And [*sigh*] I probably won't get to the Armenian one, which being extremely long and foreign and incredibly depressing has at least three "duty" factors against it.

"The Virologist" was too tech-y for my taste, too, but it was one of those things that I felt I should read because even if I don't do lots of tech-y things, I think it's a good idea to know something about what's going on in the tech-o-sphere.

I'll at least give the Armenian article a go.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 08, 2015, 01:58:15 pm
I wouldn't call "The Virologist" techy at all. It's more sociology or psychology, definitely of the pop variety. Emerson's company uses memes and clickbait to drive people to social media and sites. They try to maximize eyeballs to sell ads, much the way television did way back when.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2015, 02:16:28 pm
I'll at least give the Armenian article a go.  :-\

Actually, I'm finding this article fascinating. It personalizes a history that I know very little about, and probably most Americans know even less.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 08, 2015, 08:36:05 pm
You're welcome! The more I think about it, the surer I am that it was you who explained meme.

I was being sarcastic, referring to the part where I (or somebody) went to all the trouble to explain it, only to have you claim not to care if you understand it or not.  :-X ;)

Quote
"The Virologist" was too tech-y for my taste, too, but it was one of those things that I felt I should read because even if I don't do lots of tech-y things, I think it's a good idea to know something about what's going on in the tech-o-sphere.

You could start with knowing what a meme is.


I wouldn't call "The Virologist" techy at all. It's more sociology or psychology, definitely of the pop variety. Emerson's company uses memes and clickbait to drive people to social media and sites. They try to maximize eyeballs to sell ads, much the way television did way back when.

Well, I already totally get that people do all of those things online. None of that is the least bit surprising to me at this point, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of not only its psychology but its economics. What it looked like the article did was explain the technical aspects to doing those things, which I don't care about learning.

However, it's quite possible I got the wrong impression. I did flip through it quite quickly.

In the latest edition (black cover) I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's review of Stephen Brill's book about the creation of the ADA. Gladwell is not a huge fan of the book, and I'll have to say his review is measured and smart and even at times hilarious without seeming overly snarky.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2015, 10:19:51 pm
I was being sarcastic, referring to the part where I (or somebody) went to all the trouble to explain it, only to have you claim not to care if you understand it or not.  :-X ;)

I didn't say I didn't care. I said not understanding it didn't bother me.  ;)

Quote
You could start with knowing what a meme is.

Ha. Ha. Might do you some good to read about the Armenian genocide, too.  ;)


Quote
Well, I already totally get that people do all of those things online. None of that is the least bit surprising to me at this point, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of not only its psychology but its economics. What it looked like the article did was explain the technical aspects to doing those things, which I don't care about learning.

But I'm supposed to care what a meme is?  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 11, 2015, 08:40:08 pm
It looked to me as if there wasn't anything in the January 12 issue that I was interested in reading, but, fortunately, I'm enjoying Adam Gopnik's article on the sociologist Howard Becker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 11, 2015, 09:26:31 pm
I really enjoyed that article too!

I also liked Devid Denby's review of "A Most Violent Year" but that was about it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2015, 10:21:33 am
I really enjoyed that article too!

I think it's really fun to know that a world-renowned academic sociologist once played piano in Chicago strip joints.  ;D

And apparently he was very insistent to Adam Gopnik that they weren't burlesque houses; they were strip joints.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 12, 2015, 11:26:00 pm
I just started the Gopnik article, but I also enjoyed the one by the guy who can't smile. And, as I said earlier I think, the Malcolm Gladwell review of Stephen Brill's book.


But I'm supposed to care what a meme is?  :laugh:

Yes, because it's much much simpler and it's information that almost everybody you know, at least those of your age or younger, possesses. The chances that it will come up in a conversation with the expectation that you'll know it are much greater. And you could google it in a quarter of a second.

But here, I'm happy to explain once again.

A meme is actually an old sociological term for a thing that gets repeated throughout a culture (or something like that). In the modern sense, it's just some thing -- usually an image or a saying -- that gets repeated in different forms on social media and elsewhere. Usually, for example, it will be one picture with various captions, or a picture that's been altered in different ways. Or it might be a famous quote presented in different contexts.

So remember that cop who pepper-sprayed the protesters at the University in California? That image was widely memed. Here are a couple of pages of examples:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/casually-pepper-spray-everything-cop)

http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/ (http://peppersprayingcop.tumblr.com/)

These are more elaborate and creative than memes usually are, but you get the idea.

See, that wasn't so hard. Now you can go back to forgetting it.  ;D




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 13, 2015, 10:35:15 am
Yes, because it's much much simpler and it's information that almost everybody you know, at least those of your age or younger, possesses. The chances that it will come up in a conversation with the expectation that you'll know it are much greater. And you could google it in a quarter of a second.

You don't know the people with whom I ordinarily have conversations, or the type of things we discuss.  8)

Quote
But here, I'm happy to explain once again.

Thanks.

Quote
So remember that cop who pepper-sprayed the protesters at the University in California? That image was widely memed.

Actually, no, but let be, let be.

Quote
See, that wasn't so hard. Now you can go back to forgetting it.  ;D

Forget what? ...

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 13, 2015, 02:04:41 pm
So I read the smile article over lunch. It interested me particularly because back in the 1970s my grandmother suffered an attack of Bell's palsy, from which she completely recovered; apparently Grandma was lucky.

I'm guessing the Duchenne guy who is discussed is the person for whom Duchenne's muscular dystrophy is named.

I've moved on to Malcolm Gladwell's article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 22, 2015, 02:35:42 am
Bell's palsy and problems like it are really much more common than you might think. I have fortunately never had those problems myself (knock on wood).

In the January 19th issue, I really enjoyed Rebecca Mead's article about theme parks where kids practice adult skills.

In the latest issue, I devoured the overview of the "fast casual" quickly growing class of eateries. Probably like the article on grocery stores to most people, but it impacts on my job directly. Plus, it was only one page long.

I also really loved the article about the Wayback Machine, aka the Internet archive. This really exists! It's in SF, naturally, and is at the Presidio. An article about French author Michel Houellebecq by Adam Gopnik was repellent, and I'm looking forward to reading all about the history of gayness and how the Germans invented it (?) by Alex Ross. The fiction this week is by Isaac Bashevis Singer...really?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 22, 2015, 10:32:33 am
Bell's palsy and problems like it are really much more common than you might think. I have fortunately never had those problems myself (knock on wood).

In the January 19th issue, I really enjoyed Rebecca Mead's article about theme parks where kids practice adult skills.

In the latest issue, I devoured the overview of the "fast casual" quickly growing class of eateries. Probably like the article on grocery stores to most people, but it impacts on my job directly. Plus, it was only one page long.

I also really loved the article about the Wayback Machine, aka the Internet archive. This really exists! It's in SF, naturally, and is at the Presidio. An article about French author Michel Houellebecq by Adam Gopnik was repellent, and I'm looking forward to reading all about the history of gayness and how the Germans invented it (?) by Alex Ross. The fiction this week is by Isaac Bashevis Singer...really?

What was repellent, Houellebecq or the article?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 22, 2015, 01:04:27 pm
Good question. The article was well written, but I was repelled by the description of the author (and his picture) and the subject of his book, a satire describing a takeover of the French government by an Islamic faction. Uggh!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 22, 2015, 02:20:40 pm
From the Jan. 12 article about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, I learned that the Russian language has familiar (ty) and formal (vy) forms of address. Reminds one of the French tu and vous.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 22, 2015, 09:44:14 pm
I'm looking forward to reading all about the history of gayness and how the Germans invented it (?) by Alex Ross.

The Jan. 26 issue arrived in my mail today, and over supper I went right for this article. It was very interesting. I'd like to read the book.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 23, 2015, 09:59:10 am
In the latest issue, I devoured the overview of the "fast casual" quickly growing class of eateries. Probably like the article on grocery stores to most people, but it impacts on my job directly. Plus, it was only one page long.

One page long makes it waaayyy better than the grocery store piece. As I recall, I made it through about six pages of that one before throwing in the towel. Plus I'm interested in the fast-casual movement.

But wait -- it affects your job directly? Lee, I can never keep up with what you're doing for work. Sometimes you're unemployed, sometimes you have a job, sometimes you mention losing a job, but I never get the story as it goes along! (Not that this is the best venue, of course, but keep us readers of FRN informed!)

Quote
I'm looking forward to reading all about the history of gayness and how the Germans invented it (?) by Alex Ross.


I hadn't noticed that one, but it sounds really interesting. Alex Ross wrote something a while back about him and a friend encountering a group of drunk, fratboyish guys and getting kind of nervous, but then the guys left them alone (one of the fratboys might have even been gay himself -- I can't remember all the details) and the incident illustrated how our culture had changed, at least partly.

I don't usually have much interest in reading about classical music, but Alex Ross is an interesting writer.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 24, 2015, 01:15:33 pm
Hi friends and New Yorker readers,
I moved a couple of posts over to my blog, as they were off topic. Back to discussing The New Yorker! I misspoke in my last post about Alan Gopnik's article. It's about the rise of gay RIGHTs, not gayness. Even though he makes it clear that he is discussing gay rights, he still fails to credit the Greeks and Romans in the history of same sex awareness, IMO.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2015, 04:58:33 pm
Hi friends and New Yorker readers,
I moved a couple of posts over to my blog, as they were off topic. Back to discussing The New Yorker! I misspoke in my last post about Alan Gopnik's article. It's about the rise of gay RIGHTs, not gayness. Even though he makes it clear that he is discussing gay rights, he still fails to credit the Greeks and Romans in the history of same sex awareness, IMO.

Well, bear in mind, Alex Ross' article is essentially an expanded book review, or, at least, it takes Robert Beachy's book as its starting point, and same-sex attraction in the Ancient world isn't the subject of Beachy's book. Ross writes (p. 73), "The title of the chapter, 'The German Invention of Homosexuality,' telegraphs a principal argument of the book: although same-sex love is as old as love itself, the public discourse around it, and the political movement to win rights for it, arose in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

A common belief is that the Ancients did not have the concept of sexual orientation that we have today. The development of that concept owes much to the work of Magnus Hirschfeld (again, Germany, late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), who is discussed a lot in Ross' article.

Beachy's book and Ross' article aren't really about the awareness of same-sex attraction. They're about the growing awareness that some people are naturally orientated toward people of their own gender, and that therefore they don't deserve to be punished by law for the sin/crime of sodomy.

Incidentally, one of the most interesting things that I took away from Ross' article is that, apparently right from the very beginning of the understanding of sexual orientation, there were conflicts between masculine-identified homosexuals (androphiles?  ;D  ;) ) and their more effeminate brethren (see, e.g., p. 75). The more things change, the more they stay the same. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 26, 2015, 02:37:20 pm
I don't quite know what to make of Kidzania (Jan. 19), but it was kind of fun to learn that zania means adulteress in Arabic.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 26, 2015, 02:54:22 pm
Thanks for setting me straight correct about both the author and the scope of the article.

... one of the most interesting things that I took away from Ross' article is that, apparently right from the very beginning of the understanding of sexual orientation, there were conflicts between masculine-identified homosexuals (androphiles?  ;D  ;) ) and their more effeminate brethren (see, e.g., p. 75). The more things change, the more they stay the same. ...

I thought the same thing when I read that passage!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 26, 2015, 03:47:18 pm
Thanks for setting me straight correct about both the author and the scope of the article.

Going a bit OT here, but do you know the book Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, by John Boswell? The book is easily 30 years old, or more, by now, and very dense (I remember footnotes in untranslated/untransliterated Greek), but Boswell, whom we lost to AIDS in the early 1990s, was an amazing scholar, and I remember the book as having a lot to say about Greek and Roman attitudes toward same-gender attraction and sexual activity. I ought to read it again myself some day.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 29, 2015, 02:23:41 pm
So at lunch today I read Adam Gopnik's Jan. 26 piece on the French write Michel Houellebecq. I sure wouldn't want to have dinner with that guy; in his picture he looks awfully depressed and sour. But as for the article, I admit I laughed aloud at Gopnik's line about the French 1960s, when "Catherine Deneuve was in every other movie."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 29, 2015, 09:54:42 pm
I broke down after all and began the article about the guy who's an expert at making things go viral. It's more interesting than I thought it would be.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 29, 2015, 10:59:24 pm
The Feb. 2 issue arrived today, and I'm already enjoying Elizabeth Kolbert's article about Seneca.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 30, 2015, 10:16:19 am
The Feb. 2 issue arrived today, and I'm already enjoying Elizabeth Kolbert's article about Seneca.

 Me too. It has been my lunchtime reading for the past couple of days.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 02, 2015, 02:35:38 pm
I read Jill Lepore's article (Jan. 26) about the Wayback Machine at lunch today. I liked it. I didn't understand most of it, but I did get the point that it isn't true that if something's on the Internet, it's there forever.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 09, 2015, 02:25:18 pm
I enjoyed Adam Gopnik's article about learning to drive in middle age (Feb. 2).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 10, 2015, 02:28:49 pm
I don't usually read the fiction, but for Toni Morrison I made an exception (Feb. 9).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 10, 2015, 06:55:59 pm
I'm reading Michael Pollan on hallucinogenics for treatment of anxiety in cancer patients. It's pretty good.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 10, 2015, 09:44:09 pm
I'm reading Michael Pollan on hallucinogenics for treatment of anxiety in cancer patients. It's pretty good.

I'm looking forward to that one. The topic sounds intriguing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2015, 09:58:31 am
I just finished Rachel Aviv's article about shootings by the Albuquerque police. Exquisite reporting of an almost unbelievably horrifying situation, as is so often the case with Aviv's pieces.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2015, 10:24:53 am
I just finished Rachel Aviv's article about shootings by the Albuquerque police. Exquisite reporting of an almost unbelievably horrifying situation, as is so often the case with Aviv's pieces.

Agreed!

I think I don't want to visit Albuquerque any time soon. :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 11, 2015, 03:39:03 pm
I had a bit of insomnia last night so I read some of the Feb 16th issue that just arrived. "Northern Lights" by Nathan Heller is a book review of "The Almost Nearly Perfect People" by Michael Booth, but you would not know that unless you read all the way to page 2 of the article. It's about the Scandinavians and their utopian societies. I started out wishing I could live in such a society but quickly realized that not all is perfect in paradise. I guess the thing I would most like to see is better women's rights and respect for women. The article/book states that Iceland is the best place in the world to be if you're a woman. Maybe it's the hot tubs, the wonderful coffee and vodka, or the chance to wear seal skin. Just kidding. The article cites over a year of paid paternity/maternity leave and I'm sure that's a big factor.

Hamlet aside, Danes are supposed to be the happiest people on earth. Heller doesn't really get to the root of that happiness, and I'm not sure Booth does either. But I gather it has to do with happiness, and wealth, more evenly spread among the people instead of just residing in the top 1% of earners. Also, there's the absence of stress. I would probably be fine with the government taking 70% of my income if I knew my retirement, health care, and education for myself and my family were covered. And if I was guaranteed a job too. When I was working, 35% of my pay was in insurance and 10% went to retirement, so that's not much different. Tuition for my daughter was $12K per semester and for my son, in a private school, it's even higher. This all adds up to a lot of pressure and stress, and I guess the Scandinavians are spared that. However, there's still a lot of existential angst among them if Bergman films and the rush of modern literature and TV shows are to be believed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2015, 04:44:29 pm
However, there's still a lot of existential angst among them if Bergman films and the rush of modern literature and TV shows are to be believed.

It's the Lutheranism in their cultural background.  ;)  ;D

I've never seen Babette's Feast, but from what I remember reading about it, that might be pertinent here.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2015, 07:22:02 pm
there's still a lot of existential angst among them if Bergman films and the rush of modern literature and TV shows are to be believed.

It's the Lutheranism in their cultural background.  ;)  ;D

But then the question becomes, why is Lutheranism particularly popular there? (And is Lutheranism that much more existential-angst-filled than other denominations?)

I think it could be the climate and sun angle.

Susan Sontag once wrote a whole spiel about how, throughout the world, northern cultures tend to be industrious and responsible, while southern cultures tend to be more carefree and pleasure-seeking. That seems to fit the U.S. and Europe, though I'm not sure about other continents. And I can't remember if she said the roles are reversed in the southern hemisphere.

I haven't read Heller's article yet but have been looking forward to it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 11, 2015, 08:42:24 pm
There was a lady at my Bible study class last Sunday who was born in Sweden. She said that you are automatically a member of the Lutheran church when you're born and if you want to join a different church, you become a member of a "free" church, that is, one that is not tied to the government. The Lutheran church and the government are associated somehow. Swedish Brokies, please correct me or elaborate! Many Swedes are nonreligious or atheists and few attend church. Who knows, perhaps this is one of their keys to happiness?

The Swedish king in the 1500s used the growth of Lutherian Protestantism to transfer the Catholic church's properties and assets into the hands of Sweden, so that is the reason attributed to the popularity of Lutherism.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2015, 10:50:08 pm
But then the question becomes, why is Lutheranism particularly popular there? (And is Lutheranism that much more existential-angst-filled than other denominations?)

During the era of the Reformation, the churches in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway were all reformed "from the top down," similar to the church in England, and the state churches in the Scandinavian countries all adopted a Lutheran theology. I wouldn't exactly say Lutheranism is "particularly popular" there--it's not as though the people had a choice--just that the Scandinavian countries have 400 years of history of being "Lutheran countries."

Yes, I think Lutheranism is more "existential-angst-filled" than other denominations. Ref: Kierkegaard. Lutherans don't have comfort of conviction of their own predestination to salvation, unlike the Reformed "Puritan" denominations.

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I think it could be the climate and sun angle.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's a part of it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 12, 2015, 02:36:59 pm
I started the Pollan article (Feb. 9) over lunch today. I find it interesting and exciting.  :)

On a very mundane level, I didn't know LSD was legal until 1970. I was just a kid back then.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 12, 2015, 07:55:44 pm
I don't usually read the fiction, but for Toni Morrison I made an exception (Feb. 9).

I read this last night. Very readable and short, but I'm not sure I got a whole lot out of it. The name of the story is "Sweetness".

ALice Gregory's piece "R U There?" on texting-based crisis counseling was good in this issue, too. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 13, 2015, 09:54:40 am
On a very mundane level, I didn't know LSD was legal until 1970. I was just a kid back then.  ::)

Which means that by the time I tried it, it had been illegal for less than a decade.  ::)

I've started reading the one about the guy who discovered some amazing mathematical proof. It may be too soon to tell, but so far it's interesting. Math itself makes my eyes glaze over -- I was once actually good at it but I never particularly liked it, stopped taking it in high school, and now my skills have atrophied to about a fifth-grade level -- but as in the play/movie "Proof," the human drama surrounding amazing mathematical feats can be interesting.

One thing I like about this is the guy was middle-aged and seemingly washed up -- he couldn't get a job in academia, was working in a Subway! -- when things turned around for him.

The proof in this article is described as one that demonstrates, as I understand it from the brief description early on, that two prime numbers can be consecutive. Logically, that doesn't make sense, does it? Except in the case of 1 and 2. After that, every other number can be divided by 2, so ...? At least, my fifth-grade math mind can't conceive of it. But then, the world's great math minds considered it impossible until this guy did it, so it's not just me.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 13, 2015, 10:50:36 am
My [math] skills have atrophied to about a fifth-grade level.

Unless you're working in a job that demands sophisticated math, that's probably about all you need. I mean, how often in our daily lives do we have to find the square root of anything? (And what was the purpose of that, anyway?)  :laugh:  Plus, we now have calculators and computers, which we didn't have when you and I were in fifth grade. Calculators only started to come in when you and I were in high school.

In a similar vein, I heard something recently about new attempts to make kids understand mathematical concepts, instead of just learn how to add, subtract, etc. I thought to myself, "OMG, that sound an awful lot like the 'new math' that was in vogue when I was in elementary school: 'Subtraction is the additive inverse,' shit like that taught to first graders." WTF? It was a disaster in 1964-65; I can't see it being an better now.

Which means that by the time I tried it, it had been illegal for less than a decade.  ::)

The other thing I came away with from that article is, If LSD can successfully treat anxiety in cancer patients and the terminally ill, why can't they titrate the dosage and use it to help people who "just" have Generalized Anxiety Disorder? If I had a bad case of GAD, would I be willing to treat it with one or an occasional session of LSD with a therapist instead of having to take medication every day? I sure would!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 13, 2015, 11:11:08 am
Unless you're working in a job that demands sophisticated math, that's probably about all you need. I mean, how often in our daily lives do we have to find the square root of anything? (And what was the purpose of that, anyway?)  :laugh:  Plus, we now have calculators and computers, which we didn't have when you and I were in fifth grade. Calculators only started to come in when you and I were in high school.

I know. Occasionally the mathematical demands of my journalism job exceed my abilities. I have to stop and think about how to calculate percentages and things like that.

But I have taken the GRE twice; the first time I studied the math, relearned how to do quadratic equations, and got an actually respectable score (that is, my percentage among people taking the GREs, which includes everyone from math majors to, well, people planning to go for an MFA in writing) and the second time I didn't study at all and my score was ... I guess you could call it respectable by creative-writing program standards.

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In a similar vein, I heard something recently about new attempts to make kids understand mathematical concepts, instead of just learn how to add, subtract, etc. I thought to myself, "OMG, that sound an awful lot like the 'new math' that was in vogue when I was in elementary school: 'Subtraction is the additive inverse,' shit like that taught to first graders." WTF? It was a disaster in 1964-65; I can't see it being an better now.

I never really understand what "new math" was, because it was the only math I'd ever known.

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The other thing I came away with from that article is, If LSD can successfully treat anxiety in cancer patients and the terminally ill, why can't they titrate the dosage and use it to help people who "just" have Generalized Anxiety Disorder? If I had a bad case of GAD, would I be willing to treat it with one or an occasional session of LSD with a therapist instead of having to take medication every day? I sure would!

Having experienced both, I would say it would have to be a very low dose.

I haven't read the article yet but the premise surprises me; I would think LSD would take the minds of terminally ill people into some unsettling places.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 13, 2015, 11:23:34 am
I never really understand what "new math" was, because it was the only math I'd ever known.

That was the thing. It was supposed to make kids understand why the different math functions worked--kids who didn't yet know how to do the basic math functions.

I will never forget being in grade school, and having trouble with and getting upset over my math homework, and getting grief from my dad because I couldn't do math in my head, had to do all sorts of stuff on paper like cross off numbers and "carry" numbers--but that was how I was being taught. And he blamed me for it!  :(

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Having experienced both, I would say it would have to be a very low dose.

I haven't read the article yet but the premise surprises me; I would think LSD would take the minds of terminally ill people into some unsettling places.

It's a very interesting article. I don't want to give too much away, but your concern is exactly why it's done with a therapist present. I don't recall that they go into the amount of the drug taken by the patient.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 15, 2015, 04:16:10 pm
I've started reading the one about the guy who discovered some amazing mathematical proof. It may be too soon to tell, but so far it's interesting. Math itself makes my eyes glaze over -- I was once actually good at it but I never particularly liked it, stopped taking it in high school, and now my skills have atrophied to about a fifth-grade level -- but as in the play/movie "Proof," the human drama surrounding amazing mathematical feats can be interesting.

One thing I like about this is the guy was middle-aged and seemingly washed up -- he couldn't get a job in academia, was working in a Subway! -- when things turned around for him.

I loved that story too. The vulnerability of people whose minds are focused on such abstract things that they can't function in the day-to-day world very well. I like the way the story ended...completely in character.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2015, 02:17:28 pm
At lunch today I finished Elizabeth Kolbert's story about "the impossibility of justice for the Holocaust" (Feb. 16) and read Nathan Heller on a book about Scandinavia (so it appears Donald Duck is to the Swedes what Jerry Lewis is to the French).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 20, 2015, 06:34:55 pm
At lunch today I finished Elizabeth Kolbert's story about "the impossibility of justice for the Holocaust" (Feb. 16) and read Nathan Heller on a book about Scandinavia (so it appears Donald Duck is to the Swedes what Jerry Lewis is to the French).

I wonder who/what is to Americans what Jerry Lewis is to the French.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 20, 2015, 07:29:56 pm
French fries?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2015, 12:55:50 pm
I read Emily Nussbaum's profile of Joan Rivers. It was in-depth, analytical and fascinating.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2015, 06:24:44 pm
I read Emily Nussbaum's profile of Joan Rivers. It was in-depth, analytical and fascinating.

Looking forward to that one.

I'm a little annoyed. My 90th anniversary issue arrived with about an inch and a half of the top of the first two inside pages torn off.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2015, 08:34:58 pm
I'm a little annoyed. My 90th anniversary issue arrived with about an inch and a half of the top of the first two inside pages torn off.  >:(

The ads or the alternate covers? If it's the former, you didn't miss much. If it's the latter, I'd call to complain.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2015, 11:27:31 pm
The ads or the alternate covers? If it's the former, you didn't miss much. If it's the latter, I'd call to complain.

It's the alternate covers, but I presume it's the fault of the USPS.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 22, 2015, 01:12:17 am
It's the alternate covers, but I presume it's the fault of the USPS.

Maybe, but they still might send you a replacement. The individual copies of the magazines themselves, once printed, aren't all that valuable.






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 23, 2015, 02:59:12 pm
I was absolutely riveted by "Lost in Syria" (Nicholas Schmidle, Feb. 16). Maybe it's a guy thing.

I probably don't need to read Jeffrey Toobin's article on Andrew Cuomo. I probably will.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 23, 2015, 09:25:35 pm
At home I've started to read the article in the anniversary issue by the copy editor. Her examples of why the serial comma is still useful are hysterically funny.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2015, 02:16:40 pm
I probably don't need to read Jeffrey Toobin's article on Andrew Cuomo. I probably will.  ::)

Actually, the Cuomo article is interesting, to me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 25, 2015, 10:35:56 am
At home I've started to read the article in the anniversary issue by the copy editor. Her examples of why the serial comma is still useful are hysterically funny.  ;D

This article is very good. I think I should share it with my coworkers.

In passing the author mentions Annie Proulx, whose style, no doubt, is a copy editor's nightmare.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 26, 2015, 03:07:33 pm
Ian Frazier's account of Ellin Mackay (Mrs. Irving) Berlin, and her article that explained why 1920s New York debutantes went to cabarets, is lovely.  :)  Frazier makes it sound as if the article saved the magazine, and perhaps it did.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 26, 2015, 03:45:43 pm
In passing the author mentions Annie Proulx, whose style, no doubt, is a copy editor's nightmare.  ;D

I seem to remember AP mentioning that there were a lot of edits before the story was finally published, and then they accidentally left out the prologue altogether!

I'm enjoying this issue and the articles you mention as well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 27, 2015, 10:41:41 am
I never read the poetry in The New Yorker. Or, rather, there is one exception: I always read the Greetings, Friends at the end of each year.

And the world, or, at least, the American educational system, really is going to Hell when some people have never heard of Jabberwocky.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 28, 2015, 12:46:49 am
And the world, or, at least, the American educational system, really is going to Hell when some people have never heard of Jabberwocky.  :(

Wait, who hasn't?  ???


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 03, 2015, 01:50:06 pm
"The Cabaret Beat" WAS a good read, I agree. But I wondered as it meandered into a history of the author, Ian Frazier, his father, the New Yorker editor and founder Harold Ross, the MacKay family founder (John), Mark Twain, MacKay's wife Louise, their youngest son Clarence, his wife Katherine Duer, and a great granddaughter Katherine Barrett Swett before coming back to the subject of the story, Ellin MacKay Berlin, and her husband Irving Berlin. I settled down to read the rest of their story, but wait! The article then veered off into Irving (ne Israel) Berlin's family history starting in Siberia. Then back to John and Clarence MacKay with cameos from Leopold Stokowski and the Prince of Wales, back to Ross and TNY, and finally winding up with Ellin and her 2 articles, finishing with an interview with her aged daughter. Whew!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2015, 02:22:55 pm
I've just started the article on Apple's designer and wonder whether I really need to read it.

Hilton Als on Langston Hughes was interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 09, 2015, 06:10:54 pm
I've just started the article on Apple's designer and wonder whether I really need to read it.

Well, I forced myself through to the bitter end of this article. I suppose it's timely because of the current hoo-hah over the Apple watch.

Tell you what, by the time I finished the article, I had the creepy feeling that Apple isn't a company or a line of products: It's a cult.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2015, 01:36:40 pm
Good God! GOOD GOD! I CANNOT believe this!

I just started John McPhee's latest piece on writing (March 9 issue), and I am shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that as late as the year 2000, John McPhee--JOHN McPHEE--did not know the word sprezzatura.

This shocks me because I've known that word since, oh, roughly 1978, when Dr. William Leigh Taylor, the very sexy Virginian who was my college Shakespeare professor as well the teacher of various other undergraduate English courses that I took, used the word in a class on some Renaissance subject or other and defined it for us students more or less the way McPhee defines it: "Doing something cool without apparent effort."

(My academic advisor in the History Department had such a high regard for Dr. Taylor that he told me it didn't matter what course Dr. Taylor taught, I was to take it.  ;D )

I still can't believe that John McPhee, published author and teacher at Princeton, did not know the meaning of sprezzatura until 2000. To think that I knew a word like sprezzatura at least two decades before John McPhee!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 10, 2015, 02:02:15 pm
Well, I bet that made your day! Guess it's time for you to start writing 25,000-word articles on the most arcane of subjects!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2015, 02:07:58 pm
Well, I bet that made your day! Guess it's time for you to start writing 25,000-word articles on the most arcane of subjects!

If I do, will they give me a teaching job at Princeton?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 10, 2015, 02:36:07 pm
Good God! GOOD GOD! I CANNOT believe this!

I just started John McPhee's latest piece on writing (March 9 issue), and I am shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that as late as the year 2000, John McPhee--JOHN McPHEE--did not know the word sprezzatura.

I was surprised by that, too. But then, my theory is that everybody has surprising little gaps in their knowledge (I knew a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist who once asked whether Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn, or the other way around.)

So what was even more surprising is that McPhee asked a bunch of other people who didn't know, either. It's not THAT arcane a word.

Plus, why rely on asking random people? Why not go to a dictionary or, in the year 2000, the internet?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2015, 03:44:10 pm
I was surprised by that, too. But then, my theory is that everybody has surprising little gaps in their knowledge (I knew a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist who once asked whether Mark Twain wrote Huck Finn, or the other way around.)

That's kind of surprising, too.

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So what was even more surprising is that McPhee asked a bunch of other people who didn't know, either. It's not THAT arcane a word.

Plus, why rely on asking random people? Why not go to a dictionary or, in the year 2000, the internet?

He says he did check a dictionary, Webster's unabridged New International Dictionary, 2nd ed. As for the Internet, I suppose 15 years ago a lot of people, including middle-aged college professors who are noted writers, weren't as Internet savvy then as they are now. But you'd think somebody in the library at Princeton could have found a definition for him, if he'd asked.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the article. I'll probably even read the fiction in this issue, since it's by Stephen King.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 11, 2015, 10:25:12 am
I didn't know what the word eponymous meant for the longest time. I would come upon it every once in a while and think "I must look up that word" but I didn't have the time for some reason. Then, when I finally did, it was a letdown that such an important sounding word simply meant "of the same name." Now, I have to go look up cynosure. I used to know what it meant but I forgot. Okay, it means "a person or thing that attracts a lot of attention."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2015, 11:05:08 am
Penultimate used to confuse me. It sounds to me like it ought to mean "the last," but it actually means "the next to the last."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2015, 01:09:31 pm
Even though I'm not that far from New York, I never go there to see a show or a play. Nevertheless, one thing I really enjoy about The New Yorker is being able to read about what's going on in the theater world. I don't mean just the reviews; I mean the stuff at the front of each issue, too. For example, I enjoy reading that Lincoln Center is mounting a revival of The King and I, and that Dame Helen Mirren is on stage playing Queen Elizabeth II--again. I don't know why this is, I just know that it is.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 11, 2015, 08:43:15 pm
I have a few of those words. Some I actually look up and then, by the next time I see them, I've forgotten them.

Latin terms are the worst. I misused "in medias res" not long ago and my 20-year-old son corrected me.  :-\ 

It was fortuitous, though, because once it was brought to my attention I started mulling over the concept more deeply than I had before, and I could see its value. I later added an in medias res scene to a piece I was writing and having trouble with. It was the perfect solution!

I bet John McPhee never did that in any of his writing because he couldn't find anyone who knew what "in medias res" meant.  ;D



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 13, 2015, 08:50:07 am
FRiend Lee, did you see the piece in the Feb. 2 Talk of the Town about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar going to an annual Baker Street Irregulars gathering? Apparently he's a big Sherlock Holmes fan -- he used Holmesian techniques to get advantages on the court -- and has recently written a novel about Mycroft Holmes!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 13, 2015, 09:36:26 am
FRiend Lee, did you see the piece in the Feb. 2 Talk of the Town about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar going to an annual Baker Street Irregulars gathering? Apparently he's a big Sherlock Holmes fan -- he used Holmesian techniques to get advantages on the court -- and has recently written a novel about Mycroft Holmes!

I read that. It was fun and interesting.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 13, 2015, 02:39:00 pm
Yes, I definitely did read that piece! Love the New Yorker. They've got me pegged.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 14, 2015, 03:18:34 pm
It was interesting to read that Anne Hathaway will be returning to Broadway to play a fighter pilot in Julie Taymor's "Grounded" starting in early April.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 16, 2015, 01:06:25 pm
I just finished the March 9 piece about the break-in at Y-12. It was very interesting. I don't quite know what to make of it, but it scares the dickens out of me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 18, 2015, 02:35:14 pm
Purely by accident, I started reading the March 16 article about Gerry Adams, the I.R.A., "The Troubles," and the disappearance and murder of Jean McConville on St. Patrick's Day.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2015, 01:03:41 pm
Patricia Marx's March 23 article on plastic surgery in South Korea is enthralling.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 24, 2015, 05:56:23 pm
I just finished that one. Crazy that they have reality and game TV shows related to plastic surgery!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 24, 2015, 11:59:02 pm
I just finished that one. Crazy that they have reality and game TV shows related to plastic surgery!

We do too, don't we? At least we have had. There was a reality show -- I think called "The Swan"? -- that conducted dramatic makeovers on people that included plastic surgery.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2015, 09:26:45 am
I just finished that one. Crazy that they have reality and game TV shows related to plastic surgery!

We do too, don't we? At least we have had. There was a reality show -- I think called "The Swan"? -- that conducted dramatic makeovers on people that included plastic surgery.

Oh, yuck. I think I remember hearing about The Swan. But whoever does a show like that, it's just creepy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 26, 2015, 12:14:26 pm
I read the Colm Toibin fiction piece, but only because I read somewhere that he's gay. The narrator of the story certainly is.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2015, 07:30:49 pm
Over supper this evening I finished the March 23 article about the woes of the Metropolitan Opera under Peter Gelb. This amounted to a duty article for me because opera just isn't my thing (sorry, Meryl  :-\ ). On the other hand, I recognize the Met as an important cultural institution, so I read the article.

Anyway, I did come away from the article with something that I find amusing. The Met's production of La Boheme was designed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1981. That means that when Cher and Nicholas Cage went to the Met in Moonstruck (1987), they were seeing Zeffirelli's production.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2015, 01:37:29 pm
During an abbreviated lunch today, I read Louis Menand's March 30 article on a new book called 1995: The Year the Future Began. I won't give away Menand's conclusion, but in a way, for me, 1995 really was the year the future began. It's the year my mother died, and all of the sudden I was faced with a world without her.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 31, 2015, 09:19:39 am
An item in the March 23 Dance column mentioned a Canadian danseur named Matthew Golding, describing him as "the Brad Pitt of ballet." I did a Google search for images of him, and he really does look like Brad Pitt.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 31, 2015, 01:25:10 pm
I highly recommend Seymour Hersh's March 23 article about his return to Vietnam.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 07, 2015, 01:04:46 pm
I am finding Jonathan Franzen's April 6 article on climate change vs. conservation interesting reading. I recommend it. (Franzen's articles are usually interesting reading.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 07, 2015, 07:57:47 pm
I think I read part of that but I need to go back and re-read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 23, 2015, 01:29:20 pm
Over lunch today I finished Ariel Levy's April 13 article about compensation for people wrongfully convicted of crimes; I found that a scary article.

Over supper last night I started to read the April 20 article about John Barrymore and the totem pole.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 23, 2015, 11:04:22 pm
The John Barrymore piece is entertaining.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 24, 2015, 08:56:52 am
I'm reading through some of the articles I ripped out of old issues so that I could get rid of the old issues with a clear conscience. So I just finished the one from Dec., 2013, about Saudi women finally being allowed to work in stores, as long as their interactions with male employers or customers are kept to the barest minimum. It's a good article, but of course infuriating.

One brief anecdote tells about a 42-year-old divorced women with two kids. When the older son turns 12, he will become her guardian.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 24, 2015, 09:05:26 am
One brief anecdote tells about a 42-year-old divorced women with two kids. When the older son turns 12, he will become her guardian.

I remember that one, now that you mention it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 28, 2015, 07:13:41 pm
At lunch today I read the article about Fantasy Sports, and I came away with no clue about Fantasy Sports. My review: Don't waste your time on this one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 29, 2015, 09:25:02 am
I vaguely remember reading an article about Fantasy Sports in an earlier issue. What week are you talking about?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 29, 2015, 10:41:03 am
I vaguely remember reading an article about Fantasy Sports in an earlier issue. What week are you talking about?

Oh, I'm weeks behind as always. It was April 13.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 29, 2015, 09:18:38 pm
I remember that as being an issue with a lot of interesting pieces.

Meanwhile, I was able to relax with the latest issue today after spending grueling hours moving my Mom's stuff into her new home. Sunset brought this wonderful view as I sat enjoying the latest New Yorker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: BradInBlue on April 29, 2015, 10:29:18 pm
I remember that as being an issue with a lot of interesting pieces.

Meanwhile, I was able to relax with the latest issue today after spending grueling hours moving my Mom's stuff into her new home. Sunset brought this wonderful view as I sat enjoying the latest New Yorker.

Great shot. I can feel the tranquility  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on April 30, 2015, 08:27:58 am
and Brad knows about tranquil, he's got paradise in his own back yard.

I've seen the pics.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 30, 2015, 09:33:11 am
I've been watching too many old Westerns lately. At first glance I thought that cat was a mountain lion!  :o

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on April 30, 2015, 10:38:22 am
:laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 05, 2015, 01:48:55 pm
It is such a nice day today that I really fudged my lunch hour and sat in the garden and read some pieces from Talk of the Town, Oliver Sacks on Spalding Gray's brain injury, and Charles McGrath on the new biography of Joseph Mitchell (April 27).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 06, 2015, 10:59:27 pm
I'm reading the article "Meaning Machines" about Charles Ray, the sculptor, in the latest issue. It's kind of a long article focusing on the problems getting Ray's work shown in museums. There's a piece he's been working on for a long time called "Huck and Jim". It's been placed at several museums but there have been problems. First, it was going to be at the Whitney Museum but it didn't work out. Then at another prominent museum, but the same problem because he wanted it shown in a public area where random people pass by. The problem is that, since male genitals are shown, it can't be in a public area. It has to be in the museum itself where only attendees of the museum would see it. But this was not acceptable to Ray, so the sculpture is not on view.

The problem that I have with it is that the photo of the sculpture shows two men. But the 9-ft-tall "Jim" is not a black man at all. The hair is all wrong and he just doesn't look like a black man. And then "Huck" is bent over so you don't see his face or torso. "Jim" has his hand hovering over Huck's back but not touching it. The sculpture is just very unsatisfying. I'd like to see more of Ray's work before judging it but this is not a promising beginning.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 12, 2015, 02:02:30 pm
Anyone notice this column filler from May 4?

Quote
PERISH THE THOUGHT DEPT.

From the Northampton (Mass.) Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Granby Music Parents Association holds sale of baked children dinners FRIDAY, Sept. 27, 5-6:30 p.m.

I'll take mine with fries, please. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 12, 2015, 10:43:17 pm
Anyone notice this column filler from May 4?

I'll take mine with fries, please. ...

Oh no, Jeff, don't do that! The carbs would be bad for you.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 13, 2015, 09:33:53 am
Oh no, Jeff, don't do that! The carbs would be bad for you.

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 14, 2015, 09:42:10 am
Finally finished a long Samantha Power profile from December. (Not that I've been reading it since December -- I ripped it out of an issue before recycling and added it to my stack of single articles and have been reading it off and on for at least a week -- it's pretty long.)

Anyway, I would say the interest level of the article is pretty closely correlated with a reader's preliminary interest in Samantha Power. In other words, if you don't start with some, this piece will not change that. I was somewhat interested in her (how can you not be interested in a woman who writes a Pulitzer-winning book about genocide, critiquing the U.S. response -- at age 32?) so the article was somewhat interesting.

Unlike, say, the profile of Brian Grazer from a few years back, which turned someone I had absolutely no interest in into probably my favorite film producer. (Before that, I didn't even have a favorite film producer. I barely could have could have named any film producers! Louis B. Mayer? Irving Thalberg? Actually, Irving Thalberg was my favorite until then -- glamorous wunderkind, roman-a-clef hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumously published "The Last Tycoon" -- but he died 79 years ago, at age 37.)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 14, 2015, 10:43:34 am
I'm reading one of my favorites, Atul Gawande, in the May 11 issue. He describes himself (still) as a "general surgeon," though he does have a specialty, but somehow I can't imagine going to him for something general, like a hernia repair. ...  ;D

I don't even remember the Samantha Power profile. Now that you mention it, I remember Brian Grazer profile, but I don't remember anything about it.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 14, 2015, 11:47:17 am
The latest issue (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine) has a lot going for it.

A three-panel cover by Bruce McCall highlights innovators since caveman times.

I just finished reading World Without End (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/18/world-without-end-raffi-khatchadourian) by Raffi Khatchadourian, about Sean Murray, who is creating a space exploration video game with 18 quatrillion planets to explore. Mind-blowing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2015, 01:42:54 pm
The latest issue (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine) has a lot going for it.

A three-panel cover by Bruce McCall highlights innovators since caveman times.

I love it that one of the innovations is the hula-hoop!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 20, 2015, 01:42:01 pm
Today I finished the piece on the memoir by Henry Marsh, a British neurosurgeon (May 18). Marsh reminds me of myself--we both tend to remember the bad things when we look back over our lives.

I also started the article on the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. I've never seen a James Bond movie, but he looks like what I imagine the villain in a James Bond movie looks like. The only thing missing is the cat.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 20, 2015, 01:45:01 pm
I'm reading the article "Meaning Machines" about Charles Ray, the sculptor, in the latest issue. It's kind of a long article focusing on the problems getting Ray's work shown in museums. There's a piece he's been working on for a long time called "Huck and Jim". It's been placed at several museums but there have been problems. First, it was going to be at the Whitney Museum but it didn't work out. Then at another prominent museum, but the same problem because he wanted it shown in a public area where random people pass by. The problem is that, since male genitals are shown, it can't be in a public area. It has to be in the museum itself where only attendees of the museum would see it. But this was not acceptable to Ray, so the sculpture is not on view.

The problem that I have with it is that the photo of the sculpture shows two men. But the 9-ft-tall "Jim" is not a black man at all. The hair is all wrong and he just doesn't look like a black man. And then "Huck" is bent over so you don't see his face or torso. "Jim" has his hand hovering over Huck's back but not touching it. The sculpture is just very unsatisfying. I'd like to see more of Ray's work before judging it but this is not a promising beginning.

Apparently I gave that issue away and forgot to read this article. I noticed the photo of the sculpture and wondered whether he was trying to make some point by having Jim not be a black man while clearly referencing Jim and Huckleberry Finn.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 26, 2015, 01:41:37 pm
It is interesting the things you learn from The New Yorker. E.g., from Briefly Noted (May 18, p. 97), I knew the name Oliver Sacks, the neurologist. I did not know that Oliver Sacks is gay, originally British, a power lifter, and a biker. Also that he now has terminal cancer.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 29, 2015, 10:24:02 pm
It is interesting the things you learn from The New Yorker. E.g., from Briefly Noted (May 18, p. 97), I knew the name Oliver Sacks, the neurologist. I did not know that Oliver Sacks is gay, originally British, a power lifter, and a biker. Also that he now has terminal cancer.  :(

Me neither! And I've read a lot of his work over the years. I did know he had terminal cancer, but not any of the other things -- gay, British, etc. -- that he discusses in his new memoir. The memoir he wrote before this one was about his intense experimentation with drugs, particularly hallucinogens, which I didn't know about until THAT book came out. Apparently he was really into them, though as I recall he was in school at the time.

What a multi-faceted guy.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 02, 2015, 11:02:17 pm
Yay! The summer fiction issue has arrived!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 04, 2015, 09:58:37 am
I read Emily Nussbaum's review of Cucumber, Banana, and Tofu, all from the creator of Queer As Folk. Her review sort of makes me wish I received Logo as part of my cable service. I hope to write more about this on my blog, because here it would go beyond the bounds of the purpose of this thread. I also don't have the issue with me for reference to her review.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on June 05, 2015, 08:46:43 am
I hope you do write about it in your blog.  I get logo, but never got around to watching those shows.   I'm sure they'll repeat it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 06, 2015, 10:46:02 am
I read Zadie Smith's story, which was very good but inconclusive; I'm hoping it's an excerpt from a novel.

I also read Louise Erdrich's one-page time-travel thing -- apparently they assigned half a dozen writers to write about time travel. Hers was meh, but since I haven't read the others yet I can't tell if it's a problem with the assignment itself or her execution.

And I read Anthony Lane's review of the Brian Wilson biopic directed by Bill Pohlad. He seemed to like it, more or less.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 07, 2015, 05:32:41 pm
In the June 8 & 15 issue, I recommend Anthony Lane's article on Lewis Carroll and the Alice books.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 08, 2015, 08:48:20 am
In the June 8 & 15 issue, I recommend Anthony Lane's article on Lewis Carroll and the Alice books.

Good to know. I've been meaning to read that -- I think I have it both up on my computer and in the magazine itself -- and now I'll be sure to get to it

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 09, 2015, 01:38:20 pm
And I also recommend the June 1 article about how a Belgian teenager turned into a radical Muslim jihadist.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 15, 2015, 01:37:21 pm
Well, how did this happen? I am caught up on my New Yorkers.  :o  Just now, over lunch, I read "The Prospectors" in the June 8 and 15 Summer Fiction issue, and I really liked that story. And now I'm done with that issue.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 15, 2015, 07:10:49 pm
Well, how did this happen? I am caught up on my New Yorkers.  :o 

How DID that happen? I haven't been caught up on my New Yorkers since I started subscribing 30 years ago.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on June 16, 2015, 08:10:00 am
Congrats to Jeff on being caught up!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 20, 2015, 05:20:02 pm
I'm reading a long story in the fiction issue by Jonathan Franzen called "The Republic of Bad Taste." The first page or two were really hard to get interested in, but the story has picked up steam and now it's reminding me of a good film noir.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 21, 2015, 12:07:30 am
I'm reading a long story in the fiction issue by Jonathan Franzen called "The Republic of Bad Taste." The first page or two were really hard to get interested in, but the story has picked up steam and now it's reminding me of a good film noir.

I gave up after about the first page. But on your say-so, and because I generally like Franzen's writing, I should give it another try.

Did you read Freedom? I never got more than a few chapters into it. But I loved The Corrections! I'm wondering if my patience just isn't what it used to be.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 21, 2015, 10:33:35 am

Did you read Freedom? I never got more than a few chapters into it. But I loved The Corrections! I'm wondering if my patience just isn't what it used to be.


I felt exactly the same as you did about both novels. So, I really really wanted to read and like TROBT. It does improve after the first couple of pages, I promise!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 23, 2015, 01:43:59 pm
I gave up after about the first page. But on your say-so, and because I generally like Franzen's writing, I should give it another try.

I forced my way through to the end because I thought I had a duty to read it, since he's an Important Writer.

Quote
Did you read Freedom? I never got more than a few chapters into it. But I loved The Corrections! I'm wondering if my patience just isn't what it used to be.

Mine sure isn't.

Meanwhile, at lunch today I finished the June 22 profile of Dianne Feinstein, No trouble finishing that one because I've admired her since I first heard of her at the time of the Moscone-Milk assassinations.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2015, 01:37:59 pm
Today I read the June 22 article about euthanasia in Belgium for people with incurable depression. I learned that in Belgium, schoolchildren take a course in "nonconfessional ethics," which seems like a very good idea to me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 26, 2015, 11:04:29 am
Just ran across this Today in Literary History factoid for June 26:

TODAY: In 1948, Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is published in The New Yorker.

I never even knew that's where it was first published!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 26, 2015, 11:49:18 am
Just ran across this Today in Literary History factoid for June 26:

TODAY: In 1948, Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is published in The New Yorker.

I never even knew that's where it was first published!

Neat!

Now that you mention it, I think I read that somewhere--I mean, that the story was first published in TNY--but I don't remember where that was. It was probably somewhere in TNY itself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on June 27, 2015, 11:11:18 am
I remember reading that story.  creepy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 27, 2015, 11:58:55 am
We should have mentioned that in our discussion of things everyone reads in high school.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on June 27, 2015, 12:00:37 pm
Yeah, we should've!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 27, 2015, 12:25:40 pm
That discussion is still going on! I haven't had a chance to weigh in with my latest thoughts on it, or even to thank you all for contributing.

Go here (http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,710.0.html) to comment further!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 04, 2015, 06:52:05 pm
I also read Louise Erdrich's one-page time-travel thing -- apparently they assigned half a dozen writers to write about time travel. Hers was meh, but since I haven't read the others yet I can't tell if it's a problem with the assignment itself or her execution.

Shoot! I just realized I gave away the fiction issue and forgot to read her story. I always read her when she's in TNY.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 05, 2015, 12:01:41 am
It's all available online to subscribers, Jeff, and I think for a limited time to nonsubscribers also. Failing that, I would be happy to scan and email it to you. I didn't read that story yet, myself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 05, 2015, 09:33:39 am
It's all available online to subscribers, Jeff, and I think for a limited time to nonsubscribers also. Failing that, I would be happy to scan and email it to you. I didn't read that story yet, myself.

Well, that's a mighty kind offer, FRiend, but if I really get motivated to read it, I'll do it on line.  :)  Thanks for reminding me that me that these things are available on line!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 06, 2015, 01:18:06 pm
OK, never mind me, I'm just very confused.

I do still have the issue with the Louise Erdrich that I want to read: June 29, with her story, "The Flower."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 11, 2015, 07:02:34 pm
Rachel Aviv's article, "Revenge Killing," in the July 6 & 13 issue, is a real horror story and a must-read--and very interesting to read the week the Confederate battle flag is removed from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol building.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 12, 2015, 01:17:04 pm
I am in the middle of "The Flower" and liking it a lot so far. I love how she can describe horrible people and events in such lyrical language. Have you guys read any of her books? I highly recommend "Love Medicine," her first, as well as some of her others. I haven't read all of them -- maybe half at most -- but they're all at least pretty good.

I interviewed her years ago. She was polite but sort of distant and cool. She had a new bookstore and a new baby. But only a year earlier she'd been embroiled in a big horrifying tragic scandal, so of course I felt obliged to ask her about that. And of course she knew I was going to ask her. She said she didn't want to talk about it, I said fine and we moved on.

Rachel Aviv's article, "Revenge Killing," in the July 6 & 13 issue, is a real horror story and a must-read--and very interesting to read the week the Confederate battle flag is removed from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol building.

I'll make sure to read that one!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2015, 02:59:18 pm
I interviewed her years ago. She was polite but sort of distant and cool. She had a new bookstore and a new baby. But only a year earlier she'd been embroiled in a big horrifying tragic scandal, so of course I felt obliged to ask her about that. And of course she knew I was going to ask her. She said she didn't want to talk about it, I said fine and we moved on.

I remember that.  :(  But it's not really pertinent to the thread, I guess, so let be, let be.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 13, 2015, 11:46:14 am
I remember that.  :(  But it's not really pertinent to the thread, I guess, so let be, let be.

I didn't want to go into all the details, so I looked on Wikipedia to see if I could just cut and paste a paragraph or so, but her entry doesn't get into it at all. The entry on her late husband Michael Dorris goes into more detail.

Now I feel like I should just say it and get it over with. Long story short, Louise and Michael had seemed like this perfect literary couple -- glamorous, happy, in love, editing each other's work, both successful and respected; like Scott and Zelda without the mental illness. They had six kids, three that he had adopted while he was single, and three they had together biologically. Then suddenly they separated, then it was revealed that he was being investigated for abusing his children -- physically and/or sexually. In the midst of all this, he committed suicide.

An arts writer at my paper wrote a long piece about it at the time, and it turned out that -- surprise, surprise -- their public image did not really reflect their home life.

I finished her story and had mixed feelings. For one thing, it turned out to contain magical realism, which I don't like. And I didn't really "get" the ending.

If anybody else finishes it, I'd like to know your thoughts.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2015, 11:59:34 am
I didn't want to go into all the details, so I looked on Wikipedia to see if I could just cut and paste a paragraph or so, but her entry doesn't get into it at all. The entry on her late husband Michael Dorris goes into more detail.

Now I feel like I should just say it and get it over with. Long story short, Louise and Michael had seemed like this perfect literary couple -- glamorous, happy, in love, editing each other's work, both successful and respected; like Scott and Zelda without the mental illness. They had six kids, three that he had adopted while he was single, and three they had together biologically. Then suddenly they separated, then it was revealed that he was being investigated for abusing his children -- physically and/or sexually. In the midst of all this, he committed suicide.

I forgot the suicide part.  :(

Quote
I finished her story and had mixed feelings. For one thing, it turned out to contain magical realism, which I don't like. And I didn't really "get" the ending.

If anybody else finishes it, I'd like to know your thoughts.

I didn't really get the ending, either.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 13, 2015, 09:26:33 pm
I haven't read the story and I kind of like magical realism, so I'll tackle it and let you know.

How awkward that must have been interviewing her! Without the child abuse part, I had a somewhat similar experience this past weekend. My erstwhile husband, who moved out and left me two years ago this month, volunteered to take our grandsons for the weekend and I went up to his house to help him. On Sunday late morning we went over to the playground and he was pushing them on the swings. My younger grandson sometimes gets the giggles when he is swinging and started laughing uncontrollably. Soon, we all were laughing. Swinging and laughing and singing. I looked over and saw a young woman with two children admiring us. "She must think we are the perfect couple, laughing and having fun with our grandchildren," I thought. And for the moment at least, it was true.

Another amazing thing that happened was that a neighbor who has horses allowed us to put the boys on the horses and pet them. We were talking and she complemented me on the boys. I suddenly realized that she thought I was their mother!! I said I couldn't take the credit, it was due to my daughter, but thanks for the compliment! Okay, none of this has to do with anything in the New Yorker! Oh well!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2015, 01:36:49 pm
Lawrence Wright's story in the July 6 & 13 issue about the efforts of five families to secure the release of their children, held hostage in the Middle East, is another sad, horrifying--but gripping--article that needs to be read--even if you recognize some of the names and know what's coming.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 14, 2015, 04:02:39 pm
I haven't read the story and I kind of like magical realism, so I'll tackle it and let you know.

Looking forward to getting your opinion!

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How awkward that must have been interviewing her!

I was dreading asking about that tragedy/scandal (trandal? scagedy?), but the rest of the interview was interesting. The book she had just published features a priest who had appeared in one or more of her previous books. In this one, early on the priest starts disrobing for bed and turns out to be a woman. Louise claimed she herself did not realize the priest was a woman until she was writing the scene. That stretched my credulity a bit, but you never know -- many authors claim that their characters seem to have lives and wills of their own.

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Another amazing thing that happened was that a neighbor who has horses allowed us to put the boys on the horses and pet them. We were talking and she complemented me on the boys. I suddenly realized that she thought I was their mother!! I said I couldn't take the credit, it was due to my daughter, but thanks for the compliment! Okay, none of this has to do with anything in the New Yorker! Oh well!

But you've got to tell it somewhere! I've twice been mistaken for my own children's grandmother -- technically biologically possible since I was 36 and 37 when they were born, but not the most flattering assessment. Your mistaker was much nicer!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2015, 04:36:21 pm
Many authors claim that their characters seem to have lives and wills of their own.

Annie Proulx among them, IIRC.

Quote
But you've got to tell it somewhere! I've twice been mistaken for my own children's grandmother -- technically biologically possible since I was 36 and 37 when they were born, but not the most flattering assessment. Your mistaker was much nicer!

Somebody once mistook me for my father's brother. Flattering to my dad, perhaps, but to me, not so much.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 19, 2015, 04:28:19 pm
If you haven't already, go immediately to your July 20 issue and read Kathryn Schulz's "The Really Big One." Then, when you are thoroughly freaked out and terrified, read Dave Eggers' "Hollister," which has a sort of serious point but iis light and funny much of the time.

I made the mistake of going in the opposite order. So now I've started reading George Packer's "Dark Hours: Violence in the age of the war on terror." So, you know, that should be realaxing.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 19, 2015, 05:43:23 pm
If you haven't already, go immediately to your July 20 issue and read Kathryn Schulz's "The Really Big One." Then, when you are thoroughly freaked out and terrified, read Dave Eggers' "Hollister," which has a sort of serious point but iis light and funny much of the time.

I made the mistake of going in the opposite order. So now I've started reading George Packer's "Dark Hours: Violence in the age of the war on terror." So, you know, that should be realaxing.

I read Packer's first. (Well, actually, I read Anthony Lane's movie reviews first.) Things Packer had to say about the role of Al Qaeda put me in mind of a certain smug, conspiracy-loving Canadian who believes the U.S. is responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, but let be, let be. I'm looking forward to the Dave Eggers piece.

Actually, I even looking forward to the Jon Lee Anderson and Dexter Filkins articles, as well as the Kathryn Schulz piece.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 20, 2015, 12:06:08 am
If you haven't already, go immediately to your July 20 issue and read Kathryn Schulz's "The Really Big One." Then, when you are thoroughly freaked out and terrified, read Dave Eggers' "Hollister," which has a sort of serious point but iis light and funny much of the time.

I made the mistake of going in the opposite order. So now I've started reading George Packer's "Dark Hours: Violence in the age of the war on terror." So, you know, that should be realaxing.

I read "The Really Big One" first, then "Hollister." They were both good articles. I can't say I was terrified or freaked out. Maybe I am deadened to crises since there have been so many of them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 20, 2015, 01:00:33 am
I read "The Really Big One" first, then "Hollister." They were both good articles. I can't say I was terrified or freaked out. Maybe I am deadened to crises since there have been so many of them.

I was freaked out because, while I myself have never endured a life-threatening crisis firsthand, I did have many friends who lived in New Orleans during Katrina and I endured a close-call hurricane while i lived there and I've known towns around here get struck by tornadoes now and then -- including, on Saturday, the hometown of a former best friend -- and of course, there's the odd blizzard and so on.

But this described a crisis that would dwarf those, that would be far worse than the Japanese tsunami and for which the area is far less prepared. When it said (quoting from memory) "Of all natural disasters, a tsunami offers the least chance of survival" or talked about how, once the earthquake devastated your big city and entire coastline, your problems had only just started, because once the shaking stopped, you'd have less than 10 minutes to get your shit together enough to run like hell for your life -- disregarding the lives (the article implied, though of course I could never totally do this) of anyone else, including your family members -- but that you probably wouldn't make it anyway and would immediately find yourself under 100 feet of water floating amid submerged semis and the like ... well, yes, I found that fairly freaky. Give me a blizzard any day. Even a hurricane.

And what I found most astounding of all is how few people have ever even heard this was a problem. I know I hadn't.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 20, 2015, 09:43:24 am
But this described a crisis that would dwarf those, that would be far worse than the Japanese tsunami and for which the area is far less prepared. When it said (quoting from memory) "Of all natural disasters, a tsunami offers the least chance of survival" or talked about how, once the earthquake devastated your big city and entire coastline, your problems had only just started, because once the shaking stopped, you'd have less than 10 minutes to get your shit together enough to run like hell for your life -- disregarding the lives (the article implied, though of course I could never totally do this) of anyone else, including your family members -- but that you probably wouldn't make it anyway and would immediately find yourself under 100 feet of water floating amid submerged semis and the like ... well, yes, I found that fairly freaky. Give me a blizzard any day. Even a hurricane.

And what I found most astounding of all is how few people have ever even heard this was a problem. I know I hadn't.

The Weather Channel--leave it to the good ol' Weather Channel--has a program, the title of which now escapes me (of course), about hypothetical natural disasters striking major metropolitan areas. I once caught one, or part of one, episode about an earthquake--and, presumably--a tsunami--striking Seattle, so the idea of something like that happening has at least crossed my radar.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 20, 2015, 01:37:25 pm
Started to read the Schulz piece at lunch today. Holy crap!  :o

Kinda cool how they put together the history of the earthquake of 1700.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 20, 2015, 10:01:27 pm
Started to read the Schulz piece at lunch today. Holy crap!  :o

I know, right? That piece was so vivid that since reading it on Saturday a couple of times I've found myself thinking for half a second that an earthquake and tsunami actually HAVE hit the Northwest

Quote
Kinda cool how they put together the history of the earthquake of 1700.

She leaves no stone unturned in building the airtightness of the case. (Block that metaphor!)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 20, 2015, 10:32:05 pm
Started to read the Schulz piece at lunch today. Holy crap!  :o

I know, right? That piece was so vivid that since reading it on Saturday a couple of times I've found myself thinking for half a second that an earthquake and tsunami actually HAVE hit the Northwest

Finished it over supper this evening. Well, I didn't want to move to the Pacific Northwest anyway on account of the rain. This is just another good reason not to move there.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 20, 2015, 11:20:03 pm
Finished it over supper this evening. Well, I didn't want to move to the Pacific Northwest anyway on account of the rain. This is just another good reason not to move there.  :-\

Same here. Seattle's too rainy and Portland's too hip, so neither is on my list. But if I lived there already, I'd be wondering whether to start packing.

My biggest problem is that I am kind of tempted to move to Denver. But I'm afraid legalized pot is going to cause, or is already causing, real-estate prices to soar. Now it will be even worse, because potheads will be fleeing Washington for Colorado!  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 21, 2015, 12:14:08 am
Same here. Seattle's too rainy and Portland's too hip, so neither is on my list. But if I lived there already, I'd be wondering whether to start packing.

My biggest problem is that I am kind of tempted to move to Denver. But I'm afraid legalized pot is going to cause, or is already causing, real-estate prices to soar. Now it will be even worse, because potheads will be fleeing Washington for Colorado!  :laugh:

 :laugh: :laugh: Actually, I haven't noticed much of a change here. But there are "herbal dispensaries" that have opened up in blighted areas and foreclosed buildings and have caused a bit of a renewal in these areas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2015, 09:31:50 am
Same here. Seattle's too rainy and Portland's too hip, so neither is on my list. But if I lived there already, I'd be wondering whether to start packing.

My biggest problem is that I am kind of tempted to move to Denver. But I'm afraid legalized pot is going to cause, or is already causing, real-estate prices to soar. Now it will be even worse, because potheads will be fleeing Washington for Colorado!  :laugh:

Portland is "too hip" for you? Really?

I'd like to move to Colorado or Wyoming, too. I never gave a thought to the effect of legalized pot on real estate prices.  :-\

:laugh: :laugh: Actually, I haven't noticed much of a change here. But there are "herbal dispensaries" that have opened up in blighted areas and foreclosed buildings and have caused a bit of a renewal in these areas.

I suppose that renewal might be a good thing--unless you're getting displaced by it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 21, 2015, 11:14:40 am
Portland is "too hip" for you? Really?

I think so. My own neighborhood is sometimes too hip for me. I know I come off like the hippest of the hip  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: but actually I'm not.

Maybe "hip" isn't quite the right word. Maybe more like "lefty" or "crunchy" (though I hate the latter expression). Living in a blue state in an even bluer city in an even bluer neighborhood, I often find myself at odds with my neighbors. Like the one who boasted that her children's favorite meal was tofu and brown rice. Or the many who brag about never having set foot in the Mall of America, which is 10 minutes away. Or the party I attended where everyone started bashing organized religion -- "My husband doesn't belong to any church, but he's the most spiritual person I know" -- and laughing about the fake things they would write under "religion" on hospital admission forms, etc. I felt like the only person in the room who was thinking, "You all sound as intolerant and close-minded and sanctimonious as anyone on the Christian right."

Anyway, that's what I imagine Portland would be like, times 10. I could be wrong --- I was there for a couple of days once, and that's it -- but that's the impression I get.

Quote
I'd like to move to Colorado or Wyoming, too. I never gave a thought to the effect of legalized pot on real estate prices.  :-\

:laugh: :laugh: Actually, I haven't noticed much of a change here. But there are "herbal dispensaries" that have opened up in blighted areas and foreclosed buildings and have caused a bit of a renewal in these areas.

I've read that the big money isn't so much in selling pot, it's in industries that facilitate pot production and sales, because they don't have the banking problems and there's a demand for, say, real estate where it can be grown and processed, etc.

But I don't know much about macroeconomics, so I don't know how much growth in one industry is enough to move the property-value needle. I imagine there are people like me and Jeff who think Colorado would be a great place to live -- picturesque, outdoorsy, tolerable climate, not too expensive, somewhat crunchy but not excessively so -- and some of that group will find it even more appealing now. My son has a couple of friends who attended Colorado State University, I think, at least partly for that reason.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2015, 11:53:45 am
I think so. My own neighborhood is sometimes too hip for me. I know I come off like the hippest of the hip  :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: but actually I'm not.

I've always thought of you as "sensibly, informed hip."

Quote
Maybe "hip" isn't quite the right word. Maybe more like "lefty" or "crunchy" (though I hate the latter expression).


I've never bothered to look that one up. I've just assumed it means the "L" word, because those people eat granola, and granola is crunchy, so. ...

Quote
Or the party I attended where everyone started bashing organized religion -- "My husband doesn't belong to any church, but he's the most spiritual person I know" -- and laughing about the fake things they would write under "religion" on hospital admission forms, etc. I felt like the only person in the room who was thinking, "You all sound as intolerant and close-minded and sanctimonious as anyone on the Christian right."

Right. Some atheists are like that. And when you try to explain to them that they're being just as dogmatic as the Christian right, they totally don't get it (e.g., they can't behave just like "true believers" because they don't believe in anything--except they do).

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I've read that the big money isn't so much in selling pot, it's in industries that facilitate pot production and sales, because they don't have the banking problems and there's a demand for, say, real estate where it can be grown and processed, etc.

Doesn't surprise me. Just like, the people who got rich in the Gold Rush, whether California or the Klondike, weren't the people who dug for gold; they were the people who supplied the people who dug for gold.

But to return to The New Yorker, I'm ready to start the article on the Argentinian prosecutor who was murdered.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 22, 2015, 06:08:02 pm
Quote from: Jeff Wrangler=topic=31506.msg670181#msg670181 date=1437494025
I've always thought of you as "sensibly, informed hip."

Why thank you!  :-*  I like that description.
 
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I've never bothered to look that one up. I've just assumed it means the "L" word, because those people eat granola, and granola is crunchy, so. ...

Yeah, it threw me the first time I heard it, too. Which was in a conversation with my neighbor right after 9/11. She was informing me that the attacks upset her more than the average person, because she was from Jersey. "But of course none of my friends live in New York anymore," she said. "They've all moved to hipper places." Hipper? What's hipper than New York City? Portland, she explained. Austin. Places like that. She clarified that by hip she meant "crunchy," so in that context I got it. And yes, I also figured it refers to granola and maybe raw veggies.

New York would be plenty hip enough for me. Portland, maybe a little too hip. (Austin might be OK.)

Quote
Right. Some atheists are like that. And when you try to explain to them that they're being just as dogmatic as the Christian right, they totally don't get it (e.g., they can't behave just like "true believers" because they don't believe in anything--except they do).

I had a similar conversation with a guest at my home who, not far from other friends who are church-goers, started spouting off about the evils of Christianity. I said, "What, you mean because they're close-minded and self-righteous and intolerant of other people's views?" He got my implication and just kind of laughed it off and continued ranting. Because it's so obvious to him that Christians are close-minded and so invisible that anti-Christians aren't.

Quote
But to return to The New Yorker, I'm ready to start the article on the Argentinian prosecutor who was murdered.

I'm still trying to slog my way through the one about terrorism, There's a great quote in it, though, from a human rights guy who was baffled at how childish both the terrorists and the Bush administration acted on and after 9/11, speaking of 9/11.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 22, 2015, 09:25:52 pm
But to return to The New Yorker, I'm ready to start the article on the Argentinian prosecutor who was murdered.

Turned out to be longer than necessary, IMO, like a lot of pieces by Dexter Filkins and Jon Lee Anderson. It also wasn't as intriguing a murder mystery as I expected.  :-\

Next up is Anderson's "Letter from Havana," which is nothing if not timely.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 25, 2015, 08:59:38 pm
The July 27 issue arrived in today's mail. Over supper I went right to Adam Gopnik's essay on Go Set a Watchman. I won't give anything away, except to mention that at one point Gopnik says pretty much something I said several weeks ago when I was discussing the book with a drinkin' buddy. We were talking about how some people were upset to find Atticus portrayed as racist, and I said, in effect, just because he defended a black man in court didn't mean he wasn't racist.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 26, 2015, 12:37:46 pm
The July 27 issue arrived in today's mail. Over supper I went right to Adam Gopnik's essay on Go Set a Watchman. I won't give anything away, except to mention that at one point Gopnik says pretty much something I said several weeks ago when I was discussing the book with a drinkin' buddy. We were talking about how some people were upset to find Atticus portrayed as racist, and i said, in effect, just because he defended a black man in court didn't mean he wasn't racist.

I read that last week online and thought it was really well done. The most fascinating aspect of this whole episode for me is the opportunity to explore how people can do good tings and seem heroic -- especially through the eyes of their 6-year-old daughter -- and also have bad qualities that become clearer to a disillusioned daughter in her 20s.

NYT columnist Joe Nocera today wrote something to the effect that there's no dissonance between the two Atticus Finchs, because both are fictional creations. I think it's more interesting than that. I assume the character is based at least in part on Harper Lee's own father, and her own feelings about him. And like you, I don't see anything astonishing about the idea that a lawyer could both respect law and justice and also be racist, especially in a small town in the 1930s South.

Somewhere along the way I saw a link to something Adam Gladwell wrote six years ago on this very subject. I have it up on my computer but haven't read it yet. For anyone interested, here it is:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-ring (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/10/the-courthouse-ring)

I can envision a conversation between Harper Lee and her editor. The editor thinks 1960 America isn't eager for a book about a racist Southerner (among other problems with the novel). S/he asks why the young woman in the book was surprised to find that her father was racist. Because when she was little her father seemed so heroic and dedicated to upholding justice, Harper Lee answers. Why don't you write about that, the editor advises.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 26, 2015, 01:11:01 pm
I read that last week online and thought it was really well done.

Yes, I did, too--thought it was well done, I mean. I thought he handled well both the novel itself and the suspicions about its provenance.

Quote
NYT columnist Joe Nocera today wrote something to the effect that there's no dissonance between the two Atticus Finchs, because both are fictional creations. I think it's more interesting than that. I assume the character is based at least in part on Harper Lee's own father, and her own feelings about him. And like you, I don't see anything astonishing about the idea that a lawyer could both respect law and justice and also be racist, especially in a small town in the 1930s South.

Gopnik says pretty much the same thing, or something similar, IIRC.

I've kind of wondered, too, whether some of those people who are so upset about the apparent "difference" in Atticus don't have their idea of Atticus influenced as much by Gregory Peck in the movie as by the book.  8)

I sort of had to laugh at Gopnik's comment about Mockingbird being on eighth grade curricula. I guess I'm just too old because it sure wasn't on my eighth grade curriculum! All I remember reading in eighth grade was Fail-Safe. My English teacher was a young hottie with curly brown hair named Jim Hontz--oh, never mind!  :laugh:

Gopnik's essay also makes we want to know more about the Southern Agrarians. Obviously I recognized the name Robert Penn Warren, and I've heard of John Crowe Ransom, but I don't know anything about him.

Edit to Add:

Here's the Wikipedia article on John Crowe Ransom. The second paragraph under "Career" discusses the Southern Agrarians.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crowe_Ransom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crowe_Ransom)

And on the Southern Agrarians:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Agrarians (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Agrarians)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 26, 2015, 03:55:47 pm
I just read the Malcolm Gladwell 2009 article. It's prescient at describing exactly the kind of man Atticus Finch could easily be if you take both books into account. And Gladwell obviously hadn't seen both books. To be fair, his article is at least partly based on the work of scholars who hadn't, either.

I think this helps explain why I was so much more "meh" than most people when I finally got around to reading Mockingbird about 10 years ago (I liked it pretty well, just as I liked Gone Girl pretty well). By then, I had lived in the South and had seen firsthand that people could both be perfectly nice to black people and also be racists. I was somewhat more politically sophisticated than your average 8th grader and knew that racism could be nuanced without necessarily being self-contradictory -- there's a lot of space between civil-rights activist and raging white supremacist, and most small-town Southerners of the '30s probably stood somewhere within that spectrum.

I don't think I've ever seen more than a snippet or two of the movie. A lot of people who love TKaM seem to love the movie even more than the book.

It's interesting that it was such standard reading for Gopnik's 8th grade curriculum, given that he grew up in Canada (and I think still lived there then).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 26, 2015, 06:29:27 pm
It's interesting that it was such standard reading for Gopnik's 8th grade curriculum, given that he grew up in Canada (and I think still lived there then).

Holy crap! According to Wikipedia, Adam Gopnik was born right here in Philadelphia. He's living in New York City now (I think I remember reading that in one of his New Yorker articles).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Gopnik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Gopnik)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 27, 2015, 01:34:49 pm
I read Jon Lee Anderson's July 20 piece on Cuba over lunch today. I wanna go to Havana.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 27, 2015, 05:57:17 pm
I was so delighted to be browsing through the July 20 issue when I came upon a review of the latest translation of "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, written in the 800s in Japan and set in the Heian Period. It is one of my favorite books, and I have owned a copy since my early 20s. I have read it several times even though it is about 1300 pages long. Murasaki is Japan's Proust, in my opinion. The article is called "The Sensualist".
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 27, 2015, 06:52:40 pm
Right after I read Gopnik on Go Set a Watchman, I turned to Jill Lepore's article, "Joe Gould's Teeth," because she is certainly one of my favorite writers. When I got to the part where she quoted someone quoting the tag line, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" I laughed out loud (which, in context, perhaps wasn't very nice of me), because I knew what Flit was, and who was responsible for that line.  8)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flit)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 28, 2015, 10:13:14 am
I was so delighted to be browsing through the July 20 issue when I came upon a review of the latest translation of "The Tale of Genji" by Lady Murasaki, written in the 800s in Japan and set in the Heian Period. It is one of my favorite books, and I have owned a copy since my early 20s. I have read it several times even though it is about 1300 pages long. Murasaki is Japan's Proust, in my opinion. The article is called "The Sensualist".

Impressive! I'd be happy to get through France's Proust.

Or, for that matter, the 1,100 page Infinite Jest, by an American of my own time and in fact one of my favorite writers (his essays, anyway). My son read it. It took him three years -- the first 10 pages or so during the first two years, and the rest over a couple of months last summer.

The only 1,000+ page book I've ever read is Gone With the Wind. Though I guess Stephen King's The Stand is pretty long, and I've read that, but in the original edited and shorter version.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 28, 2015, 08:06:30 pm
What's the world coming to? Here's the subject line from the daily digest the New Yorker emails me:

Today from The New Yorer‏



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 28, 2015, 08:10:29 pm
What's the world coming to? Here's the subject line from the daily digest the New Yorker emails me:

Today from The New Yorer‏


Oh, my God.  :(

Somewhere, Mr. Shawn and everybody back to Harold Ross weeps.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 28, 2015, 10:20:25 pm
I should clarify (in case I wasn't already clear) that that's just from today's digest. Normally it's fine. But still! I get a handful of publications' digests -- from the Atlantic, New York, etc. -- and I've never seen one that wasn't typo-free. Somebody's probably in trouble tonight.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 28, 2015, 10:44:27 pm
I should clarify (in case I wasn't already clear) that that's just from today's digest. Normally it's fine. But still! I get a handful of publications' digests -- from the Atlantic, New York, etc. -- and I've never seen one that wasn't typo-free. Somebody's probably in trouble tonight.

I understood it was just today's, and, yeah, somebody should be in a lot of trouble tonight.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 01, 2015, 08:10:02 pm
The July 20 issue was really interesting to me, the cartoons were funny and the articles were engaging. In contrast, I dispatched with the latest issue in less than an hour. Maybe one of you will point out to me something I missed.

In addition to the book critique about The Tale of Gengi, I liked Dave Eggers "The Actual Hollister" about Hollister, California and the clothing line. Eggers is an author who I think captures the discontents of my generation very well. Of course there is "The Really Big One" which went viral in a big way, about the coming NW earthquake, and a review of the movie Mr. Holmes, which I saw on my birthday with my Sherlock group, Dr. Watson's Neglected Patients. The one fiction piece, "Ghosts and Empties" by Lauren Groff, was mildly interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2015, 11:38:16 am
Eggers is an author who I think captures the discontents of my generation very well.

That's an interesting observation, considering Eggers is 45.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 04, 2015, 01:33:13 pm
Over lunch today I enjoyed Joan Acocella's Aug. 3 piece on the book about stagefright. A lot of my enjoyment had to do with reading about so many famous performers who suffer from it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 05, 2015, 01:41:42 pm
I just read the Aug. 3 article about the tunnels built by the Sinaloa drug cartel for drug smuggling, similar to the one used by El Chapo to escape from prison. I found the article fascinating. It's amazing what a sophisticated business operation the cartel is, and the same goes for the tunnel construction. Get this:

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At the house in Agua Prieta, the only way to access the tunnel was to turn on an outdoor water spigot; this triggered a hydraulic system that lifted up a billiard table in a game room on the ground floor, exposing a ladder to the tunnel.

That's like something right out of TV or a movie.

Unfortunately, it seems the tunnels are built with slave labor, and when the tunnels are complete, the slaves are murdered.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 10, 2015, 12:16:21 am
I'm maybe halfway through the one about the people with kidnapped kids in Syria and looking dismally at the many, many pages left to go. Not to mention the fact that the current photos mostly don't feature the kids and the writer refers to the kids in past tense. Can anyone offer me encouragement that it's worth persevering?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2015, 10:41:43 am
I'm maybe halfway through the one about the people with kidnapped kids in Syria and looking dismally at the many, many pages left to go. Not to mention the fact that the current photos mostly don't feature the kids and the writer refers to the kids in past tense. Can anyone offer me encouragement that it's worth persevering?

By "kidnapped kids" do you mean the one about the adult journalists, like James Foley?

At the risk of spoiling it for you, I'll say it depends on what you would consider "worth persevering" for. There is only one "happy ending" here, and I've already forgotten his name. But I remembered James Foley from the news, and also the young woman, so I knew what was coming for them. Even so, I found the article worth reading to the end. I don't mean to be flip about these tragedies, but even though I knew the eventual fate of at least two of the kidnapping victims, I thought the article was very well written and read like a good "thriller," so I guess that's the sense in which I found it worth reading through to the end.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 10, 2015, 10:49:05 am
I remember that article too. Very no-nonsense, but painful as a parent to read. I liked the photos being throughout the article. As I recall, the survivor reminded me of Ennis. Not a happy ending there either.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 10, 2015, 06:28:01 pm
By "kidnapped kids" do you mean the one about the adult journalists, like James Foley?

Yes, and by "kids" I meant they were the offspring of the parents on whom the article focused.

I've always this a frustrating gap in the English language -- there's no good word for "adult children," which sounds like an oxymoron. "Offspring" only sounds right in certain contexts. Progeny? Heirs?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2015, 06:33:47 pm
Yes, and by "kids" I meant they were the offspring of the parents on whom the article focused.

I've always this a frustrating gap in the English language -- there's no good word for "adult children," which sounds like an oxymoron. "Offspring" only sounds right in certain contexts. Progeny? Heirs?

I dunno.  ???

I felt I had to ask because I do give away my magazines and sometimes I forget to read something in them before I give them away.

Plus, for me, "kid" or "kids" suggests an adolescent or younger, not an adult child.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 13, 2015, 01:37:53 pm
I am being amused by Peter Hessler's Aug. 10 & 17 piece on the Chinese lingerie merchants in Egypt.

Anybody in the market for a body stocking with an open rear end?  :laugh:

We sure have come a long way from Mr. Shawn's days, haven't we?  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 17, 2015, 09:29:54 am
Well, here's one for the books. I really am caught up on my New Yorkers. I brought the Aug. 10 & 17 issue along to work today to pass on to my coworker. I had to bring a book with me to have something to read over lunch.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 17, 2015, 04:48:06 pm
Great! Perhaps you can give us laggers some tips on what to read and what to avoid, particularly in the fiction issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 17, 2015, 08:37:54 pm
Great! Perhaps you can give us laggers some tips on what to read and what to avoid, particularly in the fiction issue.

No can do. As soon as I finish reading something I forget it. Was that the issue with Louise Erdrich's story in it? You might look back over the thread, see if I had anything to say about anything in that issue, whenever it was.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 18, 2015, 11:19:55 am
I started the article on "soft censorship" last night and am looking forward to reading more, as I am particularly interested in this issue.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 18, 2015, 11:31:44 am
I started the article on "soft censorship" last night and am looking forward to reading more, as I am particularly interested in this issue.

I actually do remember reading that one. I thought it was quite good.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2015, 09:40:33 pm
While I don't ordinarily read the short fiction, I did read Alice McDermott's short story in the Aug. 24 issue, and I recommend it.

I wonder if it's somehow excerpted from a forthcoming book?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 26, 2015, 01:06:44 pm
I'm not following the statistics in Malcolm Gladwell's Aug. 24 article, but the take-away I am getting is that for a lot of poor people, it was actually a Good Thing to be forced out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 30, 2015, 09:56:35 am
Goodbye to Oliver Sacks. I really enjoyed his writings over the years.  :'( :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 02, 2015, 01:30:20 pm
Goodbye to Oliver Sacks. I really enjoyed his writings over the years.  :'( :'(

I had no idea Oliver Sacks was that old.

Meanwhile, I really enjoyed Elif Batuman's Aug. 31 article on archaeology in Istanbul. Imagine! People were farming on that site as early as 6000 B.C.E.! And their footprints were preserved!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 02, 2015, 04:53:09 pm
I had no idea Oliver Sacks was that old.

I always thought he was old because he knew so much.  ;)

But I didn't know he was gay until a few days ago.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 03, 2015, 09:54:07 am
I knew he was old because I can remember my mom reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and telling me stories from it 30 years ago.

I new he was gay about a year ago, when his memoir came out. So to speak. (He was already officially out, of couse.)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 03, 2015, 11:54:21 am
I new he was gay about a year ago, when his memoir came out. So to speak. (He was already officially out, of couse.)

That's when I first learned he was gay.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 04, 2015, 11:52:06 am
I new he was gay

I hope that was just my K key sticking. More and more lately, I've caught myself misspelling words -- or actually, typing homonyms of words -- that of course I know how to spell correctly. It's like my brain doesn't fully connect with my fingers. So I've even done the occasional your/re and to/o. Kind of embarrassing for a professional writer -- we tend to roll our eyes when people do that stuff.

 ::)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 04, 2015, 12:09:50 pm
I hope that was just my K key sticking. More and more lately, I've caught myself misspelling words -- or actually, typing homonyms of words -- that of course I know how to spell correctly. It's like my brain doesn't fully connect with my fingers. So I've even done the occasional your/re and to/o. Kind of embarrassing for a professional writer -- we tend to roll our eyes when people do that stuff.

 ::)



It's embarrassing for a proofreader, too (also embarrassing when you don't notice that someone has made a mistake like that!  :laugh: ). I tend to think that omission of small words, such as to, just indicates that our minds work faster than we can type, but I don't know whether that would explain the "homonym problem." Perhaps it would explain some of it.

When the mistake is made by someone younger who is not a professional writer, I sometimes wonder whether the person actually knows any better, because I have no idea how much or what sort of grammar and spelling kids were taught in 1980s and 1990s.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 05, 2015, 10:03:41 am
It's embarrassing for a proofreader, too (also embarrassing when you don't notice that someone has made a mistake like that!  :laugh: ).

I've been doing some proofreading lately. If that happened in something I was proofing, I'd like to think I'd jump on it, but you never know. The material I've been proofing is almost error free, so sometimes I get all excited when I see a "benefitted" that I can delete a T from, or a "Set up" (as a noun) that I can delete the space from. Other times I get lulled into eye-glazed complacency and skip over, say, a date that looks perfectly fine but has already passed and therefore needs changing.

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I tend to think that omission of small words, such as to, just indicates that our minds work faster than we can type, but I don't know whether that would explain the "homonym problem." Perhaps it would explain some of it.

That sounds right to me. Sometimes I look back and see that I've omitted whole words!

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When the mistake is made by someone younger who is not a professional writer, I sometimes wonder whether the person actually knows any better, because I have no idea how much or what sort of grammar and spelling kids were taught in 1980s and 1990s.

Well, I think everyone was at least taught the difference between you're and your, to and too, there and their, even if they didn't pay attention or remember it. I have friends my own age who make those mistakes repeatedly. They're not unintelligent, they're just not word people.

Among non-wordies, actually, I am oddly more bothered by errors caused by trying TOO hard to be grammatical. For example, I can forgive an "Her and I have been friends for years" because I know that's just the way people talk. But I hate hearing "He came to visit Fred and I," because I think those people are hyperaware that "Fred and me went to the store" is wrong, and think that substituting I in all cases is correct.

And who vs. whom? Fageddaboudit. That one is so little understood that in some contexts I am loathe to use them correctly because I think it will sound stuffy.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 05, 2015, 10:22:35 am
On Facebook the other night I came upon a post by a woman in Portland who was finding it difficult to refer to people who don't identify as either male or female as "they." (I have another friend whose stepdaughter is in that group, so I knew what she meant -- it sounds funny.)

So she had all these comments, some of which addressed the problem she was describing, while others misunderstood and thought she was talking about using "they" as an ungrammatical but convenient substitute in cases of non-specific individuals, where traditionally the pronouns would default male and are sometimes changed to "his or her," as in, "When a student arrives on campus, they should pick up their admission forms."

So I wrote a comment pointing out that the commenters were talking about two different things. I said I also found it grammatically difficult to refer to a specific individual as "they"-- but would be willing to do so if that's what someone preferred -- but wish that "the.y" would catch on grammatically as a substitute for the sexist default male or the awkward "his or her."

Another woman from Portland snapped back "They're both correct, though."

Huh? I was willing to believe that in some ancient version of English "they" could be used as an pronoun for a single unspecific person (the was the use of "literally" to mean "figuratively" has been defended by people pointing to usages in the 16th century or whatever). But I told her that since asexual people have traditionally not been recognized as even existing, I doubted that there was ever an English pronoun for them.

So then she gave me the old "Many other cultures have been accepting of people who don't conform to a gender binary blah blah blah." Then she said English -- our culture of course being the sole culture ever that has been intolerant of asexuals -- doesn't have such a word. I said I'm always a little suspicious of the "Many other cultures have been perfectly find narrative with something we get all upset about" narrative, but don't doubt that it does sometimes happen. In any case, I pointed out that she had contradicted herself by first saying it was correct and then saying we actually don't have such a word.

By then I had realized that a) When she insisted both were "correct," she didn't think it through but made the claim because she was just so eager to assert the rights of the non-binary (which she, judging from her photo, is not) b) she was one of those people who love an opportunity to school some liberal whom she deems not sufficiently PC and c) (not for the first time) I'm glad I don't live in Portland.  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 05, 2015, 12:00:51 pm
And who vs. whom? Fageddaboudit. That one is so little understood that in some contexts I am loathe to use them correctly because I think it will sound stuffy.

Oh, that one bedevils me. I still try to use whom correctly because as a sort of "word professional" ("professional wordsmith"?) I feel obliged to do so. But some times it can be awfully difficult, depending on how the sentence is written, to figure out if you need objective case.

So she had all these comments, some of which addressed the problem she was describing, while others misunderstood and thought she was talking about using "they" as an ungrammatical but convenient substitute in cases of non-specific individuals, where traditionally the pronouns would default male and are sometimes changed to "his or her," as in, "When a student arrives on campus, they should pick up their admission forms."

Sometimes that can be an easy fix; make the whole thing plural: "When students arrive on campus, they should pick up their admission forms." But not always.

Quote
So I wrote a comment pointing out that the commenters were talking about two different things. I said I also found it grammatically difficult to refer to a specific individual as "they"-- but would be willing to do so if that's what someone preferred -- but wish that "they" would catch on grammatically as a substitute for the sexist default male or the awkward "his or her."

Personally, I want to hold the line against using they as singular. I don't mean to be unsympathetic or unaware of the issue, but I've got a personal issue with with what I perceive as "inclusive language" running amok--but that would go beyond the bounds of a New Yorker thread, I think.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 05, 2015, 10:42:48 pm
Oh, that one bedevils me. I still try to use whom correctly because as a sort of "word professional" ("professional wordsmith"?) I feel obliged to do so. But some times it can be awfully difficult, depending on how the sentence is written, to figure out if you need objective case.

My main problem with it is that "whom" just sounds too stuffy in some contexts, even when it's correct.

Quote
Sometimes that can be an easy fix; make the whole thing plural: "When students arrive on campus, they should pick up their admission forms." But not always.

Right. That's the ideal situation. if that's not possible, I alternate between "they," "him or her" and "one," depending on how much formality fits the context.

Quote
Personally, I want to hold the line against using they as singular. I don't mean to be unsympathetic or unaware of the issue, but I've got a personal i[/ssue with with what I perceive as "inclusive language" running amok--but that would go beyond the bounds of a New Yorker thread, I think.

Well, as you know, English has changed a lot over the centuries, and inclusivity seems like one of the best reasons for doing it. That and spelling. I prefer donut to doughnut, for example, because the ugh is just confusing and unnecessary.

The "what pronouns to use for an individual who doesn't identify along a binary gender model, I'm afraid that one's a lot trickier. Luckily, it doesn't come up as often.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 06, 2015, 09:30:22 am
My main problem with it is that "whom" just sounds too stuffy in some contexts, even when it's correct.

Yes, I think it can, but. ...

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Right. That's the ideal situation. if that's not possible, I alternate between "they," "him or her" and "one," depending on how much formality fits the context.


Oi! Talk about sounding "stuffy" or pompous! (Or British. ...  ;D ) "One"!

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Well, as you know, English has changed a lot over the centuries, and inclusivity seems like one of the best reasons for doing it. That and spelling. I prefer donut to doughnut, for example, because the ugh is just confusing and unnecessary.

Not me. I'm sure by now that usage has a long history, but to me it still looks too much like "do-nut," rather than "doe-nut." Unless I'm quoting, I'm stickin' with "doughnut."

Quote
The "what pronouns to use for an individual who doesn't identify along a binary gender model, I'm afraid that one's a lot trickier. Luckily, it doesn't come up as often.

Actually, I don't think I've ever run into that situation, but then I'm not a professional writer. I suppose the thing to do is ask what the individual prefers? (And I guess if the preference is for "they," I'd have to note that "they" is the individual's preference, even if that does sound a bit condescending.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 06, 2015, 12:17:09 pm
Oi! Talk about sounding "stuffy" or pompous! (Or British. ...  ;D ) "One"!

Oh, I know! That's what I meant by saying it depends on the formality of the context. Some contexts are formal enough that you can get away with it. Others are informal enough that you can use it ironically (mixing high and low diction a la David Foster Wallace). Otherwise, tread cautiously.

Quote
Not me. I'm sure by now that usage has a long history, but to me it still looks too much like "do-nut," rather than "doe-nut." Unless I'm quoting, I'm stickin' with "doughnut."

I couldn't remember what AP Style -- which is what I usually use -- called for. i think they may have changed it in recent years, but I couldn't find the definitive answer in a quick google. I probably could if I had more time, but in the meantime, I'll go with this:

http://www.grammarunderground.com/policing-the-doughnuts-and-donuts.html (http://www.grammarunderground.com/policing-the-doughnuts-and-donuts.html)

"Why does their preference matter so much? Well, to most people it doesn’t. You can choose either “donut” or “doughnut” as you prefer. (Personally, I feel it’s time to retire "doughnut." The way I see it, nothing is lost because "dough" was misleading anyway. They aren't made from dough. They're made from batter.)"

Quote
Actually, I don't think I've ever run into that situation, but then I'm not a professional writer. I suppose the thing to do is ask what the individual prefers? (And I guess if the preference is for "they," I'd have to note that "they" is the individual's preference, even if that does sound a bit condescending.)

Yes, the thing to do at this point is to ask the individual's preference. But as more people come out as non-binary, I suspect language will reach some concensus. If "they" it is, that's fine by me.

Still, it will be grammatically challenging, at least at first. For example, let's say two people get in a car and drive away, and one is non-binary. Do you say, "Where are they going?" to refer just to the one, though it will sound like you could be referring to both. Or do you say "Where is they going?" which sounds weird to those of us who grew up matching our pronouns and verbs.

I remember when "Ms." sounded odd. Now it sounds perfectly normal; for example, my kids, the older almost 21, have always called their teachers Ms. Whatever.

I think back when Ms. was first introduced, newspapers were in some cases (probably mainly society pages) even still using "Mrs. John Smith"!!! Then newspapers went with asking individuals' preferences. Very few news outlets now use titles on second references (the NYT being the most obvious exception), except in obituaries. So it doesn't come up often, but if it did the default would be "Ms."


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 06, 2015, 02:52:24 pm
Still, it will be grammatically challenging, at least at first. For example, let's say two people get in a car and drive away, and one is non-binary. Do you say, "Where are they going?" to refer just to the one, though it will sound like you could be referring to both. Or do you say "Where is they going?" which sounds weird to those of us who grew up matching our pronouns and verbs.

The plural verb would indicate that you mean both of them. If you only mean the non-binary person, use a singular verb and that person's name instead of the pronoun.  ;)

But with a non-binary person, why can't you use the pronoun that matches the gender the person presents as--i.e., how the person dresses--rather than getting into the person's sexual orientation? Perhaps that's not an option in a profile, but what about in "straight" news?

Quote
I think back when Ms. was first introduced, newspapers were in some cases (probably mainly society pages) even still using "Mrs. John Smith"!!! Then newspapers went with asking individuals' preferences. Very few news outlets now use titles on second references (the NYT being the most obvious exception), except in obituaries. So it doesn't come up often, but if it did the default would be "Ms."

Fortunate the obit writer whose subject had an academic or professional degree, so the subsequent reference would be to Dr. Smith, if the late Mary Smith had a Ph.D. or an M.D. or a D.D.S., or whatever, or Rev. Smith or Pastor Smith if the deceased was a Protestant minister.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 09, 2015, 05:46:29 pm
Thought I was caught in a time warp this week after reading about the Salem witch trials followed by a story about Ralph Waldo Emerson!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 09, 2015, 07:46:08 pm
Thought I was caught in a time warp this week after reading about the Salem witch trials followed by a story about Ralph Waldo Emerson!

You'd think by now everything worth saying about the Salem witch trials would have been said, but apparently not. No doubt the article was drawn from the author's new book.

When I saw the article in TNY, I remembered seeing a notice that she will be speaking in Philadelphia sometime in the near future, but I don't remember exactly when that will be. The notice was part of a list of speakers coming to the Free Library, or something like that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 12, 2015, 01:19:39 pm
You'd think by now everything worth saying about the Salem witch trials would have been said, but apparently not. No doubt the article was drawn from the author's new book.

I haven't read it yet, though I probably will. But I'm continually baffled by how much U.S. culture's fascination the Salem witch trials so exceeds our interest in the witch persecutions in Europe. Those went on for hundreds of years and involved the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Yet, in this country at least, you hardly ever hear anyone mention them. I'd never heard of them at all until I was an adult!

(EuroBrokies, feel free to chime in here if you have a different perspective!)

Salem's trials were a weird crazy quirk that happened long after the European persecutions had dwindled away. And I suppose part of the mystery there is, what provoked the flash of craziness?

But the European persecutions raise the same question. What provoked them? Most of the victims were women, so clearly there was a misogynistic element. Another part was the Christian church wanting to quash pagan practices. Also perhaps the increasingly professionalized -- and male -- medical industry wanted to get rid of people offering traditional herbal cures. And in part it might just have been a way to seize people's property (a practice that continues here today, when most states allow law enforcement officers to use vague and often trumped-up charges as an excuse to seize cars and other property -- as we learned in the New Yorker!).

I interviewed Mary Sharratt, an author from Minneapolis, (at first I was remembering her name as Mary Surratt, but of course that's someone completely different https://www.google.com/search?q=mary+surratt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 (https://www.google.com/search?q=mary+surratt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)). Sharrat lives in England and wrote a novel based on historical records of a woman who was tried and executed as a witch near where she (Mary) lives. The woman didn't have a lot of property to seize -- she was extremely poor; essentially supported herself by begging -- but she was disliked by some powerful people and got blamed for ordinary occurrences (another woman's death by disease, for example). A few friends and family members were thrown into prison with her, and died of either execution or the miserable conditions in the prison.

What I thought was so weird was that the woman herself suspected she might be a witch, that she might have been inadvertently responsible for the death. Huh?? I asked the author why the woman would think that. She explained that of course in a culture where everybody believes in witches, that wouldn't necessarily exclude the "witches" themselves.

Today, of course, few people in industrialized countries "believe" in witches. Yet the standard cultural images of witches that linger -- pointy black hats and black clothes, brooms, warty skin, cauldrons, cats -- those are all based on the accouterments of typical old pagan women of the time. We associate them with "witches" thanks to the anti-witch propaganda issued by the church. (The Disneyized version usually omits the orgies-with-the-devil part.)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 12, 2015, 03:40:59 pm
I haven't read it yet, though I probably will. But I'm continually baffled by how much U.S. culture's fascination the Salem witch trials so exceeds our interest in the witch persecutions in Europe. Those went on for hundreds of years and involved the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Yet, in this country at least, you hardly ever hear anyone mention them. I'd never heard of them at all until I was an adult!

I understand your point, but I'm not particularly surprised. You know how so many Americans are so narrowly focused on America. Plus I think scale might have something to do with it. Only 20 people were executed in Salem, and that makes it a lot easier to learn about their individual stories, especially when the records are here. The records are also in English, which in most of Europe they would not be. And writers have kept the story in front of us, from the Mathers and others at the time, on down through Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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Salem's trials were a weird crazy quirk that happened long after the European persecutions had dwindled away. And I suppose part of the mystery there is, what provoked the flash of craziness?

But I would have thought scholars would have exhausted speculating about that, too. One of the latest twists--unfortunately I forget exactly where I read it--is that someone noticed that some of the "afflicted children" were refugees from French and Indian raids on the northern New England frontier (war had broken out in 1689).

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But the European persecutions raise the same question. What provoked them? Most of the victims were women, so clearly there was a misogynistic element. Another part was the Christian church wanting to quash pagan practices. Also perhaps the increasingly professionalized -- and male -- medical industry wanted to get rid of people offering traditional herbal cures. And in part it might just have been a way to seize people's property (a practice that continues here today, when most states allow law enforcement officers to use vague and often trumped-up charges as an excuse to seize cars and other property -- as we learned in the New Yorker!).

Personally I don't buy the speculation about the role of the medical profession, because I don't think medicine really began to develop as a profession until after the with craze in Europe had begun to die down, but I could be wrong.

Quote
I interviewed Mary Sharratt, an author from Minneapolis, (at first I was remembering her name as Mary Surratt, but of course that's someone completely different https://www.google.com/search?q=mary+surratt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 (https://www.google.com/search?q=mary+surratt&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)). Sharrat lives in England and wrote a novel based on historical records of a woman who was tried and executed as a witch near where she (Mary) lives. The woman didn't have a lot of property to seize -- she was extremely poor; essentially supported herself by begging -- but she was disliked by some powerful people and got blamed for ordinary occurrences (another woman's death by disease, for example). A few friends and family members were thrown into prison with her, and died of either execution or the miserable conditions in the prison.

What I thought was so weird was that the woman herself suspected she might be a witch, that she might have been inadvertently responsible for the death. Huh?? I asked the author why the woman would think that. She explained that of course in a culture where everybody believes in witches, that wouldn't necessarily exclude the "witches" themselves.

I think that came up with at least one of the accused at Salem, too, at least as far as wondering whether she might actually be a witch without realizing it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 12, 2015, 04:20:25 pm
The origin of the term "witch" is unclear. Apparently, it came to be applied to old women in a derogatory way in the 15th century, about the same time that Girolamo Savonarola came to power in Florence, Italy, and ended the Renaissance with his purges. "Pagan" simply means "people of the country, the same as "urban" means people of the city. "Hag" meant "wise woman", e.g. the Hagia Sophia was a temple to the wise philosopher women.

Possibly, the meaning of "witch" was also demonized like pagan and hag. The derivation of "witch" that I favor comes from the same root as "willow" and means "to bend." Even today, when a person uses a forked willow branch to find underground water, this activity is known as "witching". Another name for it is "dowsing".

I learned about the witch persecutions in Europe by watching movies like "Elizabeth", which begins with a witch burning, and "Braveheart." Also, LOL, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." But Europeans are loathe to talk about these movements in general. When I was there a year ago, we went to Dauchau, and there were very few Germans to be seen there. All of the interpretation was by video. We didn't see any staff that I can recall. Nazism, the Protestant uprising, witch persecution, the Gypsies, and now refugees. Europe truly is a cauldron.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 12, 2015, 06:37:47 pm
I learned about the witch persecutions in Europe by watching movies like "Elizabeth", which begins with a witch burning.

I found that opening scene in Elizabeth very, very hard to watch. But I don't think it's supposed to be a "witch burning." As I recall, it's two men and one woman, and I think it's supposed to signify the burning of Protestants under Queen "Bloody" Mary Tudor, Elizabeth's half-sister.

Edit to add:

Actually, if that scene had been meant to represent a witch burning, it would have been a case of Hollywood yet again perpetuating a common misconception, that witches were burned in England. Witches were NOT burned in England; hence, they were also not burned at Salem. On the Continent, witches were classed with heretics and burned. In England, and anywhere under English law, witches were classed with common criminals and hanged. Thus 18 of the victims at Salem were hanged, not burned.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 13, 2015, 10:49:08 am
The origin of the term "witch" is unclear. Apparently, it came to be applied to old women in a derogatory way in the 15th century, about the same time that Girolamo Savonarola came to power in Florence, Italy, and ended the Renaissance with his purges. ... Possibly, the meaning of "witch" was also demonized like pagan and hag.

I'm not sure at what point the word "witch" arose, though of course the concept of witchcraft is very ancient, long preceding the European witch hunts. But sure, the word could have started out referring to something benign that was later demonized, just like the hats and brooms and cats and so forth.

When the printing press was invented, people started publishing books about witches -- how they practice, how to identify them, how to prosecute them, etc. The most famous is Malleus Maleficarum, meaning "hammer of the witch," published in 1487. It says outright that women are more likely to be witches because of the inherent weaknesses of their gender. (Also, their carnality! It's funny how throughout history and cultures women are often considered "more carnal" than men -- though I see little evidence of it in real life -- though simultaneously expected to behave in far less "carnal" ways.)

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"Pagan" simply means "people of the country, the same as "urban" means people of the city.

Yes, that's where the word originated -- the Latin word pāgus means rural. When Christianity began spreading in Europe, it was embraced first in cities, while rural inhabitants continued practicing their traditional religions. So "pagan" came to mean non-Christian or non-monotheistic. Which of course was frowned upon, to say the least.

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But Europeans are loathe to talk about these movements in general. ... Nazism, the Protestant uprising, witch persecution, the Gypsies, and now refugees. Europe truly is a cauldron.

Good thing we never do stuff like that here in the United States. Just ask Native Americans and African-Americans!  ;)

I have visited plantations in the South where you tour the palatial house but never the slave quarters, and slavery is never mentioned except in offhand, non-critical ways -- making them even more sinister. For example, at one plantation the docent pointed to a path and said it was called the "whistling walk." She explained that slave boys who'd been assigned to pick berries for the household were supposed to whistle the whole time they walked back with the buckets to show that they weren't eating any of the berries. She told it like it was a cute story and the tourists chuckled appreciatively.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 13, 2015, 11:10:06 am
I understand your point, but I'm not particularly surprised. You know how so many Americans are so narrowly focused on America. Plus I think scale might have something to do with it. Only 20 people were executed in Salem, and that makes it a lot easier to learn about their individual stories, especially when the records are here. The records are also in English, which in most of Europe they would not be. And writers have kept the story in front of us, from the Mathers and others at the time, on down through Nathaniel Hawthorne.

True. But I think the witch persecutions are more obscure than, say, the French Revolution or the Reformation or other aspects of European history. And of course historical records from, say, the 15th century can be translated easily enough.

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Personally I don't buy the speculation about the role of the medical profession, because I don't think medicine really began to develop as a profession until after the with craze in Europe had begun to die down, but I could be wrong.

Yesterday I was writing from memory -- years ago, I wrote a newspaper story about the European witch hunts and interviewed some historians, and have remained interested in the topic over the years. Somewhere around here I have a graphic (I mean literally -- drawings as well as words) non-fiction account of them. I bought it at a book sale and haven't got around to reading it. Never enough time, never enough.

Anyway, I seem to remember hearing the medical profession theory, but I can't remember where. Today I skimmed the Wikipedia entry and saw no mention of it. In fact, the reasons people were targeted were apparently varied and ambiguous, not explainable by any one thing, which makes sense considering it happened over a vast geographical area. Often it seems it was just because they were disliked, either by someone powerful or by the community in general.

One interesting factoid: Centuries before the big witch hunts started, the Christian church had tried to debunk the idea that witches existed!

The other thing is that witch hunts coincided with times of religious change and turmoil, which perhaps was in some way a factor. Mary Sharratt's book takes place in a time when England had just gone from Catholicism to Protestantism. Her heroine fondly remembers the more carefree, pleasure-enjoying days of her childhood when Catholics were still in charge, before stricter and more austere Protestantism took over. Then it sounds like Catholic clergy and people found to be practicing Catholicism were just as persecuted as witches were.

It's hard to believe people could have been so cruel to each other over religious differences that, in the grand scheme of things, actually seem pretty minor. Good thing that never happens now. Oh, wait ...

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I think that came up with at least one of the accused at Salem, too, at least as far as wondering whether she might actually be a witch without realizing it.

The reason I find that so fascinating is because I can see ways it applies to our own culture. For example, we assume women can't be sexist. But of course they can -- they grow up in the same culture as men do. For example, when researchers send out identical resumes of women and men and find the men are more likely to be contacted and offered more money -- by women employers as well as men.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2015, 03:05:01 pm
One interesting factoid: Centuries before the big witch hunts started, the Christian church had tried to debunk the idea that witches existed!

I remember reading that somewhere, too.

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Then it sounds like Catholic clergy and people found to be practicing Catholicism were just as persecuted as witches were.

Well, they were, because Catholicism became linked with treason, after 1570, when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth I and absolved her subjects of their allegiance to her. The Protestants in power believed that the Catholics were told they would not be committing a sin if they assassinated the queen--I can't remember if that was true or not, but the Protestant English certainly believed it, so maybe it doesn't matter whether or not it was true. All of the plots against the queen were Catholic-based. And then in 1572. just across the Channel in France, occurred the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, when thousands of French Protestants were murdered by their Catholic fellow countrymen. All of this built on memories of the persecution of ordinary Protestant folks, housewives and shoemakers and so forth, during Bloody Mary's reign--memories that were kept alive by the best-selling Acts and Monuments, by John Foxe, more familiarly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs. So Roman Catholicism became equated with treason and murder in the popular mind.

Anyway, meanwhile, I just read the short personal memoir about "filter fish," by the late Oliver Sacks, in the Sept. 14 issue, and also Atul Gawande's appreciation for Sacks, in The Talk of the Town. I recommend them both.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 14, 2015, 09:56:39 am
To close the loop a bit, last night I was reading the article about Pope Francis. I'm not finished, but so far there is too much about the ex-pope Benedict and not enough about Francis.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2015, 10:58:47 am
To close the loop a bit, last night I was reading the article about Pope Francis. I'm not finished, but so far there is too much about the ex-pope Benedict and not enough about Francis.

I just started that one. I'll read more of it at lunch today.

Meanwhile, I neglected to mention that I found "An Exile in the Corn Belt," about the Arab Israeli writer (Sept. 7), interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2015, 01:42:03 pm
To close the loop a bit, last night I was reading the article about Pope Francis. I'm not finished, but so far there is too much about the ex-pope Benedict and not enough about Francis.

The title does seem to suggest that the article would have more about Francis, but maybe the problem is with the title, not the article.

I did, however, smile at this statement: "It is the particular genius of Catholicism that it continues to change while insisting that it has never changed." I've heard that before, and it sticks in my mind that the Jesuits are particularly good at it. And let us not forget that Francis is a Jesuit.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 15, 2015, 04:19:14 pm
I see the last part of the sentence, that Catholicism stays true to its core values, more than the first part, that the church changes. But I'm looking at it from the outside. Someone who is close to the church would of course see that it has changed a lot over the years.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 15, 2015, 04:47:07 pm
I see the last part of the sentence, that Catholicism stays true to its core values, more than the first part, that the church changes. But I'm looking at it from the outside. Someone who is close to the church would of course see that it has changed a lot over the years.

Some changes you can see even from the outside. For example, with Vatican II, the Roman Church decided that Mass could be said in the vernacular, and it was OK for the laity to receive Communion "in both kinds"--450 years after the Protestant Reformation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 16, 2015, 01:49:22 pm
I'm now reading the Sept. 14 article about the attorney who got life imprisonment for defended the Boston Marathon bomber, and other clients as well, and I'm finding the article riveting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 17, 2015, 12:58:23 pm
I'm now reading the Sept. 14 article about the attorney who got life imprisonment for the Boston Marathon bomber, and other clients as well, and I'm finding the article riveting.

Oh! I saw that and wanted to read it. Thanks for the reminder.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 17, 2015, 01:53:41 pm
I'm now reading the Sept. 14 article about the attorney who got life imprisonment for defended the Boston Marathon bomber, and other clients as well, and I'm finding the article riveting.

Oh! I saw that and wanted to read it. Thanks for the reminder.

I finished it today at lunch. I think it's very, very good. And my earlier comment was based on faulty memory. I thought I remembered that she got him "life." He did not get "life." I seem to have confused that case with another recent case where somebody got "life" because the jury couldn't agree on "death," but I can't remember which case that one was.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 22, 2015, 12:45:11 pm
I'm now reading the Sept. 14 article about the attorney who got life imprisonment for the Boston Marathon bomber, and other clients as well, and I'm finding the article riveting.

I'm reading it now, and I agree! I love her statement, "Legalized homicide is not a good idea in a civilized society." Kind of understated, but that's exactly how I feel. It's less about whether the person might actually be innocent (though of course that's a giant problem, too), but that the government should not be in the business of killing, even if the people are killers. One never knows for sure, but I'd like to think I'd feel the same even if [knock, knock] someone I knew were a victim.

However, the article contains one of their more egregious examples of the New Yorker's refusal to put an attribution verb before the subject and creating incredibly awkward writing as a result [ellipses mine]:

"You could count the number of women ... on one hand," Elizabeth Semel, who met Clarke during this period and now runs the death-penalty clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, recalls.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 22, 2015, 01:26:04 pm
However, the article contains one of their more egregious examples of the New Yorker's refusal to put an attribution verb before the subject and creating incredibly awkward writing as a result [ellipses mine]:

"You could count the number of women ... on one hand," Elizabeth Semel, who met Clarke during this period and now runs the death-penalty clinic at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, recalls.

Yeah, that one's a lulu.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 22, 2015, 10:57:37 pm
Yeah, that one's a lulu.

 :laugh:

Would you go so far as a doozy?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 23, 2015, 09:25:26 am
:laugh:

Would you go so far as a doozy?

 :laugh:  You bet!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2015, 02:26:34 pm
So I'm reading the Bethenny Frankel article (Sept. 21) (Heaven knows why   ::) ) and I see the adjective blond used to describe a woman (p. 61). My first reaction was, Oh, another mistake, probably by a copy editor who doesn't know the difference between blond and blonde. Then I got to thinking, Maybe it isn't a mistake. Maybe TNY is no longer observing the distinction between blond and blonde. And then I realized, I've never really noticed; maybe it never did.  ???

That got me to thinking about other uses that go beyond TNY. I'm pretty sure, for example, that Amy Schumer is a comedian, not a comedienne. Maybe actress, even, is falling into disuse?  ??? Are women who host things now hosts, or are they still hostesses?  ???

Are other formerly "masculine" nouns now considered gender neutral?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 27, 2015, 02:48:48 pm
Yes. I'm pretty sure the recent piece on Julianne Moore refers to her as an actor.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2015, 03:08:07 pm
Yes, I've seen the move toward actor, and have mixed feelings about it. It sounds more jarring (wait, she's a woman -- oh yeah) than the move to comedian from comedienne, which sounds dated. But also, why not call both genders actresses? The move is always toward the masculine. And yes, I can understand the reasons -- if you think calling Julianne Moore an actor is odd, imagine calling Sean Penn an actress. But still, it seems like yet another subtle form of linguistic sexism in a way. Sexism often involves thinking of men as people and women as women, and this assumption that the masculine form is standard seems like a variation on that.

That said, I have seen male coffee-servers referred to as baristas on a number of occasions (not in TNY, as far as I know). But I've chalked that up less to equal opportunity than to people who don't understand how Italian works.

I was in Italy once with a friend who attempted to repel some overaggressive female gypsies (is that an offensive term, BTW? If so, sorry) following us across a square by calling them sporko, which she had heard to be some kind of Italian insult (I thought it meant pig, but not according to Google Translate, which also says it's actually Basque). The women rolled their eyes and corrected her: sporka.

Actually, with two of them, it should have been sporki, I think. In any case, it was hilarious.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2015, 03:38:10 pm
Yes, I've seen the move toward actor, and have mixed feelings about it. It sounds more jarring (wait, she's a woman -- oh yeah) than the move to comedian from comedienne, which sounds dated. But also, why not call both genders actresses? The move is always toward the masculine. And yes, I can understand the reasons -- if you think calling Julianne Moore an actor is odd, imagine calling Sean Penn an actress. But still, it seems like yet another subtle form of linguistic sexism in a way. Sexism often involves thinking of men as people and women as women, and this assumption that the masculine form is standard seems like a variation on that.

That's more or less what was in the back of my mind.

I guess performer could be considered gender neutral, but it's not really specific enough to acting. A performer could be someone who spins plates, or balances something on the end of his or her nose.

I guess singers, at least, are usually just singers, regardless of gender.

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That said, I have seen male coffee-servers referred to as baristas on a number of occasions (not in TNY, as far as I know). But I've chalked that up less to equal opportunity than to people who don't understand how Italian works.

I think I have seen barista used in TNY, but I can't prove it so won't swear to it. In any case, I didn't know it was Italian. For no good reason, I thought it was Spanish. Are you saying that barista is a feminine form? I've never heard servers at hoity-toity coffee shops referred to as anything other than baristas.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on September 27, 2015, 06:17:58 pm
Barista means "bartender" in Italian, and can be male or female (i.e. there is no "baristo").  However, in the plural, two men are baristi and two women are bariste. 

As for the actor thing, the corollary is the continued use of "male model" and "male nurse".
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2015, 08:01:53 pm
As for the actor thing, the corollary is the continued use of "male model" and "male nurse".

Interesting point, although I'm not a hunnerd percent persuaded here because there might be situations where the gender descriptor is useful--though clearly there are situations, maybe even the majority of situations, where the gender descriptor is entirely unnecessary.

BTW, thanks for the explanation of barista.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 28, 2015, 05:34:55 pm
Barista means "bartender" in Italian, and can be male or female (i.e. there is no "baristo").  However, in the plural, two men are baristi and two women are bariste. 

Hunh! I guess I'm the one who doesn't know how language works.  ::) It seems to be irregular, though. Found this list of general rules online. It's clear there are exceptions, and apparently barista is one of them.

The basic rule is that masculine singular nouns end with -o, feminine singular nouns end with -a. Most words follow this form, but this is not always the case.

    Masculine singular nouns can end in -a (rare)
    Feminine singular nouns can end in -o (rare)
    Both masculine and feminine nouns can end with -e
    Nouns ending in -à are always feminine
    Nouns ending in -è are always masculine
    Nouns ending in -i and in -ù are usually feminine
    Nouns ending in -ione are usually feminine
    Nouns ending in -mma are usually Greek in origin and masculine


https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Italian/Nouns (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Italian/Nouns)

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As for the actor thing, the corollary is the continued use of "male model" and "male nurse".

I guess that is sort of the corollary, if the underlying assumption for actor, comedian, etc., is that those jobs acquired feminine forms when they stopped being performed exclusively by men.

Many jobs that are sometimes masculinized also have gender-neutral titles: postal carrier, police officer, firefighter, flight attendant, Congressional representative, server (or, as we used to call it when I was in the biz, "waitron").

As a writer, I've had trouble from time to time with "fisherman." The gender-neutral equivalent is supposed to be "angler," but who says that in ordinary conversation??

Of course, the big question in the gender-language challenge in English is pronouns for indeterminate people nouns. Like, is it the traditional "When a student finishes his classwork" or "When a student finishes his or her classwork ..." or do you alternate back and forth, or do you go with "their/they/them"? The last is my personally preferred approach (though I don't use it in professional writing) -- I think we should just bite the bullet and adopt it, but it makes some people shudder.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 28, 2015, 06:50:13 pm
As a writer, I've had trouble from time to time with "fisherman." The gender-neutral equivalent is supposed to be "angler," but who says that in ordinary conversation??

Of course, the big question in the gender-language challenge in English is pronouns for indeterminate people nouns. Like, is it the traditional "When a student finishes his classwork" or "When a student finishes his or her classwork ..." or do you alternate back and forth, or do you go with "their/they/them"? The last is my personally preferred approach (though I don't use it in professional writing) -- I think we should just bite the bullet and adopt it, but it makes some people shudder.

I know it's difficult and time consuming and certainly sometimes impossible, but I'm still stickin' with rewriting to work around the problem.

Waitron? Hey there, Mr. Roboto. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on September 28, 2015, 06:52:35 pm
Yes, Katherine, Italian is full of irregularities, like English.

In fact, in your example, the plural of sporka should be sporke (feminine plural).

So, the word for man is uomo.  Logically, the plural should be uomi, but it's actually uomini.  Go figure.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 30, 2015, 12:18:17 am
I know it's difficult and time consuming and certainly sometimes impossible, but I'm still stickin' with rewriting to work around the problem.

Sayeth what thee will, English hath never been a static tongue.

But verily, making the subject plural usually works in those situations.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 02, 2015, 08:10:38 pm
At the risk of being a spoiler, the part I liked best about Adam Gopnik's article about cities and books about cities (Oct. 5) comes at the very end, where he discusses a little book about New York City's poop scoop law.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 02, 2015, 09:55:15 pm
Have we discussed the David Sedaris piece in, I think, the second to latest issue about the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision? I thought it was hilarious as usual -- especially the lines comparing the right to marry with things like the right to wear Dockers to the Olive Garden -- and poignant without being sentimental, as always. He's brilliant that way. Still, I was sort of oddly disappointed that he and Hugh did not decide to tie the knot (despite the fiscal advantages!). Not that I care if anyone gets married or not; maybe I just thought ending with a marriage would give it that extra charge of poignancy.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 02, 2015, 10:41:59 pm
Have we discussed the David Sedaris piece in, I think, the second to latest issue about the Supreme Court's marriage equality decision? I thought it was hilarious as usual -- especially the lines comparing the right to marry with things like the right to wear Dockers to the Olive Garden -- and poignant without being sentimental, as always. He's brilliant that way. Still, I was sort of oddly disappointed that he and Hugh did not decide to tie the knot (despite the fiscal advantages!). Not that I care if anyone gets married or not; maybe I just thought ending with a marriage would give it that extra charge of poignancy.

The Sedaris piece was good, as usual. I thought he and his partner would marry--maybe they will, eventually--but somehow I feel it would have been, I don't know--a cop out?--if this article would have ended with their marriage. I thought the best line was that Sedaris was all for the marriage struggle "because it so irritated the fundamentalists." And something that he said about having the right to marry but not acting on it somehow resonates with me. But maybe that's because tomorrow morning I have to sit through a gay wedding, something Sedaris said gay people didn't force others to do.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 03, 2015, 12:10:20 pm
I also liked the Sedaris article and thought it struck just the right note.

Enjoyed "Love and War" about the Broadway production of An American in Paris. Joan Acocella talked a lot about the movie and it brought back good memories. AAIP is one of the few movies that I own on CD. The soundtrack by George Gershwin is worth the price alone.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 03, 2015, 04:08:37 pm
But maybe that's because tomorrow morning I have to sit through a gay wedding, something Sedaris said gay people didn't force others to do.  ;D

Well, see, I love weddings. I appreciated Sedaris' jokes about them being dorky, but I usually find them fun.

I hate to say this, but I've never been to a gay wedding. So if anyone out there reading this decides to get married and is gay, please invite me! I promise to bring a nice gift.  :D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 03, 2015, 06:27:15 pm
Well, see, I love weddings. I appreciated Sedaris' jokes about them being dorky, but I usually find them fun.

I hate to say this, but I've never been to a gay wedding. So if anyone out there reading this decides to get married and is gay, please invite me! I promise to bring a nice gift.  :D

Is liking weddings "a girl thing"? At least, I've never met a woman who didn't like weddings.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 03, 2015, 11:27:54 pm
Is liking weddings "a girl thing"? At least, I've never met a woman who didn't like weddings.  ???

Maybe, but for me it has little to do with romanticism. I just like the music and dancing and free meal and open bar.  ;D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 04, 2015, 01:12:42 am
I am not a big fan of weddings. They go on way too long and you have to spend most of your time with people you don't even know.

The only wedding I really enjoyed was my daughter's, and even then it was stressful at the end because we had to clean up, while my mother just wanted to go home and insisted on sitting in the car for an hour while we cleaned up.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 04, 2015, 10:44:55 am
I guess I should clarify that what I enjoy are actually the receptions. The weddings themselves range from pleasant enough to outright boring depending on setting, degree of formality and religiosity and traditionalism, aesthetics, length ... things like that.

Receptions I usually find outright fun, though I guess I wouldn't if I didn't know anybody. And by reception, I mean a proper party with food and drink and music and dancing -- not coffee in the church basement.

I hate to say this, but sometimes I even enjoy funerals. Not enjoy-enjoy, maybe more like appreciate -- at least the ones that fit my ideas of proper funeral style. Both of my parents, I'll have to say, had nice funerals. A few years ago I went to a Catholic mass funeral for an old high-school friend. The guy's family were very devout Catholics and the service itself was formal and traditional and impersonal -- a giant snooze, I'm sorry to say, for this non-Catholic. Then the guy's 20-something son got up and gave what was hands down the most amazing eulogy I'd ever heard -- funny, sad, perfectly capturing the guy's character and big personality, including his goofy quirks but also his great heart. Afterward, the son got a standing ovation from this giant packed church.

Years later, I was asked to write something about how to give a eulogy and I called up the son and asked how he'd gone about it. It was a very touching story. He said the day his father died was the worst day of his life, but the funeral was the best day of his life.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Penthesilea on October 05, 2015, 01:11:35 am
I guess I should clarify that what I enjoy are actually the receptions. The weddings themselves range from pleasant enough to outright boring depending on setting, degree of formality and religiosity and traditionalism, aesthetics, length ... things like that.

Receptions I usually find outright fun, though I guess I wouldn't if I didn't know anybody. And by reception, I mean a proper party with food and drink and music and dancing -- not coffee in the church basement.

I hate to say this, but sometimes I even enjoy funerals. Not enjoy-enjoy, maybe more like appreciate -- at least the ones that fit my ideas of proper funeral style. Both of my parents, I'll have to say, had nice funerals. A few years ago I went to a Catholic mass funeral for an old high-school friend. The guy's family were very devout Catholics and the service itself was formal and traditional and impersonal -- a giant snooze, I'm sorry to say, for this non-Catholic. Then the guy's 20-something son got up and gave what was hands down the most amazing eulogy I'd ever heard -- funny, sad, perfectly capturing the guy's character and big personality, including his goofy quirks but also his great heart. Afterward, the son got a standing ovation from this giant packed church.

Years later, I was asked to write something about how to give a eulogy and I called up the son and asked how he'd gone about it. It was a very touching story. He said the day his father died was the worst day of his life, but the funeral was the best day of his life.


I totally get you. I kind of like like the social aspect of funerals, too. The meeting of old friends, far away relatives, etc. After the actual church/secular service and burial.
Some people dislike the funeral feast because they think it's tasteless and disrespectful to the deceased. Like having a party on their expense. But I think humans need a kind of reassurance directly after leaving the cemetery. The mood is subdued at the beginning but tends to get lighter with time. It doesn't hurt the deceased and I think it helps the bereaved. Humans are social animals and they find solace in each other. In my book that's a good thing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 06, 2015, 09:45:44 am
Like having a party on their expense.

My dad's funeral was an actual party, in a restaurant that he and my stepmother liked to go to a lot. It was all her idea and planning. The restaurant's owner shut down the place for a couple of hours for the event. There was champagne, hors d'oeuvres, funny and poignant speeches. The owners sat down with me and told me a really touching story about my dad, and how nice he was to everyone on the restaurant's staff. My dad liked friends and jokes and stories and good meals. I'm sure it's just what he would have wanted.  :)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 06, 2015, 10:06:50 am
To bring this subject around to relevance again, I'd like to suggest that you, Katharine, should write a New Yorker piece about weddings and/or funerals!

The funeral seems to be a dying institution (sorry about the bad pun). I can't remember the last funeral I went to...probably my stepdad's about 15 years ago. These days it's all about the memorial service or celebration of life.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2015, 01:36:29 pm
The Oct. 5 article about the poet Kenneth Goldsmith bored and baffled me, except for one thing that I think sounds like fun. It's an avant garde technique called N+7, where a poet--really, anybody could do it--takes a text, removes certain words from it, and replaces each word with the seventh word that follows it in the dictionary. The article gives as an example a poet named Rosmarie Waldrop, who used this technique on the Declaration of Independence, and ended up with something that begins, "We holler these trysts to be self-exiled."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 09, 2015, 11:40:51 am
From the Sept. 21 issue:

"Blah blah blah [paraphrasing]," Todd Haynes, in whose Safe (1995) and Far From Heaven (2002) Moore has given two of her greatest performances, said.

What are style rules for if not to make writing clearer, smoother or more graceful? Or, if they must for whatever dumb reason prohibit declarative sentences in which the verb precedes the subject (tradition, I suppose, like their insistance on spellings like reëlection), how about just splitting it into two sentences?

"Blah blah blah," Todd Haynes said. Moore gave two of her greatest performances in Haynes' Safe and Far From Heaven.

That's still a little clumsy, but not laughably so. I highly doubt David Remnick wrote weird-ass sentences like the top one above when he was a reporter at the Washington Post.

Maybe the writers all find that style rule ridiculous and keep pushing it further and further into ludicrousness in hopes of forcing the magazine to change the rule.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 09, 2015, 06:26:11 pm
After reading that article I had the distinct impression that the author didn't like Julianne Moore very much.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 09, 2015, 08:04:27 pm
After reading that article I had the distinct impression that the author didn't like Julianne Moore very much.  :-\

I came away from it feeling that she might be a fine actor, but I wouldn't be much interested in knowing her personally.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2015, 02:21:27 pm
So. Gloria Steinem was Christian Bale's stepmother (Oct. 19). I didn't know that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 27, 2015, 05:36:34 pm
So. Gloria Steinem was Christian Bale's stepmother (Oct. 19). I didn't know that.

Me neither! But then, I learned only a few months ago that Julia Louis-Dreyfus' dad is one of the world's richest people.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 27, 2015, 08:59:06 pm
Me neither! But then, I learned only a few months ago that Julia Louis-Dreyfus' dad is one of the world's richest people.

I didn't know that!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 28, 2015, 01:04:27 pm
Maybe because of all the "procedurals" that I watch on TV, I got a kick out of the cartoon on page 31 (Oct. 26) with the caption, "Maybe it's always the person you least suspect because you're not a good detective."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 02, 2015, 12:15:12 pm
Every once in a while, an issue comes along that has a lot of content I'm interested in. The Oct. 19 issue is one. Just finished "Bombshells" by Claudia Roth Pierpont, reviewing a book by Karin Wieland on Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. It's a long article but very interesting and worthwhile. Also, the profile of Gloria Steinem by Jane Kramer is long but good and Malcolm Gladwell's comments about school shootings are useful. I have yet to read "Pond Scum" about H. D. Thoreau. Movie and theater reviews for "Fool for Love", "Steve Jobs" and "Pan" are good but the Shepard play review focuses mostly on Sam and less on his play. Even then, it fails to explain why he has the impact that he does.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 02, 2015, 01:10:53 pm
Every once in a while, an issue comes along that has a lot of content I'm interested in. The Oct. 19 issue is one. Just finished "Bombshells" by Claudia Roth Pierpont, reviewing a book by Karin Wieland on Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. It's a long article but very interesting and worthwhile. Also, the profile of Gloria Steinem by Jane Kramer is long but good and Malcolm Gladwell's comments about school shootings are useful. I have yet to read "Pond Scum" about H. D. Thoreau.

I agree with you about this issue. All those articles were very good reads, and so was the Thoreau article.

I didn't realize Dietrich did so much for the Allied troops during WW II.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 03, 2015, 11:54:16 am
I was so busy reading this issue that I might have missed an aerial view of the Grand Canyon if traveling buddy hadn't bonked me on the head and told me to look out the window!

So, last night I finished up "Pond Scum" about H. D. Thoreau. I didn't quite buy the author, Kathryn Schultz's premise that Thoreau was a curmudgeonly unlikable scumbag. She overreached in trying to prove her point. Certainly he was eccentric and probably autistic but others liked him, notably R. W. Emerson, and some unnamed friends who invited him to their engagements. It was interesting that one of my ancestors, R. L. Stevenson, wrote that his "valetudinarian healthfulness. . .is more delicate than sickness itself." And he would know about health/sickness, growing up in Edinburgh, Scotland, with its punishing climate.

His oft-quoted comment that "most men live lives of quiet desperation" was interpreted as a judgement on others by the author, but I have always seen it as a plea for compassion and a prescient view of the human condition. A point which the author leads up to but doesn't quite make is that Walden should not be read so widely by high school students as a model for a life. I agree with that. There are other Transcendentalists who would be better to read. But, like it or not, Thoreau is deeply embedded in the national culture and he's not going to disappear beneath the pond scum anytime soon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 04, 2015, 11:50:41 pm
Jeez. So I've gone from being caught up on my magazines (thanks to vacation) to having three issues "on the go" at once.  :(  Do I really want to read that article about Jeb Bush (Oct. 26) or call that issue done?  ???  I guess I'd call the Bush article a duty article.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 07, 2015, 04:17:50 pm
Jeez. So I've gone from being caught up on my magazines (thanks to vacation) to having three issues "on the go" at once.  :(  Do I really want to read that article about Jeb Bush (Oct. 26) or call that issue done?  ???  I guess I'd call the Bush article a duty article.  :(

Set it aside for now. If he drops out of the race, don't read it. If he gets the nomination, read it then.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 07, 2015, 06:39:58 pm
Set it aside for now. If he drops out of the race, don't read it. If he gets the nomination, read it then.

He and Ted Cruz have been demoted to the "kid's table" for the debates, so winning the nomination seems a long shot.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 07, 2015, 07:18:11 pm
Set it aside for now. If he drops out of the race, don't read it. If he gets the nomination, read it then.

Too late. I read it so I could put paid to that issue. And while I'm no supporter, I think he comes off much better than the nut-cases running for the Republican nomination--and better than his brother, Bush 43.

But didn't I used to hear that Jeb was "the smart one" anyway?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 07, 2015, 07:19:06 pm
He and Ted Cruz have been demoted to the "kid's table" for the debates, so winning the nomination seems a long shot.

The nuttier the Republican candidate, the better the chances for Clinton.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on November 07, 2015, 07:32:25 pm
He and Ted Cruz have been demoted to the "kid's table" for the debates, so winning the nomination seems a long shot. ote]

Just heard that Christ Christie was bumped from the main debate stage, but he's calling it a 'transfer' instead of a demotion of some sort.


http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/06/politics/chris-christie-fox-business-network-debate/
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 09, 2015, 02:25:45 pm
Being behind as usual, I'm now enjoying the Food Issue (Nov. 2). Shocking to learn that Michael Specter doesn't like chocolate chips (p. 64). I mean, who doesn't like chocolate chips?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2015, 02:06:47 pm
Calvin Trillin's Nov. 2 on North Carolina barbecue is quite enjoyable--as are all his articles on barbecue.

I loved that he mentioned that a rabbi in Joplin, Missouri, "a renowned Talmudist and pitmaster," pronounced that "any farm animal without scales that is subjected to slow heat from a hardwood fire for more than six hours is kosher."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 16, 2015, 02:09:50 pm
So of course I'm still w-a-a-a-y behind in my New Yorkers. Over lunch just now I finished Calvin Trillin's Nov. 3 article on barbecue and started Dana Goodyear's article on seaweed
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2015, 02:29:59 pm
Being w-a-a-a-y, w-a-a-a-y behind on my New Yorkers, I just finished the Nov. 2 article "Accounting for Taste." I found that very interesting.

Since I drink my breakfast coffee at home from a clear glass mug, I was particularly interested to read that coffee is said to taste nearly twice as intense when drunk from a white mug as it does when drunk from a clear glass mug. Maybe I need to change my breakfast habits!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 19, 2015, 04:31:46 pm
I often get behind when the food issue comes out too. There were lots of revelations in that article about perceptions and food. I suddenly became aware of the music playing in the background at restaurants and if it made me eat faster or more.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2015, 08:03:52 pm
I often get behind when the food issue comes out too. There were lots of revelations in that article about perceptions and food. I suddenly became aware of the music playing in the background at restaurants and if it made me eat faster or more.

That reminds me. I was told once that bars play loud music because it gets people to drink more.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 19, 2015, 10:18:39 pm
That reminds me. I was told once that bars play loud music because it gets people to drink more.

Maybe because they can't use their mouths to hold a conversation, so they use them to sip instead.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 20, 2015, 12:59:55 pm
 :D

I noticed a while ago that many places play sad music. You would think they'd do just the opposite. But I theorize that the sad music stirs up sad thoughts and we are moved to buy more to assuage them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 22, 2015, 01:01:06 pm
I heard the Clash's "London Calling" at Walgreen's a while back. They probably wanted me to stock up on batteries and bottled water.

If it had been followed by the Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime," I would have known for sure (and I would have picked up some peanut butter).  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2015, 02:26:48 pm
Anybody else read the piece about the pencil people in the Nov. 2 "Talk of the Town"? I enjoyed that.

So Eberhard Faber was one single real person.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 24, 2015, 02:05:56 pm
The Nov. 9 article about Icelandic rescue teams is fun. With names like Halli and Palli, the people sound like Tolkienian dwarves.

I wonder whether they have trees in Iceland? Does anybody know?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 05, 2015, 05:34:17 pm
Of course as usual I'm weeks behind in my magazines, but if anyone skipped over the Nov. 23 article "Unfollow: Biblical fundamentalism meets Twitter," I recommend going back and reading it. I was expecting something ho-hum when I started it, so imagine my surprise and fascination to find out that it's about a granddaughter of the infamous Fred Phelps! I'm finding it fascinating.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2015, 10:39:25 pm
The Nov. 9 article about Icelandic rescue teams is fun. With names like Halli and Palli, the people sound like Tolkienian dwarves.

I wonder whether they have trees in Iceland? Does anybody know?  ???

I thought it was kind of fun, too. Not quite my first choice in stories, but a cut above duty.

I passed on a link to a coworker who had just gone on a trip to Iceland after years of wanting to visit. I never heard back from her. People in corporate America are so weird. Wouldn't you just send back a quick courteous "Thanks, this looks interesting," even if you never actually read it?

Now I'm reading Kathryn Schulz's piece about weather in literature. It's mildly interesting. But wow, is she well-read. Either that, or she's really good at Google searches and Lexus-Nexus.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2015, 03:54:58 am
I thought it was kind of fun, too. Not quite my first choice in stories, but a cut above duty.

I passed on a link to a coworker who had just gone on a trip to Iceland after years of wanting to visit. I never heard back from her. People in corporate America are so weird. Wouldn't you just send back a quick courteous "Thanks, this looks interesting," even if you never actually read it?

I certainly would.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker: Brokeback Mountain By Annie Proulx, October 13, 1997
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on December 06, 2015, 12:26:38 pm


(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sunday_Header1.jpg)

A selection of stories from The New Yorker’s archive


Adaptations

The act of adaptation can be confusing, thrilling, and revelatory. In a way, it’s also a form of time travel, reaching back into the past to alter what’s come before. That’s what’s happened with the many films, books, and television shows that have their roots in The New Yorker. The movie musical “Meet Me in St. Louis,” in which Judy Garland sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” started life as a series of short stories written by Sally Benson; “Pal Joey,” starring Frank Sinatra, began as a series by John O’Hara. “The Addams Family” first appeared in a group of New Yorker cartoons. To go back and reëncounter these pieces, after experiencing their adaptations, is to discover classic stories that have been expanded and transformed.

It’s a tradition that continues. In 1997, the magazine published a short story by Annie Proulx about two cowboys who embark on a relationship while herding sheep in Wyoming. (It was the first story, Proulx said, in which her characters appeared “very damn real” to her.) Ten years ago this month, the film adaptation of “Brokeback Mountain” made stars out of the lead actors, Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and gave us an immortal line: “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Adaptations, in short, can be acts of regeneration. This week, we’ve assembled stories that have inspired, after their publication, new works of art. You’ll find Alice Munro’s “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” (the source for the film “Away from Her”), Susan Orlean’s “Orchid Fever” (on which both Orlean’s book “The Orchid Thief” and the film “Adaptation” are based), and Jonathan Safran Foer’s “The Very Rigid Search” (which became part of the book and the movie “Everything Is Illuminated”). We’ve also included “Casualties of War” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” both of which have been made into films as well. Finally, we’ve assembled a more comprehensive selection of works adapted from New Yorker pieces: you can read some of the originals online, and download the adaptations on iTunes. These pieces are as fresh today as they were when they were published. They reassure us that, at least in the world of art, there’s something like an afterlife.

—Erin Overbey and Joshua Rothman, Archivists




(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/1997/10/971013_r27422-320-240.jpg)



Fiction | October 13, 1997

Brokeback Mountain
During the day Ennis looked
across a great gulf and sometimes
saw Jack, a small dot moving
across a high meadow, as an
insect moves across a tablecloth;
Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis
as night fire, a red spark on the
huge black mass of mountain.

BY ANNIE PROULX



http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/10/13/brokeback-mountain




Title: Re: In the New Yorker: Brokeback Mountain By Annie Proulx, October 13, 1997
Post by: serious crayons on December 06, 2015, 02:24:58 pm

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sunday_Header1.jpg)

A selection of stories from The New Yorker’s archive

Looks like you beat me by two hours, John. I just saw this in my email and came here to post about it. I'm glad you got here first -- I was just going to write a quick comment, but your presentation is much better.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2015, 03:13:03 pm
"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" has been made into a film not once but twice. I knew Meet Me in St. Louis was inspired by stories by Sally Benson, but I don't recall knowing that those stories had been published in The New Yorker. Some of the others I knew were connected to TNY; others not.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2015, 09:36:53 pm
Yes, I watched the Ben Stiller version again last week, of TSLOWM and I want to see the Danny Kaye version. I thought the Stiller version was surprisingly good, entertaining, and a reflection of the times, since it depicted the demise of LIFE Magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker: Brokeback Mountain By Annie Proulx, October 13, 1997
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on December 07, 2015, 09:09:20 pm
Quote
(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sunday_Header1.jpg)

A selection of stories from The New Yorker’s archive

Looks like you beat me by two hours, John. I just saw this in my email and came here to post about it. I'm glad you got here first -- I was just going to write a quick comment, but your presentation is much better.


Thank you!  :-*


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 26, 2016, 02:26:40 pm
I'm surprised no New Yorker reader/Downton Abbey fan has mentioned the back cover of the Jan. 4 issue, "The Dowager's View of the World."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 28, 2016, 02:33:59 pm
With all that I've had going on of late, I just realized that I haven't gotten a magazine since the issue cover dated Jan. 4.  :o  I need to call customer service.  >:(

Coincidentally, that's the end-subscription date on my mailing label.  >:(

A couple of months ago, I need to update my credit card information for automatic renewal. I couldn't get the web site to work for me, so I phoned customer service. I bet that's what has my subscription screwed up.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 28, 2016, 06:52:34 pm
I didn't receive this week's issue yet (cover date Feb 1). I am feeling put out about it because R. received his two days ago and is ahead of me in reading!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 01, 2016, 03:29:37 pm
With all that I've had going on of late, I just realized that I haven't gotten a magazine since the issue cover dated Jan. 4.  :o  I need to call customer service.  >:(

Coincidentally, that's the end-subscription date on my mailing label.  >:(

A couple of months ago, I need to update my credit card information for automatic renewal. I couldn't get the web site to work for me, so I phoned customer service. I bet that's what has my subscription screwed up.  >:(

Well, I telephoned Customer Service at The New Yorker this afternoon, and, indeed, my subscription had been canceled--and Customer Service could not explain why or how. My subscription is to be restarted, though I won't see an issue until the one to be cover dated Feb. 22.   >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: milomorris on February 10, 2016, 04:07:38 pm
Question for you New Yorker fans:

Who is/are the writers who cover music/culture for the magazine? I have a pretty big classical music event coming up, and I think they might be interested.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 10, 2016, 04:20:56 pm
Question for you New Yorker fans:

Who is/are the writers who cover music/culture for the magazine? I have a pretty big classical music event coming up, and I think they might be interested.

Alex Ross seems to be the main writer on classical music right now, if I remember correctly.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: milomorris on February 10, 2016, 08:34:43 pm
Alex Ross seems to be the main writer on classical music right now, if I remember correctly.

Thank you.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 10, 2016, 10:40:20 pm
There's also the "Goings on about town" section, of which the Classical Music subsection comes first. I've noticed that there are quite a few more opera events mentioned lately. For things going on outside of NYC, there's the "Above & Beyond" section. It says to address all editorial and other correspondence to The New Yorker, 1 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007 and more information is available on the web site at newyorker.com
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 13, 2016, 04:39:05 pm
I have tried and tried to read the latest fiction by George Saunders called "Mother's Day" but I just can't finish it. Saunders covers the strange lives of suburbanites a la John Updike but there is just something so. . .mean spirited about it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 14, 2016, 05:11:04 pm
I have tried and tried to read the latest fiction by George Saunders called "Mother's Day" but I just can't finish it. Saunders covers the strange lives of suburbanites a la John Updike but there is just something so. . .mean spirited about it.

You make it sound interesting, but my subscription hasn't restarted yet.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 14, 2016, 05:29:43 pm
I have tried and tried to read the latest fiction by George Saunders called "Mother's Day" but I just can't finish it. Saunders covers the strange lives of suburbanites a la John Updike but there is just something so. . .mean spirited about it.

I haven't read that yet, but normally I love George Saunders. I'll check it out and see what I think.

Meanwhile, here's a kind of amusing essay by someone who tried to read a year's worth of New Yorkers at once, duty articles and all. It becomes an entertaining and educational yet grueling slog.

The New Yorker feast I had planned for myself was quickly devolving into a hotdog eating contest.

http://lithub.com/a-bikini-a-toothbrush-and-44-issues-of-the-new-yorker/ (http://lithub.com/a-bikini-a-toothbrush-and-44-issues-of-the-new-yorker/)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 18, 2016, 08:06:49 pm
FINALLY. I've got a New Yorker. The Feb. 22 issue arrived in today's mail.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 18, 2016, 10:53:37 pm

Meanwhile, here's a kind of amusing essay by someone who tried to read a year's worth of New Yorkers at once, duty articles and all. It becomes an entertaining and educational yet grueling slog.

The New Yorker feast I had planned for myself was quickly devolving into a hotdog eating contest.

http://lithub.com/a-bikini-a-toothbrush-and-44-issues-of-the-new-yorker/ (http://lithub.com/a-bikini-a-toothbrush-and-44-issues-of-the-new-yorker/)
Haha, that was a good read. Who is Kathryn Schulz, anyway? I'll start paying more attention to the authors!

When I lived in Detroit for four years, I received many magazines because my husband was in control of a $20 million advertising account, and he couldn't spend any of it on broadcast. I had a goal to read a magazine every day. Then, I upped it to three per day. I had to increase to 10 magazines per day eventually. By the time I was finished breastfeeding my son, I had read thousands of magazines. There is a lot of easily digestible content in most magazines, but the New Yorker is different.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2016, 10:45:35 am
I'm going through my pile of articles I ripped out to read before throwing the rest of the New Yorkers into recycling. So I'm just now reading Oliver Sacks' piece about Spalding Gray from last April. How did I miss this at the time? Fascinating and sad, especially now that both are gone.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 19, 2016, 11:36:02 pm
Reading the article "Last Days" by William Finnegan is very timely since Apple is objecting to the request to unlock the phones of Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik. The more we know about them, the better we may understand the mysterious and diabolical process of radicalization. What would motivate a couple with a young child who are doing well in America, with a good job and a comfortable middle class life, to scheme to end their lives and the lives of 14 others, workers at a center for the developmentally disabled, in a rain of gunfire?? 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 20, 2016, 12:38:56 pm
Just finished an article from my ripped-out pile, from June I think, about something similar -- a Belgian teenager who joined a radical Islamist group in Antwerp and then went to Syria and joined a group that became part of ISIS. His father struggled for years to get him back and finally succeeded, partly because the kid wasn't completely on board at that point anyway and had been beaten and imprisoned by the group because of it. Lots of horrifying details about the group's casual beheadings, shootings, torture, etc. When the kid got back to Belgium he gave information to authorities but they prosecuted him anyway because apparently they don't plea bargain in Belgium. The kid got a light sentence, however, and now he's crazily considering going back to Syria.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2016, 01:07:15 pm
Just finished an article from my ripped-out pile, from June I think, about something similar -- a Belgian teenager who joined a radical Islamist group in Antwerp and then went to Syria and joined a group that became part of ISIS. His father struggled for years to get him back and finally succeeded, partly because the kid wasn't completely on board at that point anyway and had been beaten and imprisoned by the group because of it. Lots of horrifying details about the group's casual beheadings, shootings, torture, etc. When the kid got back to Belgium he gave information to authorities but they prosecuted him anyway because apparently they don't plea bargain in Belgium. The kid got a light sentence, however, and now he's crazily considering going back to Syria.

I remember reading that article. I found it riveting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 20, 2016, 08:42:49 pm
I remember reading that article. I found it riveting.

Yeah, I guess I saw it as dutyish at the time. It is a bit, but in a valuable way.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 24, 2016, 01:31:25 am
I arrived home from babysitting around 3 today and kind of collapsed with my new copy of the New Yorker. It made me feel good to read about the Passion of the Little Match Girl and think, oh yes, I know all about that. To think, I knew about something covered in the New Yorker, before it was mentioned in TNY! It was actually my beau R. who gave me the CD of the Passion of the little match girl as well as Bang on a Can. I suspect that they were CDs that his wife had bought and liked. I think he prefers classical music.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 24, 2016, 10:33:29 am
Is that the one with the Oscars on the cover? I'm reading the interesting profile of Mr. Money Mustache. He's a blogger who saved so much he retired at 30 with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and now his family of three lives on about $25,000 a year. In fact, they live in your neck of the woods, Lee -- some little town near Boulder. The guy seems obsessively frugal, to say the least, but still inspiring.

I've seen his site before and been intrigued but not looked that deeply into it. Now I want to check it out more closely. I could never be THAT thrifty -- I like restaurants too much -- but I could stand to tighten my budget.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 24, 2016, 04:06:59 pm
Yes, that's the one. So, Mr. Money Mustache lives in Longmont, which is a little farther north than where LauraGigs and Offline Chuck live, and south of where Monica and Dave used to live. Scanning the article I can see that I'm a bit of a Mustachian myself even though I've never heard of this guy. I have been known even to scrub my floor with a sponge and sweep it with a whiskbroom and dustpan!

I'm looking forward to reading "Helium Dreams" about the resurgence of the airship, since I did ride in a zeppelin in 2013. Also, "The Stress Test" about stem-cell research since Monica and Dave have been involved in the tests to use stem cells to fight his multiple sclerosis. Also the article about leadership, since I'm in a leadership program in my new community. I'm sure friend Jeff will have something to say about the Justin Peck article. All in all, a must-read issue.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 24, 2016, 10:39:42 pm
I'm sure friend Jeff will have something to say about the Justin Peck article. All in all, a must-read issue.

Actually, the first thing I read was Anthony Lane's review of The Witch, a movie that seems right up my alley.

But it was interesting to read that Joan Acocella was actually critical of Justin Peck's work.

It was interesting to read that Peck likes to choreograph for men--young men. The piece of his that PA Ballet did in its most recent program was actually for men and women. On the other hand, the piece of Christopher Wheeldon's that was in the program was for four men.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 25, 2016, 10:12:01 am
Scanning the article I can see that I'm a bit of a Mustachian myself even though I've never heard of this guy. I have been known even to scrub my floor with a sponge and sweep it with a whiskbroom and dustpan!

Wait, I'm confused about how this is Mustachian. You'd do this as opposed to what? I mean, most people would use a mop instead of a sponge, because the handle makes it physically easier, but mops aren't especially expensive or wasteful. Do you mean you would do this instead of forking over money for a vacuum?

I usually sweep the kitchen with a whiskbroom and dustpan and vacuum the wood floors and rugs but I'm not nearly Mustachian enough, myself. I wish I'd been more on the Mustachian side for the past, oh, 35 years or so. I don't have any desire to retire early, but I'd like to be able to retire someday, or at least to be working on stuff I enjoy rather than just stuff that makes money (and not enough of it, at that).

I also wish I'd started a really popular blog. I considered starting one about eight or 10 years ago, about the time Mr. Mustache started his. Apparently his blog earns $400,000 a year.

In case anyone's interested, here it is: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/ (http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/)






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 25, 2016, 11:57:30 pm
I was going to start the Mr. Money Mustache article over supper this evening, but instead I decided to read Jeffrey Toobin on Antonin Scalia:

"Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed."

Wow! Don't hold back, Jeff!  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 26, 2016, 10:26:43 am
I was going to start the Mr. Money Mustache article over supper this evening, but instead I decided to read Jeffrey Toobin on Antonin Scalia:

"Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed."

Wow! Don't hold back, Jeff!  :laugh:

I don't know about the first sentence, but I don't quite agree with the second. I can't say it's all Scalia's doing, though.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 26, 2016, 10:30:00 am
I don't know about the first sentence, but I don't quite agree with the second. I can't say it's all Scalia's doing, though.

Read Toobin's piece. Even if it's a "duty."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 26, 2016, 10:34:30 am
Read Toobin's piece. Even if it's a "duty."

OK! Thanks for the tip.  :)

I just read a headline saying Scalia died while vacationing with a secret society of elite hunters.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 26, 2016, 01:25:58 pm
I just read a headline saying Scalia died while vacationing with a secret society of elite hunters.

 :laugh:

Yeah, maybe Dick Cheney accidentally shot him.  ;D

I also heard he was smothered with a pillow.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: milomorris on February 26, 2016, 02:28:14 pm
I just wanted to let you NYer fans know that last week's cover was a big hit with black folks. It was being shared all over Facebook, and people that have never read the mag were asking where to find it in the Philly area.

Congrats!!

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/02_22_16-400.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 28, 2016, 07:02:59 pm
Yes, that's the one. So, Mr. Money Mustache lives in Longmont, which is a little farther north than where LauraGigs and Offline Chuck live, and south of where Monica and Dave used to live. Scanning the article I can see that I'm a bit of a Mustachian myself even though I've never heard of this guy. I have been known even to scrub my floor with a sponge and sweep it with a whiskbroom and dustpan!

Sometimes the best way to get a floor clean is to get down on your hands and knees and scrub it. I don't see anything particularly Mustachian about that--except that he wouldn't buy his wife a mop. She must love him very much. He comes across to me as a fanatic, and people who are fanatics about anything can be difficult to live with.

Since I live in the very heart of a city that was surveyed and laid out 200 years before the automobile was invented, I expect he would approve of the fact that i don't have an automobile. On the other hand, I shudder to think what he would say about some other things about my lifestyle. (Even though I've had a lot of fun collecting model trains over the past 15 years, I'm presently worrying over the amount of money I've spend on them, money that could have been saved for retirement.)

Perhaps somewhere more appropriate than The New Yorker thread, somebody could explain to me how you get paid for blogging? I get that it's related to how many unique hits your blog gets in a given period--I guess usually a month--but who pays you?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 28, 2016, 07:32:37 pm
Your advertisers pay you. There are ads on the side and sometimes on the banner or in between paragraphs. We have them on BetterMost too. The advertisers pay a certain amount depending on how many subscribers or viewers you have.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 28, 2016, 08:32:41 pm
Your advertisers pay you. There are ads on the side and sometimes on the banner or in between paragraphs. We have them on BetterMost too. The advertisers pay a certain amount depending on how many subscribers or viewers you have.

Yes, of course. I left that out of my last post. But it still seems like there is a missing step in there somewhere.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 29, 2016, 10:48:51 am
From the article I was under the impression that Mr. MM didn't want to buy a mop because he thought it was a waste of space. I hardly ever drag out my mop, bucket and big jug of ammonia myself and I almost agree with him. Over the years I've collected a lot of cast off cleaning equipment and supplies. It seems that people start thinking about cleaning up and the first step is to buy a lot of supplies. I also have at least three vacuum cleaners. People buy replacement vacuums when theirs just need a small repair or they can't find the right size bags for them. I've gotten handy over the years and can make do with other people's castoffs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 29, 2016, 11:54:01 am
From the article I was under the impression that Mr. MM didn't want to buy a mop because he thought it was a waste of space.

That is what it said, but unless you're talking one of those big, industrial-size mops, with a bucket equipped with a wringer, how much space does a mop occupy?

And still sometimes the best way to get a floor clean is to get down on your hands and knees and scrub it. I'm a horrible housekeeper and even I know that.

People buy replacement vacuums when theirs just need a small repair or they can't find the right size bags for them.

I've never had trouble finding bags, but finding someone who can repair a vacuum cleaner can be another story. Same goes for men's electric shavers, btw. And sometimes when you do find someone who can do repairs, it costs almost as much as a new item. Around here, you can almost--not quite, but almost--buy a new pair of shoes for the price of having new heels and half-soles applied to a pair of shoes you already own.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 29, 2016, 01:01:47 pm
Sometimes the best way to get a floor clean is to get down on your hands and knees and scrub it. I don't see anything particularly Mustachian about that--except that he wouldn't buy his wife a mop. She must love him very much. He comes across to me as a fanatic, and people who are fanatics about anything can be difficult to live with.

Oh, somehow I missed the part about them not owning a mop. That's why Lee's post was so confusing.

According to a quick google, you can buy a mop for as little as $23 at Target. It lasts indefinitely. And since it's quicker than scrubbing your floor with a sponge, it frees you up to make far more money than you save by not buying one.

I own a mop, but I hardly ever use it. Nor do I scrub the floor with a sponge. I just let it stay dirty.

I agree that MMM comes across as a fanatic. I got the impression that the author wasn't all that fond of him.

Meanwhile, he spends money on marijuana and beer -- two items that, however enjoyable, are non-necessities.

Quote
Since I live in the very heart of a city that was surveyed and laid out 200 years before the automobile was invented, I expect he would approve of the fact that i don't have an automobile.

I wish I could do that. Between insurance, gas, maintenance, repairs, parking and the car itself (as well as storage, if you live in a downtown area, though I don't), cars are very expensive.

I live in the city, but it's a residential area and not quite walkable. There are stores and coffee shops and a library, but all 7 to 9 blocks away -- technically walking distance, but not a walk you'd typically make if the weather's bad or you're buying a week's worth of groceries for three people.

I'm going to make sure that the next place I live is more walkable and close to public transportation. I'll probably still keep my car, because I have friends who live outside the city, but I won't need to use it as much.

Quote
Perhaps somewhere more appropriate than The New Yorker thread, somebody could explain to me how you get paid for blogging? I get that it's related to how many unique hits your blog gets in a given period--I guess usually a month--but who pays you?  ???

Yes, of course. I left that out of my last post. But it still seems like there is a missing step in there somewhere.

I think companies also pay you to promote their products. As I recall, there's a passage in there saying MMM does this. He got in a tiff with Chase Bank because they wanted him to stop swearing and he told them to bug off. Which seems an odd choice of term, considering the complaint.

I've never had trouble finding bags, but finding someone who can repair a vacuum cleaner can be another story.

There's a vacuum-cleaner repair shop about five minutes from my house. A five-minute drive, that is. If I had to take it in without a car, it would be quite an ordeal.

Still, you might try googling. There are a handful of vacuum-repair shops in my area, so I assume you have some, too. Though they might not be close enough to carry your vacuum to.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 29, 2016, 01:03:10 pm
I just wanted to let you NYer fans know that last week's cover was a big hit with black folks. It was being shared all over Facebook, and people that have never read the mag were asking where to find it in the Philly area.

Congrats!!

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/02_22_16-400.jpg)

Thanks for the news, Milo!  :)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 29, 2016, 01:37:26 pm
I agree that MMM comes across as a fanatic. I got the impression that the author wasn't all that fond of him.

Agreed. I don't think I'd like him, either, not if he presumed to scold me about my lifestyle. Even if you disagree with the way someone leads his life, I think it's rude to scold him about it. But MMM is Canadian, and maybe what I'm taking as scolding is just a certain directness that Canadians have?  ??? (I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck about that; I'm seriously wondering.)

Quote
Meanwhile, he spends money on marijuana and beer -- two items that, however enjoyable, are non-necessities.

But he wouldn't buy his son those cards. Hmm. I don't know anything about that game his son is involved in, but beer and pot are transient; those cards, presumably, last--or at least get traded for other cards?

Quote
I live in the city, but it's a residential area and not quite walkable. There are stores and coffee shops and a library, but all 7 to 9 blocks away -- technically walking distance, but not a walk you'd typically make if the weather's bad or you're buying a week's worth of groceries for three people.

Yeah, I would have a problem if I had to buy groceries for more than one person, and I do have to shop every week.

Quote
I think companies also pay you to promote their products. As I recall, there's a passage in there saying MMM does this. He got in a tiff with Chase Bank because they wanted him to stop swearing and he told them to bug off. Which seems an odd choice of term, considering the complaint.

I got that; even as I type this, I'm looking at ads for Duluth Trading Company on the side of my screen (and that's a company whose web site I regularly check out, btw). But I'm still wondering how all this comes together. But as I said, that's probably better dealt with somewhere else. I'm not planning on trying to become a professional blogger; I'd just like to understand how it all comes together.

Quote
There's a vacuum-cleaner repair shop about five minutes from my house. A five-minute drive, that is. If I had to take it in without a car, it would be quite an ordeal.

Still, you might try googling. There are a handful of vacuum-repair shops in my area, so I assume you have some, too. Though they might not be close enough to carry your vacuum to.

Of course, in the heart of major cities, all kinds of small businesses like that are being forced out by rising rents; that's what happened to a shaver repair shop only a few blocks from my home. These businesses might still exist further out from the center of the city, but then, if you don't have a car and must depend on public transportation, even if you can get to them, you might have to devote an entire Saturday just to taking your vacuum cleaner to be repaired, and another entire Saturday to picking it up when it's ready. Then you have to ask yourself, What's more important, the time involved in getting your old cleaner repaired, or the money just to buy a new cleaner--which you can do by a few clicks on the internet.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2016, 02:31:32 pm
But MMM is Canadian, and maybe what I'm taking as scolding is just a certain directness that Canadians have?  ??? (I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck about that; I'm seriously wondering.)

You might be onto something. I have two (French) Canadian friends. One I've never heard say a word against the United States. He's very interested in U.S. sports and is a pleasant fellow. The other is constantly criticizing U.S. politics, its healthcare system, etc. While I often actually agree with him, his manner is so abrasive and smug that I just don't want to hear about it.

Once at a party, my then-husband was in a conversation with the latter guy, who was going on and on about how great Canada is compared to the United States. My ex is actually more interested in Canada than any U.S. person I know -- he always knows who the PM is, and even read a whole book about Canada. But finally he got fed up with this guy's bragging and exclaimed, "But R., it's boring! Canada is fucking boring!" The room went silent, and then everyone burst out laughing.

I've also seen at least one YouTube video and read one Canadian article wondering why Americans are such idiots. Not all Americans as individuals, of course, just some of the more ridiculous politics and beliefs to which many Americans subscribe. The problem is, I couldn't disagree with either one.  :-\

Quote
I got that; even as I type this, I'm looking at ads for Duluth Trading Company on the side of my screen (and that's a company whose web site I regularly check out, btw).

Glad to hear that! I lived in Duluth for five years.

Quote
But I'm still wondering how all this comes together. But as I said, that's probably better dealt with somewhere else. I'm not planning on trying to become a professional blogger; I'd just like to understand how it all comes together.

Well, I think you'd have to start by building up a big readership. I think you can maybe get google ads even if you have relatively few followers. And I believe if you link something on Amazon and a blog reader buys it, you get a small cut. But if you're trying to get big-name sponsors and freebies and $400,000 in ad revenue, I think like any publication you'd have to show the advertisers they'd reach a large audience.

There are all kinds of other tricks to promoting your site and luring readers. During my unemployed years, it was one money-making venture I considered. I even bought a book on it. But it's a lot of work with no guarantee of success.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2016, 02:40:10 pm
So from my ripped-out-article pile I've plucked one from last March by Seymour Hersh, recalling his coverage of the My Lai massacre.

He tells an anecdote about coming to St. Paul to speak, and afterward being approached by Hubert Humphrey. After losing the presidential race to Nixon because he was too closely associated with LBJ and the war, Humphrey was teaching at the college where Hersh spoke. Afterwards, Humphrey went to talk to him:

"I have no problem with you, Mr. Hersh," he said. "You were doing your job and you did it well. But as for those kids who march around saying, 'Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' Humphrey's fleshy, round face reddened and his voice grew louder with every phrase. "I say, 'Fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em.'"

 :o :o :o  That's doesn't exactly fit the image we Minnesotans cherish of our beloved Happy Warrior!


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 02, 2016, 05:21:09 pm
Once at a party, my then-husband was in a conversation with the latter guy, who was going on and on about how great Canada is compared to the United States. My ex is actually more interested in Canada than any U.S. person I know -- he always knows who the PM is, and even read a whole book about Canada. But finally he got fed up with this guy's bragging and exclaimed, "But R., it's boring! Canada is fucking boring!" The room went silent, and then everyone burst out laughing.

I might have asked him, If Canada is so wonderful, why did you leave? Or, Why don't you go back?

Quote
There are all kinds of other tricks to promoting your site and luring readers. During my unemployed years, it was one money-making venture I considered. I even bought a book on it. But it's a lot of work with no guarantee of success.

So there's at least one book out there on how to become a blogger? That would probably answer my questions. Stuff like, How do you really get started? How do you get a place on the Internet? How do you get advertisers? But let be, let be.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 02, 2016, 05:22:27 pm
So from my ripped-out-article pile I've plucked one from last March by Seymour Hersh, recalling his coverage of the My Lai massacre.

He tells an anecdote about coming to St. Paul to speak, and afterward being approached by Hubert Humphrey. After losing the presidential race to Nixon because he was too closely associated with LBJ and the war, Humphrey was teaching at the college where Hersh spoke. Afterwards, Humphrey went to talk to him:

"I have no problem with you, Mr. Hersh," he said. "You were doing your job and you did it well. But as for those kids who march around saying, 'Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' Humphrey's fleshy, round face reddened and his voice grew louder with every phrase. "I say, 'Fuck 'em, fuck 'em, fuck 'em.'"

 :o :o :o  That's doesn't exactly fit the image we Minnesotans cherish of our beloved Happy Warrior!

I remember that article. Doesn't fit my memory/image of HHH either, and I'm not even from Minnesota.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2016, 08:52:40 pm
I might have asked him, If Canada is so wonderful, why did you leave? Or, Why don't you go back?

Good point. I think it's because his ex-wife and kids live here.

He's just one of those guys who thinks he's always right and is intolerant of others' views. I know a lot of people are like that sometimes, myself included on some topics, but he made me mad at my son's graduation party a couple of years ago because he started bashing Christians. I find that offensive in general, all the more so in this case because some of the other guests, seated not far away, were Christians. (I mean mild-mannered Protestant churchgoers minding their own business, not the fire and brimstone crowd.)

I said, "Just what is it you have against Christians, R.? Is it because you think they believe they're always right and aren't tolerant of other people's religious views?"

He got my point but it still didn't shut him up. Luckily, he was the husband of a longtime friend. They got divorced a year or two ago and I haven't seen him since.

Quote
So there's at least one book out there on how to become a blogger? That would probably answer my questions. Stuff like, How do you really get started? How do you get a place on the Internet? How do you get advertisers? But let be, let be.

This particular book came out about eight years ago, so you wouldn't want that one. I believe there's also a Blogging for Dummies, which probably gets updated.

Getting a place on the internet isn't hard. First you have to buy a domain name, i.e., jeffwrangler.com. That's maybe $10 a year. Then you go to one of the sites that helps you set it up. I use GoDaddy, because that's where I bought my domain name, but there are others. I think Google has one. As for advertisers I'm not sure but again you could easily find out by googling.

By far the hardest part is finding stuff to write about and keep it up every day. Don't get me wrong, I love visiting Wrangler's [W]rambles, but out there among the public it might not draw in unique page views by the hundreds of thousands.

I kept a blog for a while -- no ads, not many readers, no revenue whatsoever -- but I felt like it was keeping me from more important writing so I let it slide.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 02, 2016, 09:12:13 pm
Good point. I think it's because his ex-wife and kids live here.

He's just one of those guys who thinks he's always right and is intolerant of others' views. I know a lot of people are like that sometimes, myself included on some topics, but he made me mad at my son's graduation party a couple of years ago because he started bashing Christians. I find that offensive in general, all the more so in this case because some of the other guests, seated not far away, were Christians. (I mean mild-mannered Protestant churchgoers minding their own business, not the fire and brimstone crowd.)

Thank you, on behalf of mild-mannered, socially conscious mainline Protestants everywhere.  ;D

Quote
I said, "Just what is it you have against Christians, R.? Is it because you think they believe they're always right and aren't tolerant of other people's religious views?"

He got my point but it still didn't shut him up. Luckily, he was the husband of a longtime friend. They got divorced a year or two ago and I haven't seen him since.

Somehow I doubt you've shed any tears over that.  8)  ;)

Quote
This particular book came out about eight years ago, so you wouldn't want that one. I believe there's also a Blogging for Dummies, which probably gets updated.

Well, there seem to be books "for Dummies" for just about everything else, so I'm sure there must be one blogging, too.  ;D

Quote
Getting a place on the internet isn't hard. First you have to buy a domain name, i.e., jeffwrangler.com. That's maybe $10 a year. Then you go to one of the sites that helps you set it up. I use GoDaddy, because that's where I bought my domain name, but there are others. I think Google has one. As for advertisers I'm not sure but again you could easily find out by googling.

By far the hardest part is finding stuff to write about and keep it up every day. Don't get me wrong, I love visiting Wrangler's [W]rambles, but out there among the public it might not draw in unique page views by the hundreds of thousands.

I kept a blog for a while -- no ads, not many readers, no revenue whatsoever -- but I felt like it was keeping me from more important writing so I let it slide.

Oh, not to worry. I'm sure you've noticed that sometimes I go for days without writing anything. Then I notice that fact, and I think, "Oh, shit, I guess I better find something to say!"  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2016, 02:54:26 pm
I highly, highly recommend David Remnick on Donald Trump in the March 14 issue. I generally avoid political commentary, because it bores me, but Remnick's is a great piece of writing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 11, 2016, 09:36:59 pm
I highly, highly recommend David Remnick on Donald Trump in the March 14 issue. I generally avoid political commentary, because it bores me, but Remnick's is a great piece of writing.

All right, Jeff, but only on your well-trusted say so. I'm seriously oversaturated with information on all four (it's down to four now, right?) remaining candidates. Two would be catastrophic, two would be acceptable in one way or another... that's about all I know at this point. When the time comes to pull the lever, it should be pretty clear-cut.






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 13, 2016, 05:38:05 pm
All right, Jeff, but only on your well-trusted say so. I'm seriously oversaturated with information on all four (it's down to four now, right?) remaining candidates. Two would be catastrophic, two would be acceptable in one way or another... that's about all I know at this point. When the time comes to pull the lever, it should be pretty clear-cut.

Oh, I hear ya. I'm sick and tired of it myself. I guess I read Remnick's commentary only because it wasn't a full-scale article, but reading it made me go, "Woo-hoo!"  :laugh:

I just thought it turned out to be a great piece of writing.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 17, 2016, 09:50:30 am
One day recently I was reading something from the New Yorker online, and on the right rail it showed the top 5 stories -- all 5 were about Donald Trump. I'm so sick of that name I'd refuse to vote for him for that reason alone!

But unfortunately, the way America works is just the opposite. The more people hear a name the more interesting that person seems to become to a large share of the public, which generates a self-fulfilling circle.

Which is why I see/hear Trump's name on average about once an hour and I see/hear Kim Kardashian's probably at least once a day.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 17, 2016, 05:26:50 pm
Well, there's a respite of sorts in the new issue. A story by Annie Proulx!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 17, 2016, 07:30:56 pm
Well, there's a respite of sorts in the new issue. A story by Annie Proulx!!

Why, so there is!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 29, 2016, 09:35:07 pm
Well, there's a respite of sorts in the new issue. A story by Annie Proulx!!

Read it over lunch today. Her punctuation is more standard compared to her Wyoming stories. But then I always had the suspicion that in the writing of her Wyoming stories she was trying to emulate how certain Wyoming people talk.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2016, 06:55:34 pm
I'm a bit annoyed with myself right now. As usual I have three issues going at once. In something I read in one of them, I came across one of those New Yorker constructions that we've discussed before but that still makes me want to scream. Unfortunately, I didn't mark the article, page, and issue, and now I can't find it again to share the pain. ...

In this case, to begin with, the sentence was nearly as long as a paragraph. And it was one of those that went, "'[Quotation,]' name, [string of at least three long identifiers], said.'

 ::)

If I can locate the offensive sentence, I'll share it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 30, 2016, 09:43:10 pm
I'm a bit annoyed with myself right now. As usual I have three issues going at once. In something I read in one of them, I came across one of those New Yorker constructions that we've discussed before but that still makes me want to scream. Unfortunately, I didn't mark the article, page, and issue, and now I can't find it again to share the pain. ...

In this case, to begin with, the sentence was nearly as long as a paragraph. And it was one of those that went, "'[Quotation,]' name, [string of at least three long identifiers], said.'

 ::)

If I can locate the offensive sentence, I'll share it.

Please do!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2016, 06:44:11 pm
I'm going to skip the fashion-related articles in the March 21 issue. However, I heartily recommend the article in that issue about Kate del Castillo, the telenovela actress who took Sean Penn along with her to visit El Chapo. That one is a humdinger.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 07, 2016, 08:35:59 pm
In his movie review (April 4), Anthony Lane describes Batman and Superman as "bulging in all the right places."  :laugh:

Would you like to be more specific, Anthony?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on April 08, 2016, 08:59:14 am
:laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2016, 01:36:10 pm
I wonder whether the Manor House Motel still exists in Aurora, Colorado (Gay Talese, April 11 issue)? Probably not. I haven't finished the article, so maybe Talese has something to say about that. Maybe Front Ranger could do some sleuthing to find the place, or where it was located.  ;D

I am enjoying this article immensely, though I can image Mr. Shawn would have never published it.  :laugh:

And one sentence in particular should resonate with Brokies: "More men than Foos could count urinated in the sink."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 12, 2016, 08:17:08 pm
I haven't read that article but I have read articles in the past by Gay Talese and they were a little shocking to my Midwest sensibilities. I checked on the Manor House Motel. There is a groupon for it and a yelp page but other links indicate it is closed. It also has a Facebook page. 

I know we often carp about grammatical errors in the New Yorker. Today I was reading Jet Set Magazine about an exclusive luxury resort hotel in Colorado, and I was literally turning my eyes away in revulsion and making horrible faces. See what you think (http://www.kesslercanyon.com/media/uploads/12/articles/Jet_Set_Combined.pdf).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 12, 2016, 08:18:05 pm
I wonder whether the Manor House Motel still exists in Aurora, Colorado (Gay Talese, April 11 issue)? Probably not. I haven't finished the article, so maybe Talese has something to say about that. Maybe Front Ranger could do some sleuthing to find the place, or where it was located.  ;D

I am enjoying this article immensely, though I can image Mr. Shawn would have never published it.  :laugh:

And one sentence in particular should resonate with Brokies: "More men than Foos could count urinated in the sink."  :laugh:

I haven't read this. I excused myself from reading it because Talese made some allegedly sexist/racist comments at some recent event (among other things, he said he didn't find any women writers "inspirational" except Mary McCarthy, though he later tried to clarify) and, although I tend to be a teensy bit skeptical about the outcry in those situations, I welcome any opportunity to pare down my reading list. And this article didn't interest me that much intrinsically, anyway.

But Talese has been slammed for it ethically: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/04/gay_talese_s_unethical_new_yorker_article_on_gerald_foos.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/04/gay_talese_s_unethical_new_yorker_article_on_gerald_foos.html)

It's been a rough week for the New Yorker. Meanwhile, Calvin Trillin has been slammed on the internet for what's being called a racist poem. https://www.google.com/search?q=calvin+trillin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=calvin+trillin+poem&tbm=nws (https://www.google.com/search?q=calvin+trillin&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=calvin+trillin+poem&tbm=nws)

I hesitate to reveal my own possible racism, but I didn't think Trillin's poem -- while not especially entertaining and understandably mildly annoying -- was really THAT offensive. But maybe that's easy for me to say as a privileged non-Asian person.

All I know is, you have to be careful these days.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 12, 2016, 08:20:14 pm
I haven't read that article but I have read articles in the past by Gay Talese and they were a little shocking to my Midwest sensibilities. I checked on the Manor House Motel. There is a groupon for it and a yelp page but other links indicate it is closed. It also has a Facebook page.  

I know we often carp about grammatical errors in the New Yorker. Today I was reading Jet Set Magazine about an exclusive luxury resort hotel in Colorado, and I was literally turning my eyes away in revulsion and making horrible faces. See what you think (http://www.kesslercanyon.com/media/uploads/12/articles/Jet_Set_Combined.pdf).


What's the grammatical thing? I haven't read the article about the resort. Though if Kevin Costner is staying there, I'd be tempted to check in.

UPDATE; OK, so I skimmed the article and see why you were unable to offer a single example of its egregiousness. It reads like something written by someone for whom English is not a first language (apologies to Chrissi and others who are FAR more adept at English than this author) and also did not receive the benefit of an editor. And most irksome of all, it looks like the kind of publication that would pay decently. Pitch them, Lee!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2016, 09:53:39 pm
But Talese has been slammed for it ethically: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/04/gay_talese_s_unethical_new_yorker_article_on_gerald_foos.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2016/04/gay_talese_s_unethical_new_yorker_article_on_gerald_foos.html)

That doesn't surprise me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 18, 2016, 01:32:35 pm
Over lunch today I became happily immersed in the story about the Via Alpina (April 11).  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 18, 2016, 01:46:24 pm
Artisanal alert! Check out Dana Goodyear's "Mezcal Sunrise" in the Annals of Alcohol series in the April 4 issue!! I wonder if "artisanal" is code for "hand-picked worms".  :laugh:

Unfortunately, the article is a long one and I don't know if I'll get around to reading it and finding out, with my current crazy schedule.

The Shouts & Murmurs page was sort of interesting, on grains that are poised to steal the spotlight from quinoa. Also, "The End of Ice" is personally interesting to me since I have visited two of the world's greatest glaciers, the Khumbu in Nepal and the Mer de Glače (http://www.chamonix.net/english/leisure/sightseeing/mer-de-glace) in France. Finally, I avidly read, "Operatic Startups" by Alex Ross because of our friend Meryl. He mentioned the "semi-resurrected NYC Opera" so that was semi-good to hear about.

They seem to be tinkering with the layout again. I have to grudgingly admit that it looks better. I'm a New Yorker purist; I don't like to see change.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 19, 2016, 08:06:23 pm
The article "Beautiful Monsters" in the April 18 issue is misnamed. It is a biography of Niki de Saint Phalle, who was a fascinating person. But the title doesn't mention her name, just "Letter from Italy" (she wasn't Italian) and "Art and obsession in Tuscany" (she worked in several countries). It was more compelling than any bio I've read in The New Yorker in a long time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on April 19, 2016, 09:24:28 pm
Here's a New Yorker article about an event that I was a part of a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/honoring-verdi-on-seventy-second-street

And here's proof I was there!  ;D

(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h269/merylmarie/Verdi%20Square%20gathering%204-16_zpsq4tauapn.jpg) (http://s66.photobucket.com/user/merylmarie/media/Verdi%20Square%20gathering%204-16_zpsq4tauapn.jpg.html)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 19, 2016, 10:03:54 pm
Happy 200th or whatever birthday, Verdi! So awesome to know someone who actually went to his birthday party, Meryl!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on April 20, 2016, 08:35:44 am
Peek a boo, we see you!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 28, 2016, 01:29:46 pm
Thanks to reading The New Yorker, I get to "meet" interesting people, usually artists, who make me feel how dull, and boring, and safe, and conventional my life has been. I never heard of Niki de Saint Phalle until I read Ariel Levy's April 18 article. I also learn things that I find interesting. Thanks again to the April 18 issue, I now know more about the Spanish Civil War and the Americans who fought in it than I ever did before. Until I read the article, I knew Franco was a Fascist, but I really didn't know who were the Nationalists and who were the Republicans, and now I do.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 05, 2016, 01:33:49 pm
Who knew that Paris has a farm show!  :D  (Lauren Collins, April 4--which goes to show you how far behind I am!  :laugh:  )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 06, 2016, 10:38:29 am
Thanks for pointing out that article, Jeff! I guess I'm as far behind as you are. But it's the farming season after all!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 10, 2016, 02:03:15 pm
Yesterday, while the window installers were at work in my place, I couldn't do anything except hole up in a corner of the kitchen and read The New Yorker. I'm not by any means completely caught up, but I highly, highly recommend David Denby's artile in the May 2 issue about censorship and the movies. Denby advances the interesting and provocative thesis that while we generally hold censorship to be a Bad Thing, the code that went into effect in Hollywood in the early 1930s actually forced the movies to become more creative. I'll even quote him: "In effect, censorship created plot, and in the process yielded one of the greatest of American film genres: thirties romantic comedy, including the dizzier versions celebrated as screwball comedy."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 10, 2016, 11:04:22 pm
Yes, I read that article avidly! Although I miss some of the movies that stretched the boundaries more.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 11, 2016, 11:55:02 am
Yes, I read that article avidly! Although I miss some of the movies that stretched the boundaries more.

They're probably available on YouTube, or somewhere.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 11, 2016, 07:48:06 pm
I don't know about that. I looked for Casablanca on YouTube recently; couldn't find it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 11, 2016, 08:44:54 pm
I don't know about that. I looked for Casablanca on YouTube recently; couldn't find it.

I don't think I would have expected to find Casablanca on a platform like YouTube ... because it's Casablanca.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on May 12, 2016, 10:30:57 am
Some movies can be found on YouTube, and some can't.

Some are uploaded and can be viewed for free.  Others, you have to pay for.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 15, 2016, 12:03:58 pm
I have a Roku device that lets you search for movies by title from whatever platforms you happen to pay for. So I have Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO Go. The other night I watched Bridge of Spies that way. There's often some cost involved, even if you have Amazon Prime. If you don't have that service, it's probably a couple of dollars more, but possibly worth it if you want to watch something enough.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 17, 2016, 10:26:08 am
Apparently The New Yorker has a blog called Page Turner, and, back in March, there was an entry about Annie Proulx's new book, Barkskins. It looks to be interesting.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-annie-proulx-2016-03-21 (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-annie-proulx-2016-03-21)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 17, 2016, 01:24:27 pm
I liked the article about hunting for treasure the Nazis stole and hid in Lower Silesia, Poland (May 9).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on May 18, 2016, 10:49:11 am
Apparently The New Yorker has a blog called Page Turner, and, back in March, there was an entry about Annie Proulx's new book, Barkskins. It looks to be interesting.

When my cousin and his partner got married, they had a drag queen run the whole show and her name was "Paige Turner".

:laugh:

(http://i60.tinypic.com/254x9tu.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2016, 01:11:53 pm
Well, I just read Lauren Collins' article on Melania Trump in the May 9 issue. I've already read the article about the Nazis' stolen treasure hidden in Poland, and Hilton Als' review of Long Day's Journey Into Night. I don't know that there's anything else in this issue that interests me. Is there anything else in the issue I should read?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 19, 2016, 09:22:29 pm
I enjoyed the article "Hive Mind" on Samantha Bee by Emily Nussbaum on page 72.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 27, 2016, 12:43:06 pm
I wasn't going to read the Billy Eichner article (May 23). I'd heard of him, had a vague and, it turns out, close but not quite accurate idea of what he did in Billy on the Street, and the article subtitle on the TOC page, "Billy Eichner's assaultive comedy," was not encouraging, but then I was turning the page and my eye caught the phrase, "Eichner knew he was gay," and I thought, Oh, shit, I guess I should read this. Sense of tribal solidarity and duty, I guess. So I read it, but it could be skipped with no loss.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 28, 2016, 11:41:23 am
I wasn't going to read the Billy Eichner article (May 23). I'd heard of him, had a vague and, it turns out, close but not quite accurate idea of what he did in Billy on the Street, and the article subtitle on the TOC page, "Billy Eichner's assaultive comedy," was not encouraging, but then I was turning the page and my eye caught the phrase, "Eichner knew he was gay," and I thought, Oh, shit, I guess I should read this. Sense of tribal solidarity and duty, I guess. So I read it, but it could be skipped with no loss.

I may skip the article, but I've seen Billy Eichner a few times (he was a regular on Parks and Recreation in the last season or two, and I've seen snippets of Street) and he's pretty funny.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 28, 2016, 12:34:03 pm
The New Yorker has been the target of outrage lately, which seems rare. First there was a huge outcry over a poem about Chinese food by Calvin Trillin that was supposed to be light Trillinesque satire of foodies but among Asian Americans was widely seen as racist. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/04/have-they-run-out-of-provinces-yet-by-calvin-trillin (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/04/have-they-run-out-of-provinces-yet-by-calvin-trillin)

Now today, there's this harsh takedown of an online piece about transgender bathrooms. It's a little confusing since I didn't read the original article and I'm not up on the latest in transgender bathroom law. But the author considers the piece deeply flawed in a logical and legal way as well as transphobic. http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/05/27/jeannie_suk_s_newyorker_com_article_was_sloppy_and_inaccurate.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/05/27/jeannie_suk_s_newyorker_com_article_was_sloppy_and_inaccurate.html)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 29, 2016, 04:44:12 pm
But here's a fun treat! In honor of the Summer Fiction Issue, the New Yorker emailed me a selection of some memorable short stories. Two are among my all-time favorites. I can't remember the George Saunders' one, but if I read it that would be up there, too. I love George Saunders' fiction. One of these I have praised on this very thread! http://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/issue/the-sunday-newsletter-political-outsiders?mbid=nl_Sunday%20Longreads%20%2839%29&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=8987647&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNDczMzI2S0&spJobID=922826207&spReportId=OTIyODI2MjA3S0 (http://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/issue/the-sunday-newsletter-political-outsiders?mbid=nl_Sunday%20Longreads%20%2839%29&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=8987647&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNDczMzI2S0&spJobID=922826207&spReportId=OTIyODI2MjA3S0)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 01, 2016, 09:27:53 pm
Over lunch today I read the article about the goings-on at Oberlin (May 30). The experience of Roger Copeland, discussed on pp. 53-54, is similar to something that happened to a friend of mine who taught at a local college. My friend has now retired from teaching.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 02, 2016, 11:25:41 am
I recommend the June 6 and 13 article about the Muslim tamale seller who lived in Sheridan, Wyoming, and what has happened now that his descendants have attempted to create a mosque in Gillette.

Does make me think that perhaps Wyoming is not a place I would want to retire to after all.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 03, 2016, 09:34:15 pm
Does make me think that perhaps Wyoming is not a place I would want to retire to after all.  :(

Well, I haven't read the article but if the point is that the Muslims faced prejudice, it's no surprise that Wyoming isn't a hotbed of tolerance. In fact, I believe I saw a movie about that once. Or rather, 21 times.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 03, 2016, 11:46:10 pm
Well, I haven't read the article but if the point is that the Muslims faced prejudice, it's no surprise that Wyoming isn't a hotbed of tolerance. In fact, I believe I saw a movie about that once. Or rather, 21 times.

You should read it. The thing is, the family has been there since the early twentieth century, and the patriarch was a long-time fixture of the Sheridan community, and nobody bothered them until one asshole took it upon himself to stir things up.

So I guess that's all it takes. One asshole.

Substitute one elderly retired gay man for a Muslim family. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 22, 2016, 01:01:08 pm
Once again, even if you don't like to read political stuff in TNY, do read David Remnick's editorial in the June 20 issue. The language he chooses to characterize Donald Trump is highly entertaining!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 29, 2016, 01:33:24 pm
I was about to give up on the article about microbes and drug-resistant infections (June 20) (a duty article if there ever was one), but then at the top of the third column on page 56, it started to get really interesting. I felt a personal connection to the story when I read that streptomycin, "the first cure for tuberculosis," apparently was discovered in 1943. That was the year my grandfather died of tuberculosis.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 01, 2016, 12:35:41 pm
The New Yorker is not looking good in the Gay Talese debacle. I have long been suspicious of Gay Talese's fact checking (I once read an annotation of his most famous piece, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," in which he explained his sources and methods, and they seemed sloppy).

But aren't New Yorker fact checkers supposed to be impeccable? The story's flaws were as easily obtainable as real-estate records.

It's like the NY editors were willing to go on faith that a respected old white guy couldn't possibly have screwed up.

I will say that by disavowing his own book before it's even out, Talese is showing integrity. Better than Jonah Lehrer, who lied to cover up his own credibility screwups for as long as he could.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/01/us/politics/ap-us-gay-talese-book.html (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/01/us/politics/ap-us-gay-talese-book.html)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 01, 2016, 01:11:48 pm
The New Yorker is not looking good in the Gay Talese debacle. I have long been suspicious of Gay Talese's fact checking (I once read an annotation of his most famous piece, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," in which he explained his sources and methods, and they seemed sloppy).

But aren't New Yorker fact checkers supposed to be impeccable? The story's flaws were as easily obtainable as real-estate records.

It's like the NY editors were willing to go on faith that a respected old white guy couldn't possibly have screwed up.

I will say that by disavowing his own book before it's even out, Talese is showing integrity. Better than Jonah Lehrer, who lied to cover up his own credibility screwups for as long as he could.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/01/us/politics/ap-us-gay-talese-book.html (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/07/01/us/politics/ap-us-gay-talese-book.html)

You mean the article about the Peeping Tom?

Yes, the fact checkers did have a reputation for being impeccable--once upon a time. But lately it seems the fact checking is as bad as the copy editing.

How the mighty have fallen. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 01, 2016, 02:01:12 pm
Several articles in the June 27 issue are read-worthy. The article "The Shadow Doctors" by Ben Taub, brought a chill to my soul. A government bent on destroying its own people now turns to bombing hospitals and places where children are sheltered. How much more will we endure? Right after that is the article "Making a Killing" by Evan Osnos about the growth of the gun culture in the US. It explained a lot of things to me. . .such as why gun owners so stubbornly cling to their guns and why they seem to need so many. People have been manipulated by the gun manufacturers more than they think.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 01, 2016, 06:08:56 pm
You mean the article about the Peeping Tom?

Yes. He didn't even own the motel during a big chunk of the period Talese's book covers.  :P

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 01, 2016, 06:43:39 pm
I'm beginning to wonder how Gay Talese is doing, cognitive healthwise. Here's a response he gave to Vulture.com about what he's reading this summer. Can't tell if it was written or spoken, but either way ...

Gay Talese, writer
“I’m reading Richard Cohen’s book on Nora Ephron — I have the galley. It’s a wonderful book. My cousin Nick Pileggi was married to her, I knew her. This guy Richard Cohen is the only guy who could have written this book. It is a terrific book, and I knew Nora, I’m her cousin-in-law.


Oh, and to get back on topic, here's what David Remnick will be reading:

David Remnick, editor-in-chief, The New Yorker
“The last book I bought hasn't arrived at home yet; it’s A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell. And then the two books I'm currently reading: I'm just finishing Robert Gottlieb's memoirs — I wonder why. It isn’t out yet, but I have the galley. And Moby-Dick I'm reading again. It's even better than I remembered it. I sound like a dummy extolling the virtues of Moby-Dick, but god is it good. I figured since I'm not going to go to the beach I might as well read about it.


I have never read Moby-Dick, probably never will read Moby-Dick, and also probably -- never say never! -- be editor of the New Yorker.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 01, 2016, 08:18:39 pm
I'm beginning to wonder how Gay Talese is doing, cognitive healthwise. Here's a response he gave to Vulture.com about what he's reading this summer. Can't tell if it was written or spoken, but either way ...

Gay Talese, writer
“I’m reading Richard Cohen’s book on Nora Ephron — I have the galley. It’s a wonderful book. My cousin Nick Pileggi was married to her, I knew her. This guy Richard Cohen is the only guy who could have written this book. It is a terrific book, and I knew Nora, I’m her cousin-in-law.


I'm not sure what's wrong with this quote. I checked on Wikipedia and Nick was married to Nora from 1987–2012. I assume he has the advance galleys of the book, which hasn't come out yet.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 02, 2016, 04:51:23 pm
I'm not sure what's wrong with this quote. I checked on Wikipedia and Nick was married to Nora from 1987–2012. I assume he has the advance galleys of the book, which hasn't come out yet.

I was referring to how he repeats the same information twice in the same paragraph.

My cousin Nick Pileggi was married to her, I knew her.... I knew Nora, I’m her cousin-in-law.

I guess the weirdness partly depends on whether he wrote it or spoke it, which the story doesn't clarify. If he wrote it, it's ridiculous. If he spoke it, well, people do that kind of thing sometimes. Still, when my mom developed Alzheimer's, repeating facts in conversation was among the first big signs.







Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 04, 2016, 12:58:57 pm
New Yorker copyediting, circa 1962 (sentences are sequential in the article):

This astonishing statement served to confirm a long-held conviction of Sara Murphy’s that Fitzgerald knew very little about people, and nothing at all about the Murphy’s.

Now in their seventies, the Murphys today are not inclined to think very much about the past.


http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/07/28/living-well-is-the-best-revenge?mbid=nl_Sunday%20Longreads%20(43)&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=9109776&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNDczMzI2S0&spJobID=942390854&spReportId=OTQyMzkwODU0S0 (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/07/28/living-well-is-the-best-revenge?mbid=nl_Sunday%20Longreads%20(43)&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=9109776&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNDczMzI2S0&spJobID=942390854&spReportId=OTQyMzkwODU0S0)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 04, 2016, 03:40:44 pm
New Yorker copyediting, circa 1962 (sentences are sequential in the article):

This astonishing statement served to confirm a long-held conviction of Sara Murphy’s that Fitzgerald knew very little about people, and nothing at all about the Murphy’s.

Now in their seventies, the Murphys today are not inclined to think very much about the past.


http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/07/28/living-well-is-the-best-revenge?mbid=nl_Sunday%20Longreads%20(43)&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=9109776&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNDczMzI2S0&spJobID=942390854&spReportId=OTQyMzkwODU0S0 (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/07/28/living-well-is-the-best-revenge?mbid=nl_Sunday%20Longreads%20(43)&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=9109776&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNDczMzI2S0&spJobID=942390854&spReportId=OTQyMzkwODU0S0)

So it wasn't perfect. But we all know reputation and reality often differ.

I should have used this weekend to catch up on TNY. Instead I've used it to read one of Margaret Coel's Wind River Mysteries (see the Longmire thread in my blog). It was like revisiting Riverton, Lander, and Dubois, and I think maybe I needed that more than I needed to read TNY.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 05, 2016, 12:08:37 pm
The article "The Shadow Doctors" by Ben Taub

I'm reading this article now. It's just horrible. And Vladimir Putin, whom Donald Trump so admires, refuses to countenance regime change in Syria. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2016, 08:35:41 pm
I am reading George Saunders' article about Trump supporters in the July 11 & 18 issue. I am finding it very depressing--but also very important, so I will continue to push through it, even though I can only read small parts of it at a time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 13, 2016, 09:09:35 am
I am reading George Saunders' article about Trump supporters in the July 11 & 18 issue. I am finding it very depressing--but also very important, so I will continue to push through it, even though I can only read small parts of it at a time.

I'm doing the exact same thing!

I'm reading it in small pieces because 1) it's practically as long as John Hersey's Hiroshima, 2) it's not the first or even the second but the THIRD long takeout piece about Trump rallies I've read this election by horrified left-leaning writerly types and 3) I'm so sick of the whole subject.

But you're right, it's depressing, too. Trump is not going to win, I don't think. But the very fact that so many of our fellow Americans support him is bad enough.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2016, 09:35:37 am
I'm doing the exact same thing!

I'm reading it in small pieces because 1) it's practically as long as John Hersey's Hiroshima, 2) it's not the first or even the second but the THIRD long takeout piece about Trump rallies I've read this election by horrified left-leaning writerly types and 3) I'm so sick of the whole subject.

But you're right, it's depressing, too. Trump is not going to win, I don't think. But the very fact that so many of our fellow Americans support him is bad enough.

As depressing as it is, I will stick with it because I'm finding it very educational about why people support Trump, and I appreciated the part where he shows how people selectively use the facts that support their preconceived beliefs and ignore others.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on July 13, 2016, 09:52:42 am
But you're right, it's depressing, too. Trump is not going to win, I don't think. But the very fact that so many of our fellow Americans support him is bad enough.

You can say that twice and mean it
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2016, 01:25:13 pm
Spoiler Alert:

Well, as depressing as I find the George Saunders article, this did make me laugh out loud:

"A group of anti-Trump college students in Eau Claire concocted the perfect Zen protest: singing and dancing en masse to Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody.'"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 19, 2016, 08:58:59 pm
I am reading George Saunders' article about Trump supporters in the July 11 & 18 issue. I am finding it very depressing--but also very important, so I will continue to push through it, even though I can only read small parts of it at a time.

I'm wondering if I missed this issue. What's on the cover?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 19, 2016, 09:59:44 pm
I'm wondering if I missed this issue. What's on the cover?

A father and kids at the beach.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 20, 2016, 09:20:53 am
A father and kids at the beach.

Yep, it's a father and three kids at the beach. I'm at the office now, and I have the issue in front of me.

Mail delivery to my building has been really lousy this week, and I haven't, as of yesterday, received the July 25 issue yet. I'm actually done with 11 &18, so I'm going to have to read the AARP Bulletin over lunch today.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 21, 2016, 09:33:09 am
Haha, I get the AARP Bulletin too! Maybe we should start a new discussion thread for it!  ::)

Actually, my mother gets it at my address.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2016, 10:47:25 am
The July 25 issue arrived yesterday. I started the article on being white in American over dinner last evening.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 29, 2016, 10:58:49 pm
The July 25 issue arrived yesterday. I started the article on being white in American over dinner last evening.

Wait, what? I must have the 7/25 issue, but I missed that. I'll look for it -- sounds interesting!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 08, 2016, 08:29:43 pm
I've always said how much I enjoy Jill Lepore's articles (Aug. 8 & 15), but some of the things that people said to her at the RNC left me very, very depressed.  :(

Fortunately, there is Lauren Collins' article in the same issue, about learning French, which is very amusing.  :)

I hope Chrissi doesn't come back from her family vacation with Kummerspeck.  ;D

And I guess I'm a Pilkunnussija.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 08, 2016, 10:40:19 pm
Yes, I was also depressed by her RNC article and couldn't finish it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2016, 01:33:00 pm
Well, Jon Lee Anderson's article is quite different from what he usually writes! Instead of some too-long piece about politics in the Middle East, it's about contact with some Indigenous People in the Peruvian Amazon, and I'm finding it quite interesting. So far it's like an adventure story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 11, 2016, 01:29:41 pm
I finished the Jon Lee Anderson--sort of fizzles out--and read Tessa Hadley's short story. I confess I read her because I think that's such a wonderful name, Tessa Hadley. Sounds so "Downton Abbey"-esque.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 14, 2016, 01:59:05 pm
Hmm. I've finished the Aug. 8 & 15 issue, but I haven't yet received the Aug. 22 issue, so I guess I will have to start another Tony Hillerman paperback at lunch tomorrow.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 14, 2016, 07:09:16 pm
How did you like the Tessa Hadley story, Jeff? I'm beginning the one by Lauren Collins on marriage to a Frenchman.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 16, 2016, 09:44:32 am
How did you like the Tessa Hadley story, Jeff? I'm beginning the one by Lauren Collins on marriage to a Frenchman.

It was all right. Not particularly memorable--no "Brokeback Mountain," that's for sure--I bet it's an excerpt from a forthcoming novel--but not a waste of time to read, either.

Lauren Collins' adventures in a foreign language are not as amusing as David Sedaris.'
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 19, 2016, 11:23:38 am
Several articles in the June 27 issue are read-worthy. The article "The Shadow Doctors" by Ben Taub, brought a chill to my soul. A government bent on destroying its own people now turns to bombing hospitals and places where children are sheltered. How much more will we endure? Right after that is the article "Making a Killing" by Evan Osnos about the growth of the gun culture in the US. It explained a lot of things to me. . .such as why gun owners so stubbornly cling to their guns and why they seem to need so many. People have been manipulated by the gun manufacturers more than they think.

Ben Taub in the news again, after a child was pulled from a bombed building and videoed, sitting on a chair in shock and bleeding from the head. Some people close to me are still saying that Syrians should stay in their country and rebuild it, rather than flee. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490461992/a-wounded-child-in-aleppo-silent-and-still-shocks-the-world  (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490461992/a-wounded-child-in-aleppo-silent-and-still-shocks-the-world)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 19, 2016, 11:47:07 am
Ben Taub in the news again, after a child was pulled from a bombed building and videoed, sitting on a chair in shock and bleeding from the head. Some people close to me are still saying that Syrians should stay in their country and rebuild it, rather than flee. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490461992/a-wounded-child-in-aleppo-silent-and-still-shocks-the-world  (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490461992/a-wounded-child-in-aleppo-silent-and-still-shocks-the-world)

I think they should, too, except there's a war going on, and the Russians are supporting the incumbent regime, and it's difficult to keep straight who's fighting against whom, and you can't build up a country while several different groups keep destroying it.  :( Somehow the fighting and destruction has to be stopped first.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 21, 2016, 06:00:15 pm
Ben Taub in the news again, after a child was pulled from a bombed building and videoed, sitting on a chair in shock and bleeding from the head. Some people close to me are still saying that Syrians should stay in their country and rebuild it, rather than flee. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490461992/a-wounded-child-in-aleppo-silent-and-still-shocks-the-world  (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/08/18/490461992/a-wounded-child-in-aleppo-silent-and-still-shocks-the-world)

Now the boy's 10-year-old brother has died. My heart breaks for him!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 21, 2016, 06:10:54 pm
The August 8 & 15 issue was unsettling. (May God have mercy on us. . .how will we make it through the next 70+ days?)

The article I ended up liking the most was "Childhood's End", Dan Chiasson's review of The After Party by poet Jana Prikryl. I typically have not read poetry for many years but I was drawn back into it when I was musing through journals that I used to keep as a college student and beyond. I found a poem "Eulogy for a Crow" that I have thought of many times. I forgot who wrote it and the author wasn't listed in my journal. After much research, I found that it was written by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and that led me on a tour of his works and life.

The Prikryl review was well done; so much so that I feel satisfied and don't even want to read the book! But I might, when fall comes around. I also surprisingly liked "Dido's Lament" the short story mentioned by Jeff, authored by Tessa Hadley. Although I don't really know much about the story of Aeneas and Dido. Perhaps I'll look it up. I soldiered through Lauren Collins's "Love in Translation" but really feel like I wasted my time. Jeff, you were right, she's no David Sedaris!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 23, 2016, 10:02:20 pm
In the new issue, the article "The Country Restaurant" by Nick Paumgarten, is very interesting. The restaurant, in a rural area south of Albany, NY, is not really a restaurant but more of a food laboratory. Its proprietor claims that it is booked up until 2025 with patrons from 80 countries willing to pay $400 each to dine there. After reading the article I'm still not sure it's a real thing or rather, as one critic calls it, Brigadoon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 25, 2016, 01:42:23 pm
I enjoyed the Aug. 22 article on the super-recognizers. I think that would be a cool ability to have.

I also like the article on the Underground Railroad.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 25, 2016, 02:44:15 pm
I also like the article on the Underground Railroad.

I liked that one, too, especially when she stopped to consider that the number of slaves who escaped -- through the UR or other means -- were just the tiniest fraction of a percent of the total number of people over hundreds of years who spent their lives in slavery with no hope of escape.

I thought about that a lot when watching "12 Years a Slave." That guy's experiences and the things he witnessed were unquestionably horrific, yet I couldn't help thinking that in a relative sense he was "lucky" to get out after 12 years. Millions of others never did.

I've always been interested in Colson Whitehead, the novelist whose "Underground Railroad" partly inspired this piece. I plan to read that book, and others of his have sounded intriguingly original. It's so mind-blowing to think that if he'd lived less than 200 years ago ... well, it's hard to even mentally grasp.

She also, only slightly more subtly, makes the point that white UR participants, or abolition activists, or even sympathizers were also just a tiny fraction of the white population as a whole.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 25, 2016, 02:50:55 pm
I liked that one, too, especially when she stopped to consider that the number of slaves who escaped -- through the UR or other means -- were just the tiniest fraction of a percent of the total number of people over hundreds of years who spent their lives in slavery with no hope of escape.

She also, only slightly more subtly, makes the point that white UR participants, or abolition activists, or even sympathizers were also just a tiny fraction of the white population as a whole.

That's more or less why I liked the article, too. In other words, the importance of the UR has been exaggerated.

Interesting to read the UR article in juxtaposition to Jeffrey Toobin's profile of Bryan Stevenson.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 28, 2016, 02:00:23 pm
I recommend Adam Gopnik's article about the Attica prison revolt (Aug. 29).

It's not a fun read, but it is worth reading, though very sobering. It's about a historical event that occurred when I was 13 years old, and all I really knew about it was "prison revolt, upstate New York, 1970s."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 31, 2016, 02:00:22 pm
In the new issue, the article "The Country Restaurant" by Nick Paumgarten, is very interesting. The restaurant, in a rural area south of Albany, NY, is not really a restaurant but more of a food laboratory. Its proprietor claims that it is booked up until 2025 with patrons from 80 countries willing to pay $400 each to dine there. After reading the article I'm still not sure it's a real thing or rather, as one critic calls it, Brigadoon.

I read that article, too, and something seems a little fishy about the restaurant and the chef to me.

I also noticed the cartoon with Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, and R2-D2, where C-3PO says that R2-D2 "feels empty inside." I heard not long ago that Kenny Baker, the actor who "inhabited" the little 'droid, had passed away, so I don't quite know how to take the cartoon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 16, 2016, 09:16:18 am
Funny I just finished Janet Malcolm's article about the pianist Yuja Wang (Sept. 5), and this morning I learn she's appearing here at the Kimmel Center with the Philadelphia Orchestra next weekend.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 19, 2016, 01:48:38 pm
At lunch today I finished Ariel Levy's article about ayahuasca (Sept. 12). Not something I'd want to experiment with. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 20, 2016, 09:21:24 am
Me nether, and I've done all the other things. This one just sounds too brutal and sickening.

However, I recently read the one from a couple of years ago about therapists' experiments with LSD for anxiety and other mental-health issues, especially fear of death for people with terminal diseases. That one I would try, terminally diseased or otherwise. As far as I know, it's not available around here.

Apparently the researchers have had amazing results. Guided by therapists throughout, people take what sound like fairly high doses of psychedelics and emerge with transformed outlooks about life, feeling like they've confronted huge universal truths. They feel better about death or whatever their issue was. The success rates are really high, so to speak. Later, even much later, many rank it among their most profound life experiences. A psychologist is quoted saying something like, with what other drug would you see that kind of results and not immediately rush to get it approved?

My own assumption is that it triggers something in your brain rather than actually taking you to see the universe's secrets or whatever. But if it works, it works.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 20, 2016, 09:35:11 am
However, I recently read the one from a couple of years ago about therapists' experiments with LSD for anxiety and other mental-health issues, especially fear of death for people with terminal diseases. That one I would try, terminally diseased or otherwise. As far as I know, it's not available around here.

I remember that article. It was fascinating. Was there something in there about using it to treat depression as well, or do I have it confused with another article?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 21, 2016, 01:29:41 pm
I'm really enjoying the article about Yvon Chouinard, one of the founders of the outdoors-gear company Patagonia (Sept. 19). I'd be terrified to meet the man, though. I can only imagine what he'd think of a non-outdoorsperson like me.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 25, 2016, 10:29:42 am
I kind of skipped over the Style Issue. Why do they even have that? Not that the articles can't be interesting, I'm sure I've read some good ones over the years, but they could have been distributed among other issues. To me, "style" isn't a big enough subject in the context of the New Yorker to warrant an issue of its own. We've got Vogue and a dozen other publications for that.

Anyway, now I'm reading a profile in the latest issue of the transgender model/actress Hari Nef, with whom I'm familiar because she plays a recurring role on Transparent. This one could have gone in the Style Issue, come to think of it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 26, 2016, 01:34:40 pm
I kind of skipped over the Style Issue.

If you haven't done so, I recommend going back and reading Jane Kramer's essay on the new book, Ten Restaurants That Changed America. It's a delight! (In the course of her life so far, Kramer has eaten at eight of them, and one was Howard Johnson's.  ;D )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2016, 09:38:14 am
If you haven't done so, I recommend going back and reading Jane Kramer's essay on the new book, Ten Restaurants That Changed America. It's a delight! (In the course of her life so far, Kramer has eaten at eight of them, and one was Howard Johnson's.  ;D )

I saw that list somewhere and didn't realize it was connected with a whole story. I will go back and read it! Besides Howard Johnson's, the only one I've eaten at was Antoine's, and I was surprised it made the list -- it's a classic old New Orleans fine-dining creole restaurant, but there are a bunch of those. But it opened in 1840 (I see from googling), so maybe back then it was more culturally revolutionary somehow. When I saw the theme of the list, the only one I correctly predicted was Chez Panisse.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2016, 11:28:41 am
I saw that list somewhere and didn't realize it was connected with a whole story. I will go back and read it! Besides Howard Johnson's, the only one I've eaten at was Antoine's, and I was surprised it made the list -- it's a classic old New Orleans fine-dining creole restaurant, but there are a bunch of those. But it opened in 1840 (I see from googling), so maybe back then it was more culturally revolutionary somehow. When I saw the theme of the list, the only one I correctly predicted was Chez Panisse.

It was interesting to read that Antoine's went back that far (I wonder how it managed to get through the Civil War and the Union occupation of New Orleans?), and to learn a little of the history of Delmonico's.

If you've seen the list of restaurants, I guess I'm not giving anything away by saying mention of Schrafft's immediately brought to mind the line from Auntie Mame about "your nephew spoke French to the counter man at Schrafft's."  :laugh:

And it might be interesting to read the actual book to see if the author explains why he does not include McDonald's. I mean, isn't it obvious that McDonald's changed America? Change isn't always for the better. (Didn't Time magazine once make Adolf Hitler its "Man of the Year"?) When I was a very small boy, all the restaurants at rest areas on the Pennsylvania Turnpike were HoJo's. Then they all turned into fast food franchises.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 30, 2016, 01:35:02 pm
Anyway, now I'm reading a profile in the latest issue of the transgender model/actress Hari Nef, with whom I'm familiar because she plays a recurring role on Transparent. This one could have gone in the Style Issue, come to think of it.

I finished that article over lunch today. It was interesting to me in a way that all articles about the Fashion World are interesting to me; they're so far removed from my existence that it's like visiting another planet. I go back and forth from being utterly fascinated to completely annoyed by these entitled people.

I mustn't have read correctly. I didn't realize she took the role on Transparent until the article came back to it, near the end.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 01, 2016, 10:39:51 am
I didn't realize she took the role on Transparent until the article came back to it, near the end.

If it weren't for that, I'd never have heard of her. I'm pretty distant from the fashion world, too.

Are you all familiar with the Pulitzer-prize-winning author Michael Chabon? He just wrote this thing about taking his 13-year-old son to Paris Fashion Week, because his son is super into fashion. As I read it, I kept alternating between feeling affection for Chabon for helping his son have this experience, feeling admiration for the boy for having the self-confidence to be himself despite the consequences, and feeling that the extreme obsessive attention to the tiniest details of an outfit is the silliest thing I've ever heard.

http://www.gq.com/story/my-son-the-prince-of-fashion (http://www.gq.com/story/my-son-the-prince-of-fashion)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 20, 2016, 01:35:55 pm
Being way behind in my reading as always, over lunch today I read Nathan Heller's Oct. 10 article about living without cash in contemporary Sweden.

On thing he did not go into in the article is how you tip in a cashless society (maybe people don't tip in Sweden, but they do in the U.S.). My friend Phil the waiter explained to me that if you tip in cash, the waiter gets the money immediately. If you add the tip to your bill and then pay with a credit card, the waiter has to wait for his paycheck to get the tip.

I suppose in a cashless society, where two people can pass money between each other from one electronic device to another, you could tip that way. However, that would add the social issue of the waiter knowing immediately how much or how little you tipped. No more leaving money on the table and fleeing the restaurant because you're embarrassed that you can't tip more. Perhaps tipping in this way would lead to bigger tips for waiters, and so they would like it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 21, 2016, 10:45:12 am
On thing he did not go into in the article is how you tip in a cashless society (maybe people don't tip in Sweden, but they do in the U.S.). My friend Phil the waiter explained to me that if you tip in cash, the waiter gets the money immediately. If you add the tip to your bill and then pay with a credit card, the waiter has to wait for his paycheck to get the tip.

As a former longtime waitress whose two sons have often worked as tipped wait assistants (busboys/food runners), I can tell you that's not always, or maybe not even usually, how it works.

When I was a waitress many centuries ago, your base pay was less than minimum wage and you had to declare to the employer enough tips to equal minimum wage. The actual tips were far beyond that, you got them in cash regardless of the customer's payment form, and walked out with a pocketful of money every night. I would be guilty of tax evasion, I guess, except that I didn't make enough money back in them days to pay taxes anyway, so whatever I paid I would get refunded the following year.

At the restaurants where my sons have worked over the past few years (probably about six or so establishments between them), their tips come from the waiters. The waiters are expected, though not forced or monitored, to pay the wait assistants a percentage of their tips. Sometimes the servers hand them cash directly, sometimes it gets funneled through the restaurants and they receive it in their paychecks. Then they not only have to wait for it, but a larger percentage gets withheld for taxes. In their case, it's not a huge deal, because again they don't make enough in a year to pay taxes at all so they get bigger refunds the following spring. But for obvious reasons, they're not fond of that system. Another problem with it is the one you hinted at -- the paycheck system means the waiters tip anonymously, so those who undertip aren't identifiable.

In any case, none of it -- in the restaurants where they've worked -- has had anything to do with what form of payment the customer uses.

My understanding is that tipping is unusual throughout Europe, but correct me if I'm wrong, Eurobrokies!



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 21, 2016, 11:23:10 am
As a former longtime waitress whose two sons have often worked as tipped wait assistants (busboys/food runners), I can tell you that's not always, or maybe not even usually, how it works.

When I was a waitress many centuries ago, your base pay was less than minimum wage and you had to declare to the employer enough tips to equal minimum wage. The actual tips were far beyond that, you got them in cash regardless of the customer's payment form, and walked out with a pocketful of money every night. I would be guilty of tax evasion, I guess, except that I didn't make enough money back in them days to pay taxes anyway, so whatever I paid I would get refunded the following year.

Yes, but if you were the server, and the customer added the tip to the bill and then paid with a credit card, including the tip in the payment, where did that cash come from? Did management take it out of the till at the end of the night, or what? Did somebody have to go through the credit card receipts and add up how much tips each individual server got that wasn't in the form of cash left on the table? Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand. ???

Quote
At the restaurants where my sons have worked over the past few years (probably about six or so establishments between them), their tips come from the waiters. The waiters are expected, though not forced or monitored, to pay the wait assistants a percentage of their tips. Sometimes the servers hand them cash directly, sometimes it gets funneled through the restaurants and they receive it in their paychecks. Then they not only have to wait for it, but a larger percentage gets withheld for taxes. In their case, it's not a huge deal, because again they don't make enough in a year to pay taxes at all so they get bigger refunds the following spring. But for obvious reasons, they're not fond of that system. Another problem with it is the one you hinted at -- the paycheck system means the waiters tip anonymously, so those who undertip aren't identifiable.

In any case, none of it -- in the restaurants where they've worked -- has had anything to do with what form of payment the customer uses.

I believe bartenders are generally expected to share their tips with the barback, or barbacks, too, so they would get the money in cash at the end of the night.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 21, 2016, 06:52:31 pm
Yes, but if you were the server, and the customer added the tip to the bill and then paid with a credit card, including the tip in the payment, where did that cash come from? Did management take it out of the till at the end of the night, or what? Did somebody have to go through the credit card receipts and add up how much tips each individual server got that wasn't in the form of cash left on the table? Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand. ???

It's been a long time since I experienced it myself, and I've never asked my sons about the details of how it works now. Back then, you'd hand the bill and credit card slip to the cashier and she'd (it was always a she) would hand you cash in the amount of the tip. If the tip was in cash on the table, of course, you'd just grab that.

Quote
I believe bartenders are generally expected to share their tips with the barback, or barbacks, too, so they would get the money in cash at the end of the night.

Exactly. Everyone gets tipped -- the servers tipped the bartenders, too, at least in my day -- except, for some reason, the cooks. Probably the cooks got a better base wage.

No more leaving money on the table and fleeing the restaurant because you're embarrassed that you can't tip more. Perhaps tipping in this way would lead to bigger tips for waiters, and so they would like it.

This led me to wonder later, on my way to work, how much does he tip, anyway? I usually aim for 20%. If it's a close calculation, I probably round it down a bit, figuring some of the bill total is taxes and so forth. If the service was unsatisfactory, I'd go as low as 15%. If the service were bad enough that I'd be tempted to tip less than that I'd probably complain to someone and expect to get something comped.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 09, 2016, 02:30:14 pm
Seeing as how I'm so far behind in my New Yorkers, it could be kind of amusing to read all the pre-election articles. I just noticed a picture caption from October 24 that said that Tim Kaine never lost an election.

Not any more!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 09, 2016, 06:17:36 pm
I just received my NYM today in the mail. How the hell did they know?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on November 09, 2016, 06:34:04 pm
I just received my NYM today in the mail. How the hell did they know?

I guess it could equally apply to either candidate, depending on your point of view.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 09, 2016, 10:38:40 pm
I guess it could equally apply to either candidate, depending on your point of view.

True, but The New Yorker was pretty clear about who it endorsed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 11, 2016, 11:24:59 pm
True, but The New Yorker was pretty clear about who it endorsed.

True, but I'm with Jeff -- I think they meant it to indicate the way many voters felt about both candidates. But it did come off looking surprisingly appropriate and prescient.

Jeff, if you've got New Yorkers piled up with pre-election articles, I would take this opportunity to give yourself a break and skip them. Nothing they could say would be relevant anymore.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 12, 2016, 01:30:19 pm
Jeff, if you've got New Yorkers piled up with pre-election articles, I would take this opportunity to give yourself a break and skip them. Nothing they could say would be relevant anymore.

Well, that's a good suggestion, but I'll have to at least check them for articles about the theater, movies, TV, books, and interesting people and so forth that I might want to read. I could just skip the articles about the election.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 12, 2016, 06:38:13 pm
I've been able to toss whole chunks of my toppling New Yorker piles when I've realized they dated back to a previous presidential administration.  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 12, 2016, 11:46:28 pm
I've been able to toss whole chunks of my toppling New Yorker piles when I've realized they dated back to a previous presidential administration.  :laugh:

 :o   :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 15, 2016, 02:29:17 pm
I know I'm way, way behind on my magazines, but I'll report in here and say that I'm currently enjoying Elizabeth Kolbert's article on Greenland (Oct. 24).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 17, 2016, 02:39:15 pm
I know I'm way, way behind on my magazines, but I'll report in here and say that I'm currently enjoying Elizabeth Kolbert's article on Greenland (Oct. 24).

I finished the article over lunch today. Interesting but also very sad in a way. After reading it, I would not invest in any waterfront property. ...

In the same issue, I also read the Hilton Als essay on the movie Moonlight (he doesn't explain the title). Apparently the film includes this piece of dialog:

"You don't talk much but you damn sure can eat."

Remind you of anything?  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 18, 2016, 08:21:05 pm
I woke in the night and started reading some parts of the long compilation of articles on writers' reaction to the Presidential elections, "Aftermath". I skipped over a lot of it, but some were very poignant. I'm concerned about something. I read in the front matter that people like Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani are being considered for high appointments, but when I went to the Internet to check this out, it appears that none of them are actually being appointed. This worries me. Is the New Yorker getting people all riled up for nothing? Conversely, although the real appointees are not household names, it appears that they are just as regressive and inept as any of those other people. I'm confused. I'm terminally confused these days.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 21, 2016, 02:45:36 pm
At lunch today I started reading George Packer's Oct. 31 article "The Unconnected." In a sense this article is outdated by the election results, but if you didn't read it, I suggest it's worthwhile reading anyway. Why? Because so far--and I haven't gotten very far into it--it's looking like a very good explanation of why and how Trump won. Prescient, too, I guess, since it was published a week before the election. I mean, Packer seems to be explaining how "millions of Americans were suddenly drawn to a crass strongman who tossed out fraudulent promises and gave institutions and elites the middle finger."

He goes on to write, and I find this somewhat alarming:

Quote
The fact that so many informed, sophisticated Americans failed to see Donald Trump coming, and then kept writing him off, is itself a sign of a democracy in which no center holds. Most of his critics are too reasonable to fathom his fury-driven campaign. Many don't know a single Trump supporter. But to fight Trump you have to understand his appeal.

It's the "no center holds" part that scares hell out of me. And while it's too late for this election, I think it's probably still a good idea to understand Trump's appeal.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 22, 2016, 02:46:57 pm
I am still reading George Packer's Oct. 31 article, and I'm still electrified by it. Scared by it, too. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 22, 2016, 03:23:00 pm
Interesting, several commentators have referenced Yeats' poem "Second Coming" including Robert Kingler:

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/11/22/civility-casualty-2016-election/93897456/ (http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/11/22/civility-casualty-2016-election/93897456/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 30, 2016, 12:40:34 am
I woke in the night and started reading some parts of the long compilation of articles on writers' reaction to the Presidential elections, "Aftermath". I skipped over a lot of it, but some were very poignant. I'm concerned about something. I read in the front matter that people like Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Sarah Palin, and Rudy Giuliani are being considered for high appointments, but when I went to the Internet to check this out, it appears that none of them are actually being appointed. This worries me. Is the New Yorker getting people all riled up for nothing? Conversely, although the real appointees are not household names, it appears that they are just as regressive and inept as any of those other people. I'm confused. I'm terminally confused these days.

I think some of the actual verified appointees are just as scary, if not more so.

Maybe I'm insufficiently knowledgeable about New Jersey politics, but Chris Christie would seem positively reassuring compared to, say, Steve Bannon.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 30, 2016, 10:40:48 am
I think some of the actual verified appointees are just as scary, if not more so.

Maybe I'm insufficiently knowledgeable about New Jersey politics, but Chris Christie would seem positively reassuring compared to, say, Steve Bannon.

You do need to read up on Jersey politics. Christie is a bully and an asshole. Look up "Bridgegate" if you're not familiar with it. Before the Supreme Court ruling, he twice vetoed a same-sex marriage bill that had passed both houses of the General Assembly because he didn't approve of the concept, and his excuse was, "The voters should vote on it."

On the other hand, a drinking buddy of mine who lives in Jersey was kind of hoping Christie would get a cabinet position just so he'd get the hell out of New Jersey!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 30, 2016, 11:20:13 am
You do need to read up on Jersey politics. Christie is a bully and an asshole. Look up "Bridgegate" if you're not familiar with it. Before the Supreme Court ruling, he twice vetoed a same-sex marriage bill that had passed both houses of the General Assembly because he didn't approve of the concept, and his excuse was, "The voters should vote on it."

On the other hand, a drinking buddy of mine who lives in Jersey was kind of hoping Christie would get a cabinet position just so he'd get the hell out of New Jersey!

Oh, I do know enough about Jersey politics to know Christie is a bully and an asshole, and I'm familiar with Bridgegate. We've just reached the point where an asshole bully who closes down a bridge could look good next to a white supremacist.

Still, if he's a heterosupremacist, that puts him in the same realm.  :-\


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 30, 2016, 11:22:30 am
Keep in mind that, over the past couple of weeks, I have longed for the return of Richard Nixon. And that while within the past year I have called George W. Bush the worst president in history, I would take him back in a second.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 30, 2016, 02:34:41 pm
I was going to skip the Nov. 21 issue, the one with the reflections from the writers, but then I noticed it has an article by Jill Lepore, and I always read Jill Lepore, and the article about the guy in the Philippines might be instructive.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2016, 02:39:51 pm
I just realized the cover of the Nov. 21 issue is supposed to represent the wall.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2016, 02:06:11 pm
I'm now reading Jill Lepore's "Esme in Neverland" in the Nov. 21 issue, and I'm fascinated by the part about TV in the 1950s and early '60s. I recognize the actors mentioned; Ted Bessel went on to play Marlo Thomas' boyfriend in That Girl.  ;D

Trivia: Another actor mentioned was Michael Burns. I remember him as a cute young guy from various TV shows of the '60s, so I looked him up at IMDb. Seems he's one young person who wasn't destroyed by an acting career. He got out of acting, earned a PhD from Yale, taught history at Mt. Holyoke for 20 years, wrote an acclaimed book on the Dreyfus Affair, married a former president of the college, and is now living in Kentucky raising thoroughbreds!

I'm also getting a little concerned because I haven't heard anything about the renewal of my subscription. That got all screwed up last year when I had to update my credit card information.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2016, 11:06:36 pm
I'm also getting a little concerned because I haven't heard anything about the renewal of my subscription. That got all screwed up last year when I had to update my credit card information.  >:(

Actually, I looked at the mailing label on my copy of the Dec. 12 issue, which arrived today. Thanks to the screw-up with my subscription last year, my subscription now doesn't expire until Feb. 6, 2017.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2016, 11:12:52 am
I'm now reading Jill Lepore's "Esme in Neverland" in the Nov. 21 issue, and I'm fascinated by the part about TV in the 1950s and early '60s. I recognize the actors mentioned; Ted Bessel went on to play Marlo Thomas' boyfriend in That Girl.  ;D

I read it, too, though Ted Bessel was the only actor in the group I recognized. I used to love That Girl! I looked up Michael Burns, and in one or two of the photos he looked vaguely familiar. Especially when he was wearing a cowboy hat. Did he do some Westerns (on TV)?

So then of course the rabbit hole opened and I found myself looking up Marlo Thomas, which led me to wonder whether she was young enough to have been Rachel's mom on Friends (for which she won an Emmy, FYI).

Turns out she was, because Jennifer Aniston is getting close to 50! Bessel and Thomas were both born in the '30s -- non-baby boomers! -- Aniston in the late '60s. Her TV mom would have had her at 32, which at the time was oldish, but now of course is not the least bit unusual for a new mom.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 08, 2016, 12:01:04 pm
I read it, too, though Ted Bessel was the only actor in the group I recognized. I used to love That Girl! I looked up Michael Burns, and in one or two of the photos he looked vaguely familiar. Especially when he was wearing a cowboy hat. Did he do some Westerns (on TV)?

Yes! It probably won't surprise you that I always remember him from a single episode of my favorite show from childhood, Daniel Boone.  :laugh: But he was a "regular" in some of the later seasons of Wagon Train.

Check out his IMDb entry. The future Yale PhD and Mt. Holyoke professor is shown naked with a towel in front of his privates!  :laugh:

I remember Glenn Corbett, too, but mainly from various "guest appearances."

Trust a gay man to remember handsome faces from TV during his childhood!  :-\

I guess Marlo was old enough to be Rachel's mom. She certainly seems to be aging well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 08, 2016, 12:20:00 pm
I used to love That Girl!

At the risk of prolonging an OT discussion. ... We watched That Girl! too. Of course, I was too young to realize that it was groundbreaking. Before there was Mary Richards, there was Ann Marie.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 12, 2016, 02:29:38 pm
At lunch today I read Nathan Heller's Nov. 28 article "Not Our Kind: What Moral Claims Do Animals--and Robots--Make On Us?" I had a really good laugh when I read Heller's description of "the Star Wars universe" as "a multigenerational purgatory of interesting robots and tedious people."  :laugh:

I also enjoyed the briefer article about Stevie Nicks. That was almost like a history lesson for me (where Nicks comes from [Phoenix], how she met Lindsey Buckingham, how Fleetwood Mac formed and fell apart), though it was a bit disconcerting to have some of my favorite musicians of my youth (James Taylor, the Eagles) described as "too white." I'm not sure what that means, but it was meant as a criticism. Well, I guess I'm "too white," too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 12, 2016, 10:07:21 pm
it was a bit disconcerting to have some of my favorite musicians of my youth (James Taylor, the Eagles) described as "too white." I'm not sure what that means, but it was meant as a criticism. Well, I guess I'm "too white," too.

I'll have to look that up, but "too white" for what? Surely there was some further explanation. If they're just plain too white, then all white people are too white. If they're "too white to be successful rap stars" that might be more understandable.

I assume it was some reference to their music -- that the description came in a context that wouldn't equally implicate, say, Bob Dylan or Lou Reed or David Bowie. But still, it seems odd and offensive. There are plenty of non-racial reasons to dislike the Eagles.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2017, 02:17:17 pm
There are plenty of non-racial reasons to dislike the Eagles.

And plenty of reasons to like them. Let's just agree to disagree, shall we? I'm still grieving Glenn Frey.

Meanwhile, behind as usual, but not too far behind right now, at lunch I finished Malcolm Gladwell's article (Dec. 19 & 26) comparing Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden. Perhaps I should be appalled, along with Ellsberg and John Cusack, that Snowden, apparently, has never heard of Dr. Strangelove, but instead I'm finding their reaction funny. Not so funny to consider that Daniel Ellsberg is now 85 years old. ...

I also read Elif Batuman's single-page article about the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. Makes me think that perhaps I should read him, too.

And then I happily stumbled  on the annual "Greetings, Friends!" by Ian Frazier. And I am absolutely tickled by his concluding line: "Faith's more a verb than it's a noun." I might even send that one on to our rector!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 03, 2017, 09:31:29 pm
And plenty of reasons to like them. Let's just agree to disagree, shall we?

Of course! I would never dream of arguing about musical taste. Seriously. Taste is taste.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 03, 2017, 11:48:59 pm
Speaking of musical taste, I've been reading and enjoying the article about Bach in the latest issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2017, 11:57:05 pm
Speaking of musical taste, I've been reading and enjoying the article about Bach in the latest issue.

I enjoyed that one, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 04, 2017, 02:02:46 pm
I'm also now enjoying Jeffrey Toobin's article about Hulk Hogan's suit against Gawker over his sex tape.

I would not exactly call Peter Thiel and the founder of Gawker Media a credit to gay men.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 05, 2017, 08:02:43 pm
Speaking of musical taste, I've been reading and enjoying the article about Bach in the latest issue.

Bach is too white for me.  ;)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 17, 2017, 02:04:06 pm
I'm actually caught up in my New Yorkers!  :o  :laugh:  At least, I'm reading the one with this Monday's cover date on it, Jan. 16.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2017, 08:27:26 pm
I've been going through a pile that ranges from spring 2015 to late 2016 -- not every issue, just a bunch with a wide range of dates. I'm not sure where this pile came from. I have a couple of other piles elsewhere in the house, most of them recent.

Tell you what, it's become a whole lot easier to toss any pre-November "duty" articles involving politics.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 17, 2017, 11:05:12 pm
Tell you what, it's become a whole lot easier to toss any pre-November "duty" articles involving politics.

I can't remember anything specific now, but I found it kind of interesting to read the pre-election articles after the election.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 19, 2017, 08:32:34 pm
Possibly, it would be interesting to read one or two articles with the benefit of hindsight. But I still maintain that most everything went according to plan and Secy. Clinton received plenty of votes to win. . .more votes than any presidential candidate in history. . .except for certain strategic and mysterious losses of just a few percentage points in a handful of early-call states. She did nothing wrong and was an exemplary candidate, in my book.

Meanwhile I'm getting through the latest issues at a faster clip, since issues I once cared about I now just shrug at, since we're going to hell in a handbasket. I thought George Packer's "Parting Words" about Obama's successes and (mostly) failures was too harsh. Surprisingly, I did enjoy Jesse Eisenberg's "You Never Really Know" although he didn't win me over until the last couple of paragraphs. I read all of John Seabrook's "My Father's Cellar" and then at the end wondered why I had. Same with "Good Behavior". I'm mildly interested in Emily Nussbaum's "Tragedy Plus Time" about how "jokes won the election" but I don't really buy the premise (see the paragraph above). But the art, music, performance and books critiques leave me cold, because, why, now that Armageddon draws near?  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 19, 2017, 11:45:28 pm
I can't remember anything specific now, but I found it kind of interesting to read the pre-election articles after the election.

Possibly, it would be interesting to read one or two articles with the benefit of hindsight.

If you're dealing with probably a three- or four-foot stack of unfinished magazines, it's a relief to recycle articles about how Hillary is sure to win. The "on the campaign trail with Trump" articles, I'm sure, would still be instructive.

Quote
I thought George Packer's "Parting Words" about Obama's successes and (mostly) failures was too harsh. Surprisingly, I did enjoy Jesse Eisenberg's "You Never Really Know" although he didn't win me over until the last couple of paragraphs. I read all of John Seabrook's "My Father's Cellar" and then at the end wondered why I had.

That was my fear about the Packer -- haven't read it yet. I thought Jesse Eisenberg kept getting things published because he's a celebrity but I'll take your word for it and give him another chance to wow me beyond what I could ever imagine in any random pick from the slush pile. I read "My Father's Cellar" and thought there was a big chunk missing. (SPOILER ALERT: My father was so obsessive about wine and other liquor that he collected far more of the finest products than he could ever drink or serve in a lifetime. But he never drank a drop more than responsible. Yet his son became an alcoholic, but is in recovery now, so yay! I think there were some connective strings missing, perhaps because the recovery part is too new to address them (April 2016)? It needed something that at least hinted at more of a point -- the dad was so obsessive about alcohol, so maybe the son started drinking to become what the dad valued? Who knows. The guy has written for the New Yorker for years, so maybe they cut him some slack.)

I'm really looking forward to the Atul Gawande article! I love almost everything by him and was actually going through the George Packer first to save it. I'm half tempted to buy Being Mortal. Has anyone here read it?

Quote
I'm mildly interested in Emily Nussbaum's "Tragedy Plus Time" about how "jokes won the election" but I don't really buy the premise (see the paragraph above

I read that online and agree, but it was an original idea and she gave it a good shot.

Quote
But the art, music, performance and books critiques leave me cold, because, why, now that Armageddon draws near?  :-\

Maybe that's all we'll have left  :-\



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 20, 2017, 10:17:48 am
If you're dealing with probably a three- or four-foot stack of unfinished magazines, it's a relief to recycle articles about how Hillary is sure to win. The "on the campaign trail with Trump" articles, I'm sure, would still be instructive.

They certainly were coming forward, instructive and frightening, which is why I've been frightened since Election Day.

But mainly I guess I think those articles would still be interesting because I think they show how The New Yorker, like all the rest of the liberal media, misjudged the country.

Quote
I'm really looking forward to the Atul Gawande article!

I'm reading that now, so no Spoilers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 23, 2017, 08:49:02 pm
I read all of John Seabrook's "My Father's Cellar" and then at the end wondered why I had.

I read "My Father's Cellar" and thought there was a big chunk missing. (SPOILER ALERT: My father was so obsessive about wine and other liquor that he collected far more of the finest products than he could ever drink or serve in a lifetime. But he never drank a drop more than responsible. Yet his son became an alcoholic, but is in recovery now, so yay! I think there were some connective strings missing, perhaps because the recovery part is too new to address them (April 2016)? It needed something that at least hinted at more of a point -- the dad was so obsessive about alcohol, so maybe the son started drinking to become what the dad valued? Who knows. The guy has written for the New Yorker for years, so maybe they cut him some slack.)

I'm reading the Seabrook article now, and at the point where I am in the text, I'm quite enjoying it because Seabrook grew up in my region of the country. All those things he mentions, Seabrook Farms, the Devon Horse Show, Brandywine Creek, are familiar to me. It's like reading a Longmire novel where the action occurs some place in Wyoming that I have visited.

I'm also interested in what I'm learning about Seabrook himself. He's a year younger than me. He "comes from money," which doesn't surprise me in someone who ends up writing for The New Yorker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 24, 2017, 01:16:09 am
But mainly I guess I think those articles would still be interesting because I think they show how The New Yorker, like all the rest of the liberal media, misjudged the country.

Well, the New Yorker is unabashedly part of the liberal media, but I hope you're not using that term to include the mainstream media -- like the New York Times, for example -- or you're doing what Trump supporters/Fox News viewers do. However, the mainstream media misjudged the polls, too.

Which is not completely crazy, because let's remember that Hillary did win the popular vote by almost 3 million votes. Given that, and the fact that half the eligible voters didn't vote at all, hardly seems to qualify as having "misjudged the country." They certainly misjudged the electoral college, I guess.

My son, though a left-leaning Bernie/Hillary supporter, is somehow really knowledgeable about the alt-right (and politics in general). He says a lot of those people who planned to vote for Trump were counseled to tell pollsters they weren't, so that might be another part of the problem.

In any case, I'm sick of hearing about how all the prognosticators misprognosticated. Because in the end, the election result seems to come down not to "Hilllary should have done X, Y and Z differently" -- or even Comey's ill-advised email letter -- but that a substantial portion of our fellow Americans simply are not as smart as we (at least I) gave them credit for. If that seems too harsh a way to refer to Trump voters, I'm sorry, but as I said in another thread, many didin't know the difference between the ACA and Obamacare. Beyond that, they fell for an obnoxious, racist, loose-cannon rabble-rouser who has never at any point -- up to and including the present, now that he's actual taken office -- proposed any ideas of substance.

Not worth slogging through a "duty" article to be reminded of that.

Off-topic on the ItNY thread, but I came across this article today that seems a really intelligent (if non-reassuring) analysis of the problem:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/01/trump_sold_america_a_miracle_cure_it_will_fail_he_ll_get_off_for_free.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/01/trump_sold_america_a_miracle_cure_it_will_fail_he_ll_get_off_for_free.html)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2017, 10:21:43 am
Off-topic on the ItNY thread, but I came across this article today that seems a really intelligent (if non-reassuring) analysis of the problem:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/01/trump_sold_america_a_miracle_cure_it_will_fail_he_ll_get_off_for_free.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2017/01/trump_sold_america_a_miracle_cure_it_will_fail_he_ll_get_off_for_free.html)

Of course. Snake-oil salesmen usually do, somehow.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 24, 2017, 11:28:41 am
Good article, Kathryn. The proposed solution is education. But, look who's putting a public education enemy in charge of education?!?!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2017, 01:31:28 pm
Seems to me "misjudging the country" includes misjudging the stupidity--or maybe just the gullibility--or maybe they're the same thing--of a lot of voters. Just sayin'.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2017, 08:58:42 pm
I'm reading the Seabrook article now, and at the point where I am in the text, I'm quite enjoying it because Seabrook grew up in my region of the country. All those things he mentions, Seabrook Farms, the Devon Horse Show, Brandywine Creek, are familiar to me. It's like reading a Longmire novel where the action occurs some place in Wyoming that I have visited.

I'm also interested in what I'm learning about Seabrook himself. He's a year younger than me. He "comes from money," which doesn't surprise me in someone who ends up writing for The New Yorker.

Well, I guess I'm just not a perceptive, or even intelligent, reader. I finished the Seabrook over dinner this evening, and I liked it and saw no problems with it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 25, 2017, 11:07:01 pm
Well, I guess I'm just not a perceptive, or even intelligent, reader. I finished the Seabrook over dinner this evening, and I liked it and saw no problems with it.

I thought it was fine. It kept my attention. I didn't think it had much of a point, except to describe his father's very colorful liquor-collection practices and (SPOILER ALERT) note the irony of his father never drinking more than he should but he, John Seabrook, becoming an alcoholic. That's mildly interesting but not hugely meaningful. Still, as I said, it kept my attention enough to finish it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 26, 2017, 11:27:52 am
Another point that was missing or buried within the article was that addictions often have both a physical and a psychological component. With Seabrook, the psychological component was that he drank both to get away from and draw nearer to his father. Neither worked. What would have worked (and may still) is if he took the good traits of his father, his passion, his discipline, his attention to detail, and applied them to something more important than riding and collecting and drinking fine wines!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 28, 2017, 11:57:03 am
Another point that was missing or buried within the article was that addictions often have both a physical and a psychological component. With Seabrook, the psychological component was that he drank both to get away from and draw nearer to his father. Neither worked. What would have worked (and may still) is if he took the good traits of his father, his passion, his discipline, his attention to detail, and applied them to something more important than riding and collecting and drinking fine wines!

Good point!  :)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 28, 2017, 01:08:43 pm
But was that the "point" Seabrook was trying to make?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 28, 2017, 05:55:17 pm
Just because your dad had a fancy wine cellar, doesn't mean you can drink as much as you want of it without getting into trouble.

 ;D




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 01, 2017, 09:28:46 pm
The story behind this week's cover depicting Rosie the Riveter in a pussy hat:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-yorker-womens-march-cover_us_588fb495e4b0522c7d3c640e (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/new-yorker-womens-march-cover_us_588fb495e4b0522c7d3c640e)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on February 02, 2017, 12:18:28 pm
I love it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 03, 2017, 11:22:43 am

Next week's cover, according to a tweet by Philip Gourevitch:

(http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3vkSogXUAAuu7L.jpg)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 04, 2017, 01:23:24 pm

Der Spiegel takes it a step further:

(http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3wmUFcWQAA-rpd.jpg)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 04, 2017, 01:34:24 pm
I've fallen way behind, as usual. Right now I'm reading Jill Lepore's article on nuclear winter (Jan. 30).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 10, 2017, 10:03:32 am
I think I am about to have trouble with my subscription. Again.  >:(

I have not yet received the Feb. 13 issue, and the last issue date on my mailing label is the Feb. 6 issue. I have received nothing by either snail mail or e-mail about renewing the subscription--or whether it has automatically renewed. I usually have the next week's issue by Thursday of the preceding week.

You may recall that when I had to update my credit card information back in the fall of 2015 (because my subscription would expire in January 2016), instead of updating my information, the magazine cancelled my subscription! (Or allowed it to end. Whatever.)

I would miss the magazine, but if the same thing happens again this year, today I'm feeling just cranky enough not to want to deal with it and instead to tell The New Yorker to shove it.  >:(

I would miss the magazine--not sure what I would read at lunch time--but I'm sure I'd get over it. I suppose I could go back to reading a newspaper.

Right now I'm reading TNY article about the military unit in the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2017, 01:37:28 pm
Just FYI, the latest issue is Feb. 13-20, a double issue. It's the one with the fizzled Statue of Liberty torch on the cover.

It's called The Anniversary Issue, though it doesn't have any version of the monocled top-hatted guy, except on the TOC page (or is it always there?).

Nobody from my list of must-read writers, but a few writers I enjoy, and the contents look decent but there's nothing that would make me tear into it immediately.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 11, 2017, 03:29:48 pm
A pleasant respite last evening. I went to a fun winetasting downtown and then when I got home, I lay in my comfortable bed, finishing up a small glass of mead, watching my kitty groom her lower abdomen and reading about Anthony Bourdain in the New Yorker. What a happy, perfect time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2017, 04:09:07 pm
Just FYI, the latest issue is Feb. 13-20, a double issue. It's the one with the fizzled Statue of Liberty torch on the cover.

Yeah, I noticed that from where you posted a picture of the cover.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 16, 2017, 02:15:53 pm
Hmm. Yeah, I gave up and phoned about my subscription.

The nice young woman at Conde Nast Publications told me I had been mailed a renewal notice, but I never got it. She took my renewal information, but I won't get an issue until the one that will be cover dated March 6.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 17, 2017, 10:53:29 am
IF you have a subscription, you can access the entire New Yorker archives on their website (yes, going back to the 20s or whenever, I think, though I've never done it). So if you're at all curious about the two missing editions, you can read them there.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 20, 2017, 12:32:19 pm
There was a review of frequent New Yorker fiction writer George Saunders' new book, his first full-length novel, in this week's Time Magazine. It's called Lincoln in the Bardo. I don't think the title makes the book sound very appealing, but the review warmed me up to it. Even more interesting was Saunders' comments on the way he writes, his inspiration for the book, and his use of "alternative realities" for want of a better phrase.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2017, 11:05:31 am
There was a review of frequent New Yorker fiction writer George Saunders' new book, his first full-length novel, in this week's Time Magazine. It's called Lincoln in the Bardo. I don't think the title makes the book sound very appealing, but the review warmed me up to it. Even more interesting was Saunders' comments on the way he writes, his inspiration for the book, and his use of "alternative realities" for want of a better phrase.

I've been looking forward to this book, too, but also didn't like the title. I thought Bardo must be some physical place in Washington D.C. where they keep bodes for burial or something like that (the grief-stricken Lincoln is visiting his recently deceased son). Instead, it turns out that "bardo" is like a Buddhist version of limbo or Purgatory. The NYT review, by Coleson Whitehead -- author of the excellent "Underground Railroad" and no slouch at alternative realities himself -- made it sound really interesting.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2017, 12:53:52 pm
Abraham Lincoln?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 22, 2017, 10:07:08 pm
Abraham Lincoln?

Yes. When people refer casually to "Lincoln" -- especially as the subject of a book reviewed in Time and the NYT -- they don't usually mean Andrew Lincoln, star of AMC's The Walking Dead.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 22, 2017, 11:38:02 pm
Yes. When people refer casually to "Lincoln" -- especially as the subject of a book reviewed in Time and the NYT -- they don't usually mean Andrew Lincoln, star of AMC's The Walking Dead.

 ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 28, 2017, 04:43:41 pm
I'm enjoying my break from The New Yorker. At lunch I'm leisurely reading a book, and I don't feel pressured like I do to get through my New Yorkers, or depressed because I'm so far behind in my magazines.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 02, 2017, 11:12:33 am
My New Yorkers have restarted. I got the Putin cover issue. I forgot to bring it with me to work today, but anyway at lunch time there is a "to-do" for the retiring company president, so I probably won't be reading anyway. I didn't bring my book with me, either.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2017, 02:49:00 pm
I am very much looking forward to readinf the article about Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The New Yorker must consider it a very important story, since three writers worked on it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 03, 2017, 07:20:09 pm
And one of them is the editor in chief, David Remnick. Yes, it's pretty comprehensive, factual and balanced. The New Yorker needs to make up for lost time because it hasn't really covered the Russia election interference story like other media have. Massimo Calabresi has been writing on this subject for Time Magazine since last October.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 04, 2017, 11:34:32 am
And one of them is the editor in chief, David Remnick. Yes, it's pretty comprehensive, factual and balanced. The New Yorker needs to make up for lost time because it hasn't really covered the Russia election interference story like other media have. Massimo Calabresi has been writing on this subject for Time Magazine since last October.

Though in defense of the New Yorker, I don't think it has the same mission as Time and other straight-news/mainstream/"fake news" media, or vise versa.

David Remnick wrote two books on Russia, including one that won a Pulitzer, was the Washington Post's Moscow correspondent and speaks fluent Russian, so hopefully their coverage, which I haven't yet read, is more in-depth than Time's. On the other hand, I don't think the New Yorker aims to cover daily or weekly developments in a blow-by-blow way.

I'm currently reading the Feb. 6 issue's account of Dylan Roof's trial, which occurred on Dec. 7 -- I had to go check, but I knew that as usual I could find the date in the first sentence, and sure enough it's the seventh and eighth words. (The first six words, also as usual, inform readers of the time of day -- early morning -- so it's very precise!*) I assume Time reported on it when it happened, but probably didn't go as in-depth, or place it in as much cultural context.

This is all assumption, of course, since I haven't finished one account of Roof's trial and didn't read the other at all. But that would fit the general pattern I've observed over the years.


* This practice, in a magazine that so emphasizes fine writing, really annoys me. I mean, it's fine in the Roof story. But in some stories it's not necessary and feels clunky. I can't help wondering if it's some kind of editor-imposed rule that (almost) all stories must start with the time and place. Did it exist before Remnick? It seems like a newspapery rule, and he's the only New Yorker editor, I think, who's had an extensive newspaper background.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2017, 12:36:51 pm
* This practice, in a magazine that so emphasizes fine writing, really annoys me. I mean, it's fine in the Roof story. But in some stories it's not necessary and feels clunky. I can't help wondering if it's some kind of editor-imposed rule that (almost) all stories must start with the time and place. Did it exist before Remnick? It seems like a newspapery rule, and he's the only New Yorker editor, I think, who's had an extensive newspaper background.

I never really thought about that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's been the practice of the magazine since practically forever, sort of like that sentence pattern we discussed: (Name of person), (Drawn out description of who the subject is and what he or she actually said), ("said"--end of sentence.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 05, 2017, 02:06:40 pm
I never really thought about that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's been the practice of the magazine since practically forever, sort of like that sentence pattern we discussed: (Name of person), (Drawn out description ofA little  who the subject is and what he or she actually said), ("said"--end of sentence.)

I'm not sure! To be fair, it's a relevant fact in a Dylan Roof trial story. And the magazine has become more newsy in general since Remnick took over, and in those cases dates can be important. In that same issue, most of the other nonfiction stories are pretty hard news, except for a profile of a children's book author, which starts with a timeframe -- "A little more than a decade ago, [the author] had an idea" -- but not an exact date (probably at least partly because the guy himself doesn't remember the date of his idea). That's OK, but sometimes they go overboard. Like, a story about a scientific team working on some important project will start with "Early in the morning on April 27, so and so walked into the lab and greeted his fellow scientists." Like he does every day.

The other thing is their insistence on maintaining the diaeresis in words like coöperate and reëlect.

Here's an excerpt from a column by a New Yorker proofreader explaining that phenomenon:

Quote
The fact is that, absent the two dots, most people would not trip over the “coop” in “cooperate” or the “reel” in “reelect” (though they might pronounce the “zoo” in “zoological,” a potential application of the diaeresis that we get no credit for resisting). And yet we use the diaeresis for the same reason that we use the hyphen: to keep the cow out of co-workers.

Basically, we have three options for these kinds of words: “cooperate,” “co-operate,” and “coöperate.” Back when the magazine was just getting started, someone decided that the first misread and the second was ridiculous, and adopted the diaeresis as the most elegant solution with the broadest application. The diaeresis is the single thing that readers of the letter-writing variety complain about most.


http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis)

Since finding that explanation took me about two seconds, I decided to ask Prof. Google about the other issues. But the first page of "why does every New Yorker story start with a date" contained some links to the dates of New Yorker issues, and some links about dating New Yorkers.  :laugh:

And I don't even know how to phrase a question about the "said" thing.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 05, 2017, 02:59:35 pm
I never really thought about that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's been the practice of the magazine since practically forever, sort of like that sentence pattern we discussed: (Name of person), (Drawn out description of who the subject is and what he or she actually said), ("said"--end of sentence.)

Update: I did find a way to ask ("why are the new yorker's quote attributions so wordy?") and found little bit on the magazine's resistance to what's apparently called quotative inversion.

Here's a blog post discussing it that links to other blog posts about it. They include some pretty wild examples. But they don't really offer any explanation for the practice. They can't even determine, as far as I could tell, whether it's an editorial rule.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1848 (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1848)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2017, 04:04:40 pm
Update: I did find a way to ask ("why are the new yorker's quote attributions so wordy?")

Bravo! Good thinking!  :D

Quote
and found little bit on the magazine's resistance to what's apparently called quotative inversion.

"Quotative inversion"?  :laugh:

Sorry, but I think that's funny.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 05, 2017, 07:31:29 pm
Bravo! Good thinking!  :D

"Quotative inversion"?  :laugh:

Sorry, but I think that's funny.  ::)

I wish Mary Norris, the aforementioned New Yorker proofreader who has written a book and a bunch of articles and I think even has a TED talk, would address the subject. I looked her book up on Google Books and searched "quotes" and other possible references, but nada.

Yet at some point it must have come up. It's the weirdest thing the New Yorker does. There is widespread distaste for this practice outside the magazine, but nobody seems to know whether it's an actual ban and, if so, why. Why would they refuse so stubbornly to adopt a style that isn't grammatically incorrect and reads much more smoothly?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2017, 07:49:04 pm
I wish Mary Norris, the aforementioned New Yorker proofreader who has written a book and a bunch of articles and I think even has a TED talk, would address the subject. I looked her book up on Google Books and searched "quotes" and other possible references, but nada.

Yet at some point it must have come up. It's the weirdest thing the New Yorker does. There is widespread distaste for this practice outside the magazine, but nobody seems to know whether it's an actual ban and, if so, why. Why would they refuse so stubbornly to adopt a style that isn't grammatically incorrect and reads much more smoothly?

Obstinacy?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 06, 2017, 02:12:47 pm
So I just finished the Russia article (March 6). Depressing and scary but important. ...  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 09, 2017, 02:14:57 pm
I just now finished the March 6 article about the hedge fund guy who tried to destroy Herbalife.

To me the most interesting thing in the article was this assessment by the author:

"Strikingly, many of the themes and slogans that multilevel-marketing companies favor--lots of gilt, and promises that "we are going to make you rich"--are the same ones employed by Donald Trump, whose pledge to solve Middle America's economic woes helped propel him to the Presidency."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 10, 2017, 12:09:45 am
I can't remember if it was here or elsewhere that I was comparing how Time covers a news issue or event compared to how the New Yorker does. So I finally finished the story about Dylan Roof's trial. It was far more in-depth and contained more cultural context than Time's probably did, but it was mostly pretty straightfoward, so maybe not drastically different from Time's.

But then you get to the final section, basically a long paragraph. Wow. It is devastating. And it never, ever would have been in a Time story (mainly because it involved a first-person anecdote about something the writer experienced after the trial -- I don't think Time does that). I wont's spoil it in case anyone is still planning to read it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2017, 12:15:07 am
I can't remember if it was here or elsewhere that I was comparing how Time covers a news issue or event compared to how the New Yorker does. So I finally finished the story about Dylan Roof's trial. It was far more in-depth and contained more cultural context than Time's probably did, but it was mostly pretty straightfoward, so maybe not drastically different from Time's.

But then you get to the final section, basically a long paragraph. Wow. It is devastating. And it never, ever would have been in a Time story (mainly because it involved a first-person anecdote about something the writer experienced after the trial -- I don't think Time does that). I wont's spoil it in case anyone is still planning to read it.

The Roof trial article was very good, even by New Yorker standards.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2017, 02:16:56 pm
If you didn't read Kathryn Schulz's March 6 article about calling your congressman/woman, I recommend going back and reading it. I found it informative and entertaining, and some of the vignettes from politicians and their staffers that Schulz recounts are very funny.

I like Schulz's "voice."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 11, 2017, 08:58:19 pm
If you didn't read Kathryn Schulz's March 6 article about calling your congressman/woman, I recommend going back and reading it. I found it informative and entertaining, and some of the vignettes from politicians and their staffers that Schulz recounts are very funny.

I like Schulz's "voice."

Me too! Plus she was the one who wrote that terrifying article last year about the potential effects of an earthquake in the Northwest.

I'll look for it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 12, 2017, 02:07:22 pm
“I love reading anything about gigantic animate blobs of molten iron who secretly long to be concert pianists.” George Saunders, “By the Book” in the NYT (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/books/review/george-saunders-by-the-book.html?action=click&contentCollection=books&module=NextInCollection&region=Footer&pgtype=article&version=column&rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fby-the-book).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 12, 2017, 02:12:46 pm
Also, when the NYT asked, "If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?" he said:

I’d recommend that 18th-century classic on political strategy by the Count deRinchy, called “A Tim’ly Resignation Doth Suit a Gentleman Well.” There is also his lesser-known classic, “Labor Thee Always to Not Insult or Afright Those Thou Wouldst Leadeth.” DeRinchy also was a poet of some repute, and his little volume “The Truth Remains True, Even Amongst a Sea of Deliberate Falsehoods” is a timeless classic.

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 13, 2017, 10:01:35 am
Also, when the NYT asked, "If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?" he said:

I’d recommend that 18th-century classic on political strategy by the Count deRinchy, called “A Tim’ly Resignation Doth Suit a Gentleman Well.” There is also his lesser-known classic, “Labor Thee Always to Not Insult or Afright Those Thou Wouldst Leadeth.” DeRinchy also was a poet of some repute, and his little volume “The Truth Remains True, Even Amongst a Sea of Deliberate Falsehoods” is a timeless classic.

 :laugh:

 :laugh: :laugh:

I saw that -- funny!

You know, I always thought if I were ever interviewed for one of those things, I'd spend the week before desperately doing research so that when they ask things like, "What's a good book you recently read?" I could answer with some obscure 18th century novel and look all erudite instead of, "Um, 'Gone Girl,' I guess."

Looks like George went one better and skipped the week of desperate research!  :laugh:  :laugh:



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 22, 2017, 01:03:46 pm
I was not going to read the profile of photographer Catherine Opie in the March 13 issue, because, I'll be perfectly honest about this, I was put off by the photo of the subject nursing her child. However, the article was written by Ariel Levy, and I always read her articles, so I read the Opie profile, and I'll admit that I'm glad I did because she seems like an interesting person with an interesting personal history. Also, the things Opie had to say about S/M resonated with my own personal history.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 26, 2017, 10:09:27 am
I was skimming a duty article by a journalist ebedded with a SWAT team outside Mosul and I spotted another New Yorker typographic idiosyncrasy that I think I'd subconsciously noticed before but never quite registered.

When writing all-caps acronyms like SWAT and ISIS and AWOL, they put it in a weird little font that's the size of the small letters of the regular type. For example, in SWAT team, SWAT is shorter than the "t" but the same height as the "eam." Soemthing like SWAT team. (That's actually a little too small -- I think in this example the "SWAT" would probably be 9 pt. to "teams"'s 10, and we can only choose either 8 or 10. But you get the idea.)

What's up with that? I don't think any other publication does that. I would make you want to seek a beat that never required you to report on ISIS or any other topics with frequent acronyms.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 26, 2017, 03:28:40 pm
I was skimming a duty article by a journalist ebedded with a SWAT team outside Mosul and I spotted another New Yorker typographic idiosyncrasy that I think I'd subconsciously noticed before but never quite registered.

When writing all-caps acronyms like SWAT and ISIS and AWOL, they put it in a weird little font that's the size of the small letters of the regular type. For example, in SWAT team, SWAT is shorter than the "t" but the same height as the "eam." Soemthing like SWAT team. (That's actually a little too small -- I think in this example the "SWAT" would probably be 9 pt. to "teams"'s 10, and we can only choose either 8 or 10. But you get the idea.)

What's up with that? I don't think any other publication does that. I would make you want to seek a beat that never required you to report on ISIS or any other topics with frequent acronyms.

I read that article, and I never really noticed or thought about that before. Are they just using small caps?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 26, 2017, 05:14:22 pm
Are they just using small caps?

If you're asking in a literal rather than oxymoronic sense, then yes. They are using all caps but in a smaller font than the surrounding type.

And I've since approached a part of the article that suggests it -- the article's content, not the caps issue -- becomes more dramatic and less dutiful as it goes along.

Also, I should add that I could never be an embedded war correspondent for the New Yorker, weird acronyms or no, or for any other publication.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 26, 2017, 06:02:27 pm
If you're asking in a literal rather than oxymoronic sense, then yes. They are using all caps but in a smaller font than the surrounding type.

Yes, I did mean that literally rather than oxymoronically. (I have to deal with lots of small caps in my work.)

Quote
And I've since approached a part of the article that suggests it -- the article's content, not the caps issue -- becomes more dramatic and less dutiful as it goes along.

Also, I should add that I could never be an embedded war correspondent for the New Yorker, weird acronyms or no, or for any other publication.

I found it a compelling read. And I couldn't be an imbedded correspondent, either. Not for anything.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 26, 2017, 08:58:41 pm
Yes, I did mean that literally rather than oxymoronically. (I have to deal with lots of small caps in my work.)

In what context(s) do you use them? Would you stick them amid a larger font when writing an acronym?



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 26, 2017, 11:12:09 pm
In what context(s) do you use them? Would you stick them amid a larger font when writing an acronym?

In a general way, I might say that whether I would use the small caps in a larger font might depend on the point size. In something like SWAT, small caps certainly save space.

Small caps are used a lot in medical-scientific writing, and we use them for "a.m." and "p.m.," rather than lower case. I think we might get that from the American Medical Association style book.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 27, 2017, 10:11:48 am
Interesting.

At both of my jobs, we follow Associated Press style. At my medical-device job, we follow American Psychological Association style for citations, but pretty much everything else, including times of day, are AP style. We do occasionally use % in a headline or table for the sake of clarity and brevity, although AP oddly insists on spelling out percent.

The New Yorker clearly follows none of the above, though maybe it's sort of close to Chicago Style? I don't know -- I'm less familiar with that one.


 


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 27, 2017, 11:28:04 am
Interesting.

At both of my jobs, we follow Associated Press style. At my medical-device job, we follow American Psychological Association style for citations, but pretty much everything else, including times of day, are AP style. We do occasionally use % in a headline or table for the sake of clarity and brevity, although AP oddly insists on spelling out percent.

The New Yorker clearly follows none of the above, though maybe it's sort of close to Chicago Style? I don't know -- I'm less familiar with that one.

The 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style, the edition we have in our offices, doesn't prescribe caps or small caps, except in specialized usages. It does say, however, that when caps are wanted for emphasis, "Small caps rather than full capitals look more graceful" (7.50). Chicago 15 seems geared more to how and when to use small caps if your style is to use small caps.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2017, 01:26:58 pm
I am getting a huge kick out of the previously unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald story in the March 20 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 30, 2017, 11:02:54 am
I am getting a huge kick out of the previously unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald story in the March 20 issue.

Good to know! I'll read it.

I was really into F. Scott when I was in about 8th or 9th grade. I think I read all of his books at the time. But I haven't read more than a couple of his short stories.

I also really like his essay "The Crackup." I bought another collection of his essays a year or two ago, but didn't get as into it. I think they were purposely curated to counter any negative impressions caused by The Crackup. Hence, they weren't as interesting.

There's a big annual Fitgerald Society conference in St. Paul in June -- only the second time it has been held in his hometown. I may try to go to some of the events.

http://www.fitzgerald2017.org/ (http://www.fitzgerald2017.org/)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2017, 12:09:03 pm
I was really into F. Scott when I was in about 8th or 9th grade. I think I read all of his books at the time. But I haven't read more than a couple of his short stories.

Unfortunately I developed an aversion to Fitzgerald that I've never been able to overcome. Or, never made an effort to overcome. My memory is a little vague now, but my mother gave me a copy of The Great Gatsby when I was still an adolescent--I have no idea why she did that, and probably I was too young for it, or to appreciate it, or to understand it--and I just remember really not liking it. I've wondered whether my mother really knew what she was doing when she gave me that book. It never did sound like the sort of thing she would read. But that soured me on Fitzgerald, and so the short story has been a bit of a revelation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 30, 2017, 03:40:54 pm
Unfortunately I developed an aversion to Fitzgerald that I've never been able to overcome. Or, never made an effort to overcome. My memory is a little vague now, but my mother gave me a copy of The Great Gatsby when I was still an adolescent--I have no idea why she did that, and probably I was too young for it, or to appreciate it, or to understand it--and I just remember really not liking it. I've wondered whether my mother really knew what she was doing when she gave me that book. It never did sound like the sort of thing she would read. But that soured me on Fitzgerald, and so the short story has been a bit of a revelation.

The first thing of his I read was This Side of Paradise. I can't remember why I liked it so much. I was kind of a 1920s buff, I guess.

The Great Gatsby
is his classic, of course (though it received petty meh reviews). But my favorite of his was unfinished, posthumously published The Last Tycoon, perhaps because it was a fictionalized portrait of the producer Irving Thalberg, who was another part of my 1920s fixation.

My son, in college in LA, just received something called the Mary Pickford Scholarship. I explained that she was the Jennifer Lawrence of the 19-teens, and founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. I had forgotten (perhaps subconsciously on purpose) about D.W. Griffith's involvement, but my son, though not familiar with Mary, actually knew that part.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2017, 04:05:43 pm
My son, in college in LA, just received something called the Mary Pickford Scholarship. I explained that she was the Jennifer Lawrence of the 19-teens, and founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. I had forgotten (perhaps subconsciously on purpose) about D.W. Griffith's involvement, but my son, though not familiar with Mary, actually knew that part.

Yes, you mentioned that somewhere around here.

But it's funny that today you should mention an actress that your son--and probably lots of other people in his generation--knows very little about.

After seeing the road company of The King and I last night, today I was doing some reading on the history of the play. Although it ended up making a star of Yul Brynner, I already knew it was written to be a star vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence. She was a big star in the Forties, but how many people today have even heard of Gertrude Lawrence? (Julie Andrews played her in the movie Star, which was a huge flop.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 30, 2017, 07:23:17 pm
Yes, you mentioned that somewhere around here.

Did I already? Sorry! Geez, he only got it a few days ago! But I tell the same stories to so many people in so many places -- at work, among my various friends, to my sons, to my ex-husband, on Facebook, on Twitter, here -- that I can never reminder what I've told to whom. I'm constantly in fear of people being too polite to tell me they've already heard it, listening with an uncomfortable frozen smile and thinking, "Yep, the Alzheimer's is kicking in all right."

However, this particular one I don't think I told anywhere else BUT here and to my ex. I figure most people have no idea who Mary Pickford was, but here I know I'm conversing with a more erudite group.

Quote
After seeing the road company of The King and I last night, today I was doing some reading on the history of the play. Although it ended up making a star of Yul Brynner, I already knew it was written to be a star vehicle for Gertrude Lawrence. She was a big star in the Forties, but how many people today have even heard of Gertrude Lawrence? (Julie Andrews played her in the movie Star, which was a huge flop.)

The name's familiar but I can't picture a face or anything else. The '40s were never of much interest to me compared to the '20s or even '30s. I know most of my early stars, but I'm lost when it comes to the '40s and even the '50s are pretty vague.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2017, 09:36:06 pm
Did I already? Sorry! Geez, he only got it a few days ago! But I tell the same stories to so many people in so many places -- at work, among my various friends, to my sons, to my ex-husband, on Facebook, on Twitter, here -- that I can never reminder what I've told to whom. I'm constantly in fear of people being too polite to tell me they've already heard it, listening with an uncomfortable frozen smile and thinking, "Yep, the Alzheimer's is kicking in all right."

Happens to me, too, all the time.

Quote
The name's familiar but I can't picture a face or anything else. The '40s were never of much interest to me compared to the '20s or even '30s. I know most of my early stars, but I'm lost when it comes to the '40s and even the '50s are pretty vague.

I found the Wikipedia article about Gertrude Lawrence to be interesting reading. She was quite a character. Absolutely no sense of money. Apparently she could be quite a diva but without a diva's voice. In the early '40s Danny Kaye was with her in a musical called Lady in the Dark. He had to sing a "patter song," where he named 50 Russian composers in less than a minute. On opening night this number brought the house down, and that terrified him because the next number in the show was Lawrence's big number, and, he said, "Nobody upstages Gertrude Lawrence." He was sure she would demand that the song be cut from the show. Fortunately she was apparently OK with the reaction to his song.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 30, 2017, 10:36:13 pm
This discussion about the New Yorker is more interesting than some of the issues I've read over the years!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 30, 2017, 11:18:56 pm
I tell the same stories to so many people in so many places -- at work, among my various friends, to my sons, to my ex-husband, on Facebook, on Twitter, here -- that I can never reminder what I've told to whom. I'm constantly in fear of people being too polite to tell me they've already heard it, listening with an uncomfortable frozen smile and thinking, "Yep, the Alzheimer's is kicking in all right."

Yep, the Alzheimer's is kicking in, all right. I've found myself doing that lately, too -- miswriting words not just by making typos or regular misspellings but by substituting whole different words that are kind of like the word I want to write, and then not noticing either as I do it or after when I'm proofreading it. What's up with that??

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 31, 2017, 09:16:04 am
Yep, the Alzheimer's is kicking in, all right. I've found myself doing that lately, too -- miswriting words not just by making typos or regular misspellings but by substituting whole different words that are kind of like the word I want to write, and then not noticing either as I do it or after when I'm proofreading it. What's up with that??

I don't know, but--I'm not kidding--the same thing is happening to me. Frequently.  :(

I've been chalking it up to a combination of two things, normal aging (at least, I hope) and also the effect of so much typing on a computer keyboard. I can type so much faster on a computer keyboard than I ever could on a typewriter, and it appears that I can type faster than I can think.  :(

But I can't tell you how many times lately I've looked back over something I've just typed (especially here on Bettermost) and noticed words missing from the sentence, or, worse an entirely wrong word. I have noticed, however, that often when I type the wrong word, the wrong word begins with the same letter as the correct word. I don't know if that means anything, but I've noticed it.

There is some comfort in knowing I'm not the only one to whom this is happening. Thank you for having the courage to bring up the subject.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 31, 2017, 03:27:56 pm
Alz.org says that sometimes using the wrong word is not a symptom of Alzheimers but having difficulty carrying on a conversation is. I don't notice either of you having that difficulty.  :)

I've started the FSF story on your recommendation. It's good, so far.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 31, 2017, 04:20:32 pm
Alz.org says that sometimes using the wrong word is not a symptom of Alzheimers but having difficulty carrying on a conversation is. I don't notice either of you having that difficulty.  :)

Yes, but here we're writing. We have time to think about what we "say," so word-finding difficulty isn't quite so apparent as it is in actual conversation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 01, 2017, 11:40:45 am
I don't know, but--I'm not kidding--the same thing is happening to me. Frequently.  :(

Good to know it's not just me.

Quote
I've been chalking it up to a combination of two things, normal aging (at least, I hope) and also the effect of so much typing on a computer keyboard. I can type so much faster on a computer keyboard than I ever could on a typewriter, and it appears that I can type faster than I can think.  :(

You're lucky you can type! Despite all the typing people do these days, I'm not sure it's being taught in schools. I know neither of my sons ever took it as a class. They seem to get around a keyboard OK, writing papers in some sort of self-taught manner.

I work with a guy who's a writer and uses a kind of multi-fingered hunt-and-peck method.

Typing at a certain rate was a requirement to get into journalism school where I went. And to do that, you'd have to be able to type the real way. I noticed over the years that it was not a requirement at one of the local private schools that also offered a journalism major, because I worked with some of its alumni, and they couldn't type.

And yesterday, this woman at work who's maybe 56 but grew up in Duluth said that in her high school all the girls were required to take typing. I could hardly believe it -- in the late '70s the were still that sexist??

Well, at least some of those boys from Duluth may now be regretting having been excused from taking it.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 01, 2017, 12:01:07 pm
And yesterday, this woman at work who's maybe 56 but grew up in Duluth said that in her high school all the girls were required to take typing. I could hardly believe it -- in the late '70s the were still that sexist??

When I was in junior high (it may have been ninth grade; I forget for sure which grade it was), all of us, boys and girls, had to take a class called "Business Education." Not only were we taught to type, we were also taught things like how to write checks and keep a checkbook. To this day I still keep my checkbook the way I was taught in that class. (I think there is, or was, a name for the method of typing when you don't look at the keyboard while you're typing, but I forget that, too. We were required to learn how to type without looking at the keyboard.)

The sexism in my junior high, in the early Seventies, was that girls took Home Ec and boys took Shop.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 01, 2017, 06:46:47 pm
Not only were we taught to type, we were also taught things like how to write checks and keep a checkbook.

I still type, but I quit keeping my checkbook years on years ago. In fact, these days I only write a check or two a month, if that.

That's what I'm thinking of, I guess -- not exactly hunt-and-peck typing, where you'd use just your index finger and look around for each letter, one by one. But I know people who are actual writers who, though they use multiple fingers, have to look at the keyboard and don't use the right fingers for the right keys or keep their hands in the "home" position or anything.

Quote
The sexism in my junior high, in the early Seventies, was that girls took Home Ec and boys took Shop.

In mine, I think both genders (there were only two genders back then) had to take one class in each, but could go further in either if they wanted. I remember boys taking the cooking class -- we made ice cream and root beer, so who can blame them? But I don't recall any boys in the sewing class, where we made elastic-waisted dirndl skirts.  :laugh:  I took a shop class where we made a little wooden shelf, which my mom put up in her kitchen, and a picture or design that we hammered into I piece of brass and affixed to a piece of wood that we had sanded and stained. I don't even remember what my picture was! That's all I took of either one, though in high school I took graphic arts, which skewed slightly male.

Mine must have been kind of a cutting edge junior high, I guess. We even had an English class on the poetry of Bob Dylan. I was so young I barely knew who Bob Dylan was! The teacher was probably at least in her 50s, so I'm pretty sure she didn't live to see him win the Nobel Prize.  :-\


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 01, 2017, 07:15:14 pm
I think it's called touch typing or Qwerty keyboard typing. When I was in high school all students were required to take typing. But I forgot it in between HS and college. Later I taught myself typing again and now I'm pretty fast. Not as fast as my thinking, though. I can carry on a couple of other conversations with myself in my head while typing a third conversation. Perhaps that's why our blog posts seem so scatterbrained (yes, I have that problem too).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 01, 2017, 07:25:22 pm
I'm forever grateful to Brother Dan, my typing teacher in high school.

My Catholic school was relatively poor, so I was taught on an old manual typewriter (pretty antiquated even in the late 70s).

Brother Dan's line was "Use your claws, not your jaws".  LOL

I suspect he taught typing from the '50s.  I remember counting in order to make columns, etc.  Also, how to write a business letter and a "memo".  No erasing allowed!

But, now I'm a pretty fast typist.  Yes, Lee, it's the QWERTY method. 

So many of my colleagues use dragon dictation, but I still prefer typing. 

I have a writer friend who types fast and says that he writes in "thoughts" rather than words/phrases/sentences.  The placement of the keys is so completely second nature. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 01, 2017, 10:25:28 pm
Now that you mention it, Paul, "down here" "in my day" "they" called it touch typing. It's so long ago now that I can't remember if we had manual typewriters in the classroom, but I suspect we did. I didn't get an electric typewriter until I was in college.

You reminded, me, too, that we were also taught how to write business letters in that class.

Katherine, I continue to try to keep as much of my finances off the Internet as much as possible--I assume that's how you're paying bills if you only write one or two checks a month. One reason for it is the experience I had of my first PC "going bad" and being without it for close to two months before the problem was diagnosed and repaired. Of course now I also have security concerns. I even make PayPal send me a paper bill every month, and I write a check to pay it. Nobody debits money from my accounts but me. To paraphrase, I'll stop writing checks when the pry the checkbook from my cold, dead hand.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 02, 2017, 10:13:58 am
My Catholic school was relatively poor, so I was taught on an old manual typewriter (pretty antiquated even in the late 70s).

I started on my dad's old black typewriter -- the kind with round keys (which nowadays they sometimes make jewelry out of in vintage stores) attached to arms that swung up and hit the ribbon (my dad typed, and when I was little I used to be awestruck at how he could type things without looking). In junior high, my parents gave me a Christmas gift of a cool bright-red typewriter. Was it electric, though? I can't remember, though I do know at some point I think I switched to electric. Maybe, like Jeff, in college? But even then, if I had to write a paper I would write it by hand at first and then type it up. Switching to typing while writing was a pretty big adjustment, but I could never go back to that (though I know many writers -- not journalists, but novelists and the like -- do still use pen and paper during their creative process). I think my sons, as children of the computer age, skipped that whole step.

I didn't type on a computer keyboard until I started my first job.

Quote
But, now I'm a pretty fast typist.

I don't know if I'm fast or slow, I just know the direction I'm going. I doubt I'm fast enough to get a good job as a secretary or transcriber or whoever types a lot for their jobs these days. Well, I guess that would include me, but thinking of the words is the part you have to do quickly -- and sometimes not even then -- not so much the typing, except on very short deadlines.

Quote
So many of my colleagues use dragon dictation, but I still prefer typing. 

They speak it and their typewriter writes it down? I would hate that! I don't feel I can compose my thoughts well enough in speech. And I'd always want to be going back and changing things, which seems like it would be awkward in dictation.

I have a friend who has one congenitally shortened and weakened arm, then was in a motorcycle accident and lost the use of his other arm. He's a writer among other things, so now he dictates. The first book he wrote after the accident is titled "The Dog Says How," meaning that when one of his dogs wanders into the room while he's writing and barks or whatever, the typewriter records it as "how."

Quote
I have a writer friend who types fast and says that he writes in "thoughts" rather than words/phrases/sentences.  The placement of the keys is so completely second nature. 

So you mean he types things before he verbalizes them in his head? Like the way you would feel cold without necessarily thinking, "I am cold"?  I would say I type in full sentences rather than words, but I don't think I could transform inchoate thoughts into typewritten copy.

Regarding the name, I think either touch or QWERTY typing is acceptable. We called it touch.

I once read that the first line of the keyboard was designed so salespeople could peck out "typewriter quote" using the first line alone to impress customers, but Wikipedia says that's not substantiated and probably apocryphal.

The more accepted explanation is that the guy who invented the typewriter in 1868 designed it so that letters often written in succession are far apart from each other so the bars wouldn't get tangled when they swung up to hit the ribbon, but that doesn't quite make sense -- what more common word is there than "the," and the T and H appear pretty close together. However, maybe those letters' arms were positioned farther apart than their keyboard placement would suggest? Another explanation is that less common letters were placed in the hardest-to-reach spots. That's certainly true of Q, Z and X. But A and S are pretty common, as are periods, quotation marks and question marks, and those all require use of the weakest fingers.

Apparently other designs have been proposed over the years, but they didn't catch on.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 02, 2017, 10:51:16 am
Katherine, I continue to try to keep as much of my finances off the Internet as much as possible--I assume that's how you're paying bills if you only write one or two checks a month. One reason for it is the experience I had of my first PC "going bad" and being without it for close to two months before the problem was diagnosed and repaired. Of course now I also have security concerns. I even make PayPal send me a paper bill every month, and I write a check to pay it. Nobody debits money from my accounts but me. To paraphrase, I'll stop writing checks when the pry the checkbook from my cold, dead hand.  ;D

Not only do I pay my bills on the internet, but I have them automatically withdrawn from my account. I keep a fairly close eye on things as they go along, but if I don't set it on automatic I forget to pay them on time. My son just took out a credit card (credit limit: $500, so he can't do too much damage). I emphasized that he should pay it off every month but also set it up to automatically withdraw at least the minimum payment from his account so he doesn't get late fees and wreck the credit record that he got the card in the first place to establish. But neither he nor I is as meticulous as you.

I have at least three PCs in my house, if you count the one I was issued for one of my jobs. And I have one at my other job that I could take home if I wanted, so that would be four. When something goes wrong with the ones I own, I take it to a local shop called Chipheads, and they always fix it within a few days. (And the work IT departments, of course, fix those.) So no fears of a breakdown.

You do have to be careful, though. I have a friend who tried to write a check in the grocery store and found her account was empty. Apparently someone hacked into her Paypal account and stole her money. She got it straightened out eventually and got her money back, but still.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 02, 2017, 11:44:43 am
Talk about disorienting!
Many European countries use some variation of the AZERTY keyboard (also QWERTZ).  This is the French one:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/KB_France.svg/500px-KB_France.svg.png)

I borrowed a friend's laptop once and was hopelessly confounded.  
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 02, 2017, 02:58:25 pm
Not only do I pay my bills on the internet, but I have them automatically withdrawn from my account. I keep a fairly close eye on things as they go along, but if I don't set it on automatic I forget to pay them on time.

And that, I say, is a good argument for continuing to receive hard-copy bills in the mail, and for writing checks to pay them.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 02, 2017, 03:44:56 pm
Everyone should read Jane Mayer's "Trump's Money Man" in the March 27 issue.

Because it's good to know your enemies. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 03, 2017, 11:47:33 am
I am getting a huge kick out of the previously unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald story in the March 20 issue.

Back on March 28, Jeff posted this and I read the story "The I.O.U." after just returning from Pint's Pub in downtown Denver, where my Sherlock Holmes society met to discuss "The Naval Treaty". Surprise! There are several parallels: a nephew of an illustrious uncle clashes with him, has brain fever for ten months, has a spunky fiancee, and there is a disaster regarding a publication. Coincidence, or archetype?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2017, 12:32:10 pm
"Brain fever." How Victorian is that?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2017, 01:34:44 pm
I think Mayer's article about Robert Mercer successfully demonstrates that the Republic is really in danger from the super wealthy.

"Until Election Day 2016, Mercer and Hanley--two of the richest men in America--paid Caddell to keep collecting polling data that enabled them to exploit the public resentment of elites such as themselves."

That's positively evil.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 03, 2017, 05:04:05 pm
And that, I say, is a good argument for continuing to receive hard-copy bills in the mail, and for writing checks to pay them.  :)

Yes, if you're the kind of person who mails off a check immediately upon receiving the bill. As you might suspect, I am not. So the automatic withdrawal option works fine for me.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 03, 2017, 05:12:57 pm
So this weekend I weeded through my stacks of old New Yorkers. There were issues dating back to April 2016! And even then it was hard to part with some of them! ::)

They aren't all duty articles, either. I even spotted a David Sedaris piece I don't recall reading, though I usually read his the minute they arrive.

If a magazine contains only one or two articles I want to read, I rip them out, staple them and make a pile that I can gradually work my way through. I stash them in places where I might need emergency reading material. I still never even get through that stack, but at least it's shorter than the whole magazines.

However, some of them have three or four articles that still seem worth reading, so then I do keep the whole magazine!

Sometimes I wish the New Yorker were a monthly. Because this isn't even the internet's fault entirely -- I used to always fall behind in my New Yorkers in the early 1990s. But back then I also read Harper's and probably digested the paper a little more thoroughly.

The one good thing that's come out of the presidential election is that I feel I can freely toss any political reporting published prior to November 8.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2017, 07:19:41 pm
On Jeopardy! this evening: E.B. White said that The New Yorker used commas with the precision of knives in a circus act.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 06, 2017, 11:30:07 pm
I enjoyed the article about Prince Charles in the latest issue. Some eye-opening revelations there.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 07, 2017, 09:43:55 am
On Jeopardy! this evening: E.B. White said that The New Yorker used commas with the precision of knives in a circus act.  ;D

E.B. White was on Jeopardy?! Wow, that must have been some show! A rerun, maybe?

 :laugh:



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 07, 2017, 09:49:41 am
Talk about disorienting!
Many European countries use some variation of the AZERTY keyboard (also QWERTZ).  This is the French one:

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/KB_France.svg/500px-KB_France.svg.png)

I borrowed a friend's laptop once and was hopelessly confounded.  

I cqn understqnd why! I zould hqve been, too.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 07, 2017, 10:08:07 am
E.B. White was on Jeopardy?! Wow, that must have been some show! A rerun, maybe?

 :laugh:

Yeah. He competed against James Thurber and Harold Ross. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 08, 2017, 04:44:41 pm
I enjoyed the article about Prince Charles in the latest issue. Some eye-opening revelations there.

I read that one over supper last night. It reminded me of something I've thought of before. The author logically refers to the prince as being the future "Charles III." I wonder, though, if that is how he'll reign if he ever does reign. "Charles" is not an auspicious name for a king of England: The first one lost his head (literally) and the second one wasn't much better, although he did die in his bed. We know that Queen Victoria was named Alexandrina Victoria, but chose to reign as Victoria. The prince's name in full is Charles Philip Arthur George. If he gets to pick, I think he'd be much better advised to reign as "George VII." His grandfather was George VI, and I think you could say he had a successful reign, seeing England through World War II and all, and he and "the Queen Mum" were loved by the people. At any rate, he was much more successful than Charles I or Charles II.

The Queen is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, Elizabeth for her "mum," Alexandra for her great-grandmother, and Mary for her grandmother.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2017, 02:27:47 pm
Over lunch today I finished "The God Pill" (April 3). This is another article that I find longer than necessary. I recommend skipping it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 21, 2017, 01:05:45 pm
I am still struggling to get through the April 3 "Health, Medicine & the Body" issue.

The whole damn issue is a "duty."  :(

I'm about to give up on it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2017, 08:14:55 pm
I did give up on the "Health, Medicine & Body" issue.  :-\

But then this evening I came across the funniest thing I've read in a while. In the April 24 issue, Anthony Lane reviews A Quiet Passion, the new film about Emily Dickinson. There's nothing funny about that, but then in the same article he goes on to review the car-chase-and-crash movie The Fate of the Furious, and he does his review of that movie in a poem imitating Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 26, 2017, 09:44:43 am
But then this evening I came across the funniest thing I've read in a while. In the April 24 issue, Anthony Lane reviews A Quiet Passion, the new film about Emily Dickinson. There's nothing funny about that, but then in the same article he goes on to review the car-chase-and-crash movie The Fate of the Furious, and he does his review that a poem imitating Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."  :laugh:

Oh, I'll have to look that up. There was a while there when I wouldn't miss a review by Anthony Lane, even of a movie I'd never want, or get a chance, to see. He's so clever. Lately I've begun thinking of him as a bit too clever at times -- writing things just for the sake of making jokes as opposed to things that are integral to the review.

But that sounds like a really appropriate opportunity for cleverness! And he can be brilliant at it.

I remember a line of his -- I can't remember what star he was talking about, but let's say it was Tom Cruise. "I'll admit, the walls of my bedroom are not shrouded with posters of Tom Cruise, but ..." he said, meaning he wasn't normally the hugest fan but in this movie Cruise was pretty good. That joke fit organically into the review. But sometimes they seem like too much of a stretch.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 26, 2017, 09:52:02 am
Oh, I'll have to look that up. There was a while there when I wouldn't miss a review by Anthony Lane, even of a movie I'd never want, or get a chance, to see. He's so clever. Lately I've begun thinking of him as a bit too clever at times -- writing things just for the sake of making jokes as opposed to things that are integral to the review.

But that sounds like a really appropriate opportunity for cleverness! And he can be brilliant at it.

I remember a line of his -- I can't remember what star he was talking about, but let's say it was Tom Cruise. "I'll admit, the walls of my bedroom are not shrouded with posters of Tom Cruise, but ..." he said, meaning he wasn't normally the hugest fan but in this movie Cruise was pretty good. That joke fit organically into the review. But sometimes they seem like too much of a stretch.

Yeah, I agree. Sometimes he does seem too clever by half. But the faux Dickinson poem is brilliant, even if he does use a word or two that would have given Mr. Shawn a heart attack.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 26, 2017, 11:13:44 am
I love Anthony Lane.  

Several years ago, he put out a book that was mostly a compilation of his New Yorker reviews, plus a few random essays. It's called "Nobody's Perfect", an allusion to "Some Like It Hot".

(http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsod695iCj1qal7yeo1_250.gif)(http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsod695iCj1qal7yeo2_250.gif)
(http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsod695iCj1qal7yeo3_250.gif)(http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsod695iCj1qal7yeo4_250.gif)
(http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsod695iCj1qal7yeo5_250.gif)(http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsod695iCj1qal7yeo6_250.gif)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 26, 2017, 11:31:44 am
I particularly liked his review of "Contact":  he says of Jodie Foster's character:   "She does get laid in the film, but only by Matthew McConaughey, and that doesn't count."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 26, 2017, 01:09:00 pm
I particularly liked his review of "Contact":  he says of Jodie Foster's character:   "She does get laid in the film, but only by Matthew McConaughey, and that doesn't count."

Well, there you have it. Amusing, but snarky. How does he know it doesn't count? Has he ever been laid by Matthew McConaughey?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 27, 2017, 01:38:14 pm
Plus, how does that not count? I'd certainly count Matthew McConaughey if he were among my conquests, even if it occurred before the McConaisssaince, as that film did.

On the other hand, Jodie Foster no doubt has different standards.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 27, 2017, 02:15:49 pm
Plus, how does that not count? I'd certainly count Matthew McConaughey if he were among my conquests, even if it occurred before the McConaisssaince, as that film did.

On the other hand, Jodie Foster no doubt has different standards.

It just now occurred to me to wonder whether he was making a kind of veiled reference to the fact that she's lesbian, so it "doesn't count" because she got laid by a guy?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 29, 2017, 02:27:36 pm
It just now occurred to me to wonder whether he was making a kind of veiled reference to the fact that she's lesbian, so it "doesn't count" because she got laid by a guy?

Maybe, although I don't think her character in the film was necessarily identified as lesbian. I think he was just waving off Matthew McConaughey as a lightweight, which most people did back in them days.

On a related topic, since Jonathan Demme died the other day, I've read that he was slammed by "the gay community" (not that all gay people share one giant monolithic opinion, but you know what I mean) for the portrayal of the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs, whose identity was kind of vague but seemed kind of transgender or something (he was making a thing out of women's skin to wear himself) and wore makeup, I think, etc. Demme felt terrible, because he considered himself an ally. So then he made Philadelphia, in which as you'll recall Tom Hanks plays a gay man with AIDS -- and was castigated even more by the gay community for such a tame portrayal of a gay man (I guess Hanks danced with Antonio Banderas, but that was about it -- let's just say it was no Brokeback Mountain).

In fact, as years went by SotL became more embraced by "the gay community" -- Jodie Foster's character is not identified as lesbian, but could conceivably be, and for some reason I guess people liked Hannibal Lecter. But they still hated Philadelphia.

I felt bad for him, because in neither case did he intend to be insensitive. He says that in SotL he just wanted to show a guy who was extremely alienated from himself and real life or something like that. And in Philadelphia, he hoped to bring attention to an issue that was still widely ignored -- remember how Reagan notoriously didn't mention AIDS?

Do you all have any thoughts on this, or had you heard it before?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 30, 2017, 01:56:17 pm
Maybe, although I don't think her character in the film was necessarily identified as lesbian.

I didn't mean her character in the film; I've never seen it. I meant her.

Quote
I think he was just waving off Matthew McConaughey as a lightweight, which most people did back in them days.

That's certainly plausible.

I've never seen either Silence of the Lambs or Philadelphia. Years ago some guy at my gym was pointed out to me as the person on whom Hanks' character was based.

In any case, as usual I'm weeks behind in my magazines. If anybody skipped the Margaret Attwood profile (April 17), I would recommend going back and reading it. I enjoyed it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 02, 2017, 12:49:51 pm
Today I read Kathryn Schulz's April 24 "Critic At Large" piece on the Arctic in literature. New to me that neither Peary nor Byrd actually reached the North Pole. Schulz says the actual first person to reach the North Pole was an insurance agent from Duluth in 1968.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 02, 2017, 05:03:15 pm
I didn't mean her character in the film; I've never seen it. I meant her.

OK, but that would make it an even weirder comment. It would be like saying "Heath Ledger gets laid in the film by Jake Gyllenhaal, but that doesn't count" because Heath was straight.

Characters' sexual activities in film weren't expected to reflect their actors' real-life orientation, even in them days.

I think he must have been making a snarky comment about Matthew McConaughey's lightweightness. Look who counts now, Anthony Lane!  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2017, 08:35:10 pm
In the May 1 issue, everyone should read David Remnick on Trump's first one hundred days. Makes you want to break out the powder and shot and march on Washington.

The May 8 issue arrived in my mail today. I'm looking forward to what Evan Osnos has to say about how Trump could be removed from office.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 06, 2017, 10:27:13 am
In the May 1 issue, everyone should read David Remnick on Trump's first one hundred days. Makes you want to break out the powder and shot and march on Washington.

Uh-oh -- after the past few days, I already want to do that! Reading the article might put me over the edge, next thing you know I'll be getting background checked at the powder-and-shot store.

My son and I were talking on the phone yesterday, and for once we agreed on something -- that when he launches his murderous rampage, the first target should be Paul Ryan. But I reneged and said, no, I'm an opponent of capital punishment, I don't really want Paul Ryan killed, though I can't say that if he died I'd shed a tear. "Shed a tear?" my son replied. "If Paul Ryan died, all of social media would be overflowing with unbridled celebration."

Then this morning, I thought, what if something one of Paul Ryan's kids, a la Jimmy Kimmel's baby, were to have a health crisis of some kind? Would Ryan have a change of heart, the way Sheryl Sandberg did when she wrote a piece after her husband died admitting that when she wrote Lean In she didn't get it, didn't fully understand how hard it could be for single mothers (and imagine, some single mothers have no full-time live-in nannies!).

But then, getting back to Paul Ryan, I thought, nah, he won't give it any more thought than he does now because he'll be mentally and physically insulated from reality -- his family is fully and I'm sure generously insured, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

Some people are calling for the AHCA to be named Trumpcare, to saddle Trump with the label. I disagree. Not that I absolve Trump of blame, but any Republican president would have led to the same outcome. I think Trump's involvement in structuring the plan was, as Slate put it, basically handing Paul Ryan a piece of paper with "Fix health care" scrawled on it. I think it should be called Ryancare, the way we call the McCarthy Hearings the McCarthy Hearings.

I'm hoping for an equivalent of Joseph N. Welch to step in and ask Ryan et. all, as they stood outside on the lawn after the vote and smiling and clapping to celebrate the suffering and deaths of millions of Americans, to step up and say, "Have you no sense of decency?"


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 06, 2017, 03:03:29 pm
Wisconsin, Ryan's state, is interesting because it is gerrymandered so severely that this traditionally Democratic state now has 5 Republican congress persons and 3 Democratic. Last November, judges "ruled against the state's current legislative district layout, saying it was unconstitutional and 'was intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters... by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats.'" The state has until the 2018 election to redraw the district borders. Attached is a map of District 1, Ryan's district. Note how it just skirts the metropolitan areas, rounding up just enough urban voters to meet the quota but assuring that they can't compete with the rural, landed gentry. And what's with the foray deep into Lake Michigan? Yacht owners, perhaps?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 09, 2017, 01:13:46 pm
Appropriately enough, over lunch today I read Lizzie Widdicombe's April 24 article about marijuana edibles.

I have never been able to decide whether to be proud of or embarrassed by the fact that I've never tried weed (I don't even know how to smoke tobacco). I don't even know where to buy the stuff.

However, the article reminded of something that I have really thought about. The subject of Widdicombe's article once used Tegretol to treat a seizure disorder. She has replaced the drug with pot, and her condition is completely under control.

Now, Tegretol is one of the drugs I was formerly prescribed for my trigeminal neuralgia. I will admit I have wondered whether my neuralgia could be controlled permanently by cannabis. If medical marijuana were legal and available in Pennsylvania, I would consider discussing it with my doctor.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 09, 2017, 01:16:56 pm
The May 8 issue arrived in my mail today. I'm looking forward to what Evan Osnos has to say about how Trump could be removed from office.

I jumped ahead to read that; I couldn't wait. It was interesting, but I feel it didn't offer much hope.

Some people are calling for the AHCA to be named Trumpcare, to saddle Trump with the label.

Too bad. It's already being called Trumpcare.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 11, 2017, 10:36:12 am
I jumped ahead to read that; I couldn't wait. It was interesting, but I feel it didn't offer much hope.

Too bad. It's already being called Trumpcare.


Yeah, I know. And far be it from me to absolve Trump of any wrongdoing, but the people who wind up in hell for this particular piece of legislation will be Paul Ryan and the so-called "Freedom" caucus.

I'm sure there will be plenty of other things to saddle Trump with by the time he's out of office. I joked on FB and Twitter that Richard Nixon is looking down from the sky (or up, as the case may be) and thinking, "Geez, it took me five and a half years to accomplish what he's done in just over 100 days." Of course, Trump hasn't yet further enmired us in a terrible ill-conceived war, but he has plenty of time.


Anyway, Jeff, I came immediately here because I Can Not. Wait. to get your reaction to Adam Gopnik's piece in the latest issue -- for the moment, I can't find it, so don't know the date, but it's the one with Roz Chast's colorful and kind of amazing illustration of what looks like a knit/needlepointed computer motherboard. The title is "We could all be Canada." I only got about halfway through before falling asleep and it was starting to get quite complicated in outlining the motivations of the various factions at the time. But the overall concept kind of shook my own long-unquestioned assumptions. If I can describe it properly considering how late at night I started reading it, it's that the Founders were not exactly the wise heroic freedom fighters we think of them but actually kind of self-interested not-so-nice slaveholders (well, we knew the slaveholders part but we've always sort of downplayed that as a minor flaw that's far overshadowed by their foresighted document that, decades on decades later, led to emancipation and equal rights), that we've all been fed 200+ years of American propaganda, and that had things gone differently we'd be a nice peaceful modest rational country with a good healthcare system like Canada and slavery would have ended sooner and without a bloody internecine war.

Canada is, of course, more culturally boring and less creatively innovative than the U.S., so there's that. I don't know if that's a consequence of any of this or just coincidence or if Gopnik, who is part Canadian, gets into that eventually.

I can think of other possible counterarguments, but I'll have to read the whole piece first.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 11, 2017, 10:39:23 am
Oh. Duh. It was sitting amid the papers right next to my computer, where I'd brought it so I could address this topic here. Anyway, May 15.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 11, 2017, 11:44:19 am
Yeah, I know. And far be it from me to absolve Trump of any wrongdoing, but the people who wind up in hell for this particular piece of legislation will be Paul Ryan and the so-called "Freedom" caucus.

We can only hope. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 11, 2017, 11:48:42 am
Oh. Duh. It was sitting amid the papers right next to my computer, where I'd brought it so I could address this topic here. Anyway, May 15.

You mean May 15 is the issue with the Gopnik piece? I don't think my copy has arrived yet. I have May 1 with me here at work, and I guess it must be May 8 lying on my dining room table. ...

Possibly Gopnik says nothing I don't already know about the Founding Fathers (rich white guys all), but I'll have to see.

Did you read Ariel Levy on the author who wrote Olive Kitteridge? I thought it was kind of dull for Ariel Levy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 12, 2017, 09:41:07 am
You mean May 15 is the issue with the Gopnik piece?

Issue arrived in Thursday's mail. I will probably jump ahead and read the Gopnik.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 12, 2017, 12:51:53 pm
We all know the Founders were rich white guys whose concepts in the Constitution didn't extend much beyond rich white guys. We're able to overlook that (and even their human-being possession) because of their ideas' long-term value in applying those concepts to a much broader demographic. If there's anything Americans of almost every political bent agree on it's that the Founders were wise and heroic (if flawed products of their time).

But this article is more complicated than that.

I'm still in the middle of it, but looking forward to hearing your thoughts.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2017, 09:31:31 am
We all know the Founders were rich white guys whose concepts in the Constitution didn't extend much beyond rich white guys. We're able to overlook that (and even their human-being possession) because of their ideas' long-term value in applying those concepts to a much broader demographic. If there's anything Americans of almost every political bent agree on it's that the Founders were wise and heroic (if flawed products of their time).

But this article is more complicated than that.

I'm still in the middle of it, but looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Reading the Gopnick now, and may have to read it more than once. At this point I can only say that I was really annoyed by a rather flippant comment he makes about Loyalists, calling them Authoritarian Reformers who were on the losing side, or something close to that (I don't have the issue with me here at work).

Well, no. Most of the Loyalists in the Colonies were nothing like that. They were ordinary folk, farmers and tradesmen and such, who believed in their allegiance to Britain, and they suffered for it. In some places, such as the back country of the Carolinas, it got really nasty. The Revolution presented an opportunity for local conflicts to be played out, too (e.g., if you thought your neighbor was a Tory, and you owed him money, here was your chance to get him and get out of paying your just debt). These people lost their lands, their businesses, and their homes. Many of them had to flee to and settle in Nova Scotia and what is now part of Ontario.

So far I don't see Gopnick or his authors mentioning the benefit that Canada received from this influx of settlers from the new United States.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 21, 2017, 12:44:54 am



“A happy ending was imperative,” Forster wrote, in 1960. “I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. . . . I dedicated it ‘To a Happier Year’ and not altogether vainly.”




http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/james-ivory-and-the-making-of-a-historic-gay-love-story

PERSONS OF INTEREST
JAMES IVORY AND THE MAKING OF A HISTORIC GAY LOVE STORY
(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/larson-sarah-1.svg)By Sarah Larson   May 19, 2017

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Larson-James-Ivory-POI-1200.jpg)
For many gay men coming of age in the eighties and nineties, James Ivory’s “Maurice” was revelatory: a first glimpse, onscreen or anywhere,
of what love between men could look like.
  PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM KNOX / EYEVINE / REDUX



In an interview for the 2004 Criterion Collection DVD of the first film by Merchant Ivory Productions, “The Householder” (1963), James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, gray-haired and wearing similar oxford shirts, sit together in a muralled room in their 1805 Federal-style house in Claverack, New York, and companionably bicker about how they met. It was in 1961, at the Indian Consulate in Manhattan, at a screening of Ivory’s short documentary about Indian miniature paintings, “The Sword and the Flute.” Ivory says that they met on the steps. “He accosted me,” he says. Merchant invited Ivory for coffee.

“You were in the screening room,” Merchant says.

“No!” Ivory says. “You met me on the steps. I remember very well.” They debate; Ivory smiles. “You looked around—”

“No, I didn’t look around!” Merchant says. “My eyes always focus on the right things.”

“It’s chemistry,” their friend Saeed Jaffrey says in the video. “When I first introduced them to each other, I knew that the chemistry was there, and it has remained all through these years.”

Merchant died in 2005. “He was my life’s partner,” Ivory told me, when I visited him on a recent Friday at the house in Claverack. “From the beginning right on down to his final day. I lived openly with him for forty-five years, in New York and wherever else we were”—Manhattan, London, Paris. “That says what it says.”

Merchant grew up Muslim in Bombay and went to grad school at New York University. Ivory, the son of a sawmill owner, grew up Catholic in Klamath Falls, Oregon. He will be eighty-nine in June. He travels frequently. Upstate, he drives a car; in the city, he rides the subway. He walks with a cane. He seems to remember everything from every movie he has made. He described to me how, in 1963, he and Merchant visited the novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whom they had never met, at her house in Old Delhi, and convinced her to work with them on adapting “The Householder.” The partnership continued throughout their lives. Jhabvala and her husband eventually moved to the East Side apartment building that Merchant and Ivory lived in while in Manhattan; she often stayed at the house in Claverack. Her daughter later got married there. Jhabvala’s highly literate screenplays, Merchant’s showmanship, finagling, and charm, and Ivory’s sensitive, exquisite direction resulted in gorgeous, emotionally realistic films, made in India, the United States, Italy, the U.K., and beyond. The films, featuring exquisite costumes and shot on location, sometimes in friends’ houses, appeared to have cost a fortune but were made for relatively little. “We’ve never had the grandest kind of English people in our movies,” Ivory said, about the stereotype of their films being aristocratic. “I mean, the English are famous for their nice houses.” From the sixties onward, Merchant Ivory averaged about a movie a year, both original and adapted screenplays, from work by Jhabvala, Henry James, Cheever, and others. In 1985, they turned to E. M. Forster. Merchant fell in love with “A Room with a View.” In the film, we watch the ingénue Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter), in Italy and Edwardian England, fall for the unconventional George Emerson (Julian Sands), and, for a time, suffer the absurdity of being engaged to the priggish Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis). To blow off steam, she plays Beethoven, thunderously. Mr. Beebe (a pipe-smoking Simon Callow), an amiably omnipresent vicar, says things like “If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting, both for us and for her.”

“A Room with a View” is probably best remembered for Lucy and George’s swooning first kiss, set to Puccini, in a field of poppies. But its exuberant spirit is also embodied in another memorable scene, in which Lucy’s brother, Freddy (Rupert Graves), George, and the Reverend Beebe head into the woods, to a sun-dappled lake, strip naked, and jump in, whooping and splashing and wrestling; they get out and run around, leaping and bouncing; then they get caught. At the world première, at the Paris, in New York, the audience’s laughter was so loud, Callow said, that you couldn’t hear the dialogue. You hadn’t seen that kind of male nudity onscreen before. “And you haven’t seen it since!” Ivory told me. “A Room with a View” was nominated for eight Oscars and won three. “It changed our whole lives, that film,” Ivory said. “We could probably have done anything we wanted then.” They made “Maurice”—a story about love between men. (A newly restored 4K print of “Maurice,” currently showing in New York, will soon open in cities nationwide.)

E. M. Forster wrote “Maurice” in 1913 and 1914; it was published in 1971, after his death. “A happy ending was imperative,” Forster wrote, in 1960. “I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. . . . I dedicated it ‘To a Happier Year’ and not altogether vainly.” Ivory saw it as a natural successor to “A Room with a View.” “It was the same author, same period, same country,” he told me. “Same situation, really. You had muddled young people living a lie.” Maurice Hall falls in love with his schoolmate Clive Durham; Clive loves Maurice, but fearfully, and then spurns him. In the end, Maurice finds happiness with Alec Scudder, a gamekeeper on Clive’s estate.

“As for the subject matter, there wasn’t the slightest hesitation about it,” Ivory said. “I didn’t feel that I should worry. And neither did Ismail.” But Jhabvala called the novel “sub-Forster and sub-Ivory,” Ivory said—she thought “Maurice” was a minor work—and didn’t want to write the screenplay. Ivory wrote it himself, with the help of Kit Hesketh-Harvey, a former BBC music and arts producer who had studied Forster and attended the same schools that Forster had. Julian Sands, originally cast as Maurice, dropped out, and was replaced by James Wilby; Hugh Grant played Clive; Rupert Graves played Alec Scudder. Graves was worried he couldn’t pull it off, because “he’d never played a working-class type,” Ivory said. “Which is ridiculous, because he left home at sixteen to join the circus.”

The book dares to imagine a better world—but only just. Maurice suffers throughout, and his happy ending is a bold and unlikely gift. Forster didn’t publish the novel in his time because of obscenity laws. (“If it ended unhappily, with a lad dangling from a noose or with a suicide pact, all would be well, for there is no pornography or seduction of minors,” he wrote. “But the lovers get away unpunished and consequently recommend crime.”) In 1987, attitudes were the problem. Gay romance onscreen, especially at the multiplex, was rare. Happier endings were rarer still. A Times piece called “A Gay ‘Love Story’,” ( http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/13/movies/a-gay-love-story.html?pagewanted=all ) about the novelty of the film’s subject matter, imagined skeptics’ responses to the film—“Is so defiant a salute to homosexual passion really to be welcomed during a spiraling aids crisis?”—and reassured readers that it was about love, not “bathhouse promiscuity.”

One of the film’s most tender scenes takes place in a room at Cambridge. Maurice sits in a chair; Clive sits on the floor, and Maurice strokes his hair. “They’ve obviously never embraced before,” Ivory said. The scene is nearly silent except for the creaking of a chair. “The sound of that wicker chair is so sexy,” Ivory said. “It’s a fantastic sound. It just happened.”

In both “A Room with a View” and “Maurice,” the awkwardness of human intimacy is heightened by the constraints of upper-middle-class manners in Edwardian England. “A Room with a View” includes both some of the most stiffly unsexy kisses ever filmed, between Lucy and Cecil, as well as true barn-burners, between Lucy and George. In “Maurice,” the moments of liberation are all the more euphoric. Before shooting, Graves and Wilby agreed to make their love scenes convincing. “Rupert said, ‘Let’s go for it. Let’s give ’em a real kiss,’ ” Ivory said. “And they did—the sort of thing you don’t really see in movies with male lovers. It just never happens.” Male nudity makes a welcome reappearance, too. “I have always felt that people who have made love should be able to get up and move freely around the room,” Ivory told the Times in 1987. “They do so in foreign films, but in Anglo-Saxon pictures they rarely do. And it seems to me so phony and ridiculous. . . . Why should we subscribe to basically Victorian ideas about morality?”

Maurice and Scudder meet late in the story; Scudder can feel like a heartening deus ex machina. “But you also feel that they’re going to make up for it somehow,” Ivory said. “They’re young, and they’re going to make up for it.”

The house in Claverack, bought in 1975, has nineteen rooms, with high ceilings and huge windows. Its eleven acres have a pond and several small buildings; “A Room with a View” was edited in a former apple-storage barn. At one point during my visit, Ivory brought me into the parlor where the interview with Merchant from the “Householder” DVD had taken place. The murals, which Ivory commissioned, are of imagined Hudson Valley landscapes circa 1800. He opened a cabinet topped with baftas to reveal a collection of elegant dioramas, one of them in a former pralines box. He handed them to me one by one and let me look through each tiny doorway: into an 1820 New Orleans boudoir; a 1761 Mt. Pleasant, Philadelphia, drawing room. He made them when he was thirteen.

That weekend, in a convivial Forsterian scenario, he had three houseguests. All of them had worked on Merchant Ivory films. Jeremiah Rusconi, the art director for “The Europeans,” has also directed, over the years, the restoration of the house; now a restoration consultant, he currently lives there. Melissa Chung, a friend who began working for Merchant Ivory as a production assistant right out of Yale, in 1992, is there most weekends. That day, she and Benoît Pain (camera loader, “Le Divorce”), both in black-and-white striped Breton shirts, made lunch, as Ivory directed (“Have we started the asparagus?”). The group ate around a table in a sunny, windowed porch bursting with geraniums.

“Led by the maestro—the captain of our ship,” Chung said.

“I invented this pepper soup,” Ivory said. It was a bright-red purée. “But Melissa, and Benoît, too, knows all about hollandaise.”

This year, Ivory had a hand in another gay coming-of-age romance—“Call Me by Your Name,” directed by Luca Guadagnino. Ivory adapted the screenplay from the novel by André Aciman, in which Elio (Timothée Chalamet), seventeen, is wary of, then attracted to, Oliver (Armie Hammer), a twenty-four-year-old scholar who’s assisting Elio’s professor father at the family’s Italian villa for the summer. The film has the Italian-countryside pleasures of “A Room with a View,” and mirrors that and “Maurice” ’s journeys from awkwardness to connection and joy. But it’s also set in the eighties—so, like Clive, our hero’s first love marries a woman and breaks his heart.

For many gay men coming of age in the eighties and nineties, “Maurice” was revelatory: a first glimpse, onscreen or anywhere, of what love between men could look like. One man recently told me that until “Maurice” he’d seen same-sex attraction only in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” “So many people have come up to me since ‘Maurice’ and pulled me aside and said, ‘I just want you to know you changed my life,’ ” Ivory said. One such man got off a bus and ran up to Ivory on the street, then ran away. The lifetimes of Merchant and Ivory spanned generations in which the cultural landscape changed slowly but radically; they both came from milieux in which being openly gay wasn’t common or acceptable. “Such things were unthinkable, I think, to people of my parents’ generation,” Ivory said. “If you grew up in a small town somewhere—I didn’t know about such things till I went to college.” Did he struggle with it?

“I didn’t,” he said, looking content. “I didn’t. For some reason, in the same way it was not a struggle to give up my religion. You know, a lot of people give up their religion, but, oh, my goodness, they go through such agonies. I never did.” He laughed a little. “As I was telling someone, I always had this attitude about myself—Well, if I do it, it’s O.K. And my friend said, ‘Jim, that’s the attitude of a serial killer.’ ” He laughed again. “I guess I had such a high opinion of myself that I really couldn’t do wrong.” Another way to look at it might be that happiness, once found, is definitively the right answer. With the right partner, you can create the world that you want to live in—and as an artist you can show us what it looks like.



(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/larson-sarah-1.svg) Sarah Larson is a roving cultural correspondent for newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 21, 2017, 01:43:49 am




[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtPNyKHvO9s[/youtube]
Rupert Graves talks about Scudder in Maurice
Published on Oct 3, 2013


Rupert is delicious as Alec Scudder in Merchant Ivory Productions film of E.R.Forster's "Maurice", and divine as himself discussing his portrayal of the character.

Also features interviews with James Wilby (Maurice) & screenwriter Kit Hesketh-Harvey.

Edited from Maurice - Interview with the cast, parts 1, 2 & 3, uploaded onto YouTube by motherofpearl13 from The Criterion Collection. No copyright infringement is intended.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 21, 2017, 09:58:15 am
John, this was a truly wonderful interview to read! Maurice was historic. . .and timeless!  :-*
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 21, 2017, 10:16:39 am
I haven't read the article yet (nor seen the movie), but it's good to see you around these parts, Aloysius!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 21, 2017, 02:38:15 pm
I guess I'm just a thick-headed philistine. I saw the film once, in the theater, when it came out, and it seems to have made so little an impression on me that almost the only thing I can remember about it is how the English pronounce "Maurice." I remember nothing of the happy ending, only Maurice getting his heart broken.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 22, 2017, 11:48:49 am
I guess I'm just a thick-headed philistine. I saw the film once, in the theater, when it came out, and it seems to have made so little an impression on me that almost the only thing I can remember about it is how the English pronounce "Maurice." I remember nothing of the happy ending, only Maurice getting his heart broken.

How do they?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 22, 2017, 12:32:54 pm
How do they?


Like "Morris". See the film; it's important.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 22, 2017, 02:22:45 pm
I haven't read the article yet (nor seen the movie), but it's good to see you around these parts, Aloysius!



Thanks, Katherine!



John, this was a truly wonderful interview to read! Maurice was historic. . .and timeless!  :-*



Thank you. Lee--it IS wonderful, isn't it?--the article, I mean. Lots to say (by me) but will take time to process. In the meanwhile, re Forster's Maurice  as historic and timely--well,  yup!   ;D



I guess I'm just a thick-headed philistine. I saw the film once, in the theater, when it came out, and it seems to have made so little an impression on me that almost the only thing I can remember about it is how the English pronounce "Maurice."



How do they?



Like "Morris".



Thanks Paul--I'm a "Morris" Maurice myself, an Irish one (come to think of it, it's not only the whole of the British Isles that uses that pronunciation, there's the German Moritz, the Dutch Maurits, and probably others as well).



I remember nothing of the happy ending, only Maurice getting his heart broken.



Here it is, Jeff--





MAURICE:     "Alec--"

ALEC:            "You got the word, then?"

MAURICE:      "What word?"

ALEC:            "The word I sent to your house--tellin' you--sorry, I'm a bit tired with one thing or another--
              Tellin' you to come here to the boathouse at Pendersleigh without fail--"






[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p0wzNZTa6g[/youtube]
Maurice  (1987)
Published on Apr 26, 2014



ALEC:            "Now we shan't never be parted. It's finished."






Last word:



See the film; it's important.



 ;)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 02:46:38 pm
Thanks Paul--I'm a "Morris" Maurice myself, an Irish one (come to think of it, it's not only the whole of the British Isles that uses that pronunciation, there's the German Moritz, the Dutch Maurits, and probably others as well).

Well, yes, but the Dutch and the Germans don't spell it "Maurice."

How did the English--or the man himself--pronounce the name of the actor Maurice Evans? I've only ever heard it Maurice, rather than Morris. Even Endora called him Maurice.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 02:50:56 pm
ALEC:            "The word I sent to your house--tellin' you--sorry, I'm a bit tired with one thing or another--
              Tellin' you to come here to the boathouse at Pendersley without fail--"


ALEC:            "Now we shan't never be parted. It's finished."

Oh, God, such dialogue. Maybe that's why my mind has blocked out this film.

I really don't mean to be offensive, but to me that reads like a parody of melodrama, and bad melodrama at that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 22, 2017, 02:59:49 pm
How did the English--or the man himself--pronounce the name of the actor Maurice Evans? I've only ever heard it Maurice, rather than Morris. Even Endora called him Maurice.  ;D

From wiki:

American television audiences of the 1960s will remember Evans as Samantha's father, Maurice, on the sitcom Bewitched. His real-life insistence that his first name was pronounced the same as the name "Morris" was ironically at odds with his Bewitched character's contrasting stance that it be pronounced "Maw-REESE".
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 03:13:33 pm
From wiki:

American television audiences of the 1960s will remember Evans as Samantha's father, Maurice, on the sitcom Bewitched. His real-life insistence that his first name was pronounced the same as the name "Morris" was ironically at odds with his Bewitched character's contrasting stance that it be pronounced "Maw-REESE".

Wouldn't surprise me if someone somewhere thought us Yankees would be confused if somebody pronounced "Maurice" as "Morris."

Evans once made a guest appearance on Daniel Boone (as the French playwright Beaumarchais--never mind!), and in the voice-over announcing his appearance, his name was pronounced "Maw-REESE."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 22, 2017, 03:17:21 pm
Well, yes, but the Dutch and the Germans don't spell it "Maurice."

How did the English--or the man himself--pronounce the name of the actor Maurice Evans? I've only ever heard it Maurice, rather than Morris. Even Endora called him Maurice.  ;D




Maurice Herbert Evans was born in Dorset, England and surely pronounced his 'Christian name' (as they used to say) "MORRIS"  (despite the fact that EVANS  is as Welsh as they come) but in AMERICA, well-- ;) :laugh:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Evans_(actor)

Personal life

Although he had taken U.S. citizenship, by the end of the 1960s, Evans returned to Britain. Aside from an infrequent trip to the United States and occasional visits to retired actors in financial need (as a representative of the Actors' Fund, of which he was a longtime trustee), he lived quietly near Brighton. He never married, and was survived by a brother, Hugh, of London.



Anyway, click and scroll down and see/hear all the variations of MAURICE (Gibb, natch)--American Pronunciation is totally Maw-REESE of course:

http://www.pronouncekiwi.com/Maurice%20Gibb



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 03:18:32 pm
Do undergamekeepers really say things like "Come without fail" and "We shan't never be parted"?

(At least the second one has a double negative.)

Notwithstanding the lack of impression Maurice made on me, I really have always been a fan of Merchant-Ivory films. You always knew a Merchant-Ivory film would be a classy, high-quality production.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 03:23:04 pm
EVANS  is as Welsh as they come.

You ain't kiddin'. Early Philadelphia had a Welsh-born C. of E. parson. His name was Evan Evans!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 22, 2017, 03:34:22 pm
Evans once made a guest appearance on Daniel Boone (as the French playwright Beaumarchais--never mind!), and in the voice-over announcing his appearance, his name was pronounced "Maw-REESE."

Evans played the Shakespeare-quoting villain the Puzzler in the campy 60s Batman series:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51J6Sa%2BqI0L._SX342_.jpg)

But, I'll always remember him as Dr. Zaius from the Planet of the Apes and one of the awful sequels.
(http://www.aveleyman.com/Gallery/ActorsE/5411-14970.gif)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 22, 2017, 03:46:23 pm
Do undergamekeepers really say things like "Come without fail" and "We shan't never be parted"?


Well, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves) was a particularly  talented undergameskeeper to be sure, saying winsome, lovely things like

"I wouldn't take a penny from you, I don't want to hurt your little finger, come on, let's give over talkin'"

and

"Stop with me, stay the night with me."




Now, here's another pronunciation for you, this time by Hermione Gingold--at 0:43




[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsNm3rfZyCk[/youtube]
Gay Purr-ee  (1962)



Interestingly, there's this aside:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermione_Gingold


Early years

Gingold was born in Carlton Hill, Maida Vale, London, the elder daughter of a prosperous Vienna-born Jewish stockbroker James Gingold and his wife, Kate (née Walter). Her paternal grandparents were the Ottoman-born British subject, Moritz "Maurice" Gingold, a London stockbroker, and his Austrian-born wife, Hermine, after whom Hermione was named (Gingold mentions in her autobiography that her mother might have got Hermione from the Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale, which she was reading shortly before her birth). On her father's side, she was descended from the celebrated Solomon Sulzer, a famous synagogue cantor and Jewish liturgical composer in Vienna. Her mother was from a "well-to-do Jewish family". James felt that religion was something children needed to decide on for themselves, and Gingold grew up with no particular religious beliefs.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 22, 2017, 03:54:03 pm
Do undergamekeepers really say things like "Come without fail" and "We shan't never be parted"?


Well, Robert Burns, the poet laureate of Scotland, was a farmer. In fact, he was called the Ploughman Poet.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 04:08:37 pm
What is it about British gamekeepers?

Maurice. ...

Lady Chatterley. ...

Just wond'rin'.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 22, 2017, 04:17:21 pm
What is it about British gamekeepers?


They're 'earthy'?   :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 04:55:58 pm
What is it about British gamekeepers?

They're 'earthy'?   :D


:laugh:

Maybe to some effete, intellectual, post-Oscar Wilde British writers, gamekeepers represented manly men--what those same writers were not.  ;D

We have cowboys. The British have gamekeepers.  ::)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 22, 2017, 08:12:44 pm

Hermione Gingold

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsNm3rfZyCk[/youtube]
Gay Purr-ee  (1962)

At the very end! The scene was quite entertaining!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 22, 2017, 08:53:58 pm
We have cowboys. The British have gamekeepers.  ::)

I'll stick with cowboys.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2017, 11:28:34 pm
I'll stick with cowboys.

You wouldn't make an exception for Rupert Graves?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 23, 2017, 08:11:00 am
You wouldn't make an exception for Rupert Graves?

Well, if you put it that way...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 23, 2017, 09:03:39 am
I'll stick with cowboys.

You wouldn't make an exception for Rupert Graves?

Well, if you put it that way...


;D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 23, 2017, 09:49:57 am
Like "Morris". See the film; it's important.

I put it on my "To watch" list on my iPhone. Whenever I add something to that list I do it using the microphone. So I pronounced the movie the British way, and apparently Siri speaks British English, because it added "Maurice" to the list.
 
Actually, I hate Siri, and long ago had replaced her with the male voice, who's no more useful than she was. I thought maybe the male voice was British and that explained it. So I called up the Siri function, which offered (in writing) to help me with anything from "what time is sunrise in Paris?" to "how long do greyhounds live?" I hit the mic icon.

ME: How do the British pronounce Maurice (Mo-REESE)?

SIRI GUY (in robotic voice): Interesting question. Katy.

That was it. No further information on that topic. No "you got me!" or "that's a tough one." I can report, however, that greyhounds live about 11 years.

When I hear Mo-REESE, I picture someone like Samantha's father. When I hear MORE-is, I picture someone more along the lines of another '60s sitcom star.


(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTk3NzM1OTIwMl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwODczMzQ2._V1_UY317_CR25,0,214,317_AL_.jpg)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 23, 2017, 10:12:35 am
Do undergamekeepers really say things like "Come without fail" and "We shan't never be parted"?

(At least the second one has a double negative.)

I know! Who says "shall" but also uses double negatives? British people in those days, I guess. It's funny -- I can live with the double negative; it's the "shan't" that bothers me.

I would probably forgive it in this context, but I find it really off-putting when modern people say "shall."

For some reason, in a question, it's OK. "Shall I make coffee?" wouldn't bother me. But I have a friend who, on Facebook, writes things like "I shall watch 'Maurice' tonight" and it always makes me roll my eyes.

Quote
I really have always been a fan of Merchant-Ivory films. You always knew a Merchant-Ivory film would be a classy, high-quality production.

Same. When the Onion published its first post-9/11 edition -- the whole thing such a classic for brilliantly treading a line between appropriateness and hilariousness -- there was a great piee headlined "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie." I always remember this quote from a putative civilian:

"If the world were going to suddenly turn into a movie without warning, I wish it would have been one of those boring, talky Merchant-Ivory ones instead. I hate those movies, but I sure wish we were living in one right now."

http://www.theonion.com/article/american-life-turns-into-bad-jerry-bruckheimer-mov-220 (http://www.theonion.com/article/american-life-turns-into-bad-jerry-bruckheimer-mov-220)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 23, 2017, 11:22:50 am
I know! Who says "shall" but also uses double negatives? British people in those days, I guess. It's funny -- I can live with the double negative; it's the "shan't" that bothers me.
I would probably forgive it in this context, but I find it really off-putting when modern people say "shall."




(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/07/03/430703c7aa7febd90ea78bec3235b0af.jpg)

The Devil Wears Prada  (2006)


or to see/hear it, click:

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/aef42a57-e33d-4383-a6b4-dc600722d406

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 23, 2017, 12:03:51 pm

When I hear Mo-REESE, I picture someone like Samantha's father. When I hear MORE-is, I picture someone more along the lines of another '60s sitcom star.


I picture this guy:

(https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/find-a-grave-prod/photos/2007/244/7881_118876892738.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 23, 2017, 12:20:15 pm
I know! Who says "shall" but also uses double negatives? British people in those days, I guess. It's funny -- I can live with the double negative; it's the "shan't" that bothers me.

I would probably forgive it in this context, but I find it really off-putting when modern people say "shall."

For some reason, in a question, it's OK. "Shall I make coffee?" wouldn't bother me. But I have a friend who, on Facebook, writes things like "I shall watch 'Maurice' tonight" and it always makes me roll my eyes.


I had understood that "shall" was traditionally used only in the first person; "will" was preferred in the second and third.

However, there's much more nuance, and reading this hurt my brain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_and_will
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 23, 2017, 12:20:54 pm
I would probably forgive it in this context, but I find it really off-putting when modern people say "shall."

For some reason, in a question, it's OK. "Shall I make coffee?" wouldn't bother me. But I have a friend who, on Facebook, writes things like "I shall watch 'Maurice' tonight" and it always makes me roll my eyes.

I think that just makes you a typical American.

At work I keep a copy of Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage (2002) on my bookshelf. Webster has almost 2-1/2 pages on shall and will. The article begins:

Quote
The old distinction between these words is no longer observed by most people. Shall, which was once considered the only correct form for the expression of the simple future in the first person, has been replaced by will in the speech and writing of most people. ... In a few expressions, shall is the only form ever used and presents no usage problem: Shall we go? Shall I help you? [Shall I make coffee?] To use will in these expressions would change the meaning. [Will I make coffee? Heck, no!] With the exception of these special uses, will is as correct as shall.

The bracketed material in the quotation is my interpolation, of course, but the citation in the Webster for the paragraph I just quoted is "Warriner 1986." That would be the 1986 edition of John E. Warriner, English Grammar and Composition: Complete Course. "Warriner" is an old, old junior high and high school English textbook that in its original goes back at least as far as 1951. A former colleague, who used to be an English teacher, continued to swear by it as a grammar reference because it's simple, concise, and traditional. She impressed the rest of us on my team here at work so that a few years ago I bought several copies cheap on eBay as Christmas gifts for my team. I have the 1957 edition on my own desk. We need these things here because the "editors," who are computer people and not real editors, want a simple rule for every grammar change we proofreaders make. They won't take our word for it, even though we're supposed to be experts on this stuff.

In speaking I don't bother worrying about the shall-will distinction, except in such cases as in the examples, but in my writing I still try to observe the traditional difference. I guess you can take me out of 1960s-1970s public school English, but you can't take the 1960s-1970s public school English out of me.  ;D

Of course, in speaking, when it comes to something about watching Maurice tonight, I'm more apt use a a contraction, where you can't tell the difference between shall and will.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 23, 2017, 12:23:59 pm
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Shall_We_Dance_poster.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 23, 2017, 12:28:20 pm
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/95/Shall_We_Dance_poster.jpg)

Don't forget Rodgers and Hammerstein in The King and I.

Last month, when I met one of the boys from the PA Ballet corps, I asked him, "Will you be dancing in the May program?"

In that context, shall would have sounded ... queer.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 23, 2017, 12:52:32 pm
Apparently, in the book, Alec says, "And now we shan't be parted no more and that's finished."
https://never-be-parted.dreamwidth.org/7265.html (https://never-be-parted.dreamwidth.org/7265.html)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 23, 2017, 03:05:13 pm
Apparently, in the book, Alec says, "And now we shan't be parted no more and that's finished."
https://never-be-parted.dreamwidth.org/7265.html (https://never-be-parted.dreamwidth.org/7265.html)





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Merrill_(gay_activist)

George Merrill
(gay activist)

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/George_Merrill.gif)


George Merrill (1866 – 10 January 1928) was the lifelong partner of English poet and LGBT activist Edward Carpenter.

Merrill, a working-class young man who had been raised in the slums of Sheffield, had no formal education. He met Edward Carpenter on a train in 1891, and moved into Carpenter's home at Millthorpe outside Sheffield in 1898. His arrival was commemorated by Carpenter in the poem Hafiz to the Cupbearer.

The two lived openly as a couple for thirty years, until Merrill died. Carpenter died the following year and was buried beside Merrill.

The relationship between Carpenter and Merrill formed the motivation for E. M. Forster's novel Maurice, and the character of the gamekeeper Alec Scudder was in part modeled after George Merrill.





(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Carpenter_et_Merrill.jpg)
Carpenter and Merril c. 1900.





Edward Carpenter
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/Day%2C_Fred_Holland_%281864-1933%29_-_Edward_Carpenter.jpg)   (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Carpenter1875.jpg)    


Edward Carpenter (29 August 1844 – 28 June 1929) was an English socialist poet, philosopher, anthologist, and early activist for rights for homosexuals.

A poet and writer, he was a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore, and a friend of Walt Whitman. He corresponded with many famous figures such as Annie Besant, Isadora Duncan, Havelock Ellis, Roger Fry, Mahatma Gandhi, Keir Hardie, J. K. Kinney, Jack London, George Merrill, E. D. Morel, William Morris, Edward R. Pease, John Ruskin, and Olive Schreiner.

As a philosopher he was particularly known for his publication of Civilisation, Its Cause and Cure in which he proposes that civilisation is a form of disease that human societies pass through.

An early advocate of sexual freedoms, he had an influence on both D. H. Lawrence and Sri Aurobindo, and inspired E. M. Forster's novel Maurice.


(....)


On his return from India in 1891, he met George Merrill, a working class man also from Sheffield, 22 years his junior, and the two men struck up a relationship, eventually cohabiting in 1898. Merrill had been raised in the slums of Sheffield and had no formal education. Their relationship endured and they remained partners for the rest of their lives, a fact made all the more extraordinary by the hysteria about homosexuality generated by the Oscar Wilde trial of 1895. Carpenter remarked in his work The Intermediate Sex:

Eros is a great leveller. Perhaps the true Democracy rests, more firmly than anywhere else, on a sentiment which easily passes the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the closest affection the most estranged ranks of society. It is noticeable how often Uranians ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranian ) of good position and breeding are drawn to rougher types, as of manual workers, and frequently very permanent alliances grow up in this way, which although not publicly acknowledged have a decided influence on social institutions, customs and political tendencies.


(....)


E. M. Forster was also close friends with the couple, who on a visit to Millthorpe in 1912 was inspired to write his gay-themed novel, Maurice.  Forster records in his diary that, Merrill, "...touched my backside - gently and just above the buttocks. I believe he touched most people's. The sensation was unusual and I still remember it, as I remember the position of a long vanished tooth. He made a profound impression on me and touched a creative spring."

The relationship between Carpenter and Merrill was the template for the relationship between Maurice Hall and Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper in Forster's novel. Carpenter was also a significant influence on the author D. H. Lawrence, whose Lady Chatterley's Lover can be seen as a heterosexualised Maurice.




Later life


(....)


In 1915, he published The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife, where he argued that the source of war and discontent in western society was class-monopoly and social inequality.

After the First World War, he had moved to Guildford, Surrey, with George Merrill. In January 1928, Merrill died suddenly.

In May 1928, Carpenter suffered a paralytic stroke. He lived another 13 months before he died on 28 June 1929, aged 84. He was interred, in the same grave as Merrill, at the Mount Cemetery at Guildford in Surrey.




(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Edward_Carpenter_Grave_2015.jpg/1024px-Edward_Carpenter_Grave_2015.jpg)

The grave of Merrill and Edward Carpenter at the Mount Cemetery, Guildford, Surrey.


Apparently, in the book, Alec says, "And now we shan't be parted no more and that's finished."
https://never-be-parted.dreamwidth.org/7265.html (https://never-be-parted.dreamwidth.org/7265.html)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 23, 2017, 03:36:50 pm
http://mauriceficlist.livejournal.com/18027.html

01 JUNE 2013 @ 22:30

Update: Forster’s 1914 Epilogue to Maurice (full text)  (http://68.media.tumblr.com/02b16b4d016f06a1fe99c26f0eaf44f2/tumblr_mnrm2dz9Zo1rpvebao1_400.jpg)



The ‘Epilogue’ was a feature of some of Forster’s earliest 1913-14 drafts of Maurice, but not the 1971 published novel. It remained unpublished until 1999, when it was included as an Appendix in the (definitive, scholarly) Abinger Edition of Maurice, edited by Philip Gardner (London: André Deutsch).

In a letter to the poet Stephen Spender (25 August 1933), Forster himself wrote of his ‘Epilogue’:

‘One wants to know more about him and Alec for every reason, and there was an epilogue, featuring them x-years later, but all who read it thought it bad, so did I, so I scrapped it in the final version.’

Forster’s ‘Epilogue’ used to be available to read online at the Dreamwidth journal of devo79 (see Endnote), but no longer. In view of this, mauriceficlist is re-posting the full text here for the benefit of readers, fans and scholars unable to access the Abinger Edition. (Style and punctuation are as in the Abinger Edition.)

--------------------


‘Epilogue’ (1914) to Maurice, by E. M. Forster

First published in 1999 by André Deutsch Ltd, London.
Copyright 1999 The Provost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge

--------------------



“The axe is laid unto the root of the trees…” This text, so well expressing her own state, rose unbidden into Kitty's mind. It had been induced by a distant sound of wood-cutting but she was unconscious of this. She was bicycling alone through a haggard country. All leaves had been stripped from the branches by an earlier gale, and now the wind boomed in monotonous triumph under a light brown sky. In such weather, the world seems emptied of good; warmth has gone, ice and snow, splendid in their own fashion, have not yet arrived. And Kitty had nothing to do, did not know where she was going, and did not care. She had left the high road because it wearied her, and turned into plantations; the track sloped, but into the wind, so that she still had to pedal, and over a worse surface. After an hour more she would get back to the inn where she was stopping, and eat her solitary tea.

“The axe is laid … therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down … but no one wants to be barren”, she thought. “No one asks to be cross and sad, or five years older. Some of us might have brought forth fruit if we'd been nourished properly.” And sighing she cycled on, while the sound of the chopping grew more distinct. At twenty seven Kitty was as old as most women at forty; youth had found no resting place either in her body or mind. Since Violet Tonks had married – that rather than her brother’s disgrace had been the crisis –she had lost her vigour, no longer attended concerts, lectures on hygiene &c, or cared for the improvement of the world; but looked after her mother or helped the Chapmans wearily. Now and then she “struck”, as she termed it; must have a “real holiday alone”, as on the present occasion. But she never came home refreshed. She could not strike against her own personality.

“Can I get out this way?”, she called to the woodman.

He nodded, and replied in an independent voice “If you see my mate, Miss, will you ask him to bring up a saw he has, please”.

“Yes, if I see him,” said Kitty, who felt that a liberty had been taken with her. But speech had interrupted her thoughts, and when the axe recommenced, it was as a human sound.

Half a mile on, she saw the second man. He was piling logs at the side of a clearing. She called to him, and as he approached, she recognized her brother. He seemed a common labourer –not as trim as he who had accosted her.  His trousers were frayed, his shirt open at the throat: he began to button it with hard brown fingers when she cried “Maurice”. But beneath the exterior a new man throbbed – tougher, more centralised, in as good form as ever, but formed in a fresh mould, where muscles and sunburn proceed from an inward health.

“What, you’re never still in England … disgraceful … abominable…” She spoke not what she felt, but what her training ordained, and as if he understood this he did not reply, nor look her in the face. He seemed to be waiting – like the woods – till her sterile reproofs were over. “We none of us miss you,” she continued. “We never even mention you. Arthur tells us not to even ask what you did. I shall not tell mother I’ve seen you for she’s had enough to bear. A man further up gave me a message to you about a saw, or I wouldn’t have spoken otherwise.”

“Which saw?” These were the only words he uttered: his voice was rougher, but still low, and very charming.

“I don't know and I don't care,” she said, flying into a rage. Maurice picked up two saws, listened to the noise the axe made, and moved away carrying the smaller. It was her last view of him. The road twisted out of the wind, and before she had recovered her temper she was coasting away far below. The evening grew more dreary, and sky tree hedges acquired a granulated appearance, as though rust were forming on them, and announcing the earth’s extinction.

As the tea brought warmth to her mind, Kitty began recalling her brother’s disappearance. She had never thrashed it out. “Something too awful” had been hinted by her brother-in-law, who knew most, and had been in secret communication with Clive. Clive would make no pronouncement, and had refused point blank to see Mrs Hall and be questioned by her. The two families drifted apart – the more quickly because old Mrs Durham and Pippa spread a rumour that Maurice had speculated on the Stock Exchange. This annoyed the Halls, for the boy, like his father, had always been most careful, and Kitty was allowed to write one of her sharp letters; she remembered its wording very clearly now, in the solitude of this Yorkshire inn.

But what was the “awful thing”? Why should a sane wealthy unspiritual young man drop overboard like a stone into the sea, and vanish? – drop without preparation or farewell? The night of the wonderful sunset he had not returned – to the vexation of Aunt Ida, now dead, who desired a motor-ride, and on the morrow he was not at the office, nor at a dinner appointment with Clive. Beyond that she knew nothing, for masculinity had intervened. It was a man’s business, Arthur had implied: women may weep but must not ask to understand, and he warned them against communicating with the Police. She had wept duly, and comforted poor mother, but emotion had now been dead there – many years, and Oh what was it? She longed to know. What force could have driven her brother into the wilderness?

Then she thought “He's not alone there: he’s working under that other man”, and with a flash but without the slightest shock the truth was revealed to her. “He must be very fond of his mate, he must have given up us on his account, I should imagine they are practically in love.” It seemed a very odd situation to her, one which she had never heard of and had better not mention, but the varieties of development are endless: it did not seem a disgusting situation, nor one that society should have outlawed. Maurice looked happy and proud despite his cheap clothes and the cold. She remembered how his face had changed when she spoke of the saw: it was the only remark that had moved him: abuse, entreaties, sermons, were all powerless against his desire to work properly with his friend. “Which saw?” Nothing else mattered, and he had left her.

Well, and she didn't mind. He could if he liked. She had never cared for him, and didn't now, but she did understand him, and could dwell on him at last without irritation. She saw why he had always repelled her, in spite of surface generosities, why she and her sister, and even her [            ]m, and lived in a state of war. What were their thoughts now? And as the evening drew on, and the carpet bulged up in the wind, Kitty's own thoughts grew less sociological. In particular, she began to think of the unknown friend as a human being, and to be interested in him. She felt that though commoner than her brother, he might be nicer to a woman, she liked his strong loose body and the softness of his brave eyes, and wanted to see him again. He was “the sort of person in whom all meet” – so with unconscious felicity she expressed Alec’s nature, and she found herself asking the landlady about the men who worked in the woods through which she had bicycled. Her question was vague, as was the landlady’s answer: there were so many woods, she implied, and so many men, and some came and others went.

“It must be much too cold up there alone,” said Kitty, whose idea of love, though correct, remained withered: for Maurice and Alec were at that moment neither lonely nor cold. Their favourite time for talking had been reached. Couched in a shed near their work—to sleep rough had proved safer—they shared in whispered review the events of the day before falling asleep. Kitty was included, and they decided to leave their present job and find work in a new district, in case she told the Police, or returned. In the glow of manhood “There we shall be safe” they thought. They were never to be that. But they were together for the moment, they had stayed disintegration and combined daily work with love; and who can hope for more?




Maurice by E. M. Forster, The Abinger Edition (1999),
edited by Philip Gardner, pp. 221–4

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 23, 2017, 09:43:43 pm
Mrs. Patrick Campbell: "I don't care what they do, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."

[Reportedly, "Mrs. Pat" said this to a young actress who complained that an older man in the cast of a play in which they were appearing was paying entirely too much attention to the leading man.]
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 24, 2017, 09:00:08 am
Quote
In a few expressions, shall is the only form ever used and presents no usage problem: Shall we go? Shall I help you? [Shall I make coffee?] To use will in these expressions would change the meaning. [Will I make coffee? Heck, no!] With the exception of these special uses, will is as correct as shall.

I would easily say "Shall we go?" and possibly "Shall I help you?" but I might also say "Should we go?" or "Can I help you?" or "Do you need help?"

And good point, Jeff, if you use a contraction, "I'll," it could possibly pass for "I shall." How I wish my friend would say that! Even "I will" can sound a little stilted. She's a Facebook friend but she's also been a friend in real life for about 30 years, and I have never once heard her say "shall" in ordinary conversation. Which makes it all the more annoying. I hate when people present fake personas on Facebook. (Another reason for you to stay firmly lodged in the 20th century, Jeff!)

How interesting to realize that a word I find so annoying on Facebook is one I probably use fairly frequently myself without really noticing it in the "Shall we go?" structure. Probably because I kind of slur it to "Sh'we go?" in which case it passes for either "shall" or "should."

I have to get to work and no time to read the Forster passage yet, but I believe I spotted a "shall" in there.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 24, 2017, 09:13:39 am
I would easily say "Shall we go?" and possibly "Shall I help you?" but I might also say "Should we go?" or "Can I help you?" or "Do you need help?"

In speaking, this is probably the structure I actually use the most: "Should I make coffee?" And sometimes, depending on the situation, I actually use the negative: "Shouldn't we get going now?"

I have to admit that when I take time to think about it, I probably do try to observe the may/can distinction because some teacher drummed into me that may is permissive but can refers to ability. But I bet that distinction is another one no longer observed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 24, 2017, 12:22:54 pm
Thanks for posting that, John.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 24, 2017, 01:48:15 pm
I did a look-up of James Wilby to see what all he's been doing. I have no memory of him in Gosford Park, which I saw and liked.

I found this great quote from him: "I'm buggered if I'm going to go and sit on my arse in LA."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 24, 2017, 01:57:53 pm
Thanks for posting that, John.



You're welcome, Paul. Here is a much better version of that previously posted  (and severely edited) 'group interview' about 'The Story of Maurice'--nearly 30 minutes overall, very worthwhile watching!



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-UXf4GGAqs[/youtube]

The Story of Maurice

Interview with James Wilby (Maurice), Hugh Grant (Clive),
Rupert Graves (Alec), and screenwriter Kit Hesketh-Harvey.
 
(1/3)


Uploaded on Feb 23, 2008





[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNzj9cbY7iM[/youtube]

The Story of Maurice

Interview with James Wilby (Maurice), Hugh Grant (Clive),
Rupert Graves (Alec), and screenwriter Kit Hesketh-Harvey.
 
(2/3)


Uploaded on Feb 23, 2008





[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=act73BrFHVE[/youtube]

The Story of Maurice

Interview with James Wilby (Maurice), Hugh Grant (Clive),
Rupert Graves (Alec), and screenwriter Kit Hesketh-Harvey.
 
(3/3)


Uploaded on Feb 23, 2008


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 24, 2017, 02:40:31 pm
Indeed! It's all been very interesting reading. Thank you, John.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 24, 2017, 02:47:10 pm
Indeed! It's all been very interesting reading. Thank you, John.


You're welcome, Jeff. In the meanwhile--


I did a look-up of James Wilby to see what all he's been doing. I have no memory of him in Gosford Park, which I saw and liked.


In Gosford Park, James Wilby was the caddish Freddie Nesbitt who

(http://movie-dude.co.uk/James%20Wilby%20%20Gosford%20Park%20(2001).jpg)

was very mean to wife Mabel Nesbitt (Claudie Blakley) and

(http://movie-dude.co.uk/Claudie%20Blakley%20%20Gosford%20Park%20(2001).jpg)

dangerously stalkerish to Isobel McCordle (Camilla Rutherford)

(http://movie-dude.co.uk/Camilla%20Rutherford%20%20Gosford%20Park%20(2001).jpg)

who was the daughter of Lady Sylvia McCordle (Kristin Scott Thomas)

(http://movie-dude.co.uk/Kristin%20Scott%20Thomas%20%20Gosford%20Park%20(2001).jpg)

(and etc., etc., etc.!)


Here's the entire cast in an album:

Oops, sorry, because of the oddness of our site's protocol, you cannot CLICK the following url--instead, on a different page, COPY and PASTE and hit enter:

http://movie-dude.co.uk/[Film]%20Gosford%20Park%20(2001).htm
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 24, 2017, 04:04:15 pm
In Gosford Park, James Wilby was the caddish Freddie Nesbitt.

Thank you, John.

You know, it's been so long--16 years--since I saw Gosford Park that the only cast members I remembered off the top of my head were Dame Maggie and Clive Owen (first thing I ever saw him in), so I took a look, and it seems that just about everybody who was anybody was in it.

Also interesting to note that Julian Fellowes was one of the writers. That name would have meant nothing to me 16 years ago, but it does now, even though I never watched you-know-what.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on May 24, 2017, 04:58:15 pm
Thank you, John.

You know, it's been so long--16 years--since I saw Gosford Park that the only cast members I remembered off the top of my head were Dame Maggie and Clive Owen (first thing I ever saw him in), so I took a look, and it seems that just about everybody who was anybody was in it.

Also interesting to note that Julian Fellowes was one of the writers. That name would have meant nothing to me 16 years ago, but it does now, even though I never watched you-know-what.


You're welcome Jeff!

Julian Fellowes was the actual writer of Gosford Park.  Actor Bob Balaban (who wonderfully played Morris Weissman in the movie he co-produced) wanted to work with Robert Altman, asking if they could do an Agatha Christie who-done-it together. Balaban introduced Fellowes (who had been a somewhat mediocre actor) to Altman. Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay, but Altman literally MADE Fellowes's career when Fellowes won the Oscar (please note, it was NOT a shared Oscar).

Watch this when you have a chance. It's delightful!



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFrVFsjz6bU[/youtube]

Julian Fellowes Wins Original Screenplay for
Gosford Park  (2002 Oscars)


Published on Jan 3, 2013

Julian Fellowes wins the Oscar for Writing
(Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen)
Gosford Park  at the 74th Academy Awards.
Presented by Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke.




FYI:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosford_Park
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 24, 2017, 05:16:58 pm
Thank  you for the epilogue, John. I think it's wonderful.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 24, 2017, 07:12:07 pm
Julian Fellowes was the actual writer of Gosford Park.  Actor Bob Balaban (who wonderfully played Morris Weissman in the movie he co-produced) wanted to work with Robert Altman, asking if they could do an Agatha Christie who-done-it together. Balaban introduced Fellowes (who had been a somewhat mediocre actor) to Altman. Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay, but Altman literally MADE Fellowes's career when Fellowes won the Oscar (please note, it was NOT a shared Oscar).

That's good to know, John. I just went with what I saw at IMDb.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 30, 2017, 09:58:19 am
I should have spent the weekend catching up on my New Yorkers, but I didn't feel like it, so instead I spent the weekend finishing up one Tony Hillerman Navajo murder mystery and reading an entire Margaret Cole Arapaho murder mystery.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 31, 2017, 08:52:58 am
I should have spent the weekend catching up on my New Yorkers, but I didn't feel like it, so instead I spent the weekend finishing up one Tony Hillerman Navajo murder mystery and reading an entire Margaret Cole Arapaho murder mystery.

I think you could safely change that "should" to a "could." There's no "should" in reading choices (in most cases), and the New Yorker is completely optional.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 31, 2017, 09:52:11 am
I think you could safely change that "should" to a "could." There's no "should" in reading choices (in most cases), and the New Yorker is completely optional.

Thanks. I just get so daunted when I see the magazines pile up, and lately I haven't had as much time to read at lunch as I usually do.

But the late Tony Hillerman and Margaret Coel tell good stories. Hillerman was so precise in locations that you could almost follow along with a Google map. Coel's stories have the added pleasure of taking place in territory that I've visited--Lander, Riverton, and along the Wind River Mountains.

Last year I read a Longmire novella by Craig Johnson that he set in the same region of Wyoming as Coel's novels. At one point he has Sheriff Longmire and his friend Henry Standing Bear talk to the "red-haird priest" at St. Francis Mission. That would be Margaret Coel's main character, Father John Aloysius O'Malley, an Irish Jesuit from Boston who is the pastor at the mission. I wrote to Johnson to ask if that was "a tip of the hat" to Margaret Coel, and he replied that indeed it was.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 01, 2017, 09:57:15 am
You're in luck, Jeff. The latest issue is the fiction issue and it spans two weeks, so you have time to catch up.

Apparently, I missed the review (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/how-not-to-adapt-anne-of-green-gables?mbid=social_facebook_aud_dev_kw_paid-how-not-to-adapt-anne-of-green-gables&kwp_0=417635&kwp_4=1536080&kwp_1=667287) of "Anne With an E" which was in the May 11 issue.

There is quite a big controversy about this Netflix series. I haven't seen the review, the series, or even read the book Anne of Green Gables, but I love a good literary controversy!! Is there anyone out there who knows more about this?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 01, 2017, 11:14:06 am
Apparently, I missed the review (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/how-not-to-adapt-anne-of-green-gables?mbid=social_facebook_aud_dev_kw_paid-how-not-to-adapt-anne-of-green-gables&kwp_0=417635&kwp_4=1536080&kwp_1=667287) of "Anne With an E" which was in the May 11 issue.

I guess I missed it, too. I have no memory of it.

Edit to Add:

Maybe that was just on the Web site? There was no "May 11" issue. The cover dates were May 8 and May 15. Neither had anything about Anne of Green Gables. I just checked the TOCs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 01, 2017, 04:19:48 pm
Well, that explains why we have no memory of it!!

Speaking of The NY, there was a cartoon in the latest issue that made me laugh out loud! It was on page 85. But maybe, it's a chick thing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on June 02, 2017, 01:33:46 am



One explanation for Trump’s mishandling of the Europeans is that he is unwilling to accept that there are powerful people in the world who do not think that climate change is a joke, or a hoax, or something to just prattle about to naïve voters.




http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/angela-merkel-and-the-insult-of-trumps-paris-climate-accord-withdrawal

AMY DAVIDSON
ANGELA MERKEL AND THE INSULT OF
TRUMP’S PARIS CLIMATE-ACCORD WITHDRAWAL

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/davidson-amy.svg)By Amy Davidson   June 1, 2017

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Davidson-Merkel-Trump-Comments-690.jpg)
During the past few days, Merkel seemed to have had it with Trump, in some significant measure because of his flashy contempt
for the climate deal and for his fellow world leaders.
  PHOTOGRAPH BY BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / GETTY



On Wednesday, at around the time that news outlets were reporting that President Donald Trump had decided to pull America out of the Paris climate accord, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was at the Berlin airport, greeting Premier Li Keqiang, of China. As their national anthems played, Li and Merkel stood on a red carpet that had been cut to look like a giant arrow. It seemed to point definitively away from Trump. There was a connection between the two moments that was more than symbolic. China has made it clear that, with America’s abdication, it sees Paris as a vehicle for its efforts to assert itself as a leader of the international community. (Whether this means that it would also make sure that carbon emissions fell is another matter.) And Merkel, during the past few days, seemed to have had it with Trump, in some significant measure because of his flashy contempt for the climate deal and for his fellow world leaders.

That contempt was well on display on Thursday afternoon, when Trump confirmed America’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. In his remarks, delivered in the Rose Garden, Trump attacked not only the terms of the deal but also the goodwill of those who argued for it. He spoke like a man unravelling a conspiracy or a con job. The climate accord had been pushed by America’s economic rivals, whose real reason for wanting us to stay in was “so that we continue to suffer this self-inflicted major economic wound,” and by “global activists that have long sought to gain wealth at our country’s expense.” Paris was just a “scheme to redistribute wealth outside of the United States.” Only Trump really cared about the environment, and he would get a much better deal for it.

The only question now is how far away from America Merkel’s frustration leads the Chancellor, her country, and her continent. It’s not that she hasn’t tried; she even invited Ivanka Trump to Berlin, flattering her all the way. Last week, as Merkel endured Trump’s company at NATO and G7 meetings in Belgium and Italy—along with his boasts about the “unbelievable chemistry” that the two of them supposedly shared—she and the other leaders present made time to talk to him about the importance of protecting what had been gained for the planet in Paris. She said, later, at a press conference in Taormina, Italy, at the close of the G7, that, of all the points raised at the conferences, one that was “very difficult, not to say very dissatisfying, was the entire conversation on the subject of climate change.” That is, one person, representing one country, had dissatisfied her: “Here you have a situation in which six—if you count the European Union, seven—stand as one. And no one has any idea whether the United States is even going to stay in the Paris accords.” Indeed, one of the many ways in which Trump seems to have thoroughly annoyed his European counterparts is with his manufactured drama around the announcement of the Paris decision. After all, there wasn’t much mystery, given that Trump had put an end to American efforts to comply with Paris, back in March, when he issued an executive order discarding, among other things, President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The other world leaders just wanted to know if Trump would at least pretend to respect the pact and, perhaps, the idea that international pacts have value. They had all travelled to Belgium and Italy precisely so that important matters could be shared. Couldn’t he just tell them? But, perhaps, that would have given them a chance to tell Trump to his face that it was not, as he claimed again in his remarks on Thursday, “a very, very successful trip. Believe me.”

One explanation for Trump’s mishandling of the Europeans is that he is unwilling to accept that there are powerful people in the world who do not think that climate change is a joke, or a hoax, or something to just prattle about to naïve voters. Merkel, at her press conference, said, “This Paris climate accord is not just some accord or the other. It is a central accord in defining the contours of globalization.” She added, “I believe that the issue of Paris is so important that one simply can’t compromise on it.” But Merkel’s concerns may only matter to Trump if he sees it as an opportunity for bullying, or as ammunition in the trade war he seems ready to Twitter-start—or maybe just as a chance to get back at her for what she had said the day after arriving back in Germany from the G7, under a tent at a campaign beer rally in Bavaria.

The rally was in support of candidates for the Christian Social Union (the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union) ahead of the parliamentary elections in September, so Merkel spent a good deal of time on ordinary political concerns: the rent in Munich, taxes on medium-sized businesses, shout-outs to various allies (“our friends in Schleswig-Holstein!”). But she also talked about how her recent travels had reminded her “what a treasure Europe is,” and how a strong Germany relied, for example, on a strong France. As the crowd applauded, Merkel paused to adjust the two microphones in front of her and then moved to the toughest part of her remarks—the words that, it seemed, she had really come there to say.

“The time in which we could fully rely on others is a bit in the past,” Merkel said. “I have experienced that in the past several days. And, because of that, I can say now that we Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands—naturally, in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain, as good neighbors wherever that may work, with Russia and other countries.” It was striking that America was just another name on the list. Merkel continued, “But we must understand that we must fight for our future, as Europeans, for our own fate—and that I will gladly do with you.” The “you” there was the Germans in the tent.

Earlier in the speech, Merkel had emphasized that “we’re working for the people in Germany.” That included upholding values such as freedom of expression and religious tolerance, and being ready to help refugees—although she said that, since the refugee crisis of 2015, “we’ve tightened things up.” But it also meant focussing specifically on German dreams. On this, she was speaking to the German mainstream. Her opponent in the September elections, Martin Schulz, the leader of the more left-of-center Social Democratic Party, gave a speech at a Party gathering in a far less measured tone, in which he directly called Trump’s treatment of “our Chancellor” unacceptable, indeed unbearable. He later called Trump “a destroyer of all Western values such as we have never before experienced in this form.”

For many Europeans, and for people on many continents, addressing climate change speaks to the most fundamental of values. Trump spent so much time congratulating himself on his “historic” trip that he may have been surprised by the reaction of Merkel and others. He may not have thought that it was very nice. After Merkel’s beer-tent speech, he tweeted, “We have a MASSIVE trade deficit with Germany, plus they pay FAR LESS than they should on NATO & military. Very bad for U.S. This will change.” Something will change. After Trump’s sour, shrill withdrawal from Paris, though, Merkel isn’t likely to be the one who is alone. The day before Li came to visit her in Berlin, Merkel had welcomed the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra ModI. Merkel is a busy woman.



(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/davidson-amy.svg) Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column ( http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson ), in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between. newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 02, 2017, 09:48:51 am
Apparently, I missed the review (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/how-not-to-adapt-anne-of-green-gables?mbid=social_facebook_aud_dev_kw_paid-how-not-to-adapt-anne-of-green-gables&kwp_0=417635&kwp_4=1536080&kwp_1=667287) of "Anne With an E" which was in the May 11 issue.

There is quite a big controversy about this Netflix series. I haven't seen the review, the series, or even read the book Anne of Green Gables, but I love a good literary controversy!! Is there anyone out there who knows more about this?

I've read two reviews, one negative and one mostly negative. I've never read the book and don't plan to, so I think this is one literary controversy I can skip.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 02, 2017, 10:02:29 am
In a similar review, Jill Lepore says the new Wonder Woman movie neutralizes a stronger, more politically controversial figure. I guess it's actually the opposite of the other -- this one's saying they toned it down too much, the other that they went over the top.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/wonder-womans-unwinnable-war (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/wonder-womans-unwinnable-war)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 02, 2017, 11:16:21 am
I've read two reviews, one negative and one mostly negative. I've never read the book and don't plan to, so I think this is one literary controversy I can skip.

Me neither. I thought maybe just because I'm a boy it's never been on my reading list, but maybe not.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 02, 2017, 11:17:19 am
In a similar review, Jill Lepore says the new Wonder Woman movie neutralizes a stronger, more politically controversial figure. I guess it's actually the opposite of the other -- this one's saying they toned it down too much, the other that they went over the top.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/wonder-womans-unwinnable-war (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/wonder-womans-unwinnable-war)

I'll have to read this. It's Jill Lepore!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 02, 2017, 12:03:10 pm
Yes, I started reading the article about dystopian novels just because it was by her.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 03, 2017, 10:16:15 am
Me neither. I thought maybe just because I'm a boy it's never been on my reading list, but maybe not.

I don't think those are incompatible possibilities. It probably hasn't ever been on your reading list because you're a boy. However, not every book about a girl is read by every girl.

Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books? Pippi Longstocking? Little Women? Maude Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books? No? Then you're a boy -- and sexist!  ;D

I've read all of those books, but no Nancy Drew, no Ramona, no Harriet the Spy.

I have, however, read a series of books about this family going on adventures in other parts of the world, and they're all boys. Amazon Adventure was my favorite.

I think it's been pretty well documented in the publishing and entertainment industries that many boys won't watch/read stuff about girls but the opposite is not as true. That's one reason so many kid heroes are boys. Some entertainment producers, like Disney, have made an effort to change that. I'm not sure how successful it's been.

And apparently that tendency continues all the way on into so-called adulthood, as illustrated by the reaction by so many sexist morons to an all-woman Ghostbusters. Or, more recently, this hilarious exchange between some idiot and the mayor of Austin:

http://www.mayoradler.com/letter-wonder-woman/ (http://www.mayoradler.com/letter-wonder-woman/)

In fairness, it's probably similar to the phenomenon that gay people are more likely to see straight movies than the other way around.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 03, 2017, 12:20:45 pm
Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books?

Actually, I have read all the Little House books, but rather late, and there's kind of a funny story about that.

When I was a little boy, somehow I came into possession of Little House in the Big Woods, but I didn't like it because it utterly mystified me. The Ingalls were living in what were clearly pioneer conditions (log cabin, etc.), yet somewhere near the beginning of the book, there is mention of the story happening "80 years ago," or something like that. Even in the mid-1960s I could subtract, and I just didn't get how the Ingalls were living as primitively as Daniel Boone. I don't think I even finished the book.

Then I was in my first years of high school when the pilot for the TV series aired, and my whole family watched it, and suddenly it made sense to me. (I guess when Mrs. Wilder wrote her books, the events she described were "80 years ago.") The whole family watched the pilot, and then I got interested in the stories, and so did my mother and my grandmother, so we all read all of them. So there I was, a 16-year-old boy, reading the Little House books.  :laugh: I found it interesting to read about what life was like for an ordinary family in the time and places where Laura Ingalls grew up. I guess that was the burgeoning historian in me; the books were like historical documents.

I've never read Pippi Longstocking, or Little Women (though I've thought I ought to read Louisa May Alcott because I think she's an important figure in literature, and, again, Little Women takes place in the 1860s). I've never even heard of Maude Hart Lovelace.

I think we read Harriet the Spy in school. I know I've read it, but not on my own.

I've never read any Nancy Drew, but I've also never read any Hardy Boys.

Edit to Add: On second thought, it was probably "60 years ago" rather than "80" for the Little House books. The memory comes back to me now that I was thinking in, say, 1965, that "60 years ago" there were already automobiles, and telephones, and so forth, yet the Ingalls were living in a log cabin in pioneer conditions? It made no sense to me, so I gave up. If Mrs. Wilder wrote in the 1920s and 1930s, and I guess she did, then the 1860s and 1870s were "60 years ago," and the stories made sense. As I said, by the time I read them, they were like historical documents of life in the time and place where the stories were set because they were based on Mrs. Wilder's memories.

Of course, there is a controversy over whether the books were actually written by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter (you should look her up; she was quite an interesting character). In high school I read a book by Lane called Let the Hurricane Roar, and it could have been a condensed version of the Little House books. The main characters are a young couple named Charles and Caroline (sound familiar?) who settle on the plains. It seems to me there were other things in the story that reminded me of the Little House books. The title seems to come from what I guess was a popular hymn of the period that is mentioned in the Little House books.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 04, 2017, 09:32:27 am
That's very interesting, friend Jeff!

Have you read Laura Ingalls Wilder's books? Pippi Longstocking? Little Women? Maude Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books?

I've read all of those books, but no Nancy Drew, no Ramona, no Harriet the Spy.

I read about a dozen Nancy Drew books and Little Women, but not the others. As an adult I read Girl of the Limberlost, by Gene Stratton-Porter, and also My Ántonia by Willa Cather when my son had to read it for school. My children's reading was dominated by Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, so was rather masculine dominated.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 09, 2017, 09:28:19 pm
Just finished an interesting article about Sally Yates, the Deputy Attorney General who said the Department of Justice would not defend the Orange Fascist's travel ban in court. (May 29 issue)

The only thing I have left in that issue now is the article about sand. I can't wait to read it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2017, 01:22:34 pm
The only thing I have left in that issue now is the article about sand. I can't wait to read it!

Well, report back on your thoughts. I know there's getting to be a sand shortage, and I feel like that's all I need to know on the subject.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2017, 08:54:29 pm
The only thing I have left in that issue now is the article about sand. I can't wait to read it!

Well, report back on your thoughts. I know there's getting to be a sand shortage, and I feel like that's all I need to know on the subject.

You can easily skip it, but I found it interesting. Not all sand is created equal. Desert sand is so unsuitable for construction that Dubai has to import sand.  :laugh:

I guess instead of coals to Newcastle it really is sand to the desert!

Things like that.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 13, 2017, 09:35:37 am
I'm actually caught up in my issues, reading the two-week issue that includes yesterday in the cover date. No doubt, however, I will fall behind again till I read everything in this issue that I want to read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 13, 2017, 01:36:10 pm
Who names a girl child Curtis? I just read the Curtis Sittenfeld story. I checked the contributor list and learned she's a she-Curtis and not a he-Curtis.

Was Curtis, maybe, her mother's maiden name (is that term still used?)?

I should Google her to see what I can learn.

Edit to Add: Actually, her given name is Elizabeth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Sittenfeld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Sittenfeld)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 13, 2017, 06:13:08 pm
I'm not sure I should post this here, but this is a NY cartoon I found hilarious.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 13, 2017, 06:57:36 pm
I saw that cartoon. I wondered if it was supposed to be a parody of one author in particular.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on June 13, 2017, 07:55:59 pm
"how he stares rapturously into that electronic device - he must have a keen grasp of technology, and so many important  things to do."

:laughs:

reminds me of this.....



(http://funnyasduck.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/funny-pictures-use-phone-look-cats-argue-strangers-facebook.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 14, 2017, 01:01:04 pm
I'm currently reading Margaret Talbot's article about opioid addiction in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and I'm about to give up on it because it's another one that I think is longer than it needs to be.

Just too many words. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 15, 2017, 09:48:33 am
I'm currently reading Margaret Talbot's article about opioid addiction in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and I'm about to give up on it because it's another one that I think is longer than it needs to be.

Just too many words. ...

I've decided to finish the Talbot article anyway.

But I'm really looking forward to the article about "St. Augustine and the Invention of Sex" in the next issue!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 15, 2017, 04:42:06 pm
(http://funnyasduck.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/funny-pictures-use-phone-look-cats-argue-strangers-facebook.jpg)

 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 15, 2017, 05:02:25 pm
David Sedaris' piece on his mother's alcoholism is remarkable on several levels. 1) Straightforwardly, it's his own story of sadness and loss. 2) Less directly (possibly not even deliberately -- I can't tell) it's his mother's story. That a woman who was used to having six children sit around with her at the dinner table every night to hear her stories and hang on her every word, eventually reduced to living alone with a man who sounds kind of annoying -- it's not surprising her alcoholism took a turn for the worse and her moods turned angry. Sedaris always portrays himself in his writing as obnoxiously self-centered and oblivious to others' feelings, but his essays show this isn't true. 3) You know how in Norah Ephron's family everyone always said "Everything is copy"? In David Sedaris' family, clearly the tradition was that you could embellish a true story if it made it better/funnier. Sedaris has been criticized for not adhering strictly to the truth in his supposedly nonfiction essays, but he's the one writer I can forgive for this. Now I know why!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 15, 2017, 06:47:24 pm
David Sedaris' piece on his mother's alcoholism is remarkable on several levels. 1) Straightforwardly, it's his own story of sadness and loss. 2) Less directly (possibly not even deliberately -- I can't tell) it's his mother's story. That a woman who was used to having six children sit around with her at the dinner table every night to hear her stories and hang on her every word, eventually reduced to living alone with a man who sounds kind of annoying -- it's not surprising her alcoholism took a turn for the worse and her moods turned angry. Sedaris always portrays himself in his writing as obnoxiously self-centered and oblivious to others' feelings, but his essays show this isn't true. 3) You know how in Norah Ephron's family everyone always said "Everything is copy"? In David Sedaris' family, clearly the tradition was that you could embellish a true story if it made it better/funnier. Sedaris has been criticized for not adhering strictly to the truth in his supposedly nonfiction essays, but he's the one writer I can forgive for this. Now I know why!

I'm looking forward to reading Sedaris. I always read him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 16, 2017, 08:55:59 am
I saw that cartoon. I wondered if it was supposed to be a parody of one author in particular.
I like to see it as a more generalized "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" kind of cartoon.

Opiod addiction, alcoholism, I wonder if the New Yorker is reporting on a trend or trying to create one. With our country in such a mess, it's no wonder people are turning to drugs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 16, 2017, 09:27:08 am
I like to see it as a more generalized "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" kind of cartoon.

Opiod addiction, alcoholism, I wonder if the New Yorker is reporting on a trend or trying to create one. With our country in such a mess, it's no wonder people are turning to drugs.

Oh, no, it is definitely a trend. And not a good one.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 16, 2017, 06:49:22 pm
I like to see it as a more generalized "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" kind of cartoon.

I saw it as a fish out of chronological water situation.

Quote
Opiod addiction, alcoholism, I wonder if the New Yorker is reporting on a trend or trying to create one. With our country in such a mess, it's no wonder people are turning to drugs.

Opioid addiction is definitely a trend, even an epidemic. And it started long before our country was in the current mess -- sometime during the Obama Administration, I think.

Come to think of it, why didn't it start years ago? Opioids have been around for decades. Oh wait, I guess I read somewhere that it had to do with Big Pharma pushing it or something.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 22, 2017, 02:18:18 pm
At lunch today I read Charles McGrath's article on A. E. Housman (June 26), which I find notable for its use of both gaydar and angsty.

One of my favorite lines in all of poetry comes from Housman: "Malt does more than Milton can / to justify God's ways to man."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 23, 2017, 06:54:01 pm
At lunch today I read Charles McGrath's article on A. E. Housman (June 26), which I find notable for its use of both gaydar and angsty.

I'm not surprised that Charles McGrath used those words, though I would be if A. E. Housman used them.

Angsty maybe takes some liberties, but I think gaydar is a regular accepted word at this point (though my spellcheck doesn't, but then it doesn't even recognize homophobe).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 23, 2017, 07:56:58 pm
I'm not surprised that Charles McGrath used those words, though I would be if A. E. Housman used them.

Angsty maybe takes some liberties, but I think gaydar is a regular accepted word at this point (though my spellcheck doesn't, but then it doesn't even recognize homophobe).

But what would Mr. Shawn say?  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on June 23, 2017, 09:44:18 pm
At lunch today I read Charles McGrath's article on A. E. Housman (June 26), which I find notable for its use of both gaydar and angsty.

One of my favorite lines in all of poetry comes from Housman: "Malt does more than Milton can / to justify God's ways to man."  ;D



This one too, Jeff:


"Loss, weariness, diminishment, the sense of a golden age long gone—you could make a case that for the past hundred and twenty years or so this has been the authentic, dominant note of Englishness in poetry, more than a wistful, Brexity  yearning for a pastoral countryside."


I had been thinking about Hausman after reading Forster so recently, now this. Good article--






But the more likely cause of Housman’s failure was that he had become emotionally undone over an unrequited yearning for his roommate, Moses Jackson. Jackson was athletic and good-looking, bright enough, but something of a philistine, according to one acquaintance, “quite unliterary and outspoken in his want of any such interest.” Apparently, he had no clue about Housman’s feelings for him. After Oxford, the two men roomed together in London, where they both had jobs at the Patent Office, and where Housman spent every evening at the British Museum, studying on his own, heroically and penitentially, and writing papers that eventually redeemed him as a classicist, landing him professorships first at University College, London, and then at Cambridge. But in 1885 there was a blowup between him and Jackson. Parker speculates that Housman made some sort of declaration and was rejected. Stoppard imagines that it’s Jackson who forces the issue, worried perhaps by the recent passage of a law against acts of “gross indecency” between men. In the play, Jackson is slow to figure things out but finally says, in effect, “You’re not sweet on me, are you?”





http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/26/how-ae-housman-invented-englishness

(http://spartanideas.msu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/The-New-Yorker-280x222.jpg)


Books
June 26, 2017 Issue

How A. E. Housman
Invented Englishness

The poet’s longing for a lost golden
age is now a national identity.


By Charles McGrath

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5942b7bbbeb38936ce3f29da/master/w_649,c_limit/170626_r30172.jpg)

Readers have long found in “A Shropshire Lad” what they wanted to find. Illustration by Guido Scarabottolo



In person, A. E. Housman was so shy and furtive that Max Beerbohm once compared him to “an absconding cashier.” For such a crabbed and elusive figure, though, he continues to draw a surprising amount of attention: books, articles, musical tributes, even a Broadway play, Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love.” Academics know him the way he is mostly depicted in that play—as a formidable classicist, probably the greatest of his generation. But the real source of his fame is a single small volume of poetry, “A Shropshire Lad,” which has never been out of print since it was published, in 1896. Somehow, these sixty-three short lyrics, celebrating youth, loss, and early death, became for generations of readers the perfect evocation not merely of what it feels like to be adolescent and a little emotional but of what it means to be English. We don’t have anything remotely like it in American lit. Some of Emily Dickinson’s brief lyrics come closest—tonally, and in their mastery of the short, compressed line—but she has never quite attained Housman’s popularity, and the landscape she wrote about, the one inside her own head, could hardly be said to have created a sense of national identity. “He is a strange phenomenon,” Ted Hughes said of Housman, “but to my mind the most perfect expression of something deeply English and a whole mood of English history.”

Peter Parker’s new book, “Housman Country: Into the Heart of England” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)—which helpfully includes the text of “A Shropshire Lad” in an appendix—is partly a brisk, sensible biography of Housman and partly a study in poetic reputation. It traces the way Housman’s singular vision seized hold of the English imagination, inspiring not just a literary following but a generation of composers, like George Butterworth and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who sought to do musically what Housman had done with verse: to create a new and authentically English kind of song. Parker, the author of very good biographies of J. R. Ackerley and Christopher Isherwood, casts a wide net here, and eventually it unravels in a skein of loose ends and Housmanian magpie-pickings. Parker lists just about all the many authors who ever snatched a title from Housman, for example. He also points out that not only is there an American rock band (formerly Army of Strippers) now called Housman’s Athletes but that the British rocker Morrissey used to quote Housman often and a grateful fan once wrote, “I thought his poems would be drivel about babies and flowers, but it’s really good stuff about suicide.” Parker doesn’t entirely succeed in explaining the great mystery of Housman—why it’s these rueful, corpse-strewn poems and not, say, the heartier ones of John Masefield which continue to resonate within the English soul. But he leaves no doubt about Housman’s lingering attraction. You could conclude from his book that when many people pulled the lever to vote for Brexit they were imagining a return to Shropshire.

To judge from Parker’s account, there were a number of different Housmans, and how you felt about him depended on which one you happened to meet. He was an adventurous eater and a lover of good wine. He liked dirty stories and flying in airplanes. At high table at his Cambridge college, he could be clubbable and amusing, and might even bend your ear about how much he liked the jazz-age novels of Anita Loos. But he could also be rude, aloof, brooding, and difficult. He suffered fools not at all, and was unable to tolerate a compliment. Willa Cather, who so admired his poetry that she made a pilgrimage to meet its author, found him “gaunt and gray, and embittered.” The whole encounter, she said, gave her “a fit of dark depression.” As Housman’s obituary in the London Times  put it, “In his attitude to life, there seemed something baffled and even shrinking, as though he feared criticism and emotion alike more than he relished experience. . . . He valued confidence, but held back from intimate relations, and seemed to prefer isolation to giving himself away.”

There was Housman the poet, who actually wrote very little, and Housman the classical scholar, who spent most of his time poring over ancient texts and whose greatest pleasure seemed to come from writing caustic put-downs of other scholars. About an editor of Persius and Juvenal: “Mr. Owen’s innovations, so far as I can see, have only one merit, which certainly, in view of their character, is a merit of some magnitude: they are few.” He sometimes composed these insults in advance, leaving blanks for names he could later plug in. Housman was not a translator or a classical historian. He specialized in the dry-as-dust business of textual criticism, determining the correct version of a classical text by comparing different manuscripts and judging which variant was the most likely—whether in a certain line of Propertius it should be “et” or “aut,” and deciding where the commas belonged in Catullus. His life’s work was a five-volume edition of Manilius, an astrologer poet, who even Housman conceded was third-rate—“facile and frivolous,” he said, remarkable mostly for “doing sums in verse.”

How to square these two, the poet and the pedant, has preoccupied commentators for decades. Edmund Wilson once suggested that what made Housman so adept at textual criticism was his ability to think like a poet, not only like a scholar, and that his fetish for accuracy stemmed from a real passion for his texts. But Wilson also pointed out that in Housman’s choice of Manilius there seems an element of perversity and self-mortification, and that his scholarship sometimes radiated not so much love for literature as hatred for his rivals. The poems in “A Shropshire Lad” are not completely disconnected from Housman’s scholarly work—among other things, they owe something to Horace, Housman’s favorite Latin poet, in particular to Horace’s way of weighting apparently inconsequential words—but they seem to have welled up from another part of him, a spring of emotion that he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, repress. Poetry, he once said, was for him a “morbid secretion,” as the pearl is for the oyster.


Housman never lived in Shropshire, or even spent much time there. He was born in Worcestershire in 1859, the eldest of seven children. His father was a Dickensian figure—a jolly, heavy-drinking lawyer, often broke and given to investing in harebrained schemes. His mother, to whom he was very close, died when Housman was twelve, an experience that turned him into a lifelong atheist. At school, he was an exceptionally gifted student of Latin and Greek, and easily won a classics scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford, where he sailed through his first set of exams and then spectacularly botched the second. It’s possible that he was rattled by the news that his father had become seriously ill. It’s also possible that he took his success for granted and didn’t study hard enough. The young Housman was a know-it-all, who refused to have anything to do with his tutor after hearing the man mispronounce a Greek word, and even took a dim view of Benjamin Jowett, the famous master of Balliol and the greatest Greek scholar of the day.

But the more likely cause of Housman’s failure was that he had become emotionally undone over an unrequited yearning for his roommate, Moses Jackson. Jackson was athletic and good-looking, bright enough, but something of a philistine, according to one acquaintance, “quite unliterary and outspoken in his want of any such interest.” Apparently, he had no clue about Housman’s feelings for him. After Oxford, the two men roomed together in London, where they both had jobs at the Patent Office, and where Housman spent every evening at the British Museum, studying on his own, heroically and penitentially, and writing papers that eventually redeemed him as a classicist, landing him professorships first at University College, London, and then at Cambridge. But in 1885 there was a blowup between him and Jackson. Parker speculates that Housman made some sort of declaration and was rejected. Stoppard imagines that it’s Jackson who forces the issue, worried perhaps by the recent passage of a law against acts of “gross indecency” between men. In the play, Jackson is slow to figure things out but finally says, in effect, “You’re not sweet on me, are you?”

Whatever happened, Housman moved out, and Jackson soon married and settled in Karachi. Years later, Housman’s younger brother, Laurence, a novelist and playwright, also gay but much more open about it, suggested that on the rebound Housman found solace in the arms of Jackson’s younger brother, Adalbert. But Laurence was in his nineties then, and this may have been wishful thinking. Despite later rumors about Parisian rent boys and a Venetian gondolier, there’s no sure evidence that Housman ever slept with anyone, and there’s little reason to doubt that Moses Jackson was his only real love. The two men stayed distantly in touch, with Housman becoming a godfather to one of Jackson’s children and lending Jackson a large sum of money when he retired to British Columbia and tried, unsuccessfully, to make it as a farmer there. Housman, after finally overcoming his Oxford failure and achieving distinction as an academic, wrote to Jackson, “I would much rather have followed you round the world and blacked your boots.”

More than half of “A Shropshire Lad” was written during a charged five-month period in 1895, when Housman seems to have been missing Jackson acutely. Readers with advanced gaydar, like Oscar Wilde and E. M. Forster, early on detected a note of suppressed homosexual desire in the book, especially in poems like the one that begins:


Look not in my eyes, for fear
They mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.


The young Forster even wrote Housman a fan letter, and years later, after dining with him at his Cambridge college and hearing Housman say “with a twinkle” that he sometimes went to Paris to be with “unrespectable company,” ventured up the staircase to Housman’s rooms. He slipped his card under the door, but there was no reply.

Parker says that many early readers of Poem No. 44, addressed to a young man who has killed himself rather than face a life of “disgrace and scorn,” would have known that it referred to the well-publicized case of Henry Maclean, a young soldier who shot himself in a London hotel, apparently out of homosexual shame. And he makes the provocative suggestion—which could equally well be applied to other Housman poems, including the strange one that recommends plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand or foot if it offends you—that not every line need be taken at face value and the whole thing might be meant angrily or ironically:


Oh you had forethought, you could reason,
And saw your road and where it led,
And early wise and brave in season
Put the pistol to your head.


But one reason “A Shropshire Lad” has been so successful is that readers find there what they want to find. In 1929, a financial expert hired by Housman’s publisher declared that “A Shropshire Lad” was the “filthiest book I have ever read: all about rogering girls under hedges.” During the First World War, British soldiers carried copies in the breast pockets of their tunics, believing the author to be a kindred spirit and a war poet—though Housman knew little about war and soldiering. His main credential was his sense that life passes too quickly and death is always standing by, or, as one of his most famous poems has it:


Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is, and we were young.


After the war, “A Shropshire Lad” travelled in the breast pockets of the generation who had taken up rambling and rediscovering the English countryside, even though—aside from a few place names, like Bredon Hill and Wenlock Edge, evidently chosen more for euphony than for anything else—it’s not much of a geographic guide. The landscape of “A Shropshire Lad” is an all-purpose landscape, not a particular one, and, far from being the unspoiled countryside imagined by Brexiteers, it’s a place mostly of unhappy love and early death. Long past rogering each other, if they ever got that far, most of the Shropshire lads and lasses are already in their graves. Even the poems ostensibly celebrating seasonal rebirth, like the one beginning “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now / Is hung with bloom along the bough,” contain within them, like a canker, a note of foreboding, and wind up sounding like laments.

Housman’s morbidness so bothered Ezra Pound that he wrote a famous parody:


O woe, woe.
People are born and die
We also shall be dead pretty soon.
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.


What Pound missed was Housman’s music, which so lent itself to composers—the intensity of his tone and the tautness and compactness of his expression. Parker sees Housman’s habit of plainness and terseness as manifestations of English traits that amount to a sort of polite national understatement: modesty, restraint, stiff-upper-lipness. Housman is tight-lipped, certainly, but that doesn’t account for the feeling you sometimes get that the poems are so repressed they ought to bear warning signs like those found on tanker trucks: “Caution: Contents Under Pressure.”

Housman insisted that the task of poetry was “to transfuse emotion—not to transmit thought”; it was to make your throat clench and your hair stand on end. The emotion his own poetry most often elicits is that of overwhelming sadness. Parker sees him, quite rightly, as belonging to the long tradition of English melancholia, but despite the sometimes old-fashioned ways in which it is framed—the lads and lasses, the ploughed fields, the shimmering weirs—Housman’s melancholy is a more angsty, modern version, untethered from any religious or artistic consolation. He’s less like Keats, say, than like Hardy, his near-contemporary, whose bleakness, both personal and poetic, at times outdoes even Housman’s. (Hardy once wrote to Rider Haggard, after the death of Haggard’s ten-year-old son, “To be candid I think the death of a child is never really to be regretted, when one reflects on what he has escaped.”)

Some of Housman’s brand of sadness also carries over into the poetry of Philip Larkin, who was an admirer, especially in poems like “Cut Grass” and “The Trees,” which borrow the characteristic Housman form of short lines in just a few stanzas. In some ways, even Larkin’s life mirrors Housman’s: the small output of poems fastidiously worked over, the seemingly dull career as an academic librarian, the solitary bachelor flat (though we now know, of course, that he wasn’t nearly as lonely and sex-starved as he pretended). It’s not hard to imagine the two of them huddled over a couple of pints and taking great pleasure in reminding each other of all the ways in which the world is going to hell.

Loss, weariness, diminishment, the sense of a golden age long gone—you could make a case that for the past hundred and twenty years or so this has been the authentic, dominant note of Englishness in poetry, more than a wistful, Brexity yearning for a pastoral countryside. Part of Housman’s charm, even now, is the way he makes that sadness sound and feel so sweet:


Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content.
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.


But that sweetness, verging on sentimentality, is also Housman’s limitation: the lads and lasses slumbering under the grass, never growing old or sick or worrying about how to find a job. Sadness in Housman is a one-size-fits-all emotion, not one rooted in particulars. It puddles up automatically. And reading “A Shropshire Lad” you can find yourself becoming narcotized against feelings that are deeper and more complicated. That may be the real secret of the book’s enduring popularity, the way it substitutes for a feeling of genuine loss the almost pleasant pain of nostalgia. ♦


This article appears in other versions of the June 26, 2017, issue, with the headline “The Land of Lost Content.”
Charles McGrath is a former deputy editor of The New Yorker and a former editor of the Times Book Review.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 24, 2017, 10:37:04 am
Thanks for posting this, John. I particularly liked this paragraph, that made me think of Ennis:

Quote
What Pound missed was Housman’s music, which so lent itself to composers—the intensity of his tone and the tautness and compactness of his expression. Parker sees Housman’s habit of plainness and terseness as manifestations of English traits that amount to a sort of polite national understatement: modesty, restraint, stiff-upper-lipness. Housman is tight-lipped, certainly, but that doesn’t account for the feeling you sometimes get that the poems are so repressed they ought to bear warning signs like those found on tanker trucks: “Caution: Contents Under Pressure.”
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on June 24, 2017, 11:44:56 am
Thanks for posting this, John. I particularly liked this paragraph, that made me think of Ennis:


What Pound missed was Housman’s music, which so lent itself to composers—the intensity of his tone and the tautness and compactness of his expression. Parker sees Housman’s habit of plainness and terseness as manifestations of English traits that amount to a sort of polite national understatement: modesty, restraint, stiff-upper-lipness. Housman is tight-lipped, certainly, but that doesn’t account for the feeling you sometimes get that the poems are so repressed they ought to bear warning signs like those found on tanker trucks: “Caution: Contents Under Pressure."



Wow. Good catch, Lee!

Look at this too:

But he could also be rude, aloof, brooding, and difficult. He suffered fools not at all, and was unable to tolerate a compliment. Willa Cather, who so admired his poetry that she made a pilgrimage to meet its author, found him “gaunt and gray, and embittered.” The whole encounter, she said, gave her “a fit of dark depression.” As Housman’s obituary in the London Times   put it, “In his attitude to life, there seemed something baffled and even shrinking, as though he feared criticism and emotion alike more than he relished experience. . . . He valued confidence, but held back from intimate relations, and seemed to prefer isolation to giving himself away.”


And there's this,
something to really make you think,
this illustration from “A Shropshire Lad”:
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/15/ff/9b/15ff9b2e5953967e31771aa4f77c4ac2.jpg)
From "A Shropshire Lad" by A.E. Housman, illustrated by wood engraver Agnes Miller
"The Ballad of Reading Gaol
was written in the summer and autumn
of 1897 at Berneval, near Dieppe,
where Oscar Wilde stayed after his
release from prison. The poem was
inspired by A.E. Housman, in which
the following verses occur:"

ON moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four crossed ways.

A careless shepherd would keep
The flocks by moonlight there,
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
The dead man stood on air.








http://www.foliosociety.com/book/SPL/shropshire-lad

(http://www.foliosociety.com/images/books/lrg/SPL.jpg?20170624160336)

A Shropshire Lad
A. E. Housman
This timeless collection of Housman’s 63 elegiac poems features the
wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker created for the 1940 edition.


FYI:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Shropshire Lad, by A. E. Housman
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5720/5720-h/5720-h.htm

and

http://www.hoasm.org/AShropshireLad.html


IX

On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
  The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
  Fast by the four cross ways.
  
A careless shepherd once would keep
  The flocks by moonlight there[*],
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
  The dead man stood on air.
  
They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
  The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
  To men that die at morn.
  
There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
  Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
  Than most that sleep outside.
  
And naked to the hangman's noose
  The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
  Than strangling in a string.
  
And sharp the link of life will snap,
  And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
  As treads upon the land.
  
So here I'll watch the night and wait
  To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
  And not the stroke of nine;
  
And wish my friend as sound a sleep
  As lads' I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
  A hundred years ago.
 
[*]Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.



ALSO, interestingly:


http://www.online-literature.com/forster/room_with_view/12/

A Room With a View
E.M. Forster

Part Two.
Chapter XII: Twelfth Chapter





It was a Saturday afternoon, gay and brilliant after abundant rains, and the spirit of youth dwelt in it, though the season was now autumn. All that was gracious triumphed. As the motorcars passed through Summer Street they raised only a little dust, and their stench was soon dispersed by the wind and replaced by the scent of the wet birches or of the pines. Mr. Beebe, at leisure for life's amenities, leant over his Rectory gate. Freddy leant by him, smoking a pendant pipe.

"Suppose we go and hinder those new people opposite for a little."

"M'm."

"They might amuse you."

Freddy, whom his fellow-creatures never amused, suggested that the new people might be feeling a bit busy, and so on, since they had only just moved in.

"I suggested we should hinder them," said Mr. Beebe. "They are worth it." Unlatching the gate, he sauntered over the triangular green to Cissie Villa. "Hullo!" he cried, shouting in at the open door, through which much squalor was visible.

A grave voice replied, "Hullo!"

"I've brought some one to see you."

"I'll be down in a minute."

The passage was blocked by a wardrobe, which the removal men had failed to carry up the stairs. Mr. Beebe edged round it with difficulty. The sitting-room itself was blocked with books.

"Are these people great readers?" Freddy whispered. "Are they that sort?"

"I fancy they know how to read--a rare accomplishment. What have they got? Byron. Exactly. A Shropshire Lad.  Never heard of it. The Way of All Flesh.  Never heard of it. Gibbon. Hullo! dear George reads German. Um--um--Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and so we go on. Well, I suppose your generation knows its own business, Honeychurch."

"Mr. Beebe, look at that," said Freddy in awestruck tones.

On the cornice of the wardrobe, the hand of an amateur had painted this inscription: "Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes."

"I know. Isn't it jolly? I like that. I'm certain that's the old man's doing."

"How very odd of him!"

"Surely you agree?"

But Freddy was his mother's son and felt that one ought not to go on spoiling the furniture.


(....)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2017, 11:48:05 am
But what would Mr. Shawn say?  :laugh:

"Angsty" he might frown upon. "Gaydar," even in his final year as editor (1987) might leave him puzzled. Or if it didn't, he's think it certainly might confuse the readers. Now it's hard to imagine a New Yorker reader not being familiar with that term.

But let's face it, by now the magazine has supplied Mr. Shawn with plenty of material to roll in his grave about.  :-\


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2017, 12:21:34 pm
But let's face it, by now the magazine has supplied Mr. Shawn with plenty of material to roll in his grave about.  :-\

 :laugh:

(Personally I usually associate angsty with teenage girls, like, maybe the girl in the Twilight books.  ;D)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 24, 2017, 02:52:31 pm
Wow, John, I didn't realize that Ennis had so many literary ancestors! If the New Yorker was writing about Ennis today, I wonder if it would describe him as sheepish, sheepy or sheepsty!

And now we're into that awkward situation of leapfrogging discussion topics!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2017, 04:43:36 pm
(Personally I usually associate angsty with teenage girls, like, maybe the girl in the Twilight books.  ;D)

I haven't read them, so I wouldn't know. But I would imagine hanging out with people who'd like to drink your blood would make you angsty.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2017, 04:50:03 pm
And now we're into that awkward situation of leapfrogging discussion topics!

I never think of that as a big problem, do you? Usually they're pretty easy to follow because people quote each other, and eventually one or another topic fizzles out.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2017, 06:31:17 pm
I haven't read them, so I wouldn't know. But I would imagine hanging out with people who'd like to drink your blood would make you angsty.

I should have said the Twilight movies, and even those I only know about from the mainstream media. I suppose being in love with somebody who wants to drink your blood would tend to make one angsty.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on June 24, 2017, 07:58:39 pm
Wow, John, I didn't realize that Ennis had so many literary ancestors! If the New Yorker was writing about Ennis today, I wonder if it would describe him as sheepish, sheepy or sheepsty!

And now we're into that awkward situation of leapfrogging discussion topics!



 :D ;D ;)
(http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/N/N03/N03700_10.jpg)

Samuel Palmer

Moonlight, a Landscape with Sheep
c.1831–3


http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/palmer-moonlight-a-landscape-with-sheep-n03700


Samuel Palmer was fascinated by the atmospheric effects that could be achieved in black and white. In the early 1830s, while living in Shoreham, Kent, he produced a series of monochrome works in pen and ink. This is one of his more poetic works, featuring shepherds tending their sleeping flocks of sheep by moonlight. When the picture was later engraved, it was accompanied by these lines from John Milton's Comus (1637):


Evening late, by then the chewing flocks
Had ta'en their suppers of the savouring herb
Of knot-grass dew-besprent


Palmer's work at Shoreham is intensely personal, but has a mystical, even visionary quality comparable to that of William Blake (1757-1827). He was part of a circle of artists, followers of Blake and known as the 'Ancients', including George Richmond (1809-96), Edward Calvert (1799-1883) and Francis Oliver Finch (1802-62). They shunned the contemporary world and retired into a world of music, nostalgia and dreams. The Ancients would stroll together in the countryside by night, gazing at the stars, and were known among the local villagers as 'Extollagers'. The Darent valley appeared to Palmer a perfect, neo-Platonic world and he called it the 'Valley of Vision'. In his pictures he attempted to create an image of pastoral contentment, unaffected by the reality of labour. The characteristic rounded hills of Shoreham, visible in the background of the picture, and the crescent moon were later adopted as motifs by artists of the mid-twentieth century. Often inspired by Milton's poetic evocations, moonlight was a recurring feature in Palmer's work, representing a divine presence in nature.

The Shoreham works are characterised by a deliberate archaism or primitivism. Stylistically they were influenced by the work of such Northern European artists as Breughel, Dürer, Lucas Van Leyden and Giulio Bonasone. They were also partly inspired by Blake's illustrations to Ambrose Philips' imitation of Virgil's First Eclogue (1821). Palmer could have been describing his own work when he wrote of the Blake engravings: 'They are visions of little dells, and nooks, and corners of Paradise; models of the exquisitist pitch of intense poetry…There is in all such a mystic and dreamy glimmer as penetrates and kindles the inmost soul' (A.H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, 1892, pp.15-16).

This work may have been one of a group of what Palmer referred to as 'blacks' which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1832.

Further reading:
Robert C. Cafritz, Lawrence Gowing and David Rosand, Places of Delight: the Pastoral Landscape, exhibition catalogue, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC 1988, no.100, reproduced p.195.
Raymond Lister, Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Samuel Palmer, Cambridge 1988, pp.85-6, no.143, reproduced p.85.
James Sellars, Samuel Palmer, London 1974, pp.77-79, reproduced p.79.

Frances Fowle
December 2000
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 03, 2017, 06:07:38 pm
Well, wonder of wonders, I am actually caught up on my New Yorkers!  :D With not much to do this past weekend except this weekend except read, I read everything--or everything that interested me--in the July 3 issue. I found Adam Gopnik's piece on Hemingway very interesting (more on that on my blog).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 04, 2017, 10:40:03 am
Well, wonder of wonders, I am actually caught up on my New Yorkers!  :D With not much to do this past weekend except this weekend except read, I read everything--or everything that interested me--in the July 3 issue. I found Adam Gopnik's piece on Hemingway very interesting (more on that on my blog).

Would you mind reading all of mine so I could say the same? The pile on my dining-room table is a foot tall.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 04, 2017, 11:28:00 am
Would you mind reading all of mine so I could say the same? The pile on my dining-room table is a foot tall.

 :laugh:  Sorry, but I've read them all, already.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 10, 2017, 10:14:19 am
I woke up very early this morning and started reading Adam Gopnik's article on the new Hemingway bio. He's such an amazing writer. . . I'm talking about Gopnik here. I didn't read any Hemingway in school that I can recall. In my 30s I read Across the River and Into the Trees about an old veteran and his young girlfriend in Venice. It made a deep impression on me. It helped me understand my father better. At the same time, it seemed like a parody of Hemingway.

It was his thirteenth novel and his last full-length work before his death. In many ways, its style was similar to Brokeback Mountain. I wonder how Annie Proulx would feel about that statement? Hemingway lived in Ketchum, Idaho for a while. I used to go skiing in nearby Sun Valley and dated the son of Hemingway's doctor. Twice I went to a cabin up in the panhandle of Idaho that Hemingway had stayed at for fishing trips.

I remember the book as being at the same time very boring and very fascinating. The symbolism eluded me until I actually marked up the story with color-coded notes. It inspired me to start writing a book about unpacking the meaning in such novels, called How to Read a Book. That's one of the handful of books I've never finished.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 10, 2017, 06:03:59 pm

"The self-recognition of breakage is the form of bravery available to real people."

He also mentions a parody done by E. B. White called, "Across the Street and Into the Grill (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1950/10/14/across-the-street-and-into-the-grill)".  :laugh: It's pretty good.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 10, 2017, 06:39:23 pm
He also mentions a parody done by E. B. White called, "Across the Street and Into the Grill (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1950/10/14/across-the-street-and-into-the-grill)".  :laugh: It's pretty good.

I thought so, too.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 11, 2017, 12:07:24 pm
At the same time, it seemed like a parody of Hemingway.

At this point, Hemingway seems like he might always be a parody of himself. But I haven't read enough of him to say for sure.

Quote
Hemingway lived in Ketchum, Idaho for a while. I used to go skiing in nearby Sun Valley and dated the son of Hemingway's doctor.

I lived in Ketchum for two summers in college, just for fun. I worked in restaurants and bars and, briefly, for a maid service. Both times I drove out with a girlfriend. Both times, at the end of the summer, when I flew back to Minnesota for school, they stayed.

The whole time I was there I hardly met anyone from Idaho. Almost everyone was from California. There were also a handful of Minnesotans, including, coincidentally, some I'd gone to high school with. Anyway, though, at some point I talked to an Idaho native who went to school with Hemingway's granddaughters: Mariel, Margaux and, I think, Muffy.

Mariel has since made a film about  battling her family's tendency toward mental illness, addiction and suicide (like Ernest, Margaux suffered all three, and there may have been others) by living this super-healthy lifestyle. I've wanted to see it, mainly to see if I could recognize locations (it was filmed in Ketchum) but can't find it to stream. I haven't been back since 1981, so it's probably changed a lot. Back then, nearby Hailey was a cheaper, sort of blue-collar community. Then Bruce and Demi moved there.

Quote
It inspired me to start writing a book about unpacking the meaning in such novels, called How to Read a Book. That's one of the handful of books I've never finished.

I have a book called "How to Read Like an English Professor" or something like that. It's pretty good. If you like, I'll send it to you.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2017, 01:01:30 pm
I am really enjoying Lawrence Wright's article about Texas (July 10 and 17), but, as seems to me to be so often the case with The New Yorker today, the article is way too long.

Texas seems to have way more problems than a refusal to drink coffee. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 14, 2017, 09:25:24 am
I am really enjoying Lawrence Wright's article about Texas (July 10 and 17), but, as seems to me to be so often the case with The New Yorker today, the article is way too long.

So true! I was recently reading something -- I can't remember the topic, but it was kind of interesting. Then I flipped ahead and realized there were about six more pages and just thought, oh forget it, and moved on.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2017, 09:58:01 am
So true! I was recently reading something -- I can't remember the topic, but it was kind of interesting. Then I flipped ahead and realized there were about six more pages and just thought, oh forget it, and moved on.

I did that, too, recently, and I can't remember which article it was, either.

But if you skip the Wright article, at least page through it and read the part where he writes about the late, great Anne Richards. I think that's the best part! (Apparently Gov. Richards and that other late, great woman, Molly Ivins, were on a first-name basis.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 14, 2017, 01:31:40 pm
But if you skip the Wright article, at least page through it and read the part where he writes about the late, great Anne Richards. I think that's the best part!

Thanks for the tip!

Quote
(Apparently Gov. Richards and that other late, great woman, Molly Ivins, were on a first-name basis.)

That doesn't surprise me -- I imagine they knew each other well.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 20, 2017, 09:23:23 pm
Wow! Looks like the July 24 issue is loaded with interesting things to read.

Right now I'm reading Peter Hessler's article about Grand Junction. I've been through Grand Junction on the train, and it looked like a place I wouldn't want to live. Hessler is only confirming my impression.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 21, 2017, 10:10:23 am
I'm reading Nathan Heller's piece about the release of a huge cache of Enron emails in the most recent issue. If it had been about Enron, I wouldn't have read it. But it's about emails, and the things average people write in them. Heller is a good writer, and so far the article is entertaining if not hugely informative (so far).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2017, 10:45:33 am
I'm reading Nathan Heller's piece about the release of a huge cache of Enron emails in the most recent issue. If it had been about Enron, I wouldn't have read it. But it's about emails, and the things average people write in them. Heller is a good writer, and so far the article is entertaining if not hugely informative (so far).

Thanks for the review. I's sure I would have read it anyway, but I'm glad to have your take on it.

Coincidentally, on Today this morning, they had a discussion about "tweets you should never have sent."

I wonder if that's replaced "e-mails you should never have sent"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2017, 01:32:01 pm
OK, over lunch I finished the Hessler article. It frightened me. It really frightened me. I don't know which seems worse to me, Trump remaining in office, or what might happen if he were somehow removed from office.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 22, 2017, 12:57:52 pm
OK, over lunch I finished the Hessler article. It frightened me. It really frightened me. I don't know which seems worse to me, Trump remaining in office, or what might happen if he were somehow removed from office.

Yikes. Now I'm kind of scared to read it.

Coincidentally, on Today this morning, they had a discussion about "tweets you should never have sent."
I wonder if that's replaced "e-mails you should never have sent"?

They both still exist. But tweets can be far more damaging. I read a book about people who tweeted things -- mostly lame attempts at humor that came off as racist or otherwise disrespectful -- whose lives were ruined. For example, you may remember Justine Sacco (I couldn't remember her last name right away, but it came up in the list of Google suggestions when I typed in "Justine") who tweeted to her followers, who numbered in the low hundreds, "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding! I'm white" -- an attempt to make the point that AIDS hits the black community disproportionately higher but that was interpreted as racist by pretty much the whole world. She boarded a plane and spent 11 hours in blissful ignorance of the fact that she was the No. 1 trending story on Twitter, with the hashtag #hasjustinelandedyet. When she got off the plane, her phone started going crazy with messages of sympathy from people she hadn't talked to in years -- that's how she found out. She wound up losing her job (as a PR person, which arguably isn't a good fit for somebody with poor communication judgment) and for years could not get hired for years.

The author, Ron Ronson, a British journalist, told about half a dozen stories just as horrific. In each one, the person lost their job and sometimes were afraid to leave their house because of death threats. For one victim of this worldwide internet shaming, Ronson got a firm to do pro bono what it usually charges hundreds of thousands to do: scour someone's google search results by flooding the internet with innocuous stories about how much they love kittens or whatever.

He compared the Twitter shaming to old colonial practices like the stocks, designed to publicly humiliate and shame. Twitter does something similar except that the whole world participates.

In contrast with emails, my brother worked with a guy who called the boss a motherfucker or something like that and accidentally hit "reply all." Not only did he keep his job, but apparently the boss wasn't even that upset.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 22, 2017, 02:50:40 pm
What was it about the story that frightened you, friend Jeff? Was it the language the Trump supporters used when they said they were going to deliver Colorado to Trump: "We're going to start on the Western Slope and do a sweep east and color it red"?

I've overheard such language from my Republican son-in-law and my daughter. I was alarmed at first but then I realized it was all bluster.

There is a larger question related to this that I will ask you over on your blog, if that's okay.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 22, 2017, 03:18:45 pm
What was it about the story that frightened you, friend Jeff? Was it the language the Trump supporters used when they said they were going to deliver Colorado to Trump: "We're going to start on the Western Slope and do a sweep east and color it red"?

I've overheard such language from my Republican son-in-law and my daughter. I was alarmed at first but then I realized it was all bluster.

There is a larger question related to this that I will ask you over on your blog, if that's okay.

I don't really care about their political opinions (well, actually I do), but the threats to journalists, the adoption of Trump's idiocy about fake news--even in a small-town/home-town newspaper, but especially the general lack of civility and threats of violence--especially threats of violence against people who disagree with you--for which I hold Trump responsible--that frighten me. If we had a Bastille, these people sound like they'd be ready to storm it.

If Trump were removed from office in any way, I would advise the people of Denver and Boulder to lay in ammunition because I really fear there could or would be violence against Democrats. And I ain't jokin'.

(Incidentally, I don't think it was the last-minute e-mail revelations that cost Hillary the election. I think it was the "deplorables" remark. How such an otherwise intelligent and politically savvy woman could make such a stupid remark is entirely beyond me. It was like that remark that Mitt Romney made about the 98%, or whatever it was.)

As for my blog, if what you wish to discuss is political, I'd rather you didn't. If you want to say something about the loss of civility in politics, that would be OK.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 22, 2017, 04:28:34 pm
(Incidentally, I don't think it was the last-minute e-mail revelations that cost Hillary the election. I think it was the "deplorables" remark. How such an otherwise intelligent and politically savvy woman could make such a stupid remark is entirely beyond me. It was like that remark that Mitt Romney made about the 98%, or whatever it was.)

The phrase was ill-considered, but I don't think she was referring to average Trump supporters, like FRiend Lee's daughter for example. I think she was referring to members of the sexist/Islamophobic/white supermacist alt-right, like Steve Bannon and the since-disgraced Milo Yiannopoulis. In which case, I agree with her. Those people are deplorable (actually, the part of that phrase I hate the most is "basket of" -- hunh?). But she didn't make the distinction clear enough.

Still, I think her downfall was that too many people just Don't Like Hillary. Often for reasons I think are sexist or ridiculous -- she's been investigated so many times for so many supposed scandals and always come clean, which leads many people to think she must have done something shady, rather than that she's been under a microscope for 20 years, so if there were anything truly scandalous we'd know by now. I even think it's possible she has done some semi-questionable but not outright illegal things -- but compared to Trump she's practically saintly.

I don't know many conservatives, but the closest I heard among my right-leaning friends and acquaintances was that they hated both candidates but hated Hillary more. I'm not sure what they think now. If we're friends, I prefer to avoid the topic.

Especially after my one coworker friend said she voted for Trump and then later in the same conversation said why can't we have a healthcare system like Canada's. "Why don't you ask your conservative friends?" I said. She was dumbfounded. "No Republicans voted for Obamacare," she said, which is true, but ignores the fact that Obamacare would have been a lot stronger -- and more Canada-like -- if Obama didn't weaken it to placate Republicans. My coworker is a perfectly intelligent woman who I enjoy talking to otherwise, but who apparently does not pay nearly enough attention to the news.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 24, 2017, 08:57:27 am
So, now the Denver Post makes the schism between urban and rural Colorado its front page Sunday edition story: Colorado Divide (http://www.denverpost.com/2017/07/21/colorado-divide-rural-urban-chasm/), while The New Yorker and the Washington Post have already covered it. I suppose this story will crop up in other states too. The situation in Colorado is more dramatic since the Continental Divide separates Denver/Boulder from the more rural areas.

But I think the whole story is oversimplified and blown out of proportion. In the case of Colorado, how do you explain Aspen or Telluride? They're rural but even more liberal than Denver. There are also Colorado Springs and Pueblo, large metro areas that are really quite conservative. No, Grand Junction is an anomaly because of its dependence on the oil and gas industry. Working around oil and gas seems to make people become conservative. Is it the fumes?  :laugh:

I don't think my daughter is your average Trump supporter. She was educated, after all, at Boulder's Colorado University and is a Millennial. There are so few Millennials in the Republican Party that she has rocketed to star status. I came in a few days ago to babysit for her and she was applying false fingernails. I didn't say anything but wondered why a mother who washes baby bottles and changes diapers would want to wear false fingernails. It turned out that she was preparing to go to a photo shoot where her portrait would be taken for the cover of Colorado Politics Magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2017, 09:56:10 am
But I think the whole story is oversimplified and blown out of proportion. In the case of Colorado, how do you explain Aspen or Telluride? They're rural but even more liberal than Denver. There are also Colorado Springs and Pueblo, large metro areas that are really quite conservative. No, Grand Junction is an anomaly because of its dependence on the oil and gas industry. Working around oil and gas seems to make people become conservative. Is it the fumes?  :laugh:

I would suspect that Aspen is the anomaly here, not Grand Junction. Think of all the outside money that has made it a playground for the rich and ... rich. Money, especially lots of money, makes a difference. I wouldn't be surprised if even "the ordinary people" whose jobs cater to the rich outsiders who come to Aspen are doing a lot better financially than the average inhabitant of Grand Junction.

Have you spoken with OCD about the week he was recently stuck there?

And Grand Junction, unlike Telluride, does not have a world famous film festival.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 24, 2017, 12:06:15 pm
Are you saying that rich people are more liberal???? I did not know that. (That's what I say to my children/grandchildren when they tell me something off the wall.)

Yes, I agree that Aspen is an anomaly. Telluride too, but not for its film festival (actually Telluride has many film festivals, music festivals, and every other kind of festival). Colorado is full of anomalies, towns famous for their eccentricities. Denver and Grand Junction are probably the most homogenous, though, the one on the right and the other on the left (figuratively, and literally if you look at them from the North Pole).

But Denver is a fairly large city and can't be lumped in with Boulder. Colorado elected a Republican Senator last year and we are grappling with the brown noser Cory Gardner who is largely responsible for getting that seat-stealer Neal Gorsuch into the Supreme Court. Colorado is a purple state and Denver is a purple town. There are many baskets of Ds all around and they aren't all in the boondocks.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2017, 12:51:27 pm
Are you saying that rich people are more liberal???? I did not know that. (That's what I say to my children/grandchildren when they tell me something off the wall.)

Good point, and taken. The Koch brothers certainly aren't. I should have been more specific. I was thinking of the Hollywood gliterati types about whom I've read they frequently use Aspen as their playgrond. Of course, I suppose it's possible there might be a difference between the rich and the very rich or super rich who presumably want to hold on to every penny.

Quote
Yes, I agree that Aspen is an anomaly. Telluride too, but not for its film festival (actually Telluride has many film festivals, music festivals, and every other kind of festival). Colorado is full of anomalies, towns famous for their eccentricities. Denver and Grand Junction are probably the most homogenous, though, the one on the right and the other on the left (figuratively, and literally if you look at them from the North Pole).

Interesting about Telluride. I have a friend who worked a September film festival for a couple of years some time ago. That was the only one I knew about.

Quote
But Denver is a fairly large city and can't be lumped in with Boulder. Colorado elected a Republican Senator last year and we are grappling with the brown noser Cory Gardner who is largely responsible for getting that seat-stealer Neal Gorsuch into the Supreme Court. Colorado is a purple state and Denver is a purple town. There are many baskets of Ds all around and they aren't all in the boondocks.

Hessler does. See page 21.

I don't think Hessler is an outsider. I'm sure I remember reading something quite some time ago about him settling somewhere in the Western Slope after years of living in China. (Of course, perhaps that does make him an outsider after all.)

Incidentally, "I did not know that" might work for your grandchildren, but I would be wary of using that to another adult outside your immediately family. It might be perceived as condescending and even insulting. Just sayin'.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2017, 05:33:19 pm
The average Trump voter's annual income was $72,000. Not rich, but not poor. Presumably many went to college. Rich people voted for Trump because they assumed, apparently correctly, that he would act in their interest (see: attempts to pass Republican health care bill to benefit rich people and screw over everybody else) and fill the government with people who acted in their interest. Poorer people voted for Trump believed, incorrectly, that he would "drain the swamp," restore failing industries like coal mining so they could get jobs, etc. They were people who believed the fake news items about Hillary Clinton committing murders. They were people who didn't hear about, ignored or excused a lot of Trump's behavior. He wore a baseball cap and talked like a regular Joe and seemed like one of them except that he'd built a fortune so he must be smart about money (never mind six bankruptcies and a rich dad who bailed him out) and who would side with them against the "elites."

Lee, I can't explain where your daughter fits into that picture, but that's my understanding of the two most common Trump supporters. Some people are just regular conservatives, I guess. In a way, it's kind of cool that she's become such a media superstar! If only it were for a different reason.

I don't know about Denver, but most big cities are blue-ish and you are obviously much more of an expert than I am but Denver has always struck me that way. Aspen and Telluride are anomalies. It would be like saying Texas can't be conservative because Austin. Or Oregon is totally liberal because Portland. Minneapolis and St. Paul are very blue, suburbs purple, rural areas red (which is new -- outstate MN used to be more blue). But because the cities are so much bigger than everything else, MN always goes for Democrats.

I'm partway through the scary Colorado article but what has struck me so far is the stuff about the crime rate in rural cities (if that's not too much of an oxymoron). I thought Trump's depiction of the cities as cauldrons of violent crime seemed crazy -- violent crime is waaayyyyyyy down. Chicago -- infamous for violent crime! -- had 762 murders in 2016. That's about twice as many murders annually as New Orleans had when I lived there (when the city averaged about one a day), but Chicago is about six times bigger.

So Trump's claims seemed wildly absurd. But if people in Grand Junction and places like that are seeing homicides soar, I can see why that argument would seem valid to them.

I talked to someone from Colorado on Facebook about economics. Lee, maybe she was even a friend of yours! I told her there were actual job shortages in many industries and the recovery economy actually looks pretty good (nationally, wages have stayed flat, but even they're beginning to rise slightly, and corporate profits have of course soared). She argued, saying the exact opposite is true in CO. I didn't understand it at the time, but the article addresses that pretty clearly, so now I get what she was talking about.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2017, 05:49:52 pm
The Personal History essay by the woman whose 15-year-old cousin went to prison is devastating.

You were right about this issue having lots of good articles, Jeff.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2017, 06:03:42 pm
The Personal History essay by the woman whose 15-year-old cousin went to prison is devastating.

I'm reading that one now. Sad.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 26, 2017, 01:02:07 pm
I am currently enjoying the George Strait profile (July 24). For one thing, I now understand all the (expensive) George Strait clothes I've seen in stores in the Denver area, including shirts with button-down collars (George Strait wears shirts with button-down collars).

When Strait was younger, he participated in team roping (I guess he could afford a ropin' horse).

The article quotes the opening stanza of one of his songs, which the writer calls "one of the most memorable in country music."

Amarillo by morning
Up from San Antone
Everything that I got
Is just what I've got on.

The writer describes this song as "the stoic lament of a travelling rodeo pro."

Sound like anybody we know?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 27, 2017, 01:37:54 pm
I'm almost done with the Strait article, and I'm tempted to read it again any make some notes. It's making me feel I've missed something that's maybe important.

Strait and I wear the same brand of jeans.  ;D  He's obligated by contract, but I'm not.  ;D

Maybe I should think about wearing my jeans "stacked."

Read the article to see what "stacked" means.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 27, 2017, 03:48:46 pm
I wish I'd brought the issue to the hospital with me! I'm here waiting with my mom, who's getting partial hip replacement surgery in a bit.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 28, 2017, 06:17:42 pm
If anyone hasn't yet seen this Ryan Lizza article about the call from Anthony Scaramucci, drop everything and read it immediately. Don't wait til lunch hour because it's somewhat nauseating.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/anthony-scaramucci-called-me-to-unload-about-white-house-leakers-reince-priebus-and-steve-bannon (http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/anthony-scaramucci-called-me-to-unload-about-white-house-leakers-reince-priebus-and-steve-bannon)

The big question is, WWSD? What would William Shawn do with that piece? I'm sure he could never have foreseen the day, but you can't just bleep that stuff out.

It's the closest I've come to thinking Steve Bannon looks respectable in comparison. I hate him, too, but not for reasons having anything to do with self-fellatio.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 28, 2017, 09:21:21 pm
If anyone hasn't yet seen this Ryan Lizza article about the call from Anthony Scaramucci, drop everything and read it immediately. Don't wait til lunch hour because it's somewhat nauseating.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/anthony-scaramucci-called-me-to-unload-about-white-house-leakers-reince-priebus-and-steve-bannon (http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/anthony-scaramucci-called-me-to-unload-about-white-house-leakers-reince-priebus-and-steve-bannon)

The big question is, WWSD? What would William Shawn do with that piece? I'm sure he could never have foreseen the day, but you can't just bleep that stuff out.

Probably not much. TNY has already fallen a long way from Mr. Shawn's standards.

Thanks for the link. It's so recent that I assume it's only going to be available on line. The July 31 issue arrived in my mailbox only today; I've been wondering where it was. By the time the next hard copy issue is out, Scaramucci's little chat with Ryan Lizza will be long gone from the news cycle.

I guess Mr. Shawn couldn't foresee that day either. I mean the magazine being available on the Internet. I guess he was dead before there was an Internet?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 29, 2017, 11:14:25 am
Probably not much. TNY has already fallen a long way from Mr. Shawn's standards.

Well, it may have been up to his standards in writing and reporting (though I feel like TNY wasn't as newsy in his day). Ryan Lizza demonstrates astonishing professionalism, under the circumstances. I might have succumbed to just sitting there staring at the receiver in shock.

But Shawn was so vehemently opposed to letting swear words go into print. And simply using the F-word is about the least of Scaramucci's offenses in that phone call.

Quote
Thanks for the link. It's so recent that I assume it's only going to be available on line. The July 31 issue arrived in my mailbox only today; I've been wondering where it was. By the time the next hard copy issue is out, Scaramucci's little chat with Ryan Lizza will be long gone from the news cycle.

You can tell the difference when you look at the online version -- if it just says the date, it's online, if it says "From the July 31 issue" or something like that, then ... well, you get the point. Sometimes I find myself reading stories from the print version online.

Quote
I guess Mr. Shawn couldn't foresee that day either. I mean the magazine being available on the Internet. I guess he was dead before there was an Internet?  ???

He died in 1992, so the internet technically existed, but was used mostly by techies and, I think, some academics -- way under the radar for most people. I first got onto the internet in early 1997. Yikes, it's hard to believe it's been 20 years. That means, roughly estimating, I've probably spent something like four solid years on the internet.

But Mr. Shawn was 85, and the majority of people that age don't even venture onto today's internet. (I just got back from a big convention on aging, so I know this for a fact. I was surprised to hear that even over 65, a third of people don't use the internet.) I can't see @Mr.Shawn on Twitter or anything.

I found out about this story, of all places, on my Kindle, which for some reason offers me Washington Post stories. (I hope I'm not paying for them somehow.) The WaPo story was linked to the NYer story. Even my own paper covered it in this tone of, like, "Can you believe this latest thing?" I try to be pretty circumspect on Twitter but after reading that story, feel like if I ever got in trouble for saying something (very mildly) negative about this insane administration I would point to that front page.

So yesterday I posted that I felt sorry for "House of Cards" and that watching it now is like watching "The West Wing." Anybody here watch HoC? Kevin Spacey is supposed to be playing this conniving, evil, ruthless politician, but it started during the Obama years. Now, compared to real life, Spacey's character seems like he'd make a pretty decent president. Oh, he may have killed a couple of people, which Trump hasn't done (that we know of). But he'd at least know how to give a decent speech to the Boy Scouts, for Pete's sake. And his staff would know how to talk to a reporter from The New Yorker. Compared to 45, he's practically Jed Bartlet.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 29, 2017, 03:52:28 pm
Ryan Lizza demonstrates astonishing professionalism, under the circumstances. I might have succumbed to just sitting there staring at the receiver in shock.
I second that! And Scary Mouth tried to intimidate him into giving his source, with the Mafioso language but he didn't budge!

...I first got onto the internet in early 1997. Yikes, it's hard to believe it's been 20 years. That means, roughly estimating, I've probably spent something like four solid years on the internet.
I got on the Internet in 1994 when I went to work for a DOE laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Printing costs for their brochures and other literature were a big part of their budget, so everyone was really excited about and pushing to get everything on the "Information Superhighway" instead.

...I just got back from a big convention on aging, so I know this for a fact. I was surprised to hear that even over 65, a third of people don't use the internet.)
That must have been fascinating! I hope you will share other things you've learned there.

I found out about this story, of all places, on my Kindle, which for some reason offers me Washington Post stories. (I hope I'm not paying for them somehow.
My paper, the Denver Post, gives a free subscription to the Washington Post. I think they're trying to compete with other national papers like USA Today, WSJ and NYTimes.

... he'd at least know how to give a decent speech to the Boy Scouts, for Pete's sake. And his staff would know how to talk to a reporter from The New Yorker. Compared to 45, he's practically Jed Bartlet.
:laugh: Who?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 29, 2017, 05:26:06 pm
Ryan Lizza demonstrates astonishing professionalism.

I always read him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2017, 09:19:27 am
Hard to believe, once again I'm actually caught up on the magazine. I had to bring a book with me to work to read over lunch.

Incidentally, I expect I will have no problems with my subscription for next year. I've already received a renewal notice, and I just went ahead and paid it. I'm not taking chances.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2017, 09:27:41 pm
Actually, I guess I'm not as caught up as I thought. I found the July 31 issue buried under a stack of papers on my dining room table.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 31, 2017, 11:06:59 pm
Now that Scary Mouth is gone, I wonder if TNY will even print that awful phone interview.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 01, 2017, 09:06:30 am
Thanks to Katherine, I read it on line. One's enough. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 01, 2017, 10:47:45 am
I don't think they ever intended to print it. The news was too hot to hold for the next issue, and Lizza's story got linked and quoted so widely that there's no point in printing it now anyway.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 11, 2017, 01:28:01 pm
OMG, I think I won't be able to stop laughing all afternoon. I almost never read the single-page humor pieces, but I read Bruce McCall's about Canada (July 31), and I can't stop laughing over this line:

"That hunky young Canadian Prime Minister makes Trump look like a used-car salesman."

 :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

That's exactly what he looks like. And I'd never buy a car from him.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 12, 2017, 12:40:09 pm
Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto is easy on the eyes, too.

(http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/media/images/64498000/jpg/_64498679_64498678.jpg)

So grotesque-looking Trump is bracketed by handsome leaders. The funny thing is, I don't know how much Trump thinks about that. I think he assumes that as long as his wife is beautiful, his own looks don't matter. And yet, he's vain enough to keep that hair or whatever it is and wear orange makeup. Even though people ridicule both.

In any case, the North American leader looks balance was pretty close when Obama was president.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 12, 2017, 02:36:37 pm
Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto is easy on the eyes, too.

(http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/media/images/64498000/jpg/_64498679_64498678.jpg)

Oh! I don't think I've seen a picture of him before. But, yeah, real easy on the eyes. On facial features, I'd pick him over Justin Trudeau, if I had to--or could.  ::)  But I've always had a thing for Hispanic men. ...

Quote
So grotesque-looking Trump is bracketed by handsome leaders. The funny thing is, I don't know how much Trump thinks about that. I think he assumes that as long as his wife is beautiful, his own looks don't matter. And yet, he's vain enough to keep that hair or whatever it is and wear orange makeup. Even though people ridicule both.

He's so vain Carly Simon could write a song about him. ...

Quote
In any case, the North American leader looks balance was pretty close when Obama was president.

I would agree with that.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 12, 2017, 05:08:02 pm
Oh! I don't think I've seen a picture of him before. But, yeah, real easy on the eyes. On facial features, I'd pick him over Justin Trudeau, if I had to--or could.  ::)  But I've always had a thing for Hispanic men. ...

Good, because I'd go for Justin. So we won't have to fight!  :)

Quote
He's so vain Carly Simon could write a song about him. ...

He's so vain he makes Mick Jagger and Warren Beatty, among the speculative subjects of that song, look like ... [insert name of some especially low key, modest, self-effacing celebrity, because I can't think of one ... Bill Pohlad?].



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2017, 02:13:16 pm
In the Aug. 21 issue the Talk of the Town includes a small piece on Hampton Fancher, who is now the subject of a documentary. Probably the most notable thing about him is that he wrote the "script that became the bones of 'Blade Runner,' the dystopian Ridley Scott film."

Before he became a full-time writer, Fancher was an actor, and that me feel a peculiar connection to him as I read this short piece. A few years ago, when I was visiting my dad, I watched an episode of my favorite childhood TV show Daniel Boone on one of the nostalgia channels. This episode included a tall, lean young man with what I thought was a head of beautiful, thick brown hair, playing a greenhorn Continental Army officer. So, sure, this episode was maybe 40 years old, but I was intrigued to know who this attractive young man was, so I watched the credits and later did some research: Hampton Fancher.

I remember checking and learning that he did another Boone episode, and apparently he appeared on many other TV shows of that era, like Bonanza and Adam-12,  though he never became a star. I mentioned his hair in particular because the article claims his hair contributed to his not becoming a leading man.  ???

He once was Terri Garr's boyfriend.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on August 21, 2017, 03:52:54 pm
In the Aug. 21 issue the Talk of the Town includes a small piece on Hampton Fancher, who is now the subject of a documentary. Probably the most notable thing about him is that he wrote the "script that became the bones of 'Blade Runner,' the dystopian Ridley Scott film."

Before he became a full-time writer, Fancher was an actor, and that me feel a peculiar connection to him as I read this short piece. A few years ago, when I was visiting my dad, I watched an episode of my favorite childhood TV show Daniel Boone on one of the nostalgia channels. This episode included a tall, lean young man with what I thought was a head of beautiful, thick brown hair, playing a greenhorn Continental Army officer. So, sure, this episode was maybe 40 years old, but I was intrigued to know who this attractive young man was, so I watched the credits and later did some research: Hampton Fancher.

I remember checking and learning that he did another Boone episode, and apparently he appeared on many other TV shows of that era, like Bonanza and Adam-12,  though he never became a star. I mentioned his hair in particular because the article claims his hair contributed to his not becoming a leading man.  ???

He once was Terri Garr's boyfriend.



Not ugly.....



(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/916CgpHbp%2BL._SX342_.jpg)
Vintage photo of American actress
Sue Lyon and her first husband
American actor Hampton Fancher.




(http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/actors-christina-sinatra-hampton-fancher-on-set-of-tv-production-70-picture-id50610972)
Actors  Christina Sinatra (R) and Hampton Fancher  (C) on set of TV production
Romeo & Juliet 70  as director Michael Pfleghar (L) stands nearby.




(http://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/escapes_1-e1501092378551.jpg?w=780)





http://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/escapes-review-hampton-fancher-michael-almereyda-blade-runner-1201860278/

Born in 1938 and an undefinable survivor ever since, Fancher choreographed striptease routines for his sister when he was 10, he snuck about a ship to Spain when he was 15, where he became a flamenco dancer before sailing back to the States with Marlon Brando and Salvador Dali. He started working as a two-bit television actor, though he really only liked the job for the access it gave him to a constellation of beautiful starlets; he married Sue Lyons shortly after she shot “Lolita,” and he turned her into a Lolita of his own. He dodged death, became friends with the guy from “Flipper,” and seduced Barbara Hershey away from David Carradine. And then, as if by accident, he wrote the first draft of a movie that eventually came to be called “Blade Runner.”




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Fancher

Fancher was born to a Mexican/Danish mother[1] and an American father, a physician, in East Los Angeles, California, USA.[2] At 15, he ran away to Spain to become a flamenco dancer and renamed himself "Mario Montejo". He was married briefly to Sue Lyon of Lolita fame.[3]

In 1959, Fancher appeared in the episode "Misfits" of the ABC western television series, The Rebel. In the storyline, Fancher used the name "Bull" with Malcolm Cassell as Billy the Kid and Hal Stalmaster as "Skinny" plot to rob a bank so that they can live thereafter without working. The "Misfits" enlist the help of The Rebel (Nick Adams) in carrying out their doomed scheme.[4]

Fancher then played Deputy Lon Gillis in seven episodes of the ABC western, Black Saddle, with Peter Breck. He guest starred on other westerns, Have Gun, Will Travel, Tate, Stagecoach West, Outlaws, Maverick, Lawman, Temple Houston, Cheyenne (1961 episode "Incident at Dawson Flats"), and also Bonanza (1966 episode "A Dollar's Worth of Trouble").

Fancher appeared in two Troy Donahue films: 1961's Parrish and 1962's Rome Adventure and was cast as Larry Wilson in the 1963 episode "Little Richard" of the CBS anthology series, GE True, hosted by Jack Webb.[5] In 1965, he played the role of Hamp Fisher (a name very similar to his own), in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Silent Six."

After initially failing to convince Philip K. Dick to option Dick's 1968 science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in 1975, Fancher sent his friend Brian Kelly, a prospective film producer. Dick agreed, and Fancher was brought on to write a screenplay before Kelly enlisted the support of producer Michael Deeley.[6] This made Fancher the executive producer, which led to disagreements with the eventual director Ridley Scott who then brought in David Peoples to continue reworking the script, ultimately filmed and released as Blade Runner (1982).[7]










Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2017, 04:23:38 pm
Not bad at all, which is why I "tracked him down" after the Boone episode--which, apparently, never gets mentioned.

I'll have to see if I can track down the episode.

ETA: The episode I saw when I was visiting my dad was called "The Desperate Raid" and aired Nov. 16, 1967.

A short while ago I checked out some Google images and saw pics of him dressed, I thought, like a bull fighter. That must have been his flamenco period.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2017, 05:03:07 pm
Not bad at all, which is why I "tracked him down" after the Boone episode--which, apparently, never gets mentioned.

I'll have to see if I can track down the episode.

ETA: The episode I saw when I was visiting my dad was called "The Desperate Raid" and aired Nov. 16, 1967. The other episode was called "Fort West Point" and aired March 23, 1967.

A short while ago I checked out some Google images and saw pics of him dressed, I thought, like a bull fighter. That must have been his flamenco period.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 23, 2017, 01:49:31 pm
I'm reading the Julian Assange article in the Aug. 21 issue, and, while I find it interesting, I find it another one of those articles that is way too long. TNY is a weekly. Why not run an article of this length in multiple parts?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2017, 10:37:46 am
I'd say the same thing about the Carl Icahn profile in the issue that came yesterday. Normally I'd never read a profile of Carl Icahn even if it were a reasonable length. But in this case I might try to, because years ago I interviewed Carl Icahn.

I was writing about what people do who get bachelor's degrees in philosophy. So one was a chef in a nice New Orleans restaurant and I can't remember any of the others except Carl Icahn. I can't remember how I'd heard that Icahn, who was CEO of TWA Airlines at the time, had a degree in philosophy.

So this is how long ago it was: I called the main number of TWA. A human operator answered. I asked for Carl Icahn's office. Ring ring, answer.

Gruff growling voice: Hello?

Me (not even having identified myself yet): You answer your own phone?

Icahn: Oh, there's some kind of fire drill going on, and everyone else ran out.

So then we proceed to do the interview. We hadn't even made an appointment. I just cold called him and we talked for a while about how his degree in philosophy had helped him become ... well, I guess a major figure in the Trump Administration!

In between, he was ... what do you call those guys again? Tycoons who buy companies and lay everyone off? Corporate raider? He was one of those for many years. Maybe Kierkegaard or Nietzsche endorsed that strategy. I wouldn't know, having taken only one class in philosophy.

Nowadays I fairly frequently interview CEOs of small local companies or HR people at bigger ones. It invariably takes at least two or three calls and emails just to set up an appointment to talk to the owner of a lawn and garden service.

So I'll give the New Yorker piece at try. But it seems like it might be easier to just read his Wikipedia page.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2017, 08:54:05 pm
Woo-eee! How about David Remnick's editorial in the Aug. 28 issue?

"This is the inescapable fact: on November 9th, the United States elected a dishonest, inept, unbalanced, and immoral human being as its President and Commander-in-Chief. Trump has daily proven unyielding to appeals of decency, unity, moderation, or fact. He is willing to imperil the civil peace and the social fabric of his country simply to satisfy his narcissism and to excite the worst inclinations of his core followers."

The whole editorial is worth repeating.

Wow. "Immoral human being." Wow. Perhaps Remnick covers it by "dishonest," but I'd add "pathological liar.'

Far be it for me to advocate violence against anyone, but I wouldn't be sorry to see this President's head on top of the Washington Monument.

After this editorial, I hope The New Yorker provides Remnick with a security detail. He might need one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 25, 2017, 07:46:18 pm
After this editorial, I hope The New Yorker provides Remnick with a security detail. He might need one.

Guess it depends on how many Nazis and Klan members are New Yorker readers.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 25, 2017, 10:45:01 pm
... It invariably takes at least two or three calls and emails just to set up an appointment to talk to the owner of a lawn and garden service.

So I'll give the New Yorker piece at try. But it seems like it might be easier to just read his Wikipedia page.

 :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 26, 2017, 06:16:48 pm
Guess it depends on how many Nazis and Klan members are New Yorker readers.

Reminds me. I meant to ask. I read that the Anne Frank Center camp with a list of similarities between Hitler/the Nazis and Trump.

So does this mean if you bring up Hitler and the Nazis in a argument about Trump you DO NOT automatically lose the argument?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 27, 2017, 09:48:59 am
Reminds me. I meant to ask. I read that the Anne Frank Center camp with a list of similarities between Hitler/the Nazis and Trump.

So does this mean if you bring up Hitler and the Nazis in a argument about Trump you DO NOT automatically lose the argument?

I feel like there are one or more words missing from your third sentence (or was "camp" originally "came up"?). Are you saying the AF Center produced such a list?

I think it means that if you're Anne Frank (or a center named after her), you can pretty much do whatever you want when it comes to Godwin's Law.

But it would be interesting to see how many more times Hitler has entered online conversations since November and January. Google and Facebook, get on it!  ;D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 27, 2017, 06:59:52 pm
I feel like there are one or more words missing from your third sentence (or was "camp" originally "came up"?). Are you saying the AF Center produced such a list?

Yeah, I can't type anymore unless I do it very slowly and use the Columbus method (hunt for something and land on it). Yes, that was supposed to be "came up."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 08, 2017, 02:03:31 pm
It's a wonder I didn't choke on my lunch reading Calvin Trillin's piece in the Sept. 11 issue. He certainly hasn't lost his touch.

Spoiler alert: I am still laughing over the three rabbis from Kansas wearing red and blue yarmulkes with the University of Kansas Jayhawks logo, and the fake beards "making the Kansas rabbis appear even more rabbinical."

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 08, 2017, 10:19:34 pm
It's a wonder I didn't choke on my lunch reading Calvin Trillin's piece in the Sept. 11 issue. He certainly hasn't lost his touch.

Spoiler alert: I am still laughing over the three rabbis from Kansas wearing red and blue yarmulkes with the University of Kansas Jayhawks logo, and the fake beards "making the Kansas rabbis appear even more rabbinical."

 :laugh:

Oh good. I haven't read it yet, but from the headline I feared it was going to be sad.

I suppose I've already bragged about meeting Calvin Trillin. Well, not quite "meeting," but sitting a few feet away at a conference table where he regaled people at my newspaper with tales. This was a few years ago -- he stopped by the paper when he was in town for some other event.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 09, 2017, 10:56:16 am
Oh good. I haven't read it yet, but from the headline I feared it was going to be sad.

Well, there is a little bit of melancholy in it, but mostly I found it very funny.

Hmm. Owning a summer home in Nova Scotia and being able to spend the summer there? Must be a sweet life.

Quote
I suppose I've already bragged about meeting Calvin Trillin. Well, not quite "meeting," but sitting a few feet away at a conference table where he regaled people at my newspaper with tales. This was a few years ago -- he stopped by the paper when he was in town for some other event.

I don't recall you mentioning it, but, how cool!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 09, 2017, 06:12:02 pm
Yeah, I remember he told one anecdote about John McPhee hiding his typewritten manuscripts in the ceiling every night to keep them safe. I guess the prospect of losing days' or weeks' of work would have been pretty scary in those days before even Xerox machines.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2017, 08:03:24 pm
Am I going to be scared if I read Evan Osnos in the September 18 issue?  ???

We may all have to follow John Lanchester's advice and go back to living as hunter-gatherers--if any of us are left once Trump and the North Koreans get done with us.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 13, 2017, 11:00:42 pm
Terry Gross was interviewing him today and, yes, it was scary. I spent a lot of time on the road today so I heard the interview several times.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2017, 01:40:15 pm
Maybe I should be posting this somewhere else, such as on my own blog, but I love that in his article on Hillary Clinton (Sept. 25), David Remnick bluntly calls the incumbent President "the biggest liar in the history of Presidential politics" (p. 65).

I think if David Remnick didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

That might make a good Jeopardy! question some day.

"I'll take Presidential Politics for two hundred, Alex."

A: The biggest liar in the history of Presidential politics.

Q: "Who is ..."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 28, 2017, 10:28:39 am
David Remnick bluntly calls the incumbent President "the biggest liar in the history of Presidential politics" (p. 65).

I think if David Remnick didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.

That might make a good Jeopardy! question some day.

"I'll take Presidential Politics for two hundred, Alex."

A: The biggest liar in the history of Presidential politics.

Q: "Who is ..."

I'm not sure the answer to that wouldn't be Richard Nixon. Or, for that matter, any number of others. George W. Bush told the lies that led to never-ending gigantic disaster in the Middle East.

I wonder what a site like PolitiFact would do if they compared presidents that way. They keep running track of recent figures' statements, ranging from total lie they call "pants on fire," to a partial lie/truth to truth. Obama scored the highest, Hillary was a fairly close second and Trump was by far the worst.

Here's a list of Donald Trump's "pants on fire" statements: http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/ (http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/statements/byruling/pants-fire/)

I'm pretty sure PolitiFact dates back to at least the GWB administration, so I guess if Trump stays in office eight years [*shudder* -- though sometimes it seems unlikely he'll make it eight months] you could compare the scores of the two. By that point, I'm sure GWB would easily win and by then Trump will have probably gotten us into any number of never-ending gigantic disasters.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 28, 2017, 10:47:37 am
Also, I'm not a big fan of David Remnick. I guess it's nice that he writes about Trump in such blunt language but he's totally preaching to the choir. Personally, I'd rather hear Jimmy Kimmel talk politics any day.

Jimmy Kimmel's monologues about the health care bills over the past few months have been amazing. Before this Kimmel, as late-night hosts go, might have been second on my list to Colbert, but roughly on par with many of the others. Now Kimmel has risen above the others, and the gap between him and Colbert has narrowed.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 28, 2017, 10:55:17 am
Also, I'm not a big fan of David Remnick. I guess it's nice that he writes about Trump in such blunt language but he's totally preaching to the choir. Personally, I'd rather hear Jimmy Kimmel talk politics any day.

You don't think Kimmel is preaching to the choir?

All those commentators, Right and Left, preach to their own choirs. You think Bill O'Reilly ever changed the mind of some "lefty-liberal"? Or Steven Colbert turned "Joe the Plumber" into a card-carrying liberal?

Of course there's nothing wrong with preferring to watch/listen to Kimmel instead of reading Remnick.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 29, 2017, 10:04:00 am
You don't think Kimmel is preaching to the choir?

No. Not nearly as exclusively as Remnick (or Colbert, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, etc.).

As you may know, one of my jobs is as a copywriter for a medical-device company. It makes mostly heart devices. The first time Kimmel spoke about his son's heart surgery, I recognized from his description that his son's condition as one that we have a device designed to treat. So later I was talking to the company's PR person and asked if we knew whether it was one of our devices and if so whether we would look for some tasteful way to exploit that. Yes to both (though of course the latter is pretty difficult to pull off). She said one of the doctors he thanked by name was known to use our products.

Anyway, I remarked on Kimmel's speech and quoted something I'd read saying it was probably the most powerful speech about health care coverage anyone had given yet. And this woman, who I believe leans very moderately right, immediately snapped, "It wasn't at all partisan!" as if reflexively defending Republicans. I know, I said -- that's what was so great about it. At one point, Kimmel even said something like, "I think all of us, whether we're Democrats or Republicans or something else, can agree that no baby should die because his parents can't afford health insurance."

In later monologues, he did get somewhat more politically pointed, mainly because the Republicans acted like such assholes. Sen. Cassidy went on his show and promised that any bill would have to pass "the Jimmy Kimmel test." Which Graham-Cassidy most certainly did not, leaving Kimmel almost no choice but to excoriate Cassidy for lying to his face.

Here's a piece that argues a similar point -- that Kimmel was never overtly political, making his comments now that much more effective.

http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/jimmy-kimmel-how-he-found-his-political-voice.html (http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/jimmy-kimmel-how-he-found-his-political-voice.html)

An excerpt:

Quote
Kimmel’s cohorts in late-night talk and news-driven comedy — including John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and Stephen Colbert — have made their own assessments of the repeal effort night after night, via customized versions of the familiar Daily Show template, deploying charts, clips, snarky jokes, and visual non sequiturs to argue that Graham-Cassidy and earlier attempts to repeal ACA were half-baked and petty, and that bipartisan reform would be wiser and more compassionate. None have had the impact of Kimmel, an anti-hipster whose aesthetic is more Steve Allen than John Oliver, and who talks like a peppier Eeyore. Kimmel and his writing staff have been so effective at humanizing core issues that during his most recent run of health-care-dominated broadcasts — Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday — his show reframed the national discussion. Google “Graham-Cassidy” or any keyword related to health care and you’re likely to come up with an article or video that quotes Kimmel as well as legislators, doctors, and patient advocates.

Kimmel has repeatedly said he’s not a health-care expert and never pretended to be one — that he’s just a guy who’s smart enough to listen to people who are smarter than senators; that he’s never been especially political; that ultimately he’s just a father who realized that his infant son would be dead if his dad weren’t rich and famous.

But it’s those four factors in combination — his self-deprecating attitude, his informed-amateur status, his past avoidance of political opinions, and his wrenching personal story — that make him so effective. That, and his natural gift for communication.

Last night’s show ended with an appearance by Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, who, like Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Donald Trump, came to politics via entertainment. Franken, a former Saturday Night Live star and the Senate’s drollest showman, noted that Kimmel made an impression not just because he spoke passionately yet clearly on a complex subject, but because his first and most emotional segment — taped mere days after his son’s near-death — marked the first time he’d expressed a strong point of view on any political issue in a monologue.


Quote
All those commentators, Right and Left, preach to their own choirs. You think Bill O'Reilly ever changed the mind of some "lefty-liberal"? Or Steven Colbert turned "Joe the Plumber" into a card-carrying liberal?

Those guys have choirs. I can't stomach Bill O'Reilly -- the few times I've watched him for even a few minutes I've wanted to reach through the screen and throttle him. And I suppose right-wingers feel the same way about Colbert. (Though Colbert is at least funny and not openly smug and pompous and self-congratulatory, but I digress.)

But I think Kimmel is more in the Carson/Leno/Fallon mode of appealing to what people call "middle America" but really means people with a range of fairly centrist political views.

(The author of the piece above compares him to Steve Allen, which I thought was one misstep in an otherwise well-written piece. That writer is an expert on TV and movies, but how many ordinary Americans clearly remember specifics of Steve Allen's style? I don't even, and I'm pretty old.)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 29, 2017, 10:36:02 am
Here's a piece that argues a similar point -- that Kimmel was never overtly political, making his comments now that much more effective.

This is all well and good, but I don't think it really addresses the point I was trying to make, and probably didn't make very well.

Granted Kimmel may be centrist and less partisan than a Remnick,, but how many "Joe the Plumbers" do you think are watching and listening to Kimmel? I could be wrong, but I suspect not a whole lot.

He's still preaching to a choir, don't you think, albeit a more intelligent and sensible one than, say, a Bill O'Reilly? But he's not going to change any minds on the Far Right, or, I suspect, even many more Centrist Trumpites.

And, I know it's ugly to say this, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there are some out there who might consider him talking about his own son's experience as a cheap shot. ("Cheap shot" is really not the term I want to use, but it's the only one I can think of at the moment.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 30, 2017, 11:01:42 am
Granted Kimmel may be centrist and less partisan than a Remnick,, but how many "Joe the Plumbers" do you think are watching and listening to Kimmel? I could be wrong, but I suspect not a whole lot.

He's still preaching to a choir, don't you think, albeit a more intelligent and sensible one than, say, a Bill O'Reilly? But he's not going to change any minds on the Far Right, or, I suspect, even many more Centrist Trumpites.

I'm not sure how the late-night schedule works -- who is on at the same time as who. And keep in mind I almost never watch any of these shows at all; I used to watch John Stewart and I've watched Colbert a handful of times. But mostly I just see particularly standout segments on the internet later. However, I watch enough internet that I have a pretty clear idea of where the late-night hosts stand, politically.

Lefties who want unabashedly left-leaning political humor watch Colbert, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers and/or Samantha Bee. John Oliver on Sundays. I don't think Conan O'Brien gets all that political, from what I've seen, but I would imagine his audience is probably somewhat left-ish.

As far as I know there are no unequivocally right-wing late-night comedy shows. People like O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson aren't on that late and aren't at all funny. Dennis Miller is funny and conservative (a rare combo!) but I don't think he has a show of his own. So there are no funny hosts who are as politically right-wing as the hosts in the paragraph above are left-wing.

That leaves Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel. Fallon got in some political trouble during last year's primaries by having Trump on his show and playfully ruffling his hair (as opposed to treating him like the evil emperor he is). Fallon aims to be harmless and politically neutral and centrist-friendly, though I think he has since expressed regret about the hair ruffling as going too far. I believe Stephen Colbert had Trump on once, too, and later regretted being as polite as he was to Trump. But no one would accuse Colbert of not being left-leaning enough.

So then Kimmel. I had only seen a few things by Kimmel before his baby was born and they weren't at all political. They were kind of biting -- he gets celebrities to read mean tweets about themselves on air, he had parents steal their children's Halloween candy and then record their children's reactions when told it was gone. He has carried on a long fake feud with Matt Damon -- pretending Damon was going to be a guest and then saying they'd run out of time before Damon came out, stuff like that. So Damon and Sarah Silverman, Kimmel's then-girlfriend, made a hilarious video called "I'm Fucking Matt Damon." Kimmel retaliated with an even more hilarious, star-studded video (cameos by everyone from Brad Pitt to Josh Groban) called "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck." (Note: That sounds like it has the potential to be kind of homophobic humor but to this straight person, at least, it didn't seem particularly offensive.) When Jay Leno bumped Conan off the Tonight Show, Kimmel went on Leno's show and very frankly and brutally bashed him for doing that.

Anyway! The point is, Kimmel doesn't joke about politics. Apparently never mentioned anything remotely political until his baby was born. So while no doubt some socially conservative types wouldn't like "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" conceptually, an easygoing conservative could easily find all this very funny and not politically offensive. And many conservatives stay up late and like comedy, just like liberals. So I imagine Kimmel's audience represents a mix of political views, even if just by default. Conservatives who want to watch a late-night talk show without being politically enraged have to choose between Fallon and Kimmel (or watch both, or watch one and record the other). I don't know if the conservatives I work with watch late-night shows, but if they did that's what they would watch.

So that's why I say Kimmel doesn't have a choir -- unlike Remnick, Colbert, Noah, Bee, Oliver, etc.

Quote
And, I know it's ugly to say this, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there are some out there who might consider him talking about his own son's experience as a cheap shot. ("Cheap shot" is really not the term I want to use, but it's the only one I can think of at the moment.)

Of course. It's the internet. There's always someone out there saying anything, particularly if they disagree politically. But I have read quite a bit about this issue and I haven't seen even a hint of that kind of judgement from any responsible source. Yeah, I'm in a bubble, but still -- not even a Fox News person would be scummy enough to say that. (What conservatives say is that Kimmel isn't qualified to speak knowledgeably about the health-care plans).

But perhaps you haven't actually seen the monologue about the baby? If you have, you'll see why it would be hard for anyone to accuse Kimmel of exploiting his newborn son's life-threatening heart defect for political purposes. If you haven't, I highly recommend it. It's very powerful, and it's also actually funny.

The politics only take up final 2.5 minutes of the 13 minutes in the video. And even then it's a very "we're all in this together" tone, not a divisive or partisan tone. Before that, he just tells the story of what happened to his son, pulls out a list and thanks by name every single doctor and nurse who helped him as well as members of his family, etc.


[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWWoMcGmo0[/youtube]



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 30, 2017, 12:29:28 pm
Two more thoughts about Jimmy Kimmel's non-partisanness. After the initial baby monologue he had Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana on his show in apparent good faith. So conservative viewers could be pleased about that. Cassidy promised Kimmel that any health care plan would have to pass the "Jimmy Kimmel test." Only after Cassidy literally co-wrote a bill that absolutely did not pass the JK test did Kimmel criticize him.

And, according to what he said in another video, Kimmel once also wrote a blurb for some Fox News commentator's book. He slammed that guy for implying that Kimmel was trying to impose his elite Hollywood values on America and celebrities don't know what they're talking about. Kimmel, despite all his amusing self-deprecation, clearly does. And he pointed out that the Fox guy was a huge celebrity-seeker who sucked up to Kimmel and asked for the blurb.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 01, 2017, 06:28:51 pm
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I wasn't limiting my thinking to late-night hosts and shows.

In this political climate do you seriously believe there is such a thing as an "easy-going conservative"?

We also may have different ideas of what constitutes a choir. You haven't convinced me that Kimmel doesn't have a choir of his own, so we may as well just drop it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 01, 2017, 07:09:25 pm
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I wasn't limiting my thinking to late-night hosts and shows.

Well, obviously there are all kinds of people out there expressing opinions about health care. Most of them, like Remnick or Colbert or O'Reilly, are doing it in a context where their opinions are expected and predictable. My point is that I don't think left-leaning opinions are expected or predictable from Jimmy Kimmel (and his, even in the end, weren't so much "left-leaning" as just criticizing Republican health-care bills and some on Fox; as far as I know he hasn't even gotten into Trump).

I guess it would be even more powerful if, say, Laura (or George!) Bush came out against a Republican bill. But until that happens, a talk-show host that most people don't think of as partisan seems like the next best thing to non-choir-preaching.

Quote
In this political climate do you seriously believe there is such a thing as an "easy-going conservative"?

Of course!

In the context where I used it, I thought I was pretty clearly referring to conservatives who wouldn't be offended by the homoerotic (or phobic?) humor and swear words in the "I'm Fucking Ben Affleck" type of thing. And of course there are millions of conservatives who fit that category -- heck, we've known a bunch at BetterMost. Others are probably plumbers or Wall Street brokers or frat boys or, for all I know, alt-right white supremacists. (That last category obviously isn't easygoing in other ways.)

But if you are taking "easygoing conservative" to mean something larger, like a centrist conservative, or a moderate conservative, or a conservative who isn't a Trump supporter or who doesn't like the Republican health-care bills, then my answer is still the same. Yes, of course, there are plenty. I know some of them.

Quote
We also may have different ideas of what constitutes a choir. You haven't convinced me that Kimmel doesn't have a choir of his own, so we may as well just drop it.

Well, I guess every celebrity from Kim Kardashian on down has "choir," depending on how you define it. So by that definition, sure, why not. But you have not offered any reason to think that Kimmel's is heavily left-leaning.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 03, 2017, 12:40:21 pm
Anybody else read the Gloria Allred profile (Oct. 2)? I had no clue she's Philly born and bred.

(At the risk of provoking an argument that I'm really not interested in, I'll admit I'm not a fan. I think she's a publicity hound. I recognize that her tactics have been clearly, if not extraordinarily, successful; it's just that I was brought up to distrust publicity hounds.)

Based on the TOC, lots of interesting stuff in this issue. I've already read Adam Gopnik on Ulysses S. Grant. Next up for me will be the Atul Gawande. I haven't decided what comes after that, the Willa Cather fans or the Aung San Suu Kyi, though I will read both.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 03, 2017, 04:33:23 pm
Based on the TOC, lots of interesting stuff in this issue. I've already read Adam Gopnik on Ulysses S. Grant. Next up for me will be the Atul Gawande. I haven't decided what comes after that, the Willa Cather fans or the Aung San Suu Kyi, though I will read both.

I know! That looks like such an interesting issue that I'm doing something I rarely do, which is paging through it in order, cover to cover, starting even with the event listings and then Talk of the Town!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 03, 2017, 08:24:58 pm
OT again, sorry, but I thought this was an interesting article (Vulture, not the New Yorker) about the Jimmy Kimmel effect/choir/audience issue.
 
http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/why-jimmy-kimmel-is-the-most-important-host-in-late-night.html (http://www.vulture.com/2017/10/why-jimmy-kimmel-is-the-most-important-host-in-late-night.html)

Quote
Last night, it was personal again — Kimmel grew up in Las Vegas and reminded audiences that’s not a dream palace but a real city filled with real people. And he got very specific about Congress’s consistent failure to pass or even consider gun laws, saying bluntly of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan that “the NRA has their balls in a money clip. [They sent] their thoughts and prayers today — which is good. They should be praying. They should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country.” This wasn’t Kimmel chasing the studio-audience political approval known as “clapter”; his audience leaned in, absolutely silent for more than seven minutes before finally applauding at the line, “No American needs an M16.” Kimmel concluded his remarks, his voice continuing to break, by saying, “I’m sorry for getting emotional. I’m not great with this kind of thing. But I think it’s important.”

Being “not great with this kind of thing” is exactly why Kimmel is, right this minute, the most important host in late-night TV, a designation he would no doubt shun. In March, I wrote a critical piece that rounded up how various hosts were handling the Trump administration. I had a lot to say about many of them, and little to say about Kimmel other than that he doesn’t “seem to have an immense appetite” for taking on the politics of the moment. I stand by that: He doesn’t. And his reluctance — he didn’t ask for this — is what makes him so essential. In politics, elected officials fear few things more that the swing voter, or the voter who goes from indifferent to galvanized. That does not describe Seth Meyers, who gets into politics with welcome precision and terrier avidity, or John Oliver, who makes a banquet of wonkish specifics. Kimmel doesn’t — or didn’t until this year. His awkwardness — his voice quavers when he’s angry or upset, he can ramble, and every word isn’t perfectly chosen — is the awkwardness of someone who is awakening to the fact that “politics” can’t be walled off in an area that’s separate from personal experience. Kimmel is why, in every State of the Union address and political stem-winder, elected officials trying to make a point resort to “Like the story of Mary Smith, from Ames City, Iowa, who …” In their clumsy, manipulative, PowerPoint-and-whiteboard way, they’re trying to teach you that “politics” matters when it happens to you.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 05, 2017, 09:17:47 pm
I just read Rachel Aviv's truly terrifying article about guardianship in the October 9 issue.

It makes me feel that I should try to find out what the law is in Pennsylvania, not so much for my father's sake as for my own sake.

Probably not a bad idea for all of us who are aging.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 06, 2017, 09:42:53 am
I just read Rachel Aviv's truly terrifying article about guardianship in the October 9 issue.

It makes me feel that I should try to find out what the law is in Pennsylvania, not so much for my father's sake as for my own sake.

Probably not a bad idea for all of us who are aging.

I haven't read it yet, but I will. I have two friends, brothers around my age, whose mother was poor all their lives. On Welfare. Lived in an old house with all kinds of structural and other problems. (Eventually one of the sons, a successful construction contractor, built her a new one.)

Finally, long after the kids had left the house, she inherited some money. Quite a bit -- enough to live in comfort the rest of her life. But she was ailing now, so she was appointed a guardian (I think by my friends' untrustworthy half-sister.) The guardian stole most of her money. They went to court, but weren't able to recover most if any of it.

My friends contacted the newspaper consumer advocate, who wrote an expose drawing attention to the problem, for what that was worth. I was living away for part of the time so wasn't aware of all the details. But just think, had I paid more attention I could have written about it and sold it to the New Yorker and now I'd be in Rachel Aviv's shoes. Not that it would have helped the mom, of course.  :-\

I went to a little birthday party her sons held for her last year at her nursing home. She seemed a little out of it, but fairly alert. The nursing home isn't bad, as nursing homes go. She seemed cheerful, at last in the party setting. But she has led a hard life. :-\


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 06, 2017, 10:52:05 am
I haven't read it yet, but I will. I have two friends, brothers around my age, whose mother was poor all their lives. On Welfare. Lived in an old house with all kinds of structural and other problems. (Eventually one of the sons, a successful construction contractor, built her a new one.)

Finally, long after the kids had left the house, she inherited some money. Quite a bit -- enough to live in comfort the rest of her life. But she was ailing now, so she was appointed a guardian (I think by my friends' untrustworthy half-sister.) The guardian stole most of her money. They went to court, but weren't able to recover most if any of it.

My friends contacted the newspaper consumer advocate, who wrote an expose drawing attention to the problem, for what that was worth. I was living away for part of the time so wasn't aware of all the details. But just think, had I paid more attention I could have written about it and sold it to the New Yorker and now I'd be in Rachel Aviv's shoes. Not that it would have helped the mom, of course.  :-\

I went to a little birthday party her sons held for her last year at her nursing home. She seemed a little out of it, but fairly alert. The nursing home isn't bad, as nursing homes go. She seemed cheerful, at last in the party setting. But she has led a hard life. :-\

Um. ... I know this is going to spoil some of it, but that's pretty much the situation that Aviv's article is about. I won't go into any more details.

You could have sold that article to TNY!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 07, 2017, 09:28:50 am
Um. ... I know this is going to spoil some of it, but that's pretty much the situation that Aviv's article is about. I won't go into any more details.

I figured. Well, it will be instructive, because I didn't pay close enough attention when it happened to my friends' family.

Quote
You could have sold that article to TNY!

I know! Too bad about my friends, but I'd be rich and famous!  :laugh:




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2017, 12:30:50 pm
I figured. Well, it will be instructive, because I didn't pay close enough attention when it happened to my friends' family.

Of course I haven't gotten around to trying to check the law in Pennsylvania, but I hope my dad would have at least some protection since I'm half-owner of his house and now half-owner of his bank accounts. At least I might be in a legal position to put up a fight.

It comes to me now that to the best of my memory Aviv says nothing about insurance policies. But I guess the "guardian," to use that term loosely, would be in a position to cash them in along with everything else.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 07, 2017, 09:28:29 pm
Read Aviv's article tonight. Shocking that this can happen even when the elders have children or close relatives nearby! I couldn't imagine the nightmare of visiting my mother and finding her gone, the door locked and the possessions seized!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 08, 2017, 11:52:45 am
Of course I haven't gotten around to trying to check the law in Pennsylvania, but I hope my dad would have at least some protection since I'm half-owner of his house and now half-owner of his bank accounts. At least I might be in a legal position to put up a fight.

I still haven't read the article and my understanding of my friends' experience is hazy, but doesn't the guardian who steals the money have to be someone who has been officially appointed to care for the person? Does your dad have someone like that? I thought you were his primary caregiver at this point, in which case wouldn't it not be a threat?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 08, 2017, 12:03:39 pm
(At the risk of provoking an argument that I'm really not interested in, I'll admit I'm not a fan. I think she's a publicity hound. I recognize that her tactics have been clearly, if not extraordinarily, successful; it's just that I was brought up to distrust publicity hounds.)

I'm so behind I haven't even finished the Allred piece, and then there are all those other good ones!

I guess I've also thought of Allred as a publicity hound of some sort, by virtue of the fact that she represents such high-profile clients and cases. But then aren't most famous people -- with the exception of crime victims or others unintentionally thrust into the spotlight -- "publicity hounds"? I mean, how do people get to be famous in the absence of publicity in some form? And most -- actors, for example -- are motivated to take high-profile jobs.

Anyway, you expressed the desire not to argue and no argument intended here. I was brought up to be impressed by strong and effective women. I didn't know much about Allred but the article has greatly increased my admiration for her.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 10, 2017, 02:18:52 pm
I was kind of disappointed in "Fantastic Beasts and How to Rank Them" (Nov. 6).

I really only liked two things, which might be considered asides:

"Unicorns ... attract virgins--which, power-wise, puts them at the same level as boy bands."

Also:

"Controlling the elements, for instance, seems considerably harder than controlling an animal (unless, perhaps, it is a cat)."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 10, 2017, 04:48:38 pm
 :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 16, 2017, 02:25:20 pm
I'm currently reading Larissa MacFarquhar's November 13 article about Orange City, Iowa.

I'm surprised by one thing. I'm about halfway through the article, and, while she makes much of the fact that the town's first settlers were immigrants from the Netherlands, she hasn't gone into the reason why Orange City is called Orange City. I'd bet it's because the settlers were from the Netherlands and the House of Orange is the ruling dynasty of the Netherlands. It was back then and it still is today.

(MacFarquhar: Now, there's a Scottish or Scots-Irish name for you!)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 16, 2017, 11:56:00 pm
Larissa McFarquhar wrote what was, for some reason, one of my favorite New Yorker profiles ever, of the producer Brian Grazer:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/10/15/the-producer (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/10/15/the-producer)

You can't read the whole thing without a subscription and even then I'm not saying it's a must-read. But for reasons I can't fully explain, it has really stuck with me ever since.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 17, 2017, 11:20:53 am
Larissa McFarquhar wrote what was, for some reason, one of my favorite New Yorker profiles ever, of the producer Brian Grazer:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/10/15/the-producer (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/10/15/the-producer)

You can't read the whole thing without a subscription and even then I'm not saying it's a must-read. But for reasons I can't fully explain, it has really stuck with me ever since.

I have a vague memory of that article. That was in the hard copy, wasn't it?

But, anyway, I like her stuff, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2017, 06:24:51 pm
I have a vague memory of that article. That was in the hard copy, wasn't it?

But, anyway, I like her stuff, too.

Yeah, I couldn't find it on a regular web page and I hate reading their online thing.

My favorite part was how Grazer, essentially a surfer dude, was working in a studio mail room or something and started contacting every single person with power in Hollywood he could think of. Of course, 98% of them ignored him, but the 2% were enough to start him on his way to multiple-Oscar producer.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 20, 2017, 02:44:30 pm
Anybody read the article about Sen. Tom Cotton ("Trump's Inheritor," Nov. 13)? The senator's parents run "a cow-calf operation."

So it appears to me that when Jack spoke of "a little cow-'n'-calf operation," it really was a thing, not just his own personal way of expressing himself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 20, 2017, 03:41:48 pm
I didn't read that article. I do know that lots of small ranchers get heifers, use artificial insemination and raise the calves with the cows until they are of marketable size. I believe both the cows and calves then go to be "finished". Or, the cows get inseminated again. Don't want to know the details. But, it's a lot like the sheep/lamb industry, except with cows.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on November 24, 2017, 05:45:10 pm




The screenplay of “Call Me by Your Name,” adapted from André Aciman’s novel of the same title, is by James Ivory. He has done a remarkable job, paring away pasts and futures, and leaving us with an overwhelming surge of now.  On the page, events are recounted, in the first person, by an older Elio, gazing backward, but Timothée Chalamet’s Elio lacks the gift of hindsight. In any case, why is it a gift? Who wouldn’t prefer to be in the thick of love? The book is a mature and thoughtful vintage; in the film, we’re still picking the grapes.




https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/call-me-by-your-name-an-erotic-triumph
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
The Current Cinema
Call Me by Your Name, An Erotic Triumph
Luca Guadagnino’s latest film is emotionally acute and overwhelmingly sensual.

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b78019dfc3494ea36dd/1:1/w_48,c_limit/lane-anthony.png)By Anthony Lane   December 4, 2017 Issue

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a146fea3ecaf719d7e9d0b4/master/w_1023,c_limit/171204_r31056.jpg)
Luca Guadagnino’s sensuous film evokes the transformations of young love. Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli



The new film by Luca Guadagnino, “Call Me by Your Name,” begins in the summer of 1983, in a place so enchanted, with its bright green gardens, that it belongs in a fairy tale. The location, the opening credits tell us, is “Somewhere in Northern Italy.” Such vagueness is deliberate: the point of a paradise is that it could  exist anywhere but that, once you reach the place, it brims with details so precise in their intensity that you never forget them. Thus it is that a young American named Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives, dopey with jet lag, at the house of Professor Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his Italian wife, Annella (Amira Casar), whose custom is to spend their summers there and also to return for Hanukkah. (Like them, Oliver is Jewish; a closeup shows a Star of David hanging from a chain around his neck.) The Professor, an American expert in classical archeology, requires an annual assistant, and Oliver is this year’s choice. “We’ll have to put up with him for six long weeks,” Annella says, with a sigh. Not long enough, as it turns out. You can pack a whole lifetime into six weeks.

The first words of the film are “The usurper.” They are uttered by the Perlmans’ only child—their son, Elio (Timothée Chalamet), who is seventeen. He stands at an upstairs window with his friend Marzia (Esther Garrel) and watches Oliver below, fearful that the American may break the reigning peace. The Professor is more welcoming, and he proposes a kind of free trade, both spatial and emotional, that will resound throughout. “Our home is your home,” he says to Oliver. “My room is your room,” Elio adds, a few seconds later, like an echo. He has moved into the adjoining room for the duration of Oliver’s stay, and they must share a bathroom. The sharing will deepen, from handshakes to confidences, and from cigarettes to kisses and other mouthly charms, concluding in the most profound exchange of all, whispered from a few inches’ distance and proclaimed in the title of the movie.

“Call Me by Your Name” is, among other things, an exercise in polyglottery, and Elio chats to his parents and friends in an easy blend of English, French, and Italian, sometimes sliding between tongues in the course of a single conversation. (Who would guess that a household, no less than a city, can be a melting pot?) His father and Oliver enjoy a clash of wits about the twisted root of the word “apricot,” tracing it through Arabic, Latin, and Greek, and mentioning that one branch leads to the word “precocious”—a nod to Elio, who listens to them with half a smile. He is a prodigy, voraciously bookish, who plays Bach al fresco  on the guitar and then inside on the piano, in the manner of Liszt and of Busoni, with Oliver standing in the background, contrapposto, with the elegant tilt of a statue, drinking in the sound and the skill. “Is there anything you don’t  know?” he asks, after Elio has told him about an obscure, bloody battle of the First World War.

Prodigies can be a pain, onscreen and off, and Elio—fevered with boyish uncertainties and thrills, though no longer a boy, and already rich in adult accomplishments, yet barely a man—should be an impossible role. Somehow, as if by magic, Chalamet makes it work, and you can’t imagine how the film could breathe without him. His expression is sharp and inquisitive, but cream-pale and woundable, too, and saved from solemnity by the grace of good humor; when Oliver says that he has to take care of some business, Elio retorts by impersonating him to his face. Chalamet is quite something, but Hammer is a match for him, as he needs to be, if the characters’ passions are to be believed. Elio is taken aback, at the start, by Oliver’s swagger—the hesitant youth, steeped in Europe, confronted with can-do American chops. Hammer doesn’t strut, but his every action, be it dismounting a bicycle, draining a glass of juice (apricot, of course), slinging a backpack over his shoulder, rolling sideways into a pool, or demolishing a boiled egg at breakfast until it’s a welter of spilled yolk suggests a person almost aggressively at home in his own body, and thus in the larger world. Hence the abrupt note that he sends to Elio: “Grow up. See you at midnight.”

You could, I suppose, regard Oliver as the incarnation of soft power. Certainly, his handsomeness is so extreme that the camera tends to be angled up at him, as if at one of the ancient bronze deities over which the Professor enthuses. When Oliver wades in a cold stream one glorious day, you stare at him and think, My God, he is  a god. And yet, as he and Elio lounge on sun-warmed grass, it’s Oliver who seems unmanned, and it’s Elio who lays a purposeful hand directly on Oliver’s crotch. Now one, now the other appears the more carnally confident of the two. They take a while to find parity and poise, but, once they do, they are inextricable, rendered equal by ardor; the first shot of them, at dawn, after they sleep together, is of limbs so entangled that we can’t tell whose are whose. As for their parting, it is wordless. They look at one another and just nod, as if to say, Yes, that was right. That was how it is meant to be.

The screenplay of “Call Me by Your Name,” adapted from André Aciman’s novel of the same title, is by James Ivory. He has done a remarkable job, paring away pasts and futures, and leaving us with an overwhelming surge of now. On the page, events are recounted, in the first person, by an older Elio, gazing backward, but Chalamet’s Elio lacks the gift of hindsight. In any case, why is it a gift? Who wouldn’t prefer to be in the thick of love? The book is a mature and thoughtful vintage; in the film, we’re still picking the grapes.

It’s tempting to speculate how Ivory, who, as the director of “A Room with a View” (1985) and of “Maurice” (1987), showed his mastery of Italian settings and of same-sex romance, might have fared at the helm of the new film. The rhythm, I suspect, would have been more languorous, as if the weather had seeped into people’s lazy bones, whereas Guadagnino, an instinctive modernist, is more incisive. He and his longtime editor, Walter Fasano, keep cutting short the transports of delight; the lovers pedal away from us, on bikes, to the lovely strains of Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite,” only for the scene to hit the brakes. “Call Me by Your Name” is suffused with heat, and piled high with fine food, but it isn’t a nice  movie; you see it not to unwind but to be wound up—to be unrelaxed by the force with which rapture strikes. There is even a gratifying cameo by a peach, which proves useful in an erotic emergency, and merits an Academy Award for Best Supporting Fruit.

The film’s release could not be more propitious. So assailed are we by reports of harmful pleasures, and of the coercive male will being imposed through lust, that it comes as a relief to be reminded, in such style, of consensual joy. “I don’t want either of us to pay for this,” Oliver says. By falling for each other, he and Elio tumble not into error, still less into sin, but into a sort of delirious concord, which may explain why Elio’s parents, far from disapproving, bestow their tacit blessing on the pact. More unusual still is that the movie steers away from the politics of sexuality. Elio makes love to Marzia, on a dusty mattress, in a loft like an old dovecote, only hours before he meets with Oliver at midnight, but you don’t think, Oh, Elio’s having straight sex, followed by gay sex, and therefore we must rank him as bi-curious. Rather, you are curious about him and his paramours as individuals—these particular bodies, with these hungry souls, at these ravening moments in their lives. Desire is passed around the movie like a dish, and the characters are invited to help themselves, each to his or her own taste. Maybe a true love story (and when did you last see one of those?) has no time for types.

Not that anything endures. Late in the film, the Professor sits with his son on a couch, smokes, and talks of what has occurred. We expect condescension, instead of which we hear a confession. “I envy you,” he tells Elio, adding, “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty.” He once came near, he admits, to having what Elio and Oliver had, but something stood in the way, and he advises his child to seize the day, including the pain that the day brings, while he is still young: “Before you know it, your heart is worn out.” Much of this long speech is taken from Aciman’s novel, but Stuhlbarg delivers it beautifully, with great humility, tapping his cigarette. After which, it seems only natural that so rich a movie should close with somebody weeping, beside a winter fire. The shot lasts for minutes, as did the final shot of Michael Haneke’s “Hidden” (2005), but Haneke wanted to stoke our paranoia and our dread, while Guadagnino wants us to reflect, at our leisure, on love: on what a feast it can be, on how it turns with the seasons, and on why it ends in tears. ♦

This article will be published in its print form in the December 4, 2017, issue.



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b78019dfc3494ea36dd/1:1/w_48,c_limit/lane-anthony.png) Anthony Lane has been a film critic for The New Yorker since 1993. He is the author of “Nobody’s Perfect.”   newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com).




Also, FYI:






“A happy ending was imperative,” Forster wrote, in 1960. “I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. . . . I dedicated it ‘To a Happier Year’ and not altogether vainly.”



http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/james-ivory-and-the-making-of-a-historic-gay-love-story

JAMES IVORY AND THE MAKING OF A HISTORIC GAY LOVE STORY

(http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Larson-James-Ivory-POI-1200.jpg)
For many gay men coming of age in the eighties and nineties, James Ivory’s “Maurice” was revelatory: a first glimpse, onscreen or anywhere,
of what love between men could look like.
  PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM KNOX / EYEVINE / REDUX



[EXCERPT]


The house in Claverack, bought in 1975, has nineteen rooms, with high ceilings and huge windows. Its eleven acres have a pond and several small buildings; “A Room with a View” was edited in a former apple-storage barn. At one point during my visit, Ivory brought me into the parlor where the interview with Merchant from the “Householder” DVD had taken place. The murals, which Ivory commissioned, are of imagined Hudson Valley landscapes circa 1800. He opened a cabinet topped with baftas to reveal a collection of elegant dioramas, one of them in a former pralines box. He handed them to me one by one and let me look through each tiny doorway: into an 1820 New Orleans boudoir; a 1761 Mt. Pleasant, Philadelphia, drawing room. He made them when he was thirteen.

That weekend, in a convivial Forsterian scenario, he had three houseguests. All of them had worked on Merchant Ivory films. Jeremiah Rusconi, the art director for “The Europeans,” has also directed, over the years, the restoration of the house; now a restoration consultant, he currently lives there. Melissa Chung, a friend who began working for Merchant Ivory as a production assistant right out of Yale, in 1992, is there most weekends. That day, she and Benoît Pain (camera loader, “Le Divorce”), both in black-and-white striped Breton shirts, made lunch, as Ivory directed (“Have we started the asparagus?”). The group ate around a table in a sunny, windowed porch bursting with geraniums.

“Led by the maestro—the captain of our ship,” Chung said.

“I invented this pepper soup,” Ivory said. It was a bright-red purée. “But Melissa, and Benoît, too, knows all about hollandaise.”

This year, Ivory had a hand in another gay coming-of-age romance—“Call Me by Your Name,” directed by Luca Guadagnino. Ivory adapted the screenplay from the novel by André Aciman, in which Elio (Timothée Chalamet), seventeen, is wary of, then attracted to, Oliver (Armie Hammer), a twenty-four-year-old scholar who’s assisting Elio’s professor father at the family’s Italian villa for the summer. The film has the Italian-countryside pleasures of “A Room with a View,” and mirrors that and “Maurice” ’s journeys from awkwardness to connection and joy. But it’s also set in the eighties—so, like Clive, our hero’s first love marries a woman and breaks his heart.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 24, 2017, 06:23:57 pm
Thank you, friend John. Won't be long now! I'm looking forward to the cameo by the peach!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 26, 2017, 12:03:33 am
John, you probably saw the New York review calling it a masterpiece? I'll have to say the description of the plot alone would not necessarily make me see it (but then, neither did BBM, and I had even read, and liked, the short story!!). I'm looking forward to it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on November 26, 2017, 02:42:06 am
Thank you, friend John. Won't be long now! I'm looking forward to the cameo by the peach!


Thanks Lee! I'm so sorry that you still have to wait for the Denver release, but--time does seem to be flying anyway, isn't it? Thankfully!




John, you probably saw the New York review calling it a masterpiece? I'll have to say the description of the plot alone would not necessarily make me see it (but then, neither did BBM, and I had even read, and liked, the short story!!). I'm looking forward to it.


Hey, Katherine! I've seen the movie twice now, and I like it a lot (well, obviously--  ::)  :laugh: ) but my personal thumbs-up recommendation is, at least, sincere.  (  :laugh:  :laugh: )

NYMag's David Edelstein is not  my favorite film critic--he can be,  quite often, a bit sloppy (or is it just that he isn't all that smart ?) as with this quote (and see the full review below): "Michael Stuhlbarg plays Elio’s father, an anthropology professor--." Er, NO. Archaeologist  maybe, but definitely  someone who works with old Greco-Roman sculpture  and is clearly involved with the study of ancient Greek and Latin literature, philosophy, and history, i.e., the Classics. His (kind-of, 6 weeks duration) graduate student/doctoral candidate/amanuensis (Oliver/Armie) is writing his own (Oliver's) dissertation and/or book about HERACLITUS, fer chrissakes. But that's Edelstein: "Michael Stuhlbarg plays Elio’s father, an anthropology professor--." Argh!!  Sloppy or dumb (at least in this instance).

HOWEVER, my own Anthropologist/Archaeologist bugaboo-bugbear aside, the Edelstein review isn't altogether bad  (although I've certainly read much better ones). There are a lot of points he could have mentioned, but he did not. I will mention a few:  Luca Guadagnino's movie is not only FUNNY, it is as WRY as it is KIND. it is insanely INTELLIGENT without ever (or, ok, almost  never) showing off, NEVER self-admiring nor self-satisfied. It is SMOKING HOT, yet at the same time not as EXPLICIT as one might have expected, considering, yes, fellatio and masturbation with the aforementioned peach. Most of all: it is hugely emotional without being at all maudlin or (in the worst way) cheaply sentimental--it is NEVER cheap. It is DISCREET, even TASTEFUL, and I am not damning it with faint praise, far from it. The opposite of COY, it is HONEST. Nothing is ever TELEGRAPHED, but absolutely nothing is hidden. The movie is visually gorgeous. The music score is beautiful. (We are shown Timmy/Elio's musicianship in short snippets, and it is shown to be lovely, often intense but in a way that is graceful and nonchalant--we, the audience, are as proud, often amazed, and sometimes a little bit as worried, as his parents are--quietly. Quietly worried, quietly amazed, quietly proud. There is NEVER any fuss (or very little), NEVER any insistence of overt 'specialness' or genius. Elio is just Elio.)

The CAST is amazing. (The cliche that there are no small parts is certainly true here.) Elio's mother (Amira Casar), in a smaller role, IS AMAZING. A different--and better!--review noted that Elio's mother has the same facial expression, the same hooded eyes as her son when either of them (separately), with an appraising glance, looks at--well, at Oliver, of course. And I went: woah! Elio's friend/then girlfriend/then friend again, Marzia, is very good, and, momentarily, heartbreaking when Elio, momentarily, is a little shit. The housekeeper, the gardener, the old woman who gives the boys glasses of water on a hot day, are all so good, which is to say, natural.  (Elio's girlfriend and hard-working housekeeper are so different but are so alike in a sense, because they both inhabit the same universe, they are so REAL, so IMMEDIATE. Mafalda, the housekeeper, only speaks Italian--dialect?--and Marzia, the girlfriend mostly speaks French and Italian with only one short phrase, heartbreakingly, in English to Elio: "Am I not your girl?" when Oliver has his heart. All of this foreign dialogue is subtitled only when needed, but it is not distancing at all, it is natural and seamless.) My biggest complaint? At 2 hours and 10 minutes, it is way too SHORT. The last part of André Aciman's book (the two boys' last trip to Rome) was literally unfilmable because of the tiny budget. Yet, at $3.5 million, I cannot conceive how they managed to do as well as they did.

So--is it a masterpiece? Is it Perfect? Well, no, probably not. Me with yet another bugaboo-bugbear: Does (clearly super-intelligent) Oliver REALLY ask (in 1983!) about a war memorial statue--"Is that from WWII?" when the bronze soldier is wearing puttees and a WWI flat soup dish on his head? Mortifying! But Oliver didn't (creepily) feed the dopey line to Elio to allow Elio feel smart, the momentarily dopey SCRIPT made  Oliver feed Elio that stupid line. (Maybe for the 2017 audience this isn't an issue? Aren't WWI & WWII in the Middle Ages anyway? What's the diff!) But the stupid line made me cringe because Oliver IS smart and he wasn't trying to butter up Elio. And again, for me the removal of the book's Rome episode from the script rankles. For a fan of Aciman's book, replacing the Dantean weekend in Rome with a (literal) bus-and backpack holiday to Bergamo and bucolic environs is disappointing. But, in these degenerate, tawdry Trumpian times, compared to what else you'll see in the multiplex--yes. Yes, it is a masterpiece. And when the two boys with backpacks were climbing towards the pretty falls and were shouting their names at each other in glee, I shed tears.    :)

The three principals, Armie Hammer/Oliver, Timmy Chalamet/Elio and Michael Stuhlbarg/Prof. Perlman, are brilliant, in at least three different ways, but Timmy/Elio is far and above the most brilliant. He is the movie, all the way through, but two phone calls towards the end are tear-making. The first: after Oliver has finally gone, Elio, suddenly unable to make his own way home, calls his mother from the train station a considerable distance away, and asks her to pick him up with the family car. The fact that he is looking away  from the camera is kindness itself because the audible catch in his throat is heartrending. Then, the second: months later, it is hanukkah, a gentle, serenely snowy day, and a seemingly now happy, cheerful Elio picks up a ringing telephone, saying "I'll get it!" to his parents. It is Oliver, supposedly calling to wish the Perlmans happy hanukkah, but really to tell Elio that he, Oliver, is getting married in the spring. "Do you mind?" says Oliver. The conversation (only SEEN by Elio's end, in the hallway of the Perlman home) is devastating. Now think: when this scene was filmed, actor Timmy Chalamet was 19 years old. Unbelievable.

Sorry, I'm all scattered--but here are two photos of the cast not usually shown:


(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMzM5ODM2MTMxOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMDU5NTIxNDM@._V1_SX1777_CR0,0,1777,960_AL_.jpg)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5726616/mediaviewer/rm1764710400

Luncheon under the trees: Mrs Perlman, Professor Perlman, Oliver and Elio
Amira Casar, Michael Stuhlbarg, Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet




(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZjRmNzE4ZTQtY2I4Ni00YjgzLWJhNmMtNjM3Y2RiMjA5MDU5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI3NjY2ODc@._V1_.jpg)
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt5726616/mediaviewer/rm3976289024

Mafalda, Marzia and Elio in the kitchen.
Vanda Capriolo, Esther Garrel and Timothée Chalamet





Anyway, here's the Edelstein NYMag: review:


http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/review-call-me-by-your-name-is-a-masterpiece.html

(http://images.nymag.com/news/articles/reasonstoloveny/2015/img/ny-logo.svg)
(http://images.amcnetworks.com/ifc.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Vulture-Logo-Main.jpg)
Call Me by Your Name
Is a Masterpiece
By David Edelstein
November 22, 2017 8:01 pm


(https://www.psfilmfest.org/assets/images/membership/screenings/CMBYN1.jpg)
Young Elio (Timothée Chalamet) in Luca Guadagnino's Call Me by Your Name




In Call Me by Your Name, the gifted young American actor Timothée Chalamet plays Elio, a 17-year-old who spends summers with his academic parents in their airy, rustic villa in Crema in northern Italy. In early scenes, the skinny, long-waisted Elio seems vaguely uncomfortable in his body, as if uncertain what to do with it apart from the de rigeur canoodling with teenage girls who swim with him in nearby lakes and ponds. It’s only when he stares from his bedroom window at the arrival of this year’s summer guest — a young scholar who’ll spend six weeks reading, writing, and working with the professor — that Elio seems to come out of his own head.

The 24-year-old visitor, Oliver (Armie Hammer), has an easy, almost arrogant physicality. He’s broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, absurdly handsome. But he’s hard to read. Oliver gives the shirtless Elio a quick shoulder massage and then heads off to play volleyball. Was it innocent or a come-on? Whichever, Oliver’s touch lingers. Elio sneaks into Oliver’s room and sticks his nose into a pair of discarded bathing trunks, inhaling sharply. He puts them on his head. He’s in heaven.

Call Me by Your Name  takes place in summer, 1983. It has the feel of something recollected in tranquility, but the eroticism is startlingly immediate. The faithful adaptation of André Aciman’s novel is by James Ivory, but the movie has a different feel than Ivory’s own formal, somewhat stiff work. The Italian director Luca Guadagnino creates a mood of free-floating sexual longing. Oliver never wears long pants, only short shorts or swim trunks, and young men are always doffing their shirts and jumping into sparkling water or riding on bicycles along dirt roads. The flesh tones stand out against the villa’s pale whites and yellow walls — more tactile but on a continuum with the sculptures and oil paintings by men with similar longings centuries ago. Call Me by Your Name  is hardly the first film set in Italy to juxtapose youth and beauty and fleeting seasons with ancient buildings and ruins. But I can’t recall such a continuum between the ephemeral and the enduring.

I also can’t remember a filmmaker who has captured the essence of midsummer this way, lazy but so vivid that every sound registers. Sound floats in through windows — of insects and birds but mostly wind. The presence of Nature can be felt in every one of cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s frames. It’s reflected in the bodies of the characters. Oliver is hard for Elio — and us — to read. Is he toying with the teenager? Or is something stirring in him, too? In this atmosphere, how can something not be stirring? There’s friction in the uncertainty, heightened when Oliver dances provocatively with Elio’s kinda-sorta girlfriend. The minutes go by and then we’re into the film’s second hour with everything maddeningly —but thrillingly — undefined.

The love scenes between Elio and Oliver aren’t explicit — they only feel as if they are. The title is said in a moment of passion. It’s Oliver’s fervent desire to dissolve his self, to become one with Elio. I should point out that Armie Hammer doesn’t look 24 — more like 29, which he was during filming, and that changes the dynamic. Make of that what you will (17 was above the age of legal consent in Italy), but it’s Elio who finally pushes Oliver over the brink — who calls the question.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Elio’s father, an anthropology professor who gazes intently at his son, seems to know what’s happening — and doesn’t interfere. He and Elio have a revelatory conversation near the end, but it’s the very last shot that stays in mind, all but dissolving the boundary between viewer and actor. Everything in Call Me by Your Name  registers momentously, from the scene that definitively raises the question, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” to the ’80s dance numbers to the yearning Sufjan Stevens song over the stunning credits. Chalamet gives the performance of the year. By any name, this is a masterpiece.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 26, 2017, 03:07:54 pm
NYMag's David Edelstein is not  my favorite film critic--he can be,  quite often, a bit sloppy (or is it just that he isn't all that smart ?)

He's not mine, either. I don't know if you pay attention to TV reviews, but their TV critics are far superior. Matt Zoller Seitz, their lead TV critic, is also a good film critic who maintains Roger Ebert's website. Their next-in-line reviewers are good, also.

For film, I've always prefer Slate. But Dana Stevens, the regular film critic, is no longer reviewing many films for some reason, so most of their reviews have been written by assorted people.

Then there's The New Yorker, and while Anthony Lane is an intelligent and amusing writer I sometimes think he tries too hard for jokes at the expense of actually analyzing the movies. And he's far pickier than I would be.

So I guess that leaves the New York Times, which is usually pretty good, IMO.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on November 27, 2017, 01:42:16 am
John, I must say that your review is spot on and far superior to Edelstein's. Thanks so much for sharing it here!  :-*
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 27, 2017, 10:33:17 am
John, I must say that your review is spot on and far superior to Edelstein's.

Agreed!  :D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on November 28, 2017, 07:55:01 pm
John, I must say that your review is spot on and far superior to Edelstein's. Thanks so much for sharing it here!  :-*




Agreed!  :D




Meryl and Katherine, Thank You! so much, but--Oops! The New Yorker 's Perversely Contrarian Beard (Richard Brody)  (https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b758b51cf59fc423c61/1:1/w_48,c_limit/brody-richard.png)Begs (begs??) to Differ!



"All that’s missing is the Web site offering Elio-and-Oliver tours through the Italian countryside, with a stopover at the Perlman villa. Instead of gestural or pictorial evocations of intimacy, the performers act out the script’s emotions with a bland literalness that—due to the mechanistic yet vague direction—is often laughable, as in the case of the pseudo-James Dean-like grimacing that Luca Guadagnino coaxes from Timothée Chalamet."



 :o :o :o :o :o
 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)
 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:


https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/call-me-by-your-name-an-erotic-triumph
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)

Richard Brody
The Empty, Sanitized Intimacy of
Call Me by Your Name

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b758b51cf59fc423c61/1:1/w_48,c_limit/brody-richard.png)By Richard Brody   November 28, 2017 4:00PM

(https://2qibqm39xjt6q46gf1rwo2g1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/9471413_web1_M-Call-Me-edh-171124.jpg)
In “Call Me by Your Name,” starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, the director Luca Guadagnino displays no real interest
in the characters, only in the story.
Photograph by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom / Sony Pictures Classics



Luca Guadagnino’s new film, “Call Me by Your Name,” may be progressive in its appropriately admiring depiction of a loving and erotic relationship between two young men, but its storytelling is backward. It is well known, and therefore no spoiler to say, that it’s a story, set in 1983, about a summer fling between a graduate student named Oliver (Armie Hammer), who’s in his mid-twenties, and Elio (Timothée Chalamet), the seventeen-year-old son of the professor with whom Oliver is working and at whose lavish estate in northern Italy he’s staying. Half a year after their brief relationship, Oliver and Elio speak, seemingly for the first time in many months. Elio affirms that his parents were aware of the relationship and offered their approval, to which Oliver responds, “You’re so lucky; my father would have carted me off to a correctional facility.” And that’s the premise of the film: in order to have anything like a happy adolescence and avoid the sexual repression and frustration that seem to be the common lot, it’s essential to pick the right parents. The movie is about, to put it plainly, being raised right.

If Guadagnino had any real interest in his characters, what Elio and Oliver say about their parents near the end of the movie would have been among the many confidences that they share throughout. Long before the two become lovers, they’re friends—somewhat wary friends, who try to express their desire but, in the meantime, spend lots of time together eating meals and taking strolls, on bike rides and errands—and the story is inconceivable without the conversation that they’d have had as their relationship developed. And yet, as the movie is made, what they actually say to each other is hardly seen or heard.

They’re both intellectuals. Oliver is an archeologist and a classicist with formidable philological skills and philosophical training; he reads Stendhal for fun, Heraclitus for work, and writes about Heidegger. Elio, who’s trilingual (in English, French, and Italian) is a music prodigy who transcribes by ear music by Schoenberg and improvises, at the piano, a Liszt-like arrangement of a piece by Bach and a Busoni-like arrangement of the Liszt-like arrangement, and he’s literature-smitten as well. But for Guadagnino it’s enough for both of them to post their intellectual bona fides on the screen like diplomas. The script (written by James Ivory) treats their intelligence like a club membership, their learning like membership cards, their intellectualism like a password—and, above all, their experience like baggage that’s checked at the door.

What their romantic lives have been like prior to their meeting, they never say. Is Oliver is the first man with whom Elio has had an intimate relationship? Has Elio been able to acknowledge, even to himself, his attraction to other men, or is the awakening of desire for a male a new experience for him? What about for Oliver? Though Elio and Oliver are also involved with women in the course of the summer, they don’t ever discuss their erotic histories, their desires, their inhibitions, their hesitations, their joys, their heartbreaks. They’re the most tacit of friends and the most silent of lovers—or, rather, in all likelihood they’re voluble and free-spoken, as intellectually and personally and verbally intimate as they are physically intimate, as passionate about their love lives as about the intellectual fires that drive them onward—but the movie doesn’t show them sharing these things. Guadagnino can’t be bothered to imagine (or to urge Ivory to imagine) what they might actually talk about while sitting together alone. Scenes deliver some useful information to push the plot ahead and then cut out just as they get rolling, because Guadagnino displays no interest in the characters, only in the story.

For that matter, Guadagnino offers almost nothing of Elio’s parents’ talk about whatever might be going on with their son and Oliver. Not that the parents (played by Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Casar) are absentee—they’re present throughout, and there are even scenes featuring them apart from both Elio and Oliver, talking politics and movies with friends, but there isn’t a scene of them discussing their son’s relationship. They don’t express anything about it at all, whether approval or fear or even practical concern regarding the reactions of the neighbors. The characters of “Call Me by Your Name” are reduced to animated ciphers, as if Guadagnino feared that detailed practical discussions, or displays of freedom of thought and action, might dispel the air of romantic mystery and silent passion that he conjures in lieu of relationships. The elision of the characters’ mental lives renders “Call Me by Your Name” thin and empty, renders it sluggish; the languid pace of physical action is matched by the languid pace of ideas, and the result is an enervating emptiness.

There are two other characters whose near-total silence and self-effacement is a mark of Guadagnino’s blinkered and sanitized point of view—two domestic employees, the middle-aged cook and maid Mafalda (Vanda Capriolo) and the elderly groundskeeper and handyman Anchise (Antonio Rimoldi), who work for Elio’s family, the Perlmans. What do they think, and what do they say? They’re working for a Jewish family—the Perlmans, Elio tells Oliver (who’s also Jewish), are the only Jewish family in the region, even the only Jewish family ever to have set foot in the village—and they observe a brewing bond between Elio and Oliver. Do they care at all? Does the acceptance of this homosexual relationship exist in a bubble within the realm of intellectuals, and does that tolerance depend upon the silencing of the working class? Is there any prejudice anywhere in the area where the story takes place?

The one hint that there might be any at all comes in a brief scene of Elio and Oliver sharing a furtive caress in a shadowed arcade, when they brush hands and Oliver says, “I would kiss you if I could.” (That pregnant line, typically, ends the scene.) Even there, where the setting—the sight lines between the town at large and the character’s standpoint—is of dramatic significance, Guadagnino has no interest in showing a broad view of the location, because of his bland sensibility and flimsy directorial strategy, because of his relentless delivery of images that have the superficial charm of picture postcards. Adding a reverse angle or a broad pan shot on a setting is something that Guadagnino can’t be bothered with, because it would subordinate the scene’s narrow evocations to complexities that risk puncturing the mood just as surely as any substantive discussion might do.

To be sure, there’s much that a good movie can offer beside smart talk and deep confidences; for that matter, the development of characters is a grossly overrated quality in movies, and some of the best directors often do little of it. There’s also a realm of symbol, of gesture, of ideas, of emotions that arise from careful attention to images or a brusque gestural energy; that’s where Guadagnino plants the movie, and that’s where the superficiality of his artistry emerges all the more clearly. He has no sense of positioning, of composition, of rhythm, but he’s not free with his camera, either; his actors are more or less in a constant proscenium of a frame that displays their action without offering a point of view.

The intimacy of Elio and Oliver is matched by very little cinematic intimacy. There are a few brief images of bodies intertwined, some just-offscreen or cannily framed sex, but no real proximity, almost no closeups, no tactile sense, no point of view of either character toward the other. Guadagnino rarely lets himself get close to the characters, because he seems to wish never to lose sight of the expensive architecture, the lavish furnishings, the travelogue locations, the manicured lighting, the accoutrements that fabricate the sense of “order and beauty, luxury, calm, and sensuality.” All that’s missing is the Web site offering Elio-and-Oliver tours through the Italian countryside, with a stopover at the Perlman villa. Instead of gestural or pictorial evocations of intimacy, the performers act out the script’s emotions with a bland literalness that—due to the mechanistic yet vague direction—is often laughable, as in the case of the pseudo-James Dean-like grimacing that Guadagnino coaxes from Chalamet. Even the celebrated awkward dance that Oliver performs at an outdoor night spot was more exhilarating when performed to a Romanian song by an anonymous young man at a computer screen. Hammer is game, playful, and openhearted, but the scene as filmed is calculatedly cute and disingenuous. (Such faults in performance fall upon directors, not because they pull puppet strings but because they create the environment and offer the guidance from which the performances result, and then they choose what stays in the movie.)

There are moments of tenderness—telegraphed from miles away but nonetheless moving, as when Oliver grasps Elio’s bare shoulder and then makes light of it, when he reaches out to touch Elio’s hand, when Elio slides his bare foot over Oliver’s—that are simply and bittersweetly affecting. They’re in keeping with the story of a love affair of mutual discovery that is sheltered from social circumstances, from prejudice, from hostility, from side-eyes or religious dogma—and that nevertheless involves heartbreak. It’s a story about romantic melancholy and a sense of loss as a crucial element of maturation and self-discovery, alongside erotic exploration, fulfillment, and first love. The idea of the film is earnest, substantial, moving, and quite beautiful—in its idea, its motivation, its motivating principle. It offers, in theory, a sort of melancholy romantic realism. But, as rendered by Guadagnino, it remains at the level of a premise, a pitch, an index card.

Near the end of the film, Professor Perlman delivers a monologue to Elio that concentrates the movie’s sap of intellectualized understanding and empathy into a rich and potent Oscar syrup. The speech is moving and wise; Stuhlbarg’s delivery of it, in inflection and gesture, is finely burnished. Here, Guadagnino’s direction is momentarily incisive, in a way that it has not been throughout the film, perhaps because the professor’s academicized liberalism toward matters of sex is the one thing that truly excites the director. The entire film is backloaded—and it’s nearly emptied out in order for him to lay his cards, finally, on the table.



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b758b51cf59fc423c61/1:1/w_48,c_limit/brody-richard.png) Richard Brody began writing for  The New Yorker in 1999, and has contributed articles about the directors François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Samuel Fuller. He writes about movies in his blog for newyorker.com. He is the author of “Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.”   newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com)   https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Meryl on November 28, 2017, 08:36:52 pm
What can I say? Brody is a sad little man with a withered soul.  ::)  ;)  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on November 28, 2017, 09:30:34 pm
What can I say? Brody is a sad little man with a withered soul.  ::)  ;)  :)

OMG, what a sad little cretin.

This read like a Borowitz report!

Why, after Anthony Lane's glowing review, does the New Yorker need to publish this rubbish?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 28, 2017, 09:57:10 pm
It seems like the critic has something against the director. Hidden baggage.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on November 29, 2017, 06:11:46 am
It seems like the critic has something against the director. Hidden baggage.  :-\


What can I say? Brody is a sad little man with a withered soul.  ::)  ;)  :)


This read like a Borowitz report!


 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 29, 2017, 10:24:02 am
I read Brody only occasionally, but he does seem to frequently take, as you say, John, a contrarian view. Like, "Oh, they're all saying this about that? I'll show them!" In fact, that's probably when and why I read him, because I see some reference to him sharply disagreeing with others or puncturing overhype, so I look it up and frankly sometimes I agree with his take. He also has the luxury of writing on more leisurely deadlines than Anthony Lane; he doesn't have to get his review in just as the film is opening, or to review every big film, so he can wait until everyone else weighs in and then deliver his verdict.

In this case, not having seen the movie yet, I can't judge for myself. But he does seem at odds with everybody else in the the critic community.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 01, 2017, 10:54:09 pm
OK, I've got another question about New Yorker usage.

In Steve Coll's editorial in the November 13 issue, I found this statement:

Quote
At a minimum, as Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, put it, "the Russians mounted what could be described as an independent expenditure campaign on Mr. Trump's behalf."

So, I thought--or I was taught--that when a direct quotation is a complete sentence in itself (or something like that), you capitalize the first letter of the first word. Thus:

Quote
...Schiff ... put it, "The Russians mounted. ..."

On the other hand, if you write the sentence this way:

Quote
... Schiff ... put it that "the Russians mounted. ..."

Then you don't capitalize the the. I think I've seen other examples like this recently.

I wonder what's up? Is it just The New Yorker, or have the rules changed?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 02, 2017, 10:53:34 am
Aside from the perennially annoying habit of putting the verb, "put it," after a long string identifying the source, I don't think that would bother me.

On the one hand, it might not have been a whole sentence. Schiff might have said "The very least we know for sure -- and I tell you this with utter certainty -- is that the Russians mounted ..." So in that case "The Russians" was not the beginning of the sentence and the writer paraphrased the first part.

But I also don't think a sentence fragment quote requires "that." I would be fine with

"At a minimum, some Trump campaign spending originated, as Schiff put it, 'with those zany Russians.'"

Meanwhile, throwing a "that" in the sentence as is, as in your example, would strike me as wordy and unnecessary, even out of place. "At a minimum, Schiff put it that "the Russians mounted ..." I think it reads better without the "that."




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 02, 2017, 02:04:38 pm
Aside from the perennially annoying habit of putting the verb, "put it," after a long string identifying the source, I don't think that would bother me.

That is annoying. but in this case it doesn't bother me because what comes before "put it" is shorter than these things sometimes are.

Quote
On the one hand, it might not have been a whole sentence. Schiff might have said "The very least we know for sure -- and I tell you this with utter certainty -- is that the Russians mounted ..." So in that case "The Russians" was not the beginning of the sentence and the writer paraphrased the first part.

I'm not following you here. Surely you aren't suggesting paraphrasing something and passing it off as a direct quotation?  :o

Quote
But I also don't think a sentence fragment quote requires "that." I would be fine with "At a minimum, some Trump campaign spending originated, as Schiff put it, 'with those zany Russians.'"

I completely disagree with you on the "that," but maybe that's just the way I was taught by various English composition teachers, including one who was also my journalism teacher.

On the other hand, I think that your rewrite is fine. It's perfectly grammatical and correctly uses lower case for the "w" in "with." "With those zany Russians" is just a phrase, not a whole sentence. "With" doesn't need to be capitalized.

Quote
Meanwhile, throwing a "that" in the sentence as is, as in your example, would strike me as wordy and unnecessary, even out of place. "At a minimum, Schiff put it that "the Russians mounted ..." I think it reads better without the "that."

I'm not following you here, either. You're saying it reads better without a "that," but you're putting in a "that."  ??? I if you're going to take out the "that," then the sentence should read,"'At a minimum', as Schiff put it, 'the Russians mounted. ...'"

I note that Steve Coll is dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, so he presumably knows what he's doing. However, I remain convinced that  ;D "The" needs to be capitalized. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.

And I'm blaming TNY rather than Coll.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 02, 2017, 06:16:56 pm
Aside from the perennially annoying habit of putting the verb, "put it," after a long string identifying the source, I don't think that would bother me.

"T'was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse," Clement Clarke Moore, clergyman and poet, said.

OK, I guess that's not strictly about TNY. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 02, 2017, 09:04:42 pm
I'm  not following you here. Surely you aren't suggesting paraphrasing something and passing it off as a direct quotation?  :o

No! I'm just saying he might have paraphrased something Schiff said that was too wordy or something to quote directly, then launched into the significant part in a direct quote.

Quote
I completely disagree with you on the "that," but maybe that's just the way I was taught by various English composition teachers, including one who was also my journalism teacher.

My high school English teachers didn't get very granular about stuff like, well, that. But at the risk of sounding immodest, at this point I trust my own judgement more than I do a high school English teacher's. I have seen essay writing instructions from my sons' high-school teachers that were atrocious. Basically, students at one of the leading pubic high schools (my sons') in a state known for high-quality education (Minnesota) do not get taught how to write proper essays. I'm not sure I was, either, also in a highly regarded suburban district in the same state admired for its schools. I didn't learn much about writing before college, and barely even then.

Quote
I'm not following you here, either. You're saying it reads better without a "that," but you're putting in a "that."  ???

I put in the "that" because I was testing it. I did not think it read as smoothly as the sentence sans "that." But the other thing that makes this sentence particularly awkward is the "put it." If he'd just used "said," the sentence might not be the talk of dinner tables across the land tonight.

Personally, I would write the sentence like this

Quote
At a minimum, "the Russians mounted what could be described as an independent expenditure campaign on Mr. Trump's behalf," said Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Or, if he wanted to end the sentence on the Trump thing for added emphasis, he could go

Quote
At a minimum, said Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, "the Russians mounted what could be described as an independent expenditure campaign on Mr. Trump's behalf."



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 04, 2017, 12:04:09 pm
I'm learning so much here! Things I learned, forgot, relearned and discarded years ago!

I wonder how you feel about the use of the definite article, particularly at the beginning of a title or sentence? My (distant) ancestor Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote: “Home is the sailor, home from sea”. He wanted the noun to be anarthrous (lacking the definite article) — like, say, the title of Treasure Island (it wasn’t “The Treasure Island”). He also assigned an anarthrous title to the story he based on the wicked Deacon William Brodie’s double life: He called it Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Publishers recoiled at this grammatical oddity. Some prefixed “The”; others dropped the first three words, calling it Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And he titled my favorite work Kidnapped, instead of The Kidnapping.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 04, 2017, 12:32:52 pm
I wonder how you feel about the use of the definite article, particularly at the beginning of a title or sentence? My (distant) ancestor Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote: “Home is the sailor, home from sea”. He wanted the noun to be anarthrous (lacking the definite article) — like, say, the title of Treasure Island (it wasn’t “The Treasure Island”). He also assigned an anarthrous title to the story he based on the wicked Deacon William Brodie’s double life: He called it Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Publishers recoiled at this grammatical oddity. Some prefixed “The”; others dropped the first three words, calling it Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. And he titled my favorite work Kidnapped, instead of The Kidnapping.

I don't think there's a rule about that. Sometimes omitting the "the" can make a title sound a bit snappier. It seems like it's in the ear of the beholder. To me, Treasure Island and Kidnapped sound better than the alternatives. But Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, sans "the," sounds weird to me.

The situation I've struggled with is in reference to an organization, such as FDA or AARP. I normally would put a "the" before those. But I've noticed that the organizations themselves tend to omit the "the," like "FDA has approved such and such ..." In the case of AARP, an official from the organization told me directly that they don't use "the."

Maybe this only applies to organizations with acronyms; I'm not sure.

But there's no real rhyme or reason to this. For example, you could say you saw a sebment from a TV show "on television." But you wouldn't say you saw the very same video "on internet." (Though you might say you saw it "online."  :))

What's even more confusing to me is "on" vs. "in." I run into this whenever I say where my work has been published. If it's an internet site, like Salon, I would normally say "on Salon." If it's a newspaper or magazine, like Real Simple, I would say "in Real Simple." But basically, they're the same things -- magazines. It's just that one is in pixels and one is in print. This causes a problem when I'm listing all my stuff at once, for a resume or bio, and trying to figure out what article to use: "My work has appeared ..." in or on?



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2017, 05:24:57 pm
My (distant) ancestor Robert Louis Stevenson, wrote: “Home is the sailor, home from sea”. He wanted the noun to be anarthrous (lacking the definite article)

It's been a long time for me, but isn't that from a poem? Do the same rules apply to poetry as to prose?

Quote
— like, say, the title of Treasure Island (it wasn’t “The Treasure Island”).

I always assumed Treasure Island was supposed to be a place name, rather than an adjective and a noun, but that might be because the copy I had when I was a boy had a map of the fictitious  island.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on December 05, 2017, 10:55:38 pm

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/republican-women-in-alabama-sound-off-on-moore
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
News Desk
Republican Women in Alabama Sound Off on
Roy Moore

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59e12fa5b94d05552848a36f/1:1/w_130,c_limit/bethea-charles-01.png)By Charles Bethea   December 1, 2017

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a21bef7ee2b8162b3f3b06c/master/w_1023,c_limit/Bethea-Republican-Women-in-Alabama-Sound-off-on-Roy-Moore.jpg)
“If that guy doesn’t think I need to be anywhere but the kitchen birthing babies, he can kiss my ass,”
one member of the Alabama Republican Party said, of Roy Moore.
Photograph by Brynn Anderson / AP



On Wednesday evening, ThinkProgress reported that Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Alabama’s open Senate seat, co-authored a 2011 textbook called “Law and Government: An Introductory Study Course.” The book’s Amazon page, which includes a single rating, of five stars, states that the book “provides an understanding of today’s legal, moral, and ethical issues of law and government.” One of its subjects is the appropriate role of women in society. As ThinkProgress notes, the book, which consists of lectures by several men, “instructs students that women should not be permitted to run for elected office. If women do run for office, the course argues, people have a moral obligation not to vote for them.” Additionally, the book criticizes the women’s-suffrage movement. Another of its authors is Doug Phillips, a proponent of so-called Biblical patriarchy who resigned from Vision Forum—a now-defunct evangelical organization, which helped produce the textbook—after admitting to an affair with a girl who later filed a suit alleging that Phillips began grooming her for sexual abuse when she was fifteen.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Moore told The Washingtonian  that “Judge Moore has never stated or believed that women are unqualified for public office.” I spent much of yesterday speaking with Republican women in Alabama who either have worked or continue to work for conservative causes and candidates. I asked them how Moore’s connection to the Vision Forum textbook could affect the support he receives in the December 12th election, which recent polls give him an edge to win over the Democrat, Doug Jones. (Jones had previously surged ahead in some polling, partly on the strength of female support, but his momentum seems to have ebbed.) Most of the women answered on the record, despite the negative repercussions that doing so could have on their party standing. Elizabeth BeShears is a political-communications consultant based in Birmingham. “In Alabama, we talk all the time about how, historically, the men run but the women are the ones who get them elected,” BeShears told me. “As a woman who has worked hard to get Republicans elected to office, at all levels in the state, it’s extremely worrying to me to know that somebody who’s supposed to represent us at one of the highest levels in the country doesn’t think I’m good enough to serve in any capacity in political leadership.”

BeShears went on, “For folks under forty in particular, Roy Moore has been a source of embarrassment—not a source of pride—for the majority of our lives. We don’t want to reward that by putting him in the Senate, where he’ll have an even larger stage—or pulpit, as he probably imagines it—to talk about his brand of Christianity. It’s time that the Republican Party in Alabama knows that we’re not going to stand for being told that they have to vote for a person just because they have an ‘R’ beside their name.” Who would BeShears vote for? “I am prayerfully considering voting for Doug Jones.”

Another powerful female figure in the state Party, who asked to remain unnamed, was more explicit. The textbook’s anti-woman argument was, for her, one of the most damning stories about Moore so far. “Does that mean our governor shouldn’t be governor?” she asked, referring to Kay Ivey. “Our Supreme Court Chief Justice shouldn’t be Supreme Court Chief Justice, and our Republican Party state chairwoman shouldn’t be chairwoman?” (Those positions are currently held by Lyn Stuart and Terry Lathan, respectively.) “Because, I’ll tell you, I wasn’t gonna vote at all until this morning,” she continued. “I wasn’t gonna vote for Moore or Jones. Now I’m voting for Doug Jones. Because if that guy”—Moore—“doesn’t think I need to be anywhere but the kitchen birthing babies, he can kiss my ass.” She added, “I can’t say it publicly because it’ll ruin my career, and I don’t know how to do anything other than politics in Alabama. I would be without income tomorrow. I can’t stand up and say anything. But if I’m not good enough to be in government, then I’m not good enough to vote for him, either.”

Collier Tynes describes herself as a “Christian, pro-life conservative and lifelong Republican.” Until earlier this year, Tynes worked as the chief of staff to the former Alabama First Lady Dianne Bentley, who is now the ex-wife of the disgraced governor Robert Bentley. Tynes played down the impact of the textbook. “At this point, lifelong Republicans are not surprised by Judge Moore’s association with a book that takes scripture out of context and preaches invalid beliefs,” Tynes told me. “It’s the credible allegations of child molestation against Judge Moore that rightfully have pro-life Christians staying home on Election Day or surrendering their votes to a Republican write-in candidate.” Tynes declined to publicly state for whom she would be voting, though, as she has said elsewhere, it would not be Moore.

Then there are those female supporters of Moore for whom the textbook revelation is, to quote Alabama’s state auditor Jim Zeigler, much ado about very little. Debbie Dooley, the co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party and a Moore backer, argued, in an e-mail, that just because Moore was one of the textbook’s authors doesn’t mean that he shares all the views within it. “It is like being part of an event, but you don’t necessarily agree with all the speakers,” she wrote. She went on, “I don’t believe for a minute that he believes that way. He has too many strong women around him, including his wife Kayla. He also had Sarah Palin campaign for him and has praised her.” As ThinkProgress reported, Moore has never publicly endorsed a female candidate for office.

BeShears told me that she fears that this latest revelation will have a marginal effect on the vote. “People have made up their minds about voting for him or not—barring something just absolutely crazy coming out in the next week and a half,” she said, adding, “It’s sad to me to have to say that, in the context of Moore’s reputation, this textbook thing isn’t fatal. It would sink a lot of other people. But he has such a loyal base that I don’t know what it would take to get them not to vote for him.” Tynes was slightly more optimistic but, nonetheless, sounded despairing about the situation. “Defending victims of childhood molestation and the importance of women in government should not be controversial. Thus, the Alabama Republican Party’s continued support of Roy Moore has put lifelong Republican voters in a horrible position.”



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59e12fa5b94d05552848a36f/1:1/w_130,c_limit/bethea-charles-01.png) Charles Bethea is a contributing writer for newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com) and has written for The New Yorker since 2008.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2017, 04:20:47 pm
Here's a funny one, from an online political column about Al Franken stepping down.

Quote
Consider the tax bill, which is stitched together from shameless greed and boldface lies.

Republicans may well be shameless, but I don't think they've become shameless enough yet to put their lies in boldface. Clearly s/he means "bald-faced lies."

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/al-franken-resignation-and-the-selective-force-of-metoo?mbid=nl_Daily%20120817%20Subs&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=12526068&spUserID=MTMzMTgyNzYxNTMyS0&spJobID=1300779312&spReportId=MTMwMDc3OTMxMgS2 (https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/al-franken-resignation-and-the-selective-force-of-metoo?mbid=nl_Daily%20120817%20Subs&CNDID=26521759&spMailingID=12526068&spUserID=MTMzMTgyNzYxNTMyS0&spJobID=1300779312&spReportId=MTMwMDc3OTMxMgS2)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2017, 04:30:35 pm
Oops! I may stand corrected, with (as always) a reference to Shakespeare:

Quote
The third version [after bald-faced and bare-faced] is your boldfaced lie. A story one sometimes hears in support of it falls firmly into the area of folk etymology — that it comes from a lie knowingly told in print because it was printed for emphasis in bold type. But bold-faced goes back to Shakespeare in the sense of a shameless or impudent appearance, so it’s reasonable that a boldfaced lie is one told with a shamelessly bold face. At times it’s regarded as an error, though it’s to be found almost as early as barefaced lie:

The sneer, the sarcasm, the one-sided statement, the perplexing reference, the qualified concession, the bold-faced lie, — all these we could well illustrate by samples of the current crop. -- Eclectic Review, Sept. 1832.

When we call a lie baldfaced or boldfaced ... either one is just fine, though baldfaced is a bit more common. But we could save ourselves trouble by following the rest of the Anglophone world, which avoids the issue simply by using barefaced for most kinds of openly shocking behavior. -- Jan Freeman, writing in the Boston Globe in June 2002.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bal2.htm (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bal2.htm)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 09, 2017, 08:03:00 pm
There are many kind of lies. Who knew?

At least he did not say unabashedly. One of my least-favorite words lately.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 10, 2017, 11:01:05 am
At least he did not say unabashedly. One of my least-favorite words lately.

Why?   ???


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 10, 2017, 11:11:58 am
It's just way overused. I think people get carried away with the "bash" part of it. Plus, there are so many prefixes and suffixes attached to the root word that it's almost impossible to tell what the word means. Why use so many syllables when a better, shorter word, like "boldly" could be substituted? Nobody knows what "bash" means, anyway. Look it up and it's a verb; or in British English it's a party. And abash by itself? It means "to destroy the self-confidence, poise, or self-possession of". I think a lot of people who use the word don't realize what it means, they just like the sound of it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 10, 2017, 02:35:12 pm
It's just way overused. I think people get carried away with the "bash" part of it. Plus, there are so many prefixes and suffixes attached to the root word that it's almost impossible to tell what the word means. Why use so many syllables when a better, shorter word, like "boldly" could be substituted? Nobody knows what "bash" means, anyway. Look it up and it's a verb; or in British English it's a party. And abash by itself? It means "to destroy the self-confidence, poise, or self-possession of". I think a lot of people who use the word don't realize what it means, they just like the sound of it.

Maybe it's the people you hang out with. I can't say the last time I heard, or even read, somebody used "unabashedly."

And, by the way, "Nobody knows what 'bash' means"? Oh, yes, they do. Just ask any gay man.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 11, 2017, 10:50:32 am
"Abashed" as an adjective means embarrassed, ashamed, disconcerted. Unabashed, therefore, means not embarrassed or ashamed, and the adverb unabashedly means doing something despite it being potentially embarrassing or shameful. (It's also probably related to "bashful.")

So it's not quite an exact synonym for boldly, because you could do something boldly that wouldn't be embarrassing -- "boldly go where no man has gone before," for example. Yo wouldn't say the U.S.S. Enterprise was "not ashamed" to seek out new lives, new civilizations.

You might say, "He unabashedly requested cash contributions from everyone at the party." That could be a bold move as well, but "unabashedly" adds a bit of extra meaning, implying the speaker would find it embarrassing to impose on people that way.

And while we're on the subject, I hereby declare that the rule against splitting infinitives is silly, especially if you're splitting them with an adverb. "To boldly go" isn't the English-teacher-proper formulation. But "Boldly to go" sounds dumb and "to go boldly" is slightly awkward. In most cases, putting the adverb between the "to" and the verb sounds most natural.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 11, 2017, 01:18:27 pm
And while we're on the subject, I hereby declare that the rule against splitting infinitives is silly, especially if you're splitting them with an adverb. "To boldly go" isn't the English-teacher-proper formulation. But "Boldly to go" sounds dumb and "to go boldly" is slightly awkward. In most cases, putting the adverb between the "to" and the verb sounds most natural.

That's a well-known argument for it being OK to split an infinitive.  :)

I suppose Capt. Kirk et al. were also unabashed to boldly go. ...  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 11, 2017, 01:42:24 pm
That's a well-known argument for it being OK to split an infinitive.  :)

True. There are probably other rusty grammatical rules, like ending a sentence on a preposition, that the same thing has happened to.  :laugh:

Quote
I suppose Capt. Kirk et al. were also unabashed to boldly go. ...  ;D

Yes, they seemed pretty unabashed. And of course Spock was theoretically unable to feel abashed, so he did everything unabashedly.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 12, 2017, 11:03:08 am
Apparently there's a short story in a recent New Yorker called 'Cat Person.' I rarely read the NYer's fiction these days, but I might try to find this one; it sounds interesting. What caught my eye was this piece about it:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/12/11/too_bad_twitter_turned_the_new_yorker_s_cat_person_story_into_a_piping_hot.html (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/12/11/too_bad_twitter_turned_the_new_yorker_s_cat_person_story_into_a_piping_hot.html)

Quote
The last time I can remember a short story in the New Yorker being as enthusiastically talked-about as Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person” was when Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” was published by the magazine in 1997. That autumn it seemed that every literary gathering had to reserve at least 15 minutes to rhapsodizing over the story. At present, “Cat Person” has been dominating my feeds to a degree that a New Yorker story never has before, and of course because this is the age of social media, countless people have also found countless sententious reasons to dislike it.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 12, 2017, 11:09:14 am
Anybody else hear that Ryan Lizza got fired?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-new-yorker-severs-ties-with-star-reporter-ryan-lizza (https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-new-yorker-severs-ties-with-star-reporter-ryan-lizza)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 12, 2017, 12:12:58 pm
Wow, those must be serious accusations.  ???

I read the story "Cat Person" mainly because it was short. It was a fairly good story but not a "Brokeback Mountain" by any means. For writing about the sorry state of straight dating today, I prefer "Modern Romance" by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ0TMYG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OZ0TMYG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 12, 2017, 01:27:19 pm
Apparently there's a short story in a recent New Yorker called 'Cat Person.' I rarely read the NYer's fiction these days, but I might try to find this one; it sounds interesting. What caught my eye was this piece about it:

I'm unusually far behind in my mags, even for me. Either I didn't read this story, since I rarely read the short fiction, or I haven't gotten to it yet. I'm only now zeroing in on finishing the Nov. 27 issue. I'm finishing the article on the Mexican woman and the People's Police. That sounds very much like a neighbor town watch I participated in back in the first half of the Nineties, except we didn't have vehicles. Or guns.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 12, 2017, 04:36:57 pm
Wow, those must be serious accusations.  ???


With each new one of these episodes, I get increasingly worried that at some point the fairness pendulum will swing the other way.

I mean, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Roy Moore ... no question about any of them and they got what they deserve (except possibly Roy Moore -- today's the election!). Charlie Rose's and Matt Lauer's misdeeds seem well documented, Al Franken's milder misbehavior alas, seems fairly indisputable at this point. And I suspect there's more to Garrison Keillor's story than we've heard, just based on the fact that Minnesota Public Radio didn't just fire Keillor -- it blew up its own most famous brand and shows as well. I suspect they would not have brought upon their own loss on the basis of an accidental back touch. As for Trump, well, he bragged about his own assaults, then shrugged them off as "locker room talk," then denied having said them even though according to Billy Bush there were eight witnesses on the bus. Pretty cut and dried.

But ones like this, where it's one anonymous person saying undisclosed things about a man who says they dated, and he loses multiple opportunities as a result ... At this point, we seem urged to always believe the accuser and I'm less and less able to be rock-solid sure. I mean, I'm not questioning or doubting Lizza's case specifically. But it seems like a potentially harmful setup -- losing a career, perhaps permanently, isn't quite like going to prison but it's a pretty severe punishment. As a society we demand more proof and due process for imprisoning people (and even then, we make mistakes all the time!).


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 12, 2017, 05:29:17 pm
With each new one of these episodes, I get increasingly worried that at some point the fairness pendulum will swing the other way.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Do you mean like the bad old days when a rape victim was practically put on trial instead of her rapist?

Quote
But ones like this, where it's one anonymous person saying undisclosed things about a man who says they dated, and he loses multiple opportunities as a result ... At this point, we seem urged to always believe the accuser and I'm less and less able to be rock-solid sure. I mean, I'm not questioning or doubting Lizza's case specifically. But it seems like a potentially harmful setup -- losing a career, perhaps permanently, isn't quite like going to prison but it's a pretty severe punishment. As a society we demand more proof and due process for imprisoning people (and even then, we make mistakes all the time!).

I won't highlight or quote, but I agree that this situation is cause for concern. I wonder if Lizza has had or will have an opportunity to confront his accuser?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 13, 2017, 12:12:54 pm
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Do you mean like the bad old days when a rape victim was practically put on trial instead of her rapist?

No. I think we've mostly passed that point, thank god.

What I mean is, it's obviously unfair for women to have to keep quiet or be ignored when they report harassment/assault to protect powerful predators. When there's clear evidence, including women speaking publicly, possibly multiple women or multiple events, I think that's enough for the public to agree that the men deserved their fates. I'm very glad the pendulum has swung against Weinstein et. al. (Franken's is a more complex case, tangled as it is in politics.)

However, when it's one anonymous person reporting something not described publicly and it destroys the entire career of a man who says they were just dating, I still think the accuser very possibly has a good case, but also feel like I need more information to really get behind it. "Always believe the accuser" is a nice guideline, and reliable in probably 99% of cases, but not quite all, human nature being what it is.

Of course, these are confidential personnel matters, not criminal charges, so the companies is 19 and can do what it wants and it's not up to the public to decide. But the public decides anyway! So at some point, people may start erring on the side of skepticism, and I'm not really welcoming that.

As it is, a man banned from a mall was almost elected a U.S. senator!  :o

Quote
I won't highlight or quote, but I agree that this situation is cause for concern. I wonder if Lizza has had or will have an opportunity to confront his accuser?

Well, he seems to know who his accuser was and as long as said accuser hasn't taken out a restraining order, I assume he can confront them in private if he has an opportunity. But unless the accuser files criminal charges, it won't happen in a courtroom.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2018, 03:43:19 pm
Well, here's something that I really do consider unpardonable.

On page 41 of the Jan. 1 issue, there is a direct quotation where the opening quotation mark is at the end of one line, and the first word of the quotation begins the succeeding line.

If TNY doesn't have people who can fix something like that, it should.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on January 19, 2018, 10:40:42 pm
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/the-ferocious-sublime-dolores-oriordan-of-the-cranberries
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)

Postscript
The Ferocious, Sublime
Dolores O’Riordan, of
the Cranberries

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b8bebe912338a378689/1:1/w_48,c_limit/petrusich-amanda.png)By By Amanda Petrusich   January 16, 2018

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a5e16335989071d2c63eb6d/master/w_1023,c_limit/Petrusich-Dolores-ORiordan.jpg)
Dolores O’Riordan, who died on Monday, helped further the then-iffy-seeming idea that a woman could be both beautiful
and ferocious.
Photograph by Tim Roney / Getty



The Irish singer Dolores O’Riordan, who fronted the alt-rock band the Cranberries since 1989, died on Monday, at the age of forty-six. O’Riordan was managing several health issues at the time of her death—she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2015 and had been suffering from back pain, which resulted in the cancellation of a Cranberries reunion tour last year. Her body was found in a hotel on Park Lane, in central London; her death was described as sudden and unexplained.

O’Riordan was born in Ballybricken, in County Limerick, in 1971. She was the youngest of seven children and just eighteen when she joined the Cranberries. Her folks were strict: as a teen-ager, she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup or buy her own clothes. In an interview with the Irish Times, she recalled how the guitarist Noel Hogan brought her a pair of Doc Martens to wear for the band’s first photo shoot. “They were too big for me, but I put them on anyway,” she said. “Suddenly I looked like an indie girl.”

Like many people, the first time I heard her sing was on “Linger,” an early single that ended up in fairly heavy rotation on MTV in 1993. The black-and-white video, directed by Melodie McDaniel, was based loosely on Jean-Luc Godard’s “Alphaville,” a film that considers the potency of desire. It’s a hazy, sentimental song about realizing that you’re on the bummer end of a lopsided relationship. “You know I’m such a fool for you,” O’Riordan sings. She’s asking, in a way, for mercy—a final show of kindness: “You’ve got me wrapped around your finger / Do you have to let it linger?” I wasn’t old enough to understand the particular humiliation of being duped and strung along by someone you loved and trusted, but I nonetheless recognized the deep agony and confusion in her voice when she asked, “Why were you holding her hand?”

Still, it wasn’t until “Zombie,” the first single from the band’s second album, “No Need to Argue,” that the sublime recklessness of O’Riordan’s voice became fully evident. By then, the Cranberries were the most successful Irish rock band since U2. Most of the other rock singers I admired at the time (Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth; Kim and Kelley Deal, of the Breeders; Kathleen Hanna, of Bikini Kill) sounded plainly and hopelessly cool—disaffected, vaguely antagonistic, and aloof. O’Riordan sounded like a maniac. “Zombie” was written as a memorial for two children—the twelve-year-old Jonathan Ball and the three-year-old Tim Parry—who were killed in an I.R.A. street bombing, in Warrington, England, in 1993 (the explosives were hidden in garbage cans). She goes feral on the chorus: “Zombie-ie-ie-ie-oh-oh-oh-oh!” It’s all terrifically guttural—ugly, wild, and paralyzing. For an American kid, her round Irish accent made the word seem even stranger, as if she were conjuring something otherworldly, only to vanquish it.



[Note by JG: the author of this New Yorker  article has mistakenly switched the ages of the two killed children (I'm a bit shocked--what has happened to the once storied New Yorker  fact checkers?); the children's names and ages are rather:

Three-year-old Johnathan Ball died at the scene. He had been in town with his babysitter, shopping for a Mother's Day card.[1] The second victim, 12-year-old Tim Parry, was gravely wounded. He died on 25 March 1993 when his life support machine was switched off, after tests had found only minimal brain activity.[6] 54 other people were injured, four of them seriously.[5] One of the survivors, 32-year-old Bronwen Vickers, the mother of two young daughters, had to have a leg amputated, and died just over a year later from cancer.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrington_bomb_attacks ]



The album went seven-times platinum in the U.S. The band played “Zombie” on “Saturday Night Live,” in 1995. What I find most remarkable about the performance is how soft and blank O’Riordan appears. It reminds me of how, in the movies, when people are tasked with channelling a spirit, their faces go fully slack—the body is given over to the mission. On “S.N.L.,” everything O’Riordan had was being channelled into that vocal. It wasn’t until at least a decade later that I realized she was evoking, in a roundabout way, the fervor of pre-war Irish fiddlers, like Michael Coleman or James Morrison, and the gravity of the great British ballad singers. Conventional prettiness didn’t hold much water there. The idea was only to express something true.

After releasing five albums, the Cranberries went on hiatus, in 2003. O’Riordan made her solo début, in 2007, with the album “Are You Listening?” and later became a judge on Ireland’s version of “The Voice.” The band reunited for a tour in 2009, and released two more albums: “Roses,” in 2012, and “Something Else,” in 2017. In 2014, she grew belligerent on an Aer Lingus flight from New York City to Shannon, Ireland; it was later characterized, in the press, as an “air rage” incident, in which O’Riordan allegedly stomped on a flight attendant’s foot and head-butted a guard. (She later apologized for the behavior.)

I suspect every young woman eventually finds a figure (or, more likely, a series of figures) who helps disabuse her of certain stifling notions about femininity, of all the outmoded binaries—the things a woman is supposed to choose between as she comes into her own. It feels almost quaint to point out now, in a cultural moment in which we’re rethinking the whole of gender dynamics, but, in the early nineties, O’Riordan helped further the then-iffy-seeming idea that a woman could be both beautiful and ferocious. She appeared accountable only to some internal voice—which meant we could be, too.



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b8bebe912338a378689/1:1/w_130,c_limit/petrusich-amanda.png) Amanda Petrusich is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and the author of “Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 25, 2018, 08:14:55 pm
Tell you what, I've been kind of distracted, so I've been forgetting to mention: I'm actually caught up on my New Yorkers!  :o

And I like Roz Chast's cover of the January 29 issue.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 25, 2018, 09:25:34 pm
Tell you what, I've been kind of distracted, so I've been forgetting to mention: I'm actually caught up on my New Yorkers!  :o

I've never achieved that.  :-\

Quote
And I like Roz Chast's cover of the January 29 issue.  ;D

Same!



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on January 26, 2018, 08:35:11 am
(https://www.discountmags.com/shopimages/products/normal/extra/i/8304-the-new-yorker-Cover-2018-January-29-Issue.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 26, 2018, 11:39:18 am
 :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on January 27, 2018, 10:29:16 am
That cover is too funny!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 27, 2018, 07:03:13 pm
She really captured it.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on January 28, 2018, 06:29:44 pm
OMG, I just looked at the cover again, I actually do have a dentist appointment on the 30th!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 29, 2018, 10:28:03 am
OMG, I just looked at the cover again, I actually do have a dentist appointment on the 30th!  :laugh:

In that case, be careful out there on the ice today!  :laugh

The ice here is treacherous because it got up to 40 on Friday, maybe 35 on Saturday, and has been below 32 since. Today the high is 17. There's a patch of glare ice at the end of my front walk. I keep forgetting to chop it up with the ice chopper. In the meantime, I've been walking to one of my neighbors' walks because the other two choices seem to be 1) slip on the ice 2) clamber through a snowbank.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 29, 2018, 10:45:54 am
In that case, be careful out there on the ice today!  :laugh

The ice here is treacherous because it got up to 40 on Friday, maybe 35 on Saturday, and has been below 32 since. Today the high is 17. There's a patch of glare ice at the end of my front walk. I keep forgetting to chop it up with the ice chopper. In the meantime, I've been walking to one of my neighbors' walks because the other two choices seem to be 1) slip on the ice 2) clamber through a snowbank.


Once ice starts to melt and gets a layer of water on top of it, or if the temperature warms and it rains on top of the ice, there is absolutely no walking on it. You really do take your life in your hands if you try it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 29, 2018, 02:35:24 pm
There are these big rubber bands with metal coils on them that you can put on your shoes. They're called Yak Traks. They help with traction. Plus a trekking pole or walking stick helps too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on January 29, 2018, 07:39:44 pm
My father has a pair of those, I believe.  I've never seen him slip on the ice.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 31, 2018, 11:03:50 am
I've heard of those. They'd be good for a longer walk, but if you're just going out to the car to drive to the grocery store or work it seems like overkill.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 05, 2018, 06:48:19 pm
Is anyone reading the fiction this issue, "Bronze" by Jeffrey Eugenides? Going back to the early 1970s. . .
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 05, 2018, 07:02:42 pm
Is anyone reading the fiction this issue, "Bronze" by Jeffrey Eugenides? Going back to the early 1970s. . .

Haven't got to that yet. I might read that because of the author's name.

Right now I'm reading Michael Chabon's article. I recognize that name, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 05, 2018, 10:46:23 pm
I read his book Middlesex, which was pretty good. This story, I'm not so sure of but at least it reads at a good clip.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 06, 2018, 12:48:49 pm
I was doing some research on the writing of Frankenstein 200 years ago and read this marvellous article by Jill LePore:

Twisted Life of Frankenstein (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein?mbid=nl_Magazine%20020518%20Magazine&CNDID=18632875&spMailingID=12878252&spUserID=MjI2MjM0MTY1NjYyS0&spJobID=1340427558&spReportId=MTM0MDQyNzU1OAS2)

Then, when I came to the end of it, I found out it's in the NEXT issue of The New Yorker! So, I'm actually ahead on my NY reading! I don't want to make a habit of that, though.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2018, 08:59:36 pm
I'm about to delve into forbidden territory yet again! There's an article about Penzey's CEO who mixes politics with spices and I may not be able to resist!

Meanwhile there's a funny article in McSweeney's (I think it's like the NY) about alternatives to resting bitch face:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternatives-to-resting-bitch-face (https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/alternatives-to-resting-bitch-face)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 08, 2018, 10:36:19 am
I plan to read the Frankenstein article, but I started with Adam Gopnik's book review piece about the huge decline in crime over the past couple of decades and how nobody seems to know about it. I've often wondered myself why that isn't more discussed. When Donald Trump kept using inner city crime during his campaign as evidence that America is getting worse, I kept thinking, why doesn't anyone point out how wrong he is?

Last year there were 650 murders in Chicago. I just googled it to get the exact number, and all of the google hits, at least at the top, said things like "Chicago murder rate down sharply, but still 650 killed." Always the "but still." These were items from places that Trump would call fake news, like CNN. Not to minimize 650 people's deaths. But Chicago's population is 9.5 million.

When I lived in New Orleans in the early '90s, it was the murder capital of the country. There was at least a murder a day. It peaked at 450 in 1994. New Orleans' population then was just under 500,000.

So Chicago had less than twice as many murders with 19 times as many people. That's pretty mind-blowing.

According to the google page, Chicago's rate is still higher than most major cities. That's worth pointing out. But how often does anyone comment on this gigantic decline?

One possible factor furthering this misconception is that, according to that New Yorker story a while back about Grand Junction, CO, a big Trump-supporter area, the murder rate in places like Grand Junction actually has gone up. Apparently because of economic problems in depressed areas. So maybe Trump voters were under the impression that crime was booming out of control everywhere -- if it's that bad in Grand Junction, what must it be like in places like Chicago?!

And in this case, the MSM isn't doing a very good job of educating anyone. I just happen to know about it because I lived in NOLA, wrote about crime there and have done the math. And Adam Gopnik knows about it. But I'm not sure how many others do.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 08, 2018, 10:40:44 am
Meanwhile there's a funny article in McSweeney's (I think it's like the NY) about alternatives to resting bitch face:

McSweeney's is like the New Yorker if the New Yorker were all "Shouts and Murmurs." That is, it's humor. It doesn't do big serious duty articles or even big interesting articles like the Frankenstein one or the crime one. It's all hip goofy humor.

But it can be a rabbit hole -- so much good stuff, and a lot of it very funny!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on February 08, 2018, 12:40:41 pm
I plan to read the Frankenstein article, but I started with Adam Gopnik's book review piece about the huge decline in crime over the past couple of decades and how nobody seems to know about it. I've often wondered myself why that isn't more discussed. When Donald Trump kept using inner city crime during his campaign as evidence that America is getting worse, I kept thinking, why doesn't anyone point out how wrong he is?

Last year there were 650 murders in Chicago. I just googled it to get the exact number, and all of the google hits, at least at the top, said things like "Chicago murder rate down sharply, but still 650 killed." Always the "but still." These were items from places that Trump would call fake news, like CNN. Not to minimize 650 people's deaths. But Chicago's population is 9.5 million.

When I lived in New Orleans in the early '90s, it was the murder capital of the country. There was at least a murder a day. It peaked at 450 in 1994. New Orleans' population then was just under 500,000.

So Chicago had less than twice as many murders with 19 times as many people. That's pretty mind-blowing.

According to the google page, Chicago's rate is still higher than most major cities. That's worth pointing out. But how often does anyone comment on this gigantic decline?

One possible factor furthering this misconception is that, according to that New Yorker story a while back about Grand Junction, CO, a big Trump-supporter area, the murder rate in places like Grand Junction actually has gone up. Apparently because of economic problems in depressed areas. So maybe Trump voters were under the impression that crime was booming out of control everywhere -- if it's that bad in Grand Junction, what must it be like in places like Chicago?!

And in this case, the MSM isn't doing a very good job of educating anyone. I just happen to know about it because I lived in NOLA, wrote about crime there and have done the math. And Adam Gopnik knows about it. But I'm not sure how many others do.




https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-2017.html
(https://www.nytco.com/wp-content/themes/nytco/images/nytco/NYT-wordmark.png)
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s
By Ashley Southall Dec. 27, 2017


It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but as of Wednesday there have been just 286 in the city this year — the lowest since reliable records have been kept.

In fact, crime has fallen in New York City in each of the major felony categories — murder and manslaughter, rape, assault, robbery, burglary, grand larceny, and car thefts — to a total of 94,806 as of Sunday, well below the previous record low of 101,716 set last year.

If the trend holds just a few more days, this year’s homicide total will be under the city’s previous low of 333 in 2014, and crime will have declined for 27 straight years, to levels that police officials have said are the lowest since the 1950s. The numbers, when taken together, portray a city of 8.5 million people growing safer even as the police, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, use less deadly force, make fewer arrests and scale back controversial practices like stopping and frisking thousands of people on the streets.

“There is no denying that the arc is truly exceptional in the unbroken streak of declining crime,” said William J. Bratton, who retired from his second stint as police commissioner last year.




ON THE OTHER HAND--



http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/trump-silence-racist-murder-nyc-speaks-volumes-article-1.3006993
(https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/logopedia/images/f/fe/New_York_Daily_News_logo.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141211014717)
President Trump’s Twitter silence on Timothy Caughman’s murder by white supremacist speaks volumes
By LEONARD GREENE Thursday, March 23, 2017, 3:06 PM





AND A PERSONAL NOTE--

In the summer of 1994, August, a Sunday afternoon, I was on 9th Street and Avenue 'A' (the edge of edgy 'Alphabet City'--some of my friends called it Alphabetland, the actual name of a pre-school for kids) and I suddenly exclaimed to a semi-acquaintance who just happened to be walking by as I was having a personal epiphany: "This is it! Summer of 1994! Something is happening!" My semi-acquaintance smiled, although I never did know if he really understood my revelation. Summer 1994 was lovely, sunny and mild, and "interesting" (but very dicey) Alphabet City suddenly seemed Alphabetland safe.

So. I just now googled this article from January 1, 1995, which I had never previously read--





http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-falls-but-just-why-is-a-mystery.html
(https://www.nytco.com/wp-content/themes/nytco/images/nytco/NYT-wordmark.png)
New York City Crime Falls But Just Why Is a Mystery
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS Published: January 1, 1995


Behind the bloodcurdling headlines about a firebombing on the No. 4 train, a drive-by shooting on the Brooklyn Bridge and the killing of a police officer in a botched bicycle store holdup, behind the back-to-back campaigns that elected a new Mayor vowing to improve the quality of life in New York City and a new Governor committed to bring back the death penalty, lies an often-overlooked fact.

Crime in New York City is dropping. And dropping fast.

Murders, which had been falling gradually over the previous three years, dropped sharply, by nearly a fifth, in 1994. Over all, 350 fewer people were slain in 1994 than in the year before, and 650 fewer than in 1990, when murders, many of them fueled by the crack epidemic, reached a peak.

Shootings dropped by more than 15 percent, the latest police statistics show. And virtually every type of reported felony declined in frequency last year, with auto theft, grand larceny, burglary and robbery all dropping by better than 10 percent.

True, violent crime remains a constant menace of city life. The nearly 1,600 homicides that were committed in 1994 are still about four times the 390 killings that the city recorded in 1960. And a growing number of crimes are committed by teen-agers, whose vicious and often random acts of violence have raised fear to a level that statistics cannot overcome.

But coming after the staggering increases in crimes through the late 1980's -- a lethal period that culminated in mid-1990 with a string of senseless killings and a tabloid headline plea to Mayor David N. Dinkins to "Do Something, Dave" -- the latest figures show a surprising reversal.

The changes, which are mirrored in many cities across the country, have mystified criminologists. They offer a number of theories, from intensified police efforts to demographic shifts to a growing number of criminals behind bars, but no single explanation for the phenemenon.

(and etc.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on February 08, 2018, 06:47:24 pm
that list of faces was too funny!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 09, 2018, 11:30:04 am

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/27/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-2017.html
(https://www.nytco.com/wp-content/themes/nytco/images/nytco/NYT-wordmark.png)
Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s
By Ashley Southall Dec. 27, 2017


Thanks, John! Good to know the MSM isn't entirely remiss. I didn't go to the links yet, but I hope those articles delve into demographics, which I previously thought were the main reason for the change. I know the broken-window theory has been more or less discredited, but that Gen. X is much smaller than Boomers, so as those people moved into crime-committing age, the crime rate would drop accordingly in those years.

But nowadays Gen Xers are now mostly out of the crime-committing age, Millennials outnumber Gen Xers and even Boomers, and millennials are in prime crime time. So clearly demographics don't entirely explain it.

I lived in New York the year before you had the epiphany in Alphabetland and according to my hazy memory and limited Upper West Side perspective, I had the sense the area had been dicey but was becoming somewhat safer. In years since then, of course, I have read that it totally is, but I attributed that to gentrification. My own epiphany in New York was that, while there were of course many more murders than there had been in NOLA (I lived in NYC in 1993-94, NOLA before and after), the per-capita  rate was lower, which was fairly obvious, but also that the murder numbers were psychologically deceiving because if you looked at a newspaper there would be many more reported than you'd have found in the New Orleans paper, so it would seem like a more dangerous place. Fear about crime is so irrationally based on what happens to grab people's attention, like a particularly horrible crime, however rare those might be.

The other thing I realized is that your chances of getting murdered in most parts of Manhattan were pretty low, but relatively high in some parts of the city. In NOLA murders were scattered around every neighborhood, including the wealthiest, including the French Quarter and other touristy spots, including on the steps of the sandwich shop kitty-corner from our apartment. They were slightly higher in really poor neighborhoods, as always, but the poor neighborhoods are scattered all over the city rather than relegated to certain areas, as in New York or Chicago or Minneapolis.

That's not good news for the people who live in high-crime neighborhoods, of course. It was only good news for me personally.






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2018, 02:11:46 pm
I'm enjoying the article about the guy's obsession with Antarctica, but at the same time I find his obsession scary.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 27, 2018, 02:19:50 pm
I gave up on the article about the British architect Thomas Heatherwick (Feb. 26). Too long and unengaging.

But I love that name, Thomas Heatherwick!  :D  I suppose when they pronounce it, the British elide (is that the word for it?) the "w," so it comes out sounding like "Heather'ick."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 27, 2018, 03:09:00 pm
On the decline in crime, it is to the ruling class's advantage for there to be a hulking mass of barbarians outside the door to terrorize the populace and keep them shuddering in fear. Rulers don't mind a high crime rate despite anything Trump might say. High crime affects the poor and minorities disproportionately and creates economic opportunities in manufacture of guns, their paraphernalia and new weaponry escalating in deadliness. Also, security services and a myriad of other things. I know people who are actually having secret rooms built into their homes to hide their weaponry.

There was a rogue economist named Steven Levitt who dated the start of the crime decline to the date when young men would be turning 16 except they did not exist due to Roe vs. Wade. (that sentence was tricky to compose!) The ruling class also wants there to be a large permanent population of poor people, it keeps wages low.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 28, 2018, 10:19:06 am
On the decline in crime, it is to the ruling class's advantage for there to be a hulking mass of barbarians outside the door to terrorize the populace and keep them shuddering in fear. Rulers don't mind a high crime rate despite anything Trump might say. High crime affects the poor and minorities disproportionately and creates economic opportunities in manufacture of guns, their paraphernalia and new weaponry escalating in deadliness. Also, security services and a myriad of other things. I know people who are actually having secret rooms built into their homes to hide their weaponry.

There was a rogue economist named Steven Levitt who dated the start of the crime decline to the date when young men would be turning 16 except they did not exist due to Roe vs. Wade. (that sentence was tricky to compose!) The ruling class also wants there to be a large permanent population of poor people, it keeps wages low.  >:(

Hmm. I don't think I would agree that the confusion over crime is deliberately manufactured by the entire "ruling class." For sure it was deliberately manufactured (or spread) by Trump, to rile up his lower-income supporters. I saw it happen in debates when he would describe places like Chicago (i.e., big cities with lots of black people) as roiling cauldrons of violent crime, implying it was getting worse and worse. I'd be yelling at the screen, "What the hell are you talking about? Crime is way down!" But, as I said earlier, people who live in medium-size cities -- i.e., the working-class part of Trump's base -- that were hard hit by the oil bust or whatever might actually be seeing some rise in local crime and therefore assume it's that much worse in "inner cities." Was it your friend on FB I started debating about this? Somebody in CO. She said crime was getting worse, jobs were getting scarcer, etc. and I said the opposite was true. Turned out we were just looking at it from different perspectives. We became friends on FB.

Creating the illusion of high crime might benefit the gun industry but the entire ruling class doesn't back the gun industry, and I can't think of many other industries besides the obvious (home alarm systems, etc.) that would benefit from an unrealistically high perception of crime.

I also don't think I would agree that the ruling class favors widespread poverty to suppress wages. After all, it also suppresses customers. They may not have to pay their employees as much, but they don't need as many employees because they can't produce as much because there's nobody to buy their goods and services. Rich people (many, at least) do want to keep taxes low, however, so they don't want government money used to pay for services to poor people, including ones that might help lift them out of poverty. Unfortunately, they aren't usually moved to say, "Well damn it, let's make sure there are fewer poor people!" Instead they just say poor people don't deserve it, they're lazy, they're greedy, whereas we need to be able to keep every single million we can get, etc.

As for Steven Levitt, I have heard his theory. But it's larger than that -- the entire Gen X is much smaller than Boomers, so logically you would expect crime to have dropped when Gen Xers were at prime crime-committing age -- mid-teens to maybe 30ish. And back then economists did attribute at least some of the crime decline to that. But Gen Xers are now mostly in their 40s and 50s. Millennials, who range from mid-teens to mid-30s, are at prime crime age, and there are actually more of them than Boomers (just by like half a million; probably partly because some Boomers have died off). So logically, if crime is merely a factor of the number of people who haven't been aborted, it should be back to where it was in the '70s and '80s.

I cover generations stuff and I have never heard the smaller size of Gen X attributed to abortion. In any case, abortion is still legal and now we have a giant younger population.

Anyway, I think most women who have abortions are middle class and up. Kids most likely to commit crimes live in poor communities, where women are less likely to get abortions.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 28, 2018, 06:47:24 pm
I cover generations stuff and I have never heard the smaller size of Gen X attributed to abortion.

I just realized this directly contradicts my statement above it that I had heard Levitt's theory. I mean, I haven't heard anybody in recent years (since I've been covering aging and generational stuff) discuss abortion as a factor in the smaller size of Gen X.

One reason it's smaller is that the arbitrary lines they draw to distinguish "generations" encompass fewer years for Gen X, for some reason. But they would still be smaller anyway.

The only "real" generational distinction is baby boomers, who were created by an actual boom. Otherwise, the idea that people from one year have drastically different outlooks and behavior than people born the year after that is silly. It's really just a media invention. Fake news! Sad! :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 28, 2018, 07:39:19 pm
I just realized this directly contradicts my statement above it that I had heard Levitt's theory. I mean, I haven't heard anybody in recent years (since I've been covering aging and generational stuff) discuss abortion as a factor in the smaller size of Gen X.

One reason it's smaller is that the arbitrary lines they draw to distinguish "generations" encompass fewer years for Gen X, for some reason. But they would still be smaller anyway.

The only "real" generational distinction is baby boomers, who were created by an actual boom. Otherwise, the idea that people from one year have drastically different outlooks and behavior than people born the year after that is silly. It's really just a media invention. Fake news! Sad! :laugh:

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2018, 02:46:18 pm
I recently finished the March 5 article about Jordan Peterson. I'm completely with him in objecting to using a plural pronoun ('they") as if it were singular. but I was really interested in the article because we are beginning to grapple with that issue in my job, because it is felt (rightly, in my opinion) that future physicians need to be trained to care for patients of many different sexual orientations/identities. The issue isn't just limited to pronouns. The issue is also noun usage, e.g., does the patient identify as transgender, transsexual, bisexual, asexual, non-binary, and so forth and so on.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 04, 2018, 11:35:20 am
I recently finished the March 5 article about Jordan Peterson. I'm completely with him in objecting to using a plural pronoun ('they") as if it were singular. but I was really interested in the article because we are beginning to grapple with that issue in my job, because it is felt (rightly, in my opinion) that future physicians need to be trained to care for patients of many different sexual orientations/identities. The issue isn't just limited to pronouns. The issue is also noun usage, e.g., does the patient identify as transgender, transsexual, bisexual, asexual, non-binary, and so forth and so on.

I haven't read the article yet, but I'm in favor of "they." Not just for the sake of non-binary people but for the sake of non-gendered pronouns in reference to non-specific people, i.e., "If a doctor told you to exercise, you should take their advice." I like it because most people do it in speech already. The Associated Press Style Guide (used throughout newspapers but other places, too) has approved its use, and up until a year or two ago they were still capitalizing "internet"!!

I've probably used it a time or two in casual writing for publication. I probably wouldn't use it in formal writing. And in any situation, I would try to get around it by using a plural noun, when that's possible. But"he or she" is awkward and I'm not a big fan of jumping back and forth. And I long ago stopped using default male pronouns in those situations. I think those reinforce the idea that men are people and women are women.

So as far as I'm concerned, the sooner everybody gets used to "they," the better. Somewhere along the way people stopped saying thee and thy, and nowadays everybody is comfortable with that. Language evolves.

I do think physicians, not just future but now, need to be aware of those distinctions and be sensitive to them. But unless it involves transgender people and has something directly to do with either transitioning or gender-specific ailments (a transgender woman with prostate cancer, for example), I don't see why a physician would care, especially not if the person is bisexual or asexual. I've never gone to, say, a dermatologist and been asked whom I prefer to sleep with.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2018, 03:28:11 pm
I haven't read the article yet, but I'm in favor of "they." Not just for the sake of non-binary people but for the sake of non-gendered pronouns in reference to non-specific people, i.e., "If a doctor told you to exercise, you should take their advice." I like it because most people do it in speech already. The Associated Press Style Guide (used throughout newspapers but other places, too) has approved its use, and up until a year or two ago they were still capitalizing "internet"!!

The AP has approved it? God, not only are the barbarians at the gate, they've broken down the gate.  ;D

There are still work-arounds: "if a doctor told you to exercise, you should take that advice."

Quote
But"he or she" is awkward.


I agree. Yes, it is.

Quote
I long ago stopped using default male pronouns in those situations. I think those reinforce the idea that men are people and women are women.

I'm sure many people agree with you.

Quote
So as far as I'm concerned, the sooner everybody gets used to "they," the better.

I can't believe you're saying that, but let be, let be.

Quote
Language evolves.

Not all changes are for the better.

I think in spoken language the use of "they" as singular sounds ignorant, and in written language it will continue to be confusing without the explanation "who prefers 'they.'"

Quote
I do think physicians, not just future but now, need to be aware of those distinctions and be sensitive to them. But unless it involves transgender people and has something directly to do with either transitioning or gender-specific ailments (a transgender woman with prostate cancer, for example), I don't see why a physician would care, especially not if the person is bisexual or asexual. I've never gone to, say, a dermatologist and been asked whom I prefer to sleep with.

Am I missing your point, or are you missing mine?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 04, 2018, 06:11:33 pm
There are still work-arounds: "if a doctor told you to exercise, you should take that advice."

You're right. But you know what I mean. That's just the first one I could think of, and there aren't always handy work-arounds.
 
Quote
I can't believe you're saying that, but let be, let be.

Not all changes are for the better.

Of course not! Take the change of U.S. president in January 2017, for example.

But changing language (especially a pronoun!) is neither inherently better nor worse. After all, you have to change words all the time when you go from one country to the next -- even between regions or communities or professions in the same country. Language is not set in stone, there's no intrinsic moral superiority to one set of rules versus the other. The English language could easily have evolved to use "they" or "it" instead of "he" centuries ago and you probably wouldn't wishing it would become gender-specific because that's "better." The reason male pronouns became "standard" (though frankly they look extremely dated at this point, in almost any context) is because sexism has existed as long as the English language has.

In a lot of languages, people would disapprove of gender-neutral nouns, for Pete's sake. So glad we don't have to deal with that issue.

In this case "they" serves a useful function and merely echoes a change the language has already undergone in most people's speech. When someone is talking, they usually say "they."  :laugh: ;D

There were probably people clutching their pearls when we went from "thy" to "your." And of course you know the background of "ain't," right?

Quote
Am I missing your point, or are you missing mine?

I probably missed yours. I didn't understand why you were listing that jumble of things, some of which didn't seem to have anything to do with doctors.

Quote
future physicians need to be trained to care for patients of many different sexual orientations/identities. The issue isn't just limited to pronouns. The issue is also noun usage, e.g., does the patient identify as transgender, transsexual, bisexual, asexual, non-binary, and so forth and so on.

Why in the future as opposed to now? Also, I have been treated by countless physicians who had no idea whether I was bisexual or asexual or gay. Why would they need to? On the other hand, whether the patient is transgender is hugely important in treating some conditions, and from what I've heard it's a controversy because of how you're identified on insurance or something like that. Like, if you identify as a man you shouldn't be getting uterine cancer, so does insurance not have to cover your treatment?

But I wouldn't think sexual orientation would be an issue in medical treatment unless the doctor is a psychiatrist, in which case they  ;) might need to know.

Well, I guess the one area I can think of where it would matter is in bedside manner. Like, a doctor shouldn't automatically assume that if a patient is married, their  ;) spouse is of the opposite sex.

BTW, according to GLAAD, transsexual is the old-fashioned term for transgender and is usually considered dated. But sometimes people use it to distinguish people who've had gender-transition surgery.

One thing everybody should become more sensitive about is to offer more than two choices on forms (applications and things like that, where you're forced to pick female or male). I get annoyed when I see that now, especially from organizations that should know better, such as the government.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2018, 09:17:32 pm
But changing language (especially a pronoun!) is neither inherently better nor worse. After all, you have to change words all the time when you go from one country to the next -- even between regions or communities or professions in the same country. Language is not set in stone, there's no intrinsic moral superiority to one set of rules versus the other. The English language could easily have evolved to use "they" or "it" instead of "he" centuries ago and you probably wouldn't wishing it would become gender-specific because that's "better." The reason male pronouns became "standard" (though frankly they look extremely dated at this point, in almost any context) is because sexism has existed as long as the English language has.

Well, then, why don't we go with it? It's gender neutral as well as singular.

I can just imagine how mightily offended an individual who wants to be referred to in the plural would be to be referred to as it.

Quote
In this case "they" serves a useful function and merely echoes a change the language has already undergone in most people's speech. When someone is talking, they usually say "they."  :laugh: ;D

Yes, they do, but it still isn't standard English.

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I probably missed yours. I didn't understand why you were listing that jumble of things, some of which didn't seem to have anything to do with doctors.

I don't see what was jumbled.

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Why in the future as opposed to now?

Indeed, why not? But my perspective is from working in an organization involved with training future physicians. Current physicians have to shift for themselves.

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Also, I have been treated by countless physicians who had no idea whether I was bisexual or asexual or gay. Why would they need to? On the other hand, whether the patient is transgender is hugely important in treating some conditions.

That's it right there. It might be relevant to the condition or it's treatment.

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Well, I guess the one area I can think of where it would matter is in bedside manner. Like, a doctor shouldn't automatically assume that if a patient is married, their  ;) spouse is of the opposite sex.

That's exactly the point.

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BTW, according to GLAAD, transsexual is the old-fashioned term for transgender and is usually considered dated. But sometimes people use it to distinguish people who've had gender-transition surgery.

Yes. And that distinction is still relevant in medicine. Gender is a social construct. A physician might have to treat a patient who self-identifies as a woman and lives and dresses as a woman and uses a female name, but has not had sex-reassignment surgery. And this can make a difference in diagnosis and treatment.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 05, 2018, 11:23:31 am
Well, then, why don't we go with it? It's gender neutral as well as singular.

Because, as I believe I've said in every post on this topic so far, people don't use that and it would sound weird and unnatural. People already do use they, and while you might notice it in writing I bet you don't always notice it when someone's speaking.

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Well, then, why don't we go with it? It's gender neutral as well as singular.

OK, first of all, maybe we're talking about two different things. I admitted at the outset that I hadn't read the article that sparked this conversation. So is he talking about "they" to refer to people who don't identify with one gender or another? Or is he talking about using "they" in reference to an unspecified person, like "your doctor" or "a student"?

I thought it was the latter. But I'm in favor of the former, too, and so is the AP. I'm in favor of calling people whatever they want to be called.

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I can just imagine how mightily offended an individual who wants to be referred to in the plural would be to be referred to as it.

Of course they'd be offended. That's why we don't do that. (Side note: I'm less in favor of newly coined pronouns, but whatever. I guess we can get used to those, too. After all, nobody thinks twice about "Ms" now, and when it was introduced everybody thought it was too weird to use.)

But why are you even asking this? I'm saying that if English had developed with a gender-neutral singular pronoun we wouldn't be having this conversation. It might have been "it," it might have been "poop" -- it could have been anything. If English speakers had been using it for centuries or millennia nobody would mind a bit.

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Yes, they do, but it still isn't standard English.

But, as I keep saying, standard English changes, and you're looking at it happening now. Don't you ever read those articles every year about the news words the dictionary is including, often because people already use them? You still haven't weighed in with your feelings about the switch from thee and thy to you and your. Do you still call developmentally challenged people morons, as was once an official scientific term as well as standard English?

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I don't see what was jumbled.

You mixed terms involving gender identity with terms involving sexual orientation, which are completely different things (despite being lumped together as "sexual minorities" or as members of the LGBTQ community -- both situations having more to do with politics than biology).

Gender identity would be crucially important in a medical setting. Sexual orientation would be almost a non-issue. That's why I was confused by the mix of terms. I cannot thing of any exchange I've ever had with any doctor anywhere when my sexual orientation was relevant or mentioned. Yes, doctors should be told not to make assumptions and say, "So how's the wife?" as small talk. But explaining that issue is not complicated. Gender identity is.

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Yes. And that distinction is still relevant in medicine. Gender is a social construct. A physician might have to treat a patient who self-identifies as a woman and lives and dresses as a woman and uses a female name, but has not had sex-reassignment surgery. And this can make a difference in diagnosis and treatment.

Gender is a social construct??  ???  I think a lot of things are social constructs, but gender isn't one of them, IMO.

As for the rest of the paragraph, obviously gender identity is relevant. It's relevant whether the person has had sex-reassignment surgery or not. Biological men and women have different health issues and needs. Even if they've had surgery, many of those needs would be related to their pre-surgical bodies. And if they haven't had surgery, hormone treatments would also be a factor in their health.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2018, 12:12:48 pm
Gender is a social construct??  ???  I think a lot of things are social constructs, but gender isn't one of them, IMO.

Perhaps I should have said cultural rather than social. Chalk that up to my word-finding difficulty.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 06, 2018, 10:46:11 am
Perhaps I should have said cultural rather than social. Chalk that up to my word-finding difficulty.

That's fine. You got your point across. I still disagree, though, unless I'm missing some larger meaning. Are you saying the differences between men and women (not the biological differences, but everything else) are entirely due to cultural influence? That in a different culture, men and women might just as easily behave like their opposite genders in this one? That transgender people don't have any deep identification with the gender that differs from their biological form -- they just like how it is performed in their culture?

 ???

I mean, if you're saying culture influences the way men and women behave, I'm totally with you. I agree with that and write about it.

But if you're saying all gender differences are entirely created by culture, I'd have to bail. What makes you say that?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 06, 2018, 11:33:57 am
I finally got around to reading the Jordan Peterson article. At first I just skimmed because I couldn't see what was interesting enough about the guy to warrant 4 1/2 pages. He's conservative. And Canadian. And apparently rigid and outspoken. OK. So? But then I saw that his book is an international blockbuster and he's one of the most influential public intellectuals in the English-speaking world. So I decided I'd better know a bit more about him.

So I see that one of his issues is pronouns for nonbinary people (he doesn't get into the plural pronouns for indeterminate individuals, like "your doctor," we were discussing above). But oddly enough, I find he sounds a bit less conservative on that issue than you are, Jeff.

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One of his foundational beliefs is that cultures evolve, which suggests that nonstandard pronouns could become standard. In a debate about gender on Canadian television, in 2016, he tried to find some middle ground. “If our society comes to some sort of consensus over the next while about how we’ll solve the pronoun problem,” he said, “and that becomes part of popular parlance, and it seems to solve the problem properly, without sacrificing the distinction between singular and plural ... I would be willing to reconsider my position."


Although he hasn't yet reconsidered his position, his views are actually similar to mine (on this one issue). The difference is, I think our society is partly there already and the rest had better get there quickly. Most people had never heard of nonbinary gender 10 years ago. Now we have and there are lots of people who have come out as non-binary, which presents the problem of pronouns. But luckily there's a relatively easy solution and many people are already doing to refer to non-binary people. And many people had already using plural pronouns in the "your doctor" cases. So it's not a huge leap.

Whereas you sound like you think standard English is standard English, and that's the end of that that. You never did address my thy/your question, but I assume what you consider "standard English" is something like, maybe, AP style in 2016 -- before it changed the pronoun rule.

A guy I work with is the father of a non-binary person who looks to be in their late teens/early 20s. He calls them "them." He has posted photos of them on Facebook and it's hard to tell what biological gender they originally were/are. I kind of think female, but I'm not certain.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 06, 2018, 12:36:56 pm
Tell you what. This has got tiresome, and I'm done. I have no interest in discussing/debating cultural constructs across cultures, and I think it's only a minority that is partly there already, and the rest of us are under no obligation to follow, especially in formal writing.

Also, it looks to me that to say the AP stylebook accepts singular they is to tell only half the story. Yes, it does, but apparently as of last year/2017, the complete entry is: "They/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and-or gender-neutral pronoun, when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy. However, rewording usually is possible and always preferable."

AP acceptance is certainly newsworthy, but the guideline is not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2018, 10:19:22 am
Tell you what. This has got tiresome, and I'm done.

That's fine. I like talking about language. But you've stated your views on "they," and I've stated mine.

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I have no interest in discussing/debating cultural constructs across cultures,

I don't even know what that debate would be, because I never did understand what you meant. The ways that gender is understood or performed, the expectations for how genders are expected to behave, certainly differs across cultures, with some cross-cultural similarities. Maybe that's what you meant. But what you said is, "gender is a cultural construct," which sounds as if the whole concept exists only in a cultural sense. That doesn't sound like something you would believe, which is why I kept asking. But if you do, I was curious to hear why.

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and I think it's only a minority that is partly there already

You're mixing up my take on the two meanings. Many if not most people already use "they" in the "your doctor" sense in casual ordinary speech. Hardly anybody uses "they" to refer to gender-non-binary people, because many don't even know what that means.

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, and the rest of us are under no obligation to follow, especially in formal writing.

Pretty sure I never said anyone is under an obligation to follow!  :laugh:

And I'm pretty sure I explicitly did say I myself would not use it (in the "your doctor" sense) in formal writing .

My own formal writing has never involved gender non-binary people. But if it did -- and of course it already does for psychologists and the like -- I would use "they." Using "he" against the person's wishes would sound insensitive to much of your audience (professionals who work with non-binary people or the people themselves -- not the general population). It would sound like insisting on calling trans people by their biological, rather than preferred, gender identity. (Also, I wonder what you'd do if you were talking to my coworker about his non-binary kid?)

Let's take something in between: a newspaper story. If I were writing about a non-binary person, I would say something like "Jordan does not identify with either male or female genders and prefers plural pronouns." Then I would use plural pronouns.

Side note: This may be changing faster than you thought. When my son attended Occidental College, a left-leaning liberal arts school based in LA, everybody at orientation was asked what pronouns they prefer. And professors' pre-set email signatures would say things like, "Frank Smith, who prefers male pronouns."

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"However, rewording usually is possible and always preferable."

No argument there.  :)

Look, Jeff, you don't have a smartphone, you're not on Facebook, you don't have DVR, etc. Not only because you haven't gotten around to it but because you steadfastly decline to succumb to widespread cultural change. I don't want to psychoanalyze you, but it has been my impression that you pride yourself on sticking with established ways. I'm different in those respects.

So it doesn't surprise me that we have different views on how accepted language usage should evolve.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2018, 10:23:09 am
This has got tiresome

Not to open a whole new can of worms, but do you always use "got" for past-perfect or whatever that tense is called? I grew up always using "gotten." Then I noticed that the New Yorker uses "got." I'm still figuring out if that's one of the New Yorker's language idiosyncrasies or if it's a regional thing or if it's s just standard correct usage I didn't know about.

Maybe I should consult my AP stylebook!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 07, 2018, 11:49:31 am
Not to open a whole new can of worms, but do you always use "got" for past-perfect or whatever that tense is called? I grew up always using "gotten." Then I noticed that the New Yorker uses "got." I'm still figuring out if that's one of the New Yorker's language idiosyncrasies or if it's a regional thing or if it's s just standard correct usage I didn't know about.

Maybe I should consult my AP stylebook!

No, I don't. I think I go back and forth on that, especially informally. In this case, I wanted to suggest a reference, and I felt I needed  a past tense, because in context "Gets tiresome" wouldn't work, and "got" seemed closer to "gets" than "gotten" would be.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 07, 2018, 05:27:15 pm
I don't even know what that debate would be, because I never did understand what you meant. The ways that gender is understood or performed, the expectations for how genders are expected to behave, certainly differs across cultures, with some cross-cultural similarities. Maybe that's what you meant. But what you said is, "gender is a cultural construct," which sounds as if the whole concept exists only in a cultural sense. That doesn't sound like something you would believe, which is why I kept asking. But if you do, I was curious to hear why.

Why wouldn't I?

It occurred to me this morning that my views might be heavily influenced by my work, and it seems they are (I've been on my job for 16 years now). Unfortunately I'm now at home (see my blog), so I don't have the book in front of me to quote, but our standard at work is the American Medical Association's style book. The AMA uses sex as a matter of biology, whereas gender relates to how society views a person and how that person self-identifies and lives. That says to me that the AMA regards gender as more of a cultural thing.

Seems sensible to me.

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You're mixing up my take on the two meanings. Many if not most people already use "they" in the "your doctor" sense in casual ordinary speech. Hardly anybody uses "they" to refer to gender-non-binary people, because many don't even know what that means.

Thank you for clarifying that.

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Pretty sure I never said anyone is under an obligation to follow!  :laugh:

No, you didn't, but that sounded to me like the implication of "the rest of society had better catch up."

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My own formal writing has never involved gender non-binary people. But if it did -- and of course it already does for psychologists and the like -- I would use "they." Using "he" against the person's wishes would sound insensitive to much of your audience (professionals who work with non-binary people or the people themselves -- not the general population). It would sound like insisting on calling trans people by their biological, rather than preferred, gender identity.

Hmm. I suppose if we all just used trans that would be one way around the whole transgender/transsexual usage issue. And I'm not trying to be funny.

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(Also, I wonder what you'd do if you were talking to my coworker about his non-binary kid?)

I'm assuming the kid wants "they" used and the parent is OK with it? I'd use the kid's name, even at the risk of sounding awkward or stilted at times, and if I were asked why I was doing that, I would reply (I hope in a way that didn't sound belligerent) that I don't wish to be insulting but I won't use a plural pronoun top refer to an individual.

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Let's take something in between: a newspaper story. If I were writing about a non-binary person, I would say something like "Jordan does not identify with either male or female genders and prefers plural pronouns." Then I would use plural pronouns.

Does Jordan prefer (insist?) on using plural pronouns for everyone, or only for Jordan?  ;D

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Side note: This may be changing faster than you thought. When my son attended Occidental College, a left-leaning liberal arts school based in LA, everybody at orientation was asked what pronouns they prefer. And professors' pre-set email signatures would say things like, "Frank Smith, who prefers male pronouns."

I guess that says a lot, doesn't it?

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Look, Jeff, you don't have a smartphone, you're not on Facebook, you don't have DVR, etc. Not only because you haven't gotten around to it but because you steadfastly decline to succumb to widespread cultural change. I don't want to psychoanalyze you, but it has been my impression that you pride yourself on sticking with established ways. I'm different in those respects.

No, you shouldn't. You're not a psychoanalyst, and your impression is mistaken. Pride has nothing to do with it. To an extent stinginess probably does. It seems that in this I'm very like my father to the point you might think I was raised right next to him in the Depression. I just don't believe in giving up something that works perfectly well for me until whatever that something is no longer works for me, or needs to be replaced. I've got a perfectly functioning 1990s TV (great picture, great sound--better than the flat-screen I got at work). Why get rid of a perfectly functioning appliance just because I can't hook it up to my PC? When I no longer had the use of a PC at my job (because the job was eliminated), I got one of my own. When it became difficult if not impossible to make long-distance phone calls from hotel-room telephones, I got a cell phone.

Here's where the stinginess comes in. I simply don't believe in spending money on new technology just because it's new. I realize lots of people are perfectly fine with that, otherwise they wouldn't stand in line all night whenever Apple comes out with a new iPhone. But I'm not the kid who has to be the first on the block to have the latest toy. That's just not who I am.

But I'll also say this. I know I've said before that just about every time I bring myself to the point of going on Facebook, I hear another horror story about Facebook (usually related to flaming--I believe that's the word?). But it appears that Facebook is rapidly becoming something necessary for my life. I see that. It gives me no pleasure to admit this more or less publicly, but if I'm honest with myself, I believe what is really holding me back is lack of self-confidence that I can set up an account without somehow screwing it up, especially with regards to security.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 07, 2018, 06:50:07 pm
I guess we went a bit OT, didn't we?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2018, 10:19:47 pm
Why wouldn't I?

Because the notion is seriously logically flawed, and I credit you with common sense.

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It occurred to me this morning that my views might be heavily influenced by my work, and it seems they are (I've been on my job for 16 years now). Unfortunately I'm now at home (see my blog), so I don't have the book in front of me to quote, but our standard at work is the American Medical Association's style book. The AMA uses sex as a matter of biology, whereas gender relates to how society views a person and how that person self-identifies and lives. That says to me that the AMA regards gender as more of a cultural thing.

Well, that helps explain your remark. (I think in real life, most people these days use "gender" to mean "sex" so they don't confuse "sex" with "sex." But to avoid getting into another battle over terminology, let's humor the AMA and follow suit for the moment.) You no doubt know more about the AMA's contention and the thinking behind it. But to me it seems extremely bizarre.

Let's go though it. They feel -- I mean, it (the organization) feels that sex is, to put it crudely, the difference between penises and vaginas (plus different body shapes, body-hair patterns, hormones, chromosomes, reproductive systems, etc.) And gender is everything else?

So the parents see a penis and raise the kid accordingly -- blue clothing, short haircut, trucks and baseballs as gifts. Vaginas get pink clothing, longer hair and dolls. The kids take the hint and model their behavior after other kids with similar hair and clothing. And so it goes, not only with appearances and pastimes, but also behavior and everything else, including deep-down feelings of gender identity? At some point fairly early in the process, the kid understands which thing s/he is, based entirely on external environmental signals?

That is really far-fetched. For example, studies show that kids feel a strong gender -- excuse me, sexual -- identity very early, like by age 2 or so. And typically they aren't confused about it even if they don't like baseball or dolls, even if they're wearing purple, even if their parents raise them in a more sex-neutral way. It also doesn't explain transgender people, who intensely believe they're of the opposite gender despite outward signs -- not just clothing, etc., but genitalia -- also very early on (I've seen Barbara Walters interview 7-year-olds who insist they're the opposite sex). It hardly even explains homosexuality, because if you simply followed what the culture tells people of your sex to do you'd have settled down with a nice girl years ago.  :)

Sexual expression varies widely from culture to culture (e.g., hijab vs. bikini), but there are cross-cultural similarities in gender behavior that suggest the concept goes deeper than that stuff. I'll keep coming up with examples and explanations if you like, but I figure I got my point across.

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No, you didn't, but that sounded to me like the implication of "the rest of society had better catch up."

Again, it depends on which "they" we're talking about. For the "your doctor" kind, you can refuse to use it for the rest of your life and scoff when anyone does -- you could even correct their grammar in conversations, for which I'm sure they'll be very grateful!  :laugh:

As for non-binary "they," then yeah, I think society will have to catch up, or risk offending people. The way they've caught up to "developmentally challenged" vs. "moron," or "black" vs. "negro." Of course, there are far fewer non-binary people than there are people in those groups, and their existence is far less well known. So the catch-up process may take longer.

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Hmm. I suppose if we all just used trans that would be one way around the whole transgender/transsexual usage issue. And I'm not trying to be funny.

People use "trans" all the time in casual contexts. In formal ones, you'd probably go with transgender at this point. Even the AMA would be pleased, right? Because they're identifying with the opposite gender, in AMA terminology, not the opposite sex.

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I'm assuming the kid wants "they" used and the parent is OK with it? I'd use the kid's name, even at the risk of sounding awkward or stilted at times, and if I were asked why I was doing that, I would reply (I hope in a way that didn't sound belligerent) that I don't wish to be insulting but I won't use a plural pronoun top refer to an individual.

Yeah, it would be insulting. People would interpret that as you saying that traditional grammatical rules are more important to you than their feelings. Which I guess is exactly what you are saying.

Using the person's name, often multiple times in the same sentence, would sound more than stilted. "What time does Terry's plane get in, and where should we take Terry for dinner -- do you know what kind of food Terry likes? I think Terry said years ago that Terry is a vegetarian but I don't know if Terry still is."

In my coworker's case, I imagine it was hard to grapple with at first, but at this point the dad seems fine with it as far as I can tell (I don't know him that well). I have another friend whose stepdaughter had her breasts removed at age 17 and became "they." My friend didn't outright object -- it wasn't her place; the kid lived with the mother in a different state -- but my friend did seem to harbor reservations about someone who wasn't even old enough to vote removing whole body parts.

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I guess that says a lot, doesn't it?

Yes, but everything but the "LA" part was almost redundant. Many if not most liberal arts schools are left-leaning. And since I'm left-leaning, I have no problem with that.

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You're not a psychoanalyst,

I just play one on TV.

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To an extent stinginess probably does. It seems that in this I'm very like my father to the point you might think I was raised right next to him in the Depression. I just don't believe in giving up something that works perfectly well for me until whatever that something is no longer works for me, or needs to be replaced. I've got a perfectly functioning 1990s TV (great picture, great sound--better than the flat-screen I got at work). Why get rid of a perfectly functioning appliance just because I can't hook it up to my PC? When I no longer had the use of a PC at my job (because the job was eliminated), I got one of my own. When it became difficult if not impossible to make long-distance phone calls from hotel-room telephones, I got a cell phone.

Here's where the stinginess comes in. I simply don't believe in spending money on new technology just because it's new. I realize lots of people are perfectly fine with that, otherwise they wouldn't stand in line all night whenever Apple comes out with a new iPhone. But I'm not the kid who has to be the first on the block to have the latest toy. That's just not who I am.

Well, you won't see me in line at the Apple store, either. I think my phone is at least two old by now. But the wireless company lets you upgrade every couple of years if you extend your contract.

That said, most of the new devices you refer to here aren't just shinier than the ones they replaced.

I was a late adopter of smartphones -- "that just seems kind of sad," my son said when I got my last flip phone -- but when I did it changed my life. Now when I have to go somewhere in an unfamiliar area I just go, knowing that with GPS I won't get lost. If I need a ride, I contact Lyft and someone drives up, usually within 5 minutes. If I get bored and don't have a book with me, I have a whole internet. If I want to text someone, I don't have to laboriously hit the same key three times to write a C. If I need to do some quick banking, it's right there. If I can't remember what actor played so and so, the answer is available in moments (my sons can look up stuff like that without even pausing the conversation). If I want to know the temperature or what time it's supposed to start snowing, I look at my phone. I'm just now discovering how convenient it makes travel, in a lot of ways. And if I need an alarm clock, a flashlight, a mirror, a price comparison ... they're all there. I like to sleep with white noise, so I used to have to pack this bulky heavy battery-operated thing when I traveled. Now my phone can provide it.

As for DVR, I can only imagine what a nightmare it would have been to try to watch Vietnam or The Roosevelts, for example, without it. You'd have to sit there for two hours a night, for eight or however many nights in a row! If you wanted to make dinner or use the bathroom, you'd have to miss a part. I watched those shows an hour at a time, some nights but not others, some time after they were first broadcast. And for other shows, if you miss an episode in an ongoing plot, you're out of luck.

So I guess what I'm saying is, there were probably people who insisted that those sink scrubbers like Alma used got clothes just as clean as an electric washer would. And that a horse and wagon would get you to your destination just as effectively as one of those newfangled horseless carriages. But new technology actually offers conveniences lacking in the old stuff.

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But I'll also say this. I know I've said before that just about every time I bring myself to the point of going on Facebook, I hear another horror story about Facebook (usually related to flaming--I believe that's the word?). But it appears that Facebook is rapidly becoming something necessary for my life. I see that. It gives me no pleasure to admit this more or less publicly, but if I'm honest with myself, I believe what is really holding me back is lack of self-confidence that I can set up an account without somehow screwing it up, especially with regards to security.

Flaming isn't really a thing on Facebook. (That's more a Twitter thing.) On FB, you connect with your friends, and only they can see your posts, so unless they turn against you, you're safe. Or even if they did, you'd delete their comments, just like you can on this blog. Setting up an account is really easy. And I'm trying to imagine what kind of security risks might be involved. What would you put on there that you would worry about?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2018, 10:20:45 pm
I guess we went a bit OT, didn't we?  ;D

We've practically written a whole New Yorker article by now!  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 07, 2018, 11:25:12 pm
Because the notion is seriously logically flawed, and I credit you with common sense.

Obviously, I disagree. And this is coming close to being insulting.

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Well, that helps explain your remark. (I think in real life, most people these days use "gender" to mean "sex" so they don't confuse "sex" with "sex." But to avoid getting into another battle over terminology, let's humor the AMA and follow suit for the moment.) You no doubt know more about the AMA's contention and the thinking behind it. But to me it seems extremely bizarre.

It's. A. Style. Book.

If it means that much to you, go take it up with the AMA. I'm not here to defend the AMA. I just happen to agree with it's choice of style.

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Even the AMA would be pleased, right?

I'm sure the AP would be pleased to know you follow its style.

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Yeah, it would be insulting. People would interpret that as you saying that traditional grammatical rules are more important to you than their feelings. Which I guess is exactly what you are saying.

Is this supposed to embarrass me, or what? If it is, it ain't workin'.

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In my coworker's case, I imagine it was hard to grapple with at first, but at this point the dad seems fine with it as far as I can tell (I don't know him that well). I have another friend whose stepdaughter had her breasts removed at age 17 and became "they." My friend didn't outright object -- it wasn't her place; the kid lived with the mother in a different state -- but my friend did seem to harbor reservations about someone who wasn't even old enough to vote removing whole body parts.

As well he might, especially if he was expected to contribute to the cost of it.

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That said, most of the new devices you refer to here aren't just shinier than the ones they replaced.

I said nothing about appearance.

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As for DVR, I can only imagine what a nightmare it would have been to try to watch Vietnam or The Roosevelts, for example, without it. You'd have to sit there for two hours a night, for eight or however many nights in a row! If you wanted to make dinner or use the bathroom, you'd have to miss a part. I watched those shows an hour at a time, some nights but not others, some time after they were first broadcast. And for other shows, if you miss an episode in an ongoing plot, you're out of luck.

See, here this reads to me like you think that because it would have been a nightmare for you to sit through Vietnam or The Roosevelts, it had to be a nightmare for everyone else. Clearly it wasn't.

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Flaming isn't really a thing on Facebook. (That's more a Twitter thing.) On FB, you connect with your friends, and only they can see your posts, so unless they turn against you, you're safe. Or even if they did, you'd delete their comments, just like you can on this blog. Setting up an account is really easy. And I'm trying to imagine what kind of security risks might be involved. What would you put on there that you would worry about?

Well, when I say "security," I'm just thinking there are parts of my life that I prefer not to share with everybody. For example, I would be fine with communicating with other Bettermost folks, but I'm not interested in sharing my activity (such as it is) within the gay male leather community with everyone else, even people from Bettermost. (Remember TNY interview with Zuckerberg where he didn't seem to comprehend that not everyone wants to share all of their lives with everyone else?) If you can have only one account, can you pick and choose who can see what, and how difficult is it to figure out how to do it? That's the sort of thing that concerns me.

Incidentally, I did visit the Facebook web site this afternoon. Looks easy enough to open an account. It's what comes after--managing the account maybe you'd call it?--that concerns me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 08, 2018, 11:37:39 am
Obviously, I disagree. And this is coming close to being insulting.

Sorry. Didn't mean to be rude.

Note that I credited you with common sense. And yes, I think the AMA's notion, as you stated it, is seriously flawed. I guess by criticizing the AMA, I am by default criticizing anyone who sees the situation that rigidly. So by inference, I guess I did insult you. Sorry.

Quote
It's. A. Style. Book.

Actually, as you know, the AMA is an organization (as are the AP and the APA; not sure where the Chicago Manual comes from). So I assumed the style book reflects the association's official position on medically related topics. If that means nothing beyond style and the organization's views are more nuanced, fine. But what you said was "gender is a cultural construct," which I interpreted as meaning gender is a cultural construct. Not, the use of the word "gender" in writing refers exclusively to external expression and cultural norms.

Quote
I just happen to agree with it's choice of style.

Ahem.

(Sorry -- I normally don't do that but in this situation I couldn't resist.)

Quote
I'm sure the AP would be pleased to know you follow its style.

This is taken so out of context I didn't even know what you were talking about. I didn't even say anything about "you." But yeah, I suppose the AP style writers are pleased about how many people and organizations follow their guidelines. If nothing else, they sell more books.

Quote
Is this supposed to embarrass me, or what? If it is, it ain't workin'.

Well, I'm glad it isn't, because that wasn't the intent. It was a simple description of how I see the situation.

Quote
As well he might, especially if he was expected to contribute to the cost of it.

No, I don't think she was. But geez, Jeff, do you really feel like the worst part of that situation is its cost?

Quote
I said nothing about appearance.

Sorry. I assumed you would understand that "shiny" was a figure of speech in that sentence. Would "newer and fancier" or something like that help clarify the meaning?

Quote
See, here this reads to me like you think that because it would have been a nightmare for you to sit through Vietnam or The Roosevelts, it had to be a nightmare for everyone else. Clearly it wasn't.

Well, you mentioned missing parts, and I thought you seemed to regret that. I didn't miss anything. In fact wasn't until you wrote about watching Vietnam without DVR that I started thinking about what a pain it would be. Nightmare would be an exaggeration -- sorry, there I go with a figure of speech again. But I normally don't watch more than an hour of TV a night. Some nights I don't watch at all because I'm going out or something. It would be a huge pain to sit there for two hours night after night. And I like being able to get up and go into the kitchen or whatever -- if a show has commercials that makes it easier, but Burns' documentaries don't. And, as I said, I don't like missing parts.

Quote
Well, when I say "security," I'm just thinking there are parts of my life that I prefer not to share with everybody. For example, I would be fine with communicating with other Bettermost folks, but I'm not interested in sharing my activity (such as it is) within the gay male leather community with everyone else, even people from Bettermost.

I have tons of Bettermost friends on FB, including old-timers like Barb and Sheyne. Most of them never talk about Bettermosty stuff these days anyway. Occasionally they might slip a subtle Brokieism into a comment, but that's about it. If they want to go full BBM, they go to a group page called "Bluebirds and Whiskey Springs" that's private and by invitation only, so only BetterMost people can see it. Diana Ossana is a member and posts or comments occasionally. It's where I first saw Phillip announce his plans to revamp this site.

Quote
f you can have only one account, can you pick and choose who can see what, and how difficult is it to figure out how to do it?

Yes, and not very. When you post something, there's a little icon with a dropdown box next to it. You can post it publicly -- meaning anyone in the world can see it -- or just to your FB friends, or just to specific FB friends, or to all your friends except so and so. I've done the last thing, for instance, when asking for recommendations for a gift for my niece. I posted it to everyone but my niece and her parents.

Quote
Incidentally, I did visit the Facebook web site this afternoon. Looks easy enough to open an account. It's what comes after--managing the account maybe you'd call it?--that concerns me.

Well, there are privacy settings for this or that, and they can get complicated. There are articles out there that can guide you. I don't pay that much attention to them, though. I just never say anything on FB that I wouldn't say in real life anyway. As an MSM journalist and someone with a public byline -- who in fact partly uses FB as a place to promote my own work -- I have to be a bit careful, but I've never had a problem.



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 13, 2018, 01:11:33 pm
Lots of good stuff in the March 12 issue!  :D

Adam Gopnik on Andrew Lloyd Weber.

Alex Ross on current operas at the Met.

Peter Schjeldahl on Grant Wood at the Whitney.

Emily Nussbaum on the TV show Jane the Virgin (makes me wish I watched the show, but also sort of makes it sound like one of those shows where, if you haven't watched from the beginning, you'd be hopelessly lost).

Lots more to go: Hilton Als, Anthony Lane, and Jane Mayer.

(I've already read Kathryn Schulz on stinkbugs, and I found it truly scary.  :(  )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 14, 2018, 09:48:04 am
Lots of good stuff in the March 12 issue!  :D

Agreed!

Quote
Emily Nussbaum on the TV show Jane the Virgin (makes me wish I watched the show, but also sort of makes it sound like one of those shows where, if you haven't watched from the beginning, you'd be hopelessly lost).

Not to bring up the touchy subject of DVR again (sorry), but I have been recording Jane the Virgin almost since the series first started and I was seeing rave reviews. I've never watched more than about 5 minutes of it, but from what I've seen I agree, you'd have to start from the beginning. So that's like, what, six years now? Is she even still a virgin anymore?  :laugh:

Quote
(I've already read Kathryn Schulz on stinkbugs, and I found it truly scary.  :(  )

I read it, too, and before I'd even finished -- in fact, I still haven't finished it, come to think of it -- was frantically googling stinkbugs and Minnesota. Yes, Minnesota is one of the 45 states they've invaded.

Bright side: Maybe we don't even have to worry about global warming! Not to add more scariness, but I read an article the other day from a reliable source (an environmental biologist writing on Slate) that, according to some estimates, the chances of human life surviving to the 22nd century are 50/50.

But maybe stinkbugs will have taken over by then. And it's probably only a matter of time before they become carnivorous.

Kathryn Schulz seems to be making a specialty of stories that are scary beyond belief. She wrote the one about how Seattle is overdue for a gigantic earthquake/tsunami that will instantly deluge a huge swath on the coastal side of the city with 30 feet of water.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 14, 2018, 11:21:08 am
Not to bring up the touchy subject of DVR again (sorry), but I have been recording Jane the Virgin almost since the series first started and I was seeing rave reviews. I've never watched more than about 5 minutes of it.

Never more than five minutes (per episode?) since almost the beginning of the series (Nussbaum says it debuted in 2014)? Um, I think you just made my point about recording/not recording, regardless of the device used.

Quote
Is she even still a virgin anymore?  :laugh:

I'd answer that question, but it would spoil Nussbaum's review.  ;D

Quote
Kathryn Schulz seems to be making a specialty of stories that are scary beyond belief. She wrote the one about how Seattle is overdue for a gigantic earthquake/tsunami that will instantly deluge a huge swath on the coastal side of the city with 30 feet of water.

I remember that article; I didn't remember that Schulz wrote it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 14, 2018, 08:41:27 pm
The only article I was able to read so far in last week's NY was the longish one on Christopher Steele: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

The latest issue arrived today and I have read half of it already, online. Watch out for the Reddit story. Be prepared for a look into the obscene world of online trolling:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet?mbid=&mbid=nl_Magazine%20Weekly%20031218%20without%20Web&CNDID=18632875&spMailingID=13105294&spUserID=MjI2MjM0MTY1NjYyS0&spJobID=1361154261&spReportId=MTM2MTE1NDI2MQS2
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 14, 2018, 09:46:12 pm
Never more than five minutes (per episode?) since almost the beginning of the series (Nussbaum says it debuted in 2014)? Um, I think you just made my point about recording/not recording, regardless of the device used.

Oh, it's totally true of Jane the Virgin but ask me about a million other shows, including (not to be redundant, but ...) Vietnam and The Roosevelts. But really, pretty much all the shows I watch these days, even the current ones that are broadcast once a week or whatever -- I watch them when I want to watch them as opposed to when they're actually "on." If they're on Friday night but I'm out, for example, I watch them on a different night. Sometimes I'm even more or less ready to watch when they're on, but still wait 15 minutes doing other stuff so I can FF through the commercials. Downside: I'm not up on the latest commercials, but I can live with that.

(No, I meant I've seen about 15 minutes total of the entire JtV series. It comes on right after something else I record, so the recording of the first show picks up the first few minutes of JtV. So I know that it's modeled after a Latinx telanova -- or whatever it's called; I defer to Emily Nussbaum -- a medium I'm not familiar with, but OK, I don't mind broadening my cultural horizons. But it starts out with a Hispanic-accented narrator going, "When last we saw Jane, she was blah blah blah" and so on for a lot of other characters I'd have to watch from the beginning to know, so it's kind of overwhelming.)

Quote
I remember that article; I didn't remember that Schulz wrote it.

I remember because I knew of her work when she was a book reviewer for New York magazine/Vulture.com. Since then, I remember her byline.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 15, 2018, 04:32:52 pm
The only article I was able to read so far in last week's NY was the longish one on Christopher Steele: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

That one's next up on my list.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2018, 01:04:15 pm
As usual, I'm way behind on my reading. I found Jane Mayer's March 12 article on Christopher Steele absorbing and important; it was long, but I think it needed to be.

Anyway, I'm now thoroughly enjoying the article about wine making in China. I mean, who knew?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 21, 2018, 06:56:56 pm



Eventually, Simon (Nick Robinson) gets his boy and there is a big, smacking kiss at the end. But Greg Berlanti’s balancing act for the mainstream leaves little room for the physical expression of gay love. Even compared with, say, Moonlight, or Call Me By Your Name, this film is chaste; it avoids the oddball raunchiness of mid-aughts efforts like She’s The Man  and Mean Girls. The real romance is between Simon and his own true public identity; his coming out is far more important than his desire.




https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-chaste-optimism-of-love-simon
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
Culture Desk
The Chaste Optimism of
Love, Simon

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/596fbd91a28215791910e1f3/1:1/w_130,c_limit/st-felix-doreen_avatar.png)By Doreen St. Félix   March 20, 2018

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYqgonKWAAA9QUC.jpg)
In Love, Simon, the director Greg Berlanti’s balancing act for the mainstream leaves little room for the physical expression of gay love.
Photograph by Ben Rothstein / Twentieth Century Fox / Everett



Children’s movies are made, in part, for grownups—their allegories are meant to pacify both parent and child—but the teen movie, like its audience, is more intemperate. Alternately generous and cruel, it teaches its viewers that life isn’t fair, but that, in spite of pain, they should continue to believe in it. In other words, its job is to break hearts. In the summer of 2014, I sat behind two girls at a matinee of The Fault in Our Stars, adapted from John Green’s young-adult novel; the loudness of their weeping, as Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, playing the fatefully linked Hazel and Augustus, were both slowly debilitated by cancer, moved me far more than the histrionics onscreen. There was a similar energy at a recent viewing of Love, Simon, Greg Berlanti’s new adaptation of Becky Albertalli’s 2015 novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. On the way in, a teen-ager with lime-green hair careened into me. “I just have to get a good seat,” she said, sweet and shrill.

The film opens on Simon (Nick Robinson), waking among his bedroom juvenilia in a spruce Georgia suburb. He peers out of his window, yearning for the boy cutting the neighbor’s lawn. “Simon!” a voice pined from the back of the theatre. The audience knew the contours of the character; in Albertalli’s novel, Simon is a closeted high-school junior, a jumpy intellectual, sarcastic and melancholy. He makes a playlist of Elliott Smith and the Smiths called “The Great Depression”; he also peppers his speech with “freaking” and “awesome.” He’s a bit of a goober, on the page—an adorable one, deep in heartsickness. In the book, he’s five feet seven; Robinson, playing an alpha brooder who clenches his jaw and squints like a baby-faced DiCaprio, towers over his provokers.

Berlanti has tweaked Albertalli’s novel in more meaningful ways, too, turning the delirious coming-of-age tale into something more domestic. The novel’s drama derives from Simon’s secret Gmail correspondence with an anonymous student at his school, also closeted, and every other chapter is an assemblage of their letters. The reader takes pleasure in identifying the traits of the escalating communication: the time stamps between messages shorten; the confessions in the body of each e-mail lengthen. The boys start to fantasize about sex, what it would feel like. Berlanti’s film excises much of this; Simon narrates just a few letters in voice-over, and spends most of his time dodging his classmate Martin, a squirrely antagonist who threatens to out Simon unless he sets him up with the plucky and gorgeous Abby. Eventually, Simon gets his boy and there is a big, smacking kiss at the end. But Berlanti’s balancing act for the mainstream leaves little room for the physical expression of gay love. Even compared with, say, Moonlight, or Call Me By Your Name, this film is chaste; it avoids the oddball raunchiness of mid-aughts efforts like She’s The Man  and Mean Girls. The real romance is between Simon and his own true public identity; his coming out is far more important than his desire.

Berlanti, who was himself closeted in high school, has been a guardian of teen dramas since the nineties. As the showrunner of Dawson’s Creek, he orchestrated the smooch between the football star Jack McPhee and his handsome prom date in Season 3. (“There hadn’t been a gay kiss that was romantic on primetime TV,” he reminisced to Vanity Fair, earlier this year.) Berlanti has since sired a bundle of superhero romps that air on the CW, but Riverdale, an Archie  comic rewrite, is the scene stealer. Attitudes about prime-time sex in general have considerably loosened since Dawson’s Creek, and Riverdale, a murder mystery in which the gay son of the town sheriff cruises at night, is very horny.

Love, Simon  keeps its protagonist more firmly in check, hewing safely to the heterosexual values of teen romantic comedies, all the while earning Fox its promotional crown of backing “the first mainstream gay teen movie.” In a review, Richard Lawson made the bittersweet observation that there had been no such guide when he was younger, but noted that he wished that Robinson’s Simon “read, frankly, a bit gayer.” (Keiynan Lonsdale, who plays his beau, Blue, came out as bisexual to his followers on Instagram after the film’s completion.) In Albertalli’s book, two of Simon’s friends, Abby and Nick, take him to a gay bar, where he experiences a sense of sublime recognition. The film omits the scene, and instead includes a jokey replacement: a dream sequence in which Simon, a student at “Liberal University,” lacquers his dorm wall with posters of Whitney Houston and dances in rainbow on the quad. He then snaps out of it, shakes his head. This isn’t him; he’s not a stereotype. “I’m just like you,” Simon says, breaking the fourth wall. In such interior monologues, Simon is constantly assuaging the young audience’s anxiety about gayness manifesting in clichéd difference; he is, instead, the poster child of what is sometimes called “homonormativity.”

The film, which leans on the de-facto distinction of its leading man—his gayness—forgets to give him quirks. Simon and his friends are an affluent, telegenic crew, who drink drive-through iced coffees before pulling into the parking lot at Creekwood High. The script is limber and funny, swapping in the contemporary references from the 2015 book with newer quips; one kid, clad in a relaxed button-down and a kitschy lei, goes to a Halloween party dressed like “post-retirement Obama.” Simon gets in a dig at his perfect parents, played by Jennifer Garner and Josh Duhamel, about how their generation loved Bill Cosby. Garner is the “cool mom,” defined not, as is usually the case, by a character flaw (alcoholism, anxiety) but by her political bona fides; she makes protest signs about taking down the patriarchy. It’s clear that Simon’s parents would never have a problem with his sexuality, and neither would his friends—that the struggle, for him, is mostly internal. Berlanti delights in his idea of Gen Z, affirming the studies that forecast that these Americans will reject the “whitelash” and be more queer, more tolerant, than those before them. The two homophobic jocks at Creekwood are repulsive brutes whom no one likes; one of Simon’s classmates, Ethan, who reads as flamboyant, regularly outwits them.

But surely teen-age viewers, who otherwise lose themselves in queer fan-fictions on Tumblr, who march on the street for their rights, could have handled a bolder artwork, one that captured something of gay love rather than making a statement about the straight acceptance of it? The film is as sweet as bubble-gum-flavored medicine; it arrives as if without cinematic lineage—unburdened by cinema’s history of equating gayness with death. It just stops short of producing a picture of gay attraction. I am a mark, but the climactic reunion in the novel—in which Simon sends Blue one last e-mail, inviting him to meet for a ride on the Ferris wheel at a local carnival—made me weep. (“Our pinkie fingers are maybe an inch apart, and it’s as if an invisible current runs through them.”) In the film, the boys’ conversation is intercut with shots of the crowd, roaring from the ground. The moment is tepid—their kiss a win for representation rather than the climax of a consuming crush. A few minutes later, Simon picks up his new boyfriend on his way to school, and Berlanti has them kiss a second time. The coda made the theatre roar. And it was their cheering, not the kiss, that made me emotional.



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/596fbd91a28215791910e1f3/1:1/w_130,c_limit/st-felix-doreen_avatar.png) Doreen St. Félix is a staff writer at The New Yorker    newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2018, 08:40:58 pm
A friend likened Love, Simon to a John Hughes movie for middle-aged gay men who had always wondered why there was no John Hughes movie for them.

He's ten years younger than me. I have to take his word for it because I've never seen a John Hughes movie. They weren't exactly aimed at my demographic.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 21, 2018, 09:36:47 pm
A friend likened Love, Simon to a John Hughes movie for middle-aged gay men who had always wondered why there was no John Hughes movie for them.

He's ten years younger than me. I have to take his word for it because I've never seen a John Hughes movie. They weren't exactly aimed at my demographic.

You mean, age-wise or orientation-wise? Judd Nelson is 58, so not much younger than you. Molly Ringwald is 50.

I don't think I've seen a whole JH movie either, but I've seen bits and pieces of some, like The Breakfast Club. One thing I couldn't relate to was my impression that in JH movies social status and cliques are determined by the wealth of kids' families. I see that a lot in depictions of teen life.

That wasn't what it was like in my high school at all. There was a range of socioeconomic levels, but cliques were based on personalities and lifestyles.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 21, 2018, 10:24:40 pm
Hmmm. It does seem
rather sweet--


[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0rh1xduHyE[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0rh1xduHyE

Ferris wheel scene from Love, Simon
Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale

Love, Simon kiss scene 😍😍
This movie was sooooo goood . You guys need to watch Love, Simon immediately !!!



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Published on Mar 18, 2018

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Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2018, 10:45:06 pm
You mean, age-wise or orientation-wise?


I meant the age of the target audience. I've never seen a John Hughes movie, and one reason for it was because I assumed (perhaps incorrectly?) that the target demographic for the audience was YA. But how much younger were the characters than the actors playing them?

Quote
Judd Nelson is 58, so not much younger than you. Molly Ringwald is 50.

I don't get your point about the age of the actors. Today is Nick Robinson's (Simon) birthday. He's 23 and played a teenager.

In Call Me By Your Name, Armie Hammer, age 31, plays 24, and Timothee Chalamet, age 22, plays 17. (I haven't seen the movie, but I'm currently reading the novel, and I'm assuming the ages of the characters in the movie are the same as in the book.)

One might consider that the age differences between the actors and the characters aren't enormous, so I'm just sayin', but the friend who likened Love, Simon to a John Hughes movie also said he had a problem with Call Me By Your Name because he couldn't accept Armie Hammer as a 24-year-old graduate student. He felt Hammer was (or came off) too mature for the role. (My own opinion is that in the novel Hammer's character seems more mature and self-aware than might be typical for a 24-year-old, or at least a 24-year-old roughly 30 years ago.)

Judd Nelson was (turned) 27 the year The Breakfast Club was released; I haven't checked, but I assume he was playing a teenager?

I guess Molly Ringwald is the "outlier." It appears she actually was (turned) 16 when Sixteen Candles was released.

(I say "was [turned]" because I checked the birth years for Nelson and Ringwald, but not their birth dates.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 22, 2018, 06:37:23 pm
Judd Nelson was (turned) 27 the year The Breakfast Club was released; I haven't checked, but I assume he was playing a teenager?

Correct that he was playing a teenager. My math says he was 25. But still, you got your point across. You don't care for movies whose main characters are teenagers, regardless of the age of the actor.

I tend to be that way, too, but with exceptions. I wasn't actually as big a fan of Oscar-nominee Lady Bird as most people were/are. But I liked Easy A.

Quote
(I say "was [turned]" because I checked the birth years for Nelson and Ringwald, but not their birth dates.)

Tip: If you google "Molly Ringwald age" it will come up in big numbers across the top of the page, with her birthday right below it. Below that are the ages and birthdays of associated figures, like Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. And you can google "breakfast club year" and the same thing happens with movies (Feb. 14, 1985 -- three days before Molly Ringwald's 17th birthday.

Oh, I just discovered you can do something even easier. Scroll down to the list of frequently googled questions about the topic. One is about the ages of the cast members. Click on that, and you get:

Quote
How old was the cast of The Breakfast Club?
Ages of the Breakfast Club actors during filming: Judd Nelson (25), Molly Ringwald (16), Emilio Estevez (22), Anthony Michael Hall (16), Ally Sheedy (22).


Probably not a question you'll be googling frequently, but it works on lots of topics.

Yesterday I was haunted by the idea that I had seen, and in fact was actually pretty familiar with, one John Hughes movie. But I couldn't think of one. It just came to me: Ferris Buehler's Day Off. I liked that movie when I first saw it but now I hate it, and not just because Matthew Broderick was 24 and playing a teenager.

BTW, yesterday was Matthew Broderick's birthday.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 22, 2018, 10:16:47 pm
Correct that he was playing a teenager. My math says he was 25. But still, you got your point across. You don't care for movies whose main characters are teenagers, regardless of the age of the actor.

That would very much depend on the film. No, I wouldn't care for a film full of teen angst--I don't watch TV shows about it, either--but I would probably like Call Me By Your Name. The book is difficult to put down--I could sit up all night reading it. Plus only one of the main characters is a teenager. If a 50-year-old friend liked Love, Simon, I might well like it, too.

But something like Sixteen Candles or The Breakfast Club? No.

I just really didn't get your point about the ages of the actors.

I didn't Google, incidentally. I just took my information from IMDb.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 23, 2018, 09:47:45 am
I didn't Google, incidentally. I just took my information from IMDb.

Well, if that meant first going to IMDb and then looking up individual actors and movies one at a time, I was just pointing out that googling is faster. You type in "Molly Ringwald age" once and you not only get her age and birthday but also those of her fellow Brat Pack actors and a bunch of other related information -- all on the same page, all from typing three words. Google, incidentally, lifts the information from places like IMDb and Wikipedia or whatever would be appropriate.

I'm not saying this particular issue will ever come up for you again, but this technique works with a lot of things.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 23, 2018, 10:42:28 am
Well, if that meant first going to IMDb and then looking up individual actors and movies one at a time, I was just pointing out that googling is faster. You type in "Molly Ringwald age" once and you not only get her age and birthday but also those of her fellow Brat Pack actors and a bunch of other related information -- all on the same page, all from typing three words. Google, incidentally, lifts the information from places like IMDb and Wikipedia or whatever would be appropriate.

Yes, I've noticed that about other things, mostly when I need to verify things at work.

When it comes to movies, TV shows, and actors, my default setting  ;D  is IMDb. If the information there is unsatisfactory, I Google.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 23, 2018, 01:16:01 pm
When it comes to movies, TV shows, and actors, my default setting  ;D  is IMDb. If the information there is unsatisfactory, I Google.

I might use IMDb if I wanted to, oh, deep dive into the cast of a movie or look up an actor's earliest roles or see if anyone is still posting on the Brokeback page, if it even still exists. For basic info, Google seems faster.

For instance, I found myself curious about the age of Tad Friend, the guy who wrote that New Yorker article about ageism that I posted somewhere around here. Up popped large font with his age (55), his birthday, his New Yorker staff writer caricature, and pertinent facts lifted from Wikipedia: a brief paragraph explaining who he is, where he went to school, books he's written and the name of his dad, who also has a Wikipedia entry in case I was curious. Which I'm not.

I will say that I once looked up Julia Louis-Dreyfus' age that way, and saw that her father was also in Wikipedia, got curious enough to click his name and discovered that he's one of the richest people in the world. I never knew that about JLD's background.

UPDATE: I thought one of Friend's book titles sounded interesting, so I clicked on that. It took me to the Amazon page, where I learned this: "Tad Friend's family is nothing if not illustrious: his father was president of Swarthmore College, and at Smith his mother came in second in a poetry contest judged by W.H. Auden--to Sylvia Plath."

And that was interesting because I'd just been thinking about how the college admissions process sustains a non-meritocracy system. Not that this is a great example -- Friend's parents sound like they probably do have merit.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 23, 2018, 03:31:13 pm

I meant the age of the target audience. I've never seen a John Hughes movie, and one reason for it was because I assumed (perhaps incorrectly?) that the target demographic for the audience was YA.



Oh dear!  Is this embarrassing or what??  ::) ::)

I loved  Sixteen Candles (1984)--and I was just over 30 years old when the movie was released. I thought it was the cleverest thing (and very, very funny!)--and I had a small crush on Jake (Michael Schoeffling)


(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/42/77/4a/42774a299e0edfbd9d4688b8b24b5753.jpg)

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOiRMN5nRO8[/youtube]


(Is that a FANTASY or what!!   :D :laugh:)






Nine months later, I also loved  The Breakfast Club (1985)--with great soundtrack!--and, of course, the sensitive jock Andrew (Emilio Estevez)

(http://cdn.iofferphoto.com/img3/item/480/309/867/o_the-breakfast-club-cast-signed-photo-x5-emilio-estavez-6583.JPG)

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSXBvor47Zs[/youtube]



[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3CUh8v7MNo[/youtube]







Nearly 6 years after that, a very different, NOT brat-pack, NOT John Hughes film (this one written and directed by Allan Moyle): 36-year-old me  loved, loved LOVED, Pump Up the Volume (1990)--with my MAJOR crush Mark Hunter (Christian Slater--sigh!) (and the amazing, totally cool soundtrack also)!

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fPbVMpURcAs/U4uDQlQkVeI/AAAAAAAAJlY/6yGtr4vxbDU/s1600/pump-up-the-volume-alan-moyle-1990-L-S2k0DY.jpeg)
(http://derekwinnert.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/183.jpg)
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-P--CgXkAAIpzq.jpg)

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSzz-t7ywVM[/youtube]







You know, Jeff--you might find yourself liking some of these 80s film--they certainly have their own charms!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 23, 2018, 06:49:21 pm
Oh dear!  Is this embarrassing or what??  ::) ::)

John, we all have our guilty pleasures.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 23, 2018, 11:30:50 pm
John, we all have our guilty pleasures.  :)


HA!  :laugh: (Thank you for being so tolerant, Jeff!  ;D )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 24, 2018, 09:51:56 am

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-chaste-optimism-of-love-simon
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
Culture Desk
The Chaste Optimism of
Love, Simon

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/596fbd91a28215791910e1f3/1:1/w_130,c_limit/st-felix-doreen_avatar.png)By Doreen St. Félix   March 20, 2018



I am a mark, but the climactic reunion in the novel—in which Simon sends Blue one last e-mail, inviting him to meet for a ride on the Ferris wheel at a local carnival—made me weep. (“Our pinkie fingers are maybe an inch apart, and it’s as if an invisible current runs through them.”) In the film, the boys’ conversation is intercut with shots of the crowd, roaring from the ground. The moment is tepid—their kiss a win for representation rather than the climax of a consuming crush. A few minutes later, Simon picks up his new boyfriend on his way to school, and Berlanti has them kiss a second time. The coda made the theatre roar. And it was their cheering, not the kiss, that made me emotional.






A bit more from
the Ferris wheel scene--
(and that kiss)--now I
really want to see the
final scene/coda kiss!


[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLBaQIcn1xQ[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLBaQIcn1xQ

Ferris wheel scene from Love, Simon
('Blue' Revealed)
Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale



Rhenz17
Published on Mar 21, 2018

(https://yt3.ggpht.com/a-/AJLlDp3tektbanya2jit4pF0zD9SDQCPEtYrElnxSQ=s88-mo-c-c0xffffffff-rj-k-no)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2018, 11:03:13 am
John, we all have our guilty pleasures.  :)

HA!  :laugh: (Thank you for being so tolerant, Jeff!  ;D )

(((John))) I have mine. At the moment I just can't remember what it is--or what they are!  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 24, 2018, 04:44:53 pm
BTW, has anybody read the letters about Jordan Peterson in the March 19 issue? I found all three of them very good reading and the first of the three particularly interesting.

It doesn't change my mind about using a plural pronoun to refer to an individual, but I thought the letter was quite good.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 25, 2018, 06:33:30 pm

Ok, here we are again--
looks like this is the
final scene/coda kiss--
but only for about half
a second--damn!


[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MQB4E8NOuI[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MQB4E8NOuI


Simon and Bram in Love, Simon
'Blue' (Bram) Revealed
Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale



AccioTargaryen
Published on Mar 22, 2018

(https://yt3.ggpht.com/a-/AJLlDp1ydZz0XVW1GcKMhl5kwuHcyslkiz7qMw6SJA=s88-mo-c-c0xffffffff-rj-k-no)






Finally--
the final scene/coda kiss--
but seen from a seat in
the theater!


[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VVT3CVhHpg[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VVT3CVhHpg



Simon and Bram in Love, Simon
The Coda/Kiss at the end @movie theater goes wild
Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale



Jorge Gomez
Published on Mar 20, 2018

(https://yt3.ggpht.com/a-/AJLlDp3SYO_bpChD8dzIrl4VjCaG2SE9QpooDjCGsg=s88-mo-c-c0xffffffff-rj-k-no)





Once Again:





https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-chaste-optimism-of-love-simon
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
Culture Desk
The Chaste Optimism of
Love, Simon

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/596fbd91a28215791910e1f3/1:1/w_130,c_limit/st-felix-doreen_avatar.png)By Doreen St. Félix   March 20, 2018



I am a mark, but the climactic reunion in the novel—in which Simon sends Blue one last e-mail, inviting him to meet for a ride on the Ferris wheel at a local carnival—made me weep. (“Our pinkie fingers are maybe an inch apart, and it’s as if an invisible current runs through them.”) In the film, the boys’ conversation is intercut with shots of the crowd, roaring from the ground. The moment is tepid—their kiss a win for representation rather than the climax of a consuming crush. A few minutes later, Simon picks up his new boyfriend on his way to school, and Berlanti has them kiss a second time. The coda made the theatre roar. And it was their cheering, not the kiss, that made me emotional.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on March 26, 2018, 05:47:42 pm
The New Yorker reviewer
was absolutely correct--
the young audience members'
reaction to the same-sex kiss
is more important than the
kiss itself.


[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYFydwsUmFg[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYFydwsUmFg



Simon and Bram in Love, Simon
MORE (YOUNG) AUDIENCE MEMBERS REACT WHEN
The Coda/Kiss at the end @movie theater goes wild
Nick Robinson and Keiynan Lonsdale



Jorge Gomez
Published on Mar 20, 2018

(https://yt3.ggpht.com/a-/AJLlDp3SYO_bpChD8dzIrl4VjCaG2SE9QpooDjCGsg=s88-mo-c-c0xffffffff-rj-k-no)





Once Again:





https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-chaste-optimism-of-love-simon
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
Culture Desk
The Chaste Optimism of
Love, Simon

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/596fbd91a28215791910e1f3/1:1/w_130,c_limit/st-felix-doreen_avatar.png)By Doreen St. Félix   March 20, 2018



I am a mark, but the climactic reunion in the novel—in which Simon sends Blue one last e-mail, inviting him to meet for a ride on the Ferris wheel at a local carnival—made me weep. (“Our pinkie fingers are maybe an inch apart, and it’s as if an invisible current runs through them.”) In the film, the boys’ conversation is intercut with shots of the crowd, roaring from the ground. The moment is tepid—their kiss a win for representation rather than the climax of a consuming crush. A few minutes later, Simon picks up his new boyfriend on his way to school, and Berlanti has them kiss a second time. The coda made the theatre roar. And it was their cheering, not the kiss, that made me emotional.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2018, 02:23:02 pm
As usual I'm behind in my reading, but anyone who has not read Andrew Marantz's article on Reddit in the March 19 issue, I highly recommend it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 28, 2018, 05:54:04 pm

The latest issue arrived today and I have read half of it already, online. Watch out for the Reddit story. Be prepared for a look into the obscene world of online trolling:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet?mbid=&mbid=nl_Magazine%20Weekly%20031218%20without%20Web&CNDID=18632875&spMailingID=13105294&spUserID=MjI2MjM0MTY1NjYyS0&spJobID=1361154261&spReportId=MTM2MTE1NDI2MQS2


Yes, I agree.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 28, 2018, 06:53:39 pm
I posted the following on my blog, but I think it kind of applies to The New Yorker thread, too.

Quote
Unquestionably the best thing that happened was that I was actually able to speak briefly with Corella himself. I thanked him for programming two of the classical story ballets a season and in general for where he has taken the company. I also embarrassed him a bit. I told him that I had a photo from The New Yorker (from 1999) that featured four dancers from A.B.T. Three of the company's male stars were in the foreground, and in the rear was a certain very young guy perched on the mantle of a fireplace. He looked a bit shocked and said he would like to see that photo, so I'm going to send it to him early next week.

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 09, 2018, 10:42:13 am
The New Yorker's first musical cover!

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2018-04-16?mbid=social_facebook (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2018-04-16?mbid=social_facebook)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 09, 2018, 11:36:34 am

[youtube=960,540]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYFydwsUmFg[/youtube]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYFydwsUmFg





I really need to read carefully. For one shocking moment I thought that said "Love Simon Kissing Erection."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 10, 2018, 01:28:11 pm
Over my just-completed lunch today, I read John Seabrook's April 9 article that takes off from his highway spin-out on black ice. It was too long with too many digressions, but what Seabrook had to say on p. 33 about the writing of the Swiss geologist Albert Heim struck a chord.

Heim wrote about falls from great heights, but his description seemed to match my own experience in a fall from a relatively short height. When I was thrown from--OK, fell off--my horse in '09, time seemed to slow down. I clearly remember feeling that I was falling in slow motion, and I had the time to formulate in my mind the entire sentence, "When you hit the ground, roll, so the horse won't step on you." And that's exactly what I did. Yet that was not a very far fall.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 11, 2018, 09:22:36 am
Heim wrote about falls from great heights, but his description seemed to match my own experience in a fall from a relatively short height. When I was thrown from--OK, fell off--my horse in '09, time seemed to slow down. I clearly remember feeling that I was falling in slow motion, and I had the time to formulate in my mind the entire sentence, "When you hit the ground, roll, so the horse won't step on you." And that's exactly what I did. Yet that was not a very far fall.

I got thrown by a horse in about 2012 or so. I had time, as I went headfirst over the horse's neck, to think, "Great, now I'm going to be out $11,000," because that's the out-of-network health-insurance deductible. Luckily, I was on the side of the dirt road, cushioned with soft pine needles and leaves. If I had rolled to avoid being stepped on I might have rolled down the mountain, so it's lucky I was more worried about the insurance. But I wasn't hurt enough to need a doctor's care. Just pretty bruised up, less from the impact of the fall than from being yanked off the saddle.

My friend Beth (another of our group of six or so) wasn't so lucky. When her horse saw what happened to mine, he threw her, too -- only she was in the middle of the hard-packed dirt road. She broke her pelvis and had to be carried off the trail on a stretcher. Then she had to spend the rest of our vacation (in Eureka Springs, AR), sitting on the big porch of the house we'd rented, taking opioids and being waited on. She needed help to get to the bathroom and a special elevated toilet attachment and when we flew back, she had to make arrangements for a wheelchair. Luckily, one member of our group was a nurse.

Even more luckily, Beth works for a hospital so has good employer-sponsored health insurance. Also, she comes from a family of nurses and doctors who were there to help her during the six weeks she had to stay home recovering.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2018, 09:31:28 am
I thought this was interesting. I'm reading the April 9 article about the new CEO of Uber, and he shows up on the Today show this morning.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 18, 2018, 01:39:18 pm
Over lunch today I read Andrew Marantz's April 16 piece on Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook scandal. It reminded me that a long time ago, probably about the time the movie The Social Network came out, The New Yorker ran a piece about Zuckerberg. I don't remember who the author was, but I do remember that he was gay. I remember that when he confronted Zuckerberg with the concept that not all people want everything about their lives put "out there" for the rest of the world to know, Zuckerberg seemed unable even to comprehend why anyone wouldn't.

I can't say why. I haven't been able to put my finger on it. But somehow I feel as if there is a line between Zuckerberg's incomprehension and the current scandal. Maybe it has to do with not caring what's "out there," or where it's coming from. I don't know. I just feel that somehow there is a connection.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 19, 2018, 08:57:47 am
The view got uninteresting from the plane around Missouri, so I brought out my New Yorker Magazine. In the packing rush, I grabbed a back copy for March 5, in which we had just discussed the Jordan Peterson article. But the longer article on Donald Glover was fascinating and so well written! How Tad Friend could relate and capture someone so different than himself was amazing to behold! Here are a few quotes that resonated with me:

"If you grew up knowing there was a bear in your future, because your dad kept telling you, ‘When you’re thirteen, you’re going to have to kill a bear,’ then, when you turned thirteen, you would kill the bear.” Beetz was baffled. “The bear,” she repeated. The door was still beeping, the way a jarring sound grows in a scene until you realize it’s an alarm clock and it was all a dream."

"he makes the city look both vast and confiningly tiny, as it might to an onlooker playing with a telescope."

"Earn and Van are feeling floaty and relaxed, enjoying each other—a setup for quarrels to come."

Nestled in the middle of the article on Glover is a recap of television's recent history that I found enlightening. "That creative breakthrough [the Sopranos] allowed shows to aim for smaller but more fervent audiences, to traffic not in quirky heroes but in flawed Everymen prone to depression and savagery."

And this point seemed very Brokieish: "Ambiguity has become a selling point, with nonlinear storytelling the new norm. Many dramas are designed to be solved or resolved online, where fans can collaborate to crack open the hidden Easter eggs."

Then it goes back to Glover's selling of the TV show "Atlanta" to the FX network and the concept of "Trojan-horsing". The FX CEO told Glover, "The parts that you’re worried we’re going to think are too weird—lean into those.” The CEO also said, "We’re in the business of making pieces of commercial television that mask deeper artistic narratives.”

And speaking of masks, "I feel like people are going to be writing essays twenty years from now on all the masks in the show...starting with why Earn is wearing a white mask.” A reveller is wearing what the script called an “innocent child face” mask, whose “black eyeholes peer into Earn’s soul.” How Brokieish is that!!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 19, 2018, 09:31:17 am
Thanks for the quotes, Lee! I saw that article but didn't read it. i have seen part of an episode of the show. The show is acclaimed, so I've wanted to watch it, but my sons warned me that I probably wouldn't get it because there are too many rap-culture in-references. I did have a hard time following the segment I watched, but then I was just jumping into the middle of a series that has been on more than one season, without knowing anything about the characters or storyline.

I did read a few quotes from the story somewhere. Despite his talent, I think Donald Glover may be going a little over the top when he speculates that people will be writing essays about his show 20 years from now. Well ... maybe. But are people even still writing essays about The Sopranos or The Wire, which were roughly 20 years ago? Or even Mad Men and Breaking Bad, which were more recent? Not to say his show isn't or can't be as good as those classics. It's just that you'd think a show's essay shelf life would be limited to a few months after the season finale, if that.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 19, 2018, 10:11:12 am
That might not even be limited to TV shows. Is anybody writing scholarly essays on BBM anymore? Seriously, I'd like to know if anybody is. I remember hearing about academics writing things in the immediate wake of the film, but is anybody doing it now?

I imagine BBM might get mentioned if someone writes an essay about Call Me By Your Name right now, but I think that would be different from being the focus of the essay/aritcle.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 19, 2018, 10:46:22 am
The only exception I can think of would be students writing essays as college papers. My son wrote a paper about the philosophical themes reflected in two Cohen Brothers' movies (No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man) as a requirement for his BA in Media Arts and Culture.

A lot of people still think of essays as school papers that start with "In this essay, I will blah blah blah" and end with "So in conclusion, blah blah blah" and in between cite a bunch of academic papers and research.

But I, and most people who are familiar with literary essays (like those in The New Yorker, for example) think of them as more creative and informal pieces that people read for information, entertainment and novel ideas. And it's hard to think of a publication that would run an essay about an old TV series or movie. It would have to be really, really good and say something strikingly new. And maybe not even then.

The only exception I can think of is someone writing something about a really old but widely familiar show. Someone not long ago wrote a piece on Slate "proving" that Mike and Carol Brady had killed their dead spouses. It was silly, of course. But someone on Facebook posted it who apparently knew the essay's writer. I wrote a comment with a link to that related New Yorker short story about the couple on the plane. The writer of the Slate essay popped in to point out that story contained no proof, whereas his essay was supported with "evidence."

He did have a point. One of his pieces of evidence, for example, was that in this big happy family made of bereaved widows and grief-stricken young children, nobody ever even mentions the deceased spouses/parents. Which would be really weird, come to think of it.

And I read another essay recently about how Ross and Rachel, the lovebirds of Friends who finally get together in the last episode, were actually a terrible couple and that Ross treated Rachel like shit. She made some valid points, also with evidence. I can't imagine anybody being interested except those who watched Friends (though admittedly, that's a lot of people, including me).

Whereas I never watched much of The Brady Bunch, but certainly have seen and heard enough about it to feel pretty familiar with the setup.

Oh now I can think of one more essay about TBB that I first read a long time ago, possibly even in the New Yorker. It was called "Here's the Story" in reference to the opening words of TBB's theme song, and he connected his regular TV watching in childhood and to the similarities and differences in his real life. That one was pretty good, too.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 19, 2018, 11:47:56 am
Interesting points. I was thinking narrowly of scholarly journals (on paper--if they continue to exist--or online). But then I didn't read the Glover article because when I glanced through it, it seemed that it would not interest me whatsoever. While I had heard of his series (possibly it was even in good old-fashioned  TV Guide   :o ) the show itself didn't interest me whatsoever.

Maybe he did have in mind articles such as the one proving that Mike and Carol Brady had murdered their previous spouses.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 19, 2018, 05:03:14 pm
Nestled in the middle of the article on Glover is a recap of television's recent history that I found enlightening. "That creative breakthrough [the Sopranos] allowed shows to aim for smaller but more fervent audiences, to traffic not in quirky heroes but in flawed Everymen prone to depression and savagery."


Here's more about The Sopranos, which you specifically asked about. “The Sopranos,” which arrived on HBO in 1999, established a new benchmark, verisimilitude; in the fifth episode, we saw the Mob boss Tony Soprano strangling an informant. . . . “True Detective. . .reinvents the procedural form using a unique, layered story structure which braids multiple time periods and employs occasionally unreliable narration. “Fargo” ’s “Season One Is a Triangle,” Structure is the new Tony Danza. [In the old days of television, when four networks dominated the industry, the survival standard was clear. A show thrived by attracting a huge audience, and it attracted a huge audience by being diverting yet comforting. You just needed that actor everyone liked, Tony Danza or Ted Danson]"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 20, 2018, 09:30:45 am
Here's more about The Sopranos, which you specifically asked about. “The Sopranos,” which arrived on HBO in 1999, established a new benchmark, verisimilitude; in the fifth episode, we saw the Mob boss Tony Soprano strangling an informant. . . . “True Detective. . .reinvents the procedural form using a unique, layered story structure which braids multiple time periods and employs occasionally unreliable narration. “Fargo” ’s “Season One Is a Triangle,” Structure is the new Tony Danza. [In the old days of television, when four networks dominated the industry, the survival standard was clear. A show thrived by attracting a huge audience, and it attracted a huge audience by being diverting yet comforting. You just needed that actor everyone liked, Tony Danza or Ted Danson]"

What's that passage from? Yeah, I've seen all of those shows, along with most of the critically acclaimed "prestige TV" series. The Sopranos is generally considered the original inspiration for the genre.

From what you quoted, that essay sounds like it's about the growth of the "prestige TV" era in general. I doubt anyone outside of an academic environment is currently writing essays specifically analyzing TS the way we did here with BBM. But that's what Donald Glover was suggesting people would do with Atlanta.

I don't really get the "structure is the new Tony Danza" thing. Was Tony Danza ever really that popular? I thought he was pretty schlocky even back in the day. (Ted Danson was and is pretty popular, and he's still starring in a TV show.)

But then I guess I don't even know what they mean by "structure." Is it, like, narrative complexity? The good series these days do have that, but they don't necessarily have huge audiences, especially because they're almost all on cable. Who's the Boss probably attracted 10 times their audiences, although many series today are at least 10 times better.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 20, 2018, 10:25:09 am
I don't really get the "structure is the new Tony Danza" thing.

Me neither.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 21, 2018, 06:31:31 pm
I would suggest you read that section of the article to get the points that Tad Friend was making on the evolution of TV. It's not that long a section, although the article itself is really loooooong.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 22, 2018, 10:07:12 am
I would suggest you read that section of the article to get the points that Tad Friend was making on the evolution of TV. It's not that long a section, although the article itself is really loooooong.

Ohhh, I didn't realize that was a passage from the Glover profile. I looked it up, and it made more sense in context and order.

It's saying: In the old days, shows could become popular if they were predictable and comforting [and on at least two occasions starred Tony Danza], whereas nowadays popular shows are complex and intricately structured.

I still think Tony Danza is a dumb example. Ted Danson, maybe. I don't think of either one as an actor you could just plunk into any old show and have a guaranteed hit.

Lucille Ball, maybe ...? Andy Griffith? Bob Newhart? I can think of a few actors that might apply to, but not Tony Danza.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 30, 2018, 02:49:58 pm
Typically, I'm way behind. I enjoyed the articles about the bean guy and the red bees in the April 23 issue.

(Maybe Ennis wouldn't have gotten sick of beans if he could have gotten beans from the bean guy.  ;D )

I'm looking forward to the articles about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the trip along the Rio Grande.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 30, 2018, 09:28:14 pm
I also devoured the article about the red bees. It was kind of sad. A King Lear-ish story.

Oh joy! I just found out that TNY will have a weekly crossword puzzle!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 01, 2018, 01:36:00 pm
Typically, I'm way behind. I enjoyed the articles about the bean guy and the red bees in the April 23 issue.

(Maybe Ennis wouldn't have gotten sick of beans if he could have gotten beans from the bean guy.  ;D )

I'm looking forward to the articles about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the trip along the Rio Grande.

I read that over lunch today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 01, 2018, 04:48:09 pm
The story about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey contained some good tidbits of new information, but I've read some better critiques of the movie that were more in-depth. I liked the part about Clarke and Kubrick reading about psychedelic experiences yet not wanting to take the drugs themselves to have a more direct experience.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 02, 2018, 08:39:56 am
The story about the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey contained some good tidbits of new information, but I've read some better critiques of the movie that were more in-depth.

I'm about midway through. I'm not that into it because I think I saw the movie only once -- when it was in theaters! :o -- and wasn't that crazy about it. Of course, I was only 10. But even then I could tell it was supposed to be making some grander statement, but just seemed boring.

Quote
I liked the part about Clarke and Kubrick reading about psychedelic experiences yet not wanting to take the drugs themselves to have a more direct experience.

 :laugh: I'm not sure it works that way. But I liked that part, too, mainly because Clarke and Kubrick said they were too "square" too do psychedelics. It got me musing on that word and wondering if, in 2018, it's so square to call someone a square that squareness has actually become cool.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 02, 2018, 09:27:23 am
I'm about midway through. I'm not that into it because I think I saw the movie only once -- when it was in theaters! :o -- and wasn't that crazy about it. Of course, I was only 10. But even then I could tell it was supposed to be making some grander statement, but just seemed boring.

I don't have the issue with me here at work to check it, but according to IMDb, the film was released in the U.S. in April 1968. I mention this because I have a very clear memory of actually seeing excerpts, or an excerpt, from the film in a class in school (I turned 10 in May 1968.). I know it was the part where the "space shuttle" approaches and docks at the space station, all to the tune of "On the Beautiful Blue Danube." The point of showing it in a classroom must have had something to do with the movie's vision of the future, space travel, and all that. What I cannot recall was what school year I saw this, whether it was before or after the film was released. April was late in the school year (ours ended around mid- to late June; I know we were always still in class for Flag Day, June 14), so I doubt I saw it in class if we saw it the same year but after the release.

When I finally saw the film, it was on TV. I was an adult by then, and I was still confused by the part about the apes and the black thingie.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2018, 10:01:24 am
When I finally saw the film, it was on TV. I was an adult by then, and I was still confused by the part about the apes and the black thingie.

The apes and the black thingie were the only part I liked.

That "Blue Danube" scene was incredibly boring, as I recall. But then, I thought the critically acclaimed movie Gravity was boring, too. The special effects were cool, but once you got used to those the story itself was kind of dull.

Someone should write a book about books and movies that look ahead to a specific year in the future that is now past, and compare the book/movie's vision with reality. So 2001, 1984 ... Prince's song "1999." Actually, we didn't party all that much that year. Had my mom and uncle over on New Year's Eve.

At one point that evening, my uncle asked my son, then 3, what he was going to do in the new year. "I'm going to eat a cracker!" Jack said, and we all laughed. How cute! Then Jack, smiling and completely cheerful, added, "But first, I'm going to set myself on fire and die."

 :laugh: Maybe I let him watch the wrong Saturday morning cartoons or something.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2018, 10:46:57 am
That "Blue Danube" scene was incredibly boring, as I recall. But then, I thought the critically acclaimed movie Gravity was boring, too. The special effects were cool, but once you got used to those the story itself was kind of dull.

Maybe it's a guy thing, but I thought watching the spaceship move and then dock was pretty cool. Plus, I liked the music. I know "The Blue Danube" is cliched, but I recall it as what I call "the full concert version," not just some short knock-off. Plus, I'm sure I read somewhere (maybe in an earlier New Yorker article?) that "The Blue Danube" was put in as "filler" because the music that was supposed to be specially composed for the scene wasn't ready, and somebody (studio exec?) liked it so much that it was kept in.

I've never seen Gravity. I think I'd rather see that one about Jodie Foster talking to aliens.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 04, 2018, 10:26:53 am
Maybe it's a guy thing, but I thought watching the spaceship move and then dock was pretty cool. Plus, I liked the music. I know "The Blue Danube" is cliched, but I recall it as what I call "the full concert version," not just some short knock-off. Plus, I'm sure I read somewhere (maybe in an earlier New Yorker article?) that "The Blue Danube" was put in as "filler" because the music that was supposed to be specially composed for the scene wasn't ready, and somebody (studio exec?) liked it so much that it was kept in.

Well also, I was 10. So youth could have been a factor or I could be misremembering my reaction.

The movie that I think best handled famous composers' "full concert version" (I guess) music was Woody Allen's Manhattan, with its George Gershwin soundtrack. And I hate to say that because of how I feel about that movie otherwise. But Gershwin's soaring music could distract you from the fact that the movie's hero is a pedophile. (I mean, in the actual fictional script -- not necessarily in real life, though probably that, too.)

Quote
I've never seen Gravity. I think I'd rather see that one about Jodie Foster talking to aliens.

I don't know exactly what you're talking about but it sounds familiar, so I've probably seen it.

But then, there are so many movies about women talking to aliens, including the most recent Best Picture Oscar winner, The Shape of Water. That creature might not have been an actual alien (i can't remember where the evil guys found him) but close enough.

It seems like pretty much every famous actress has talked to an alien. Especially if you can stretch the definition of "alien" to include characters who aren't quite aliens but might as well be, like King Kong.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 04, 2018, 12:11:10 pm
Well also, I was 10. So youth could have been a factor or I could be misremembering my reaction.

Of course I was 10, too, or maybe 11 at the oldest, so that's why I suggested it might have been a guy thing.

Meanwhile, I have no idea what to make of Anthony Lane's review of the new Avengers movie. Is he trying to be funny, or just condescending and snarky, or both?  ???  It struck me as just condescending and snarky.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 05, 2018, 09:58:43 am
Of course I was 10, too, or maybe 11 at the oldest, so that's why I suggested it might have been a guy thing.

Well, you said you weren't sure exactly what year you saw it in school, and that you also saw it as an adult. I don't think I've seen it since, at least not the whole thing. Also, I said my memories aren't totally clear -- for all I know I did think it was cool at the time, and other parts were boring, or whatever.

Also, I don't usually think of your tastes as more "guy" than mine (and no, that's not a typo :laugh:). Arguably less so, to the extent that you can label tastes guy-ish or otherwise. For example, I've never been to a ballet. And you've never mentioned going to a major-league sports game, whereas have seen quite a few baseball games -- both in person and, when the Twins were in the World Series, on TV. (I've never watched a football game, though -- I'm not that "guy"ish.)

Quote
Meanwhile, I have no idea what to make of Anthony Lane's review of the new Avengers movie. Is he trying to be funny, or just condescending and snarky, or both?  ???  It struck me as just condescending and snarky.

I haven't read it -- I rarely read reviews of movies I have no intention of seeing -- but now I'll look it up. Aren't almost all of Anthony Lane's reviews a combination of humor and snark? That is, unless he really, really likes a movie, in which case he might take the snark down a notch. I used to think his writing was great, but less so these days. Often I feel like he stretches too far off topic just to make a joke.

I still love a phrase of his from years ago that has stuck in my head. He was writing about some big male star in some movie. His point was that he doesn't think of the star as a great actor but he was good in this movie. So let's say it was Tom Cruise. He said, "I can't say the walls of my bedroom are shrouded with Tom Cruise posters, but in this case ..."

It must have been Tom Cruise, because that totally applies to him. Not the greatest actor of his generation, but he's good enough (as Alma Jr. might say), and in a few movies he's been genuinely really good.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 06, 2018, 06:46:30 pm
"I can't say the walls of my bedroom are shrouded with Tom Cruise posters, but in this case ..."

I don't remember if this goes as far back as Pauline Kael, or if it's more recent, but my all-time favorite appeared in a capsule review of Kenneth Branagh's film of Much Ado About Nothing: "Sometimes all you ask of Shakespeare is Denzel Washington in leather pants."

 :laugh:

(One professional baseball game, in our old ball park. We have "gay nights" at our current stadium, but they never seem convenient, and the complex is so huge I wouldn't want to try to find my way around it by myself. Then again, I don't have the patience to sit through nine innings--or more--of baseball.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 07, 2018, 01:18:44 pm
I don't remember if this goes as far back as Pauline Kael, or if it's more recent, but my all-time favorite appeared in a capsule review of Kenneth Branagh's film of Much Ado About Nothing: "Sometimes all you ask of Shakespeare is Denzel Washington in leather pants."

Too bad Denzel wasn't around in Elizabethan England. Shakespeare could have saved himself a lot of trouble!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 10, 2018, 04:27:20 pm
Anybody else notice in the Rachel Kushner article (April 30, p. 23) that there is a bar in San Francisco, called the Pyrenees, that caters to Basque shepherds?  ;D

FRiend Lee?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 11, 2018, 10:38:54 am
It's weird that it's in San Francisco. What are shepherds of any kind doing in SF?

My brother used to live in Elko, Nevada, and there were so many Basque shepherds around there was a Basque restaurant that of course served, among other things, lamb. (Yep, I ate the sheep, not guarded 'em.) At the time he was dating a woman whose ex-husband was a Basque shepherd.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 11, 2018, 11:16:04 am
It's weird that it's in San Francisco. What are shepherds of any kind doing in SF?

My brother used to live in Elko, Nevada, and there were so many Basque shepherds around there was a Basque restaurant that of course served, among other things, lamb. (Yep, I ate the sheep, not guarded 'em.) At the time he was dating a woman whose ex-husband was a Basque shepherd.

Too early to be sick of beans?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 11, 2018, 11:29:31 am
I used to work in the mining industry and The Red Lion was THE place to stay in Elko, although you had to walk past the jangling slot machines in the lobby. The Basque place served the best food in town.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 12, 2018, 09:57:03 am
The Basque place served the best food in town.

It was nice! We had a surprise party for my brother. I guess he knew it was going to be a party, but he didn't realize my family and mom were going to fly in for it.

You and John were probably eating there at the same time at some point, with your common connection still at least 10 years in the future.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2018, 01:00:29 pm
Has a New Yorker article ever before been redacted? (Nicholas Schmidle, "Digital Vigilantes," May 7.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 19, 2018, 11:13:41 am
I started yet another article about television. Who would have thought the New Yorker would be expounding about TV?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2018, 11:21:23 am
Over dinner yesterday I finished Emily Nussbaum's profile of Ryan Murphy. It was interesting, but also it was too long, I think.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 07, 2018, 02:57:23 pm
We all know Anthony Lane can be snarky in his movie reviews, but I think his review of "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (June 4 & 11) is both snarky and very funny.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2018, 11:41:36 am
Yesterday I finished the profile of the film maker Claire Denis. I was reminded of what often happens to me when I read TNY. I'll finish the entire magazine except for a profile of someone I've never heard of. I really don't want to read the profile, but I force myself to read it anyway. Very often I end up being glad I dd, as the subject turns out to be an interesting person whom I would know nothing about if I hadn't read the profile.

This doesn't happen all the time, but it happens frequently.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2018, 10:07:25 am
I started yet another article about television. Who would have thought the New Yorker would be expounding about TV?

Well, TV is much better now than it has been throughout the rest of the New Yorker's history, but also, Emily Nussbaum is a much better writer than Nancy Franklin.

I went through and recycled my giant stacks of New Yorkers, as always ripping out unread articles that look interesting. I keep a handful in my purse for when I have open time and don't want to be on my phone. Or can't be on my phone, as when I'm on a plane.

So this past week I took some planes and read an article from March about Reddit. It was really well done -- interesting and appalling in about equal measures. I've only been to Reddit a couple of times, but I did know that it's full of alt-right, pro-Trump, racist, sexist, nationalist trolls. It's also full of regular people, I guess, but overall the atmosphere is more savage and Wild West than, say, Facebook. I liked how the writer, twice, wrote about a troll's or forum's horrible posts, lists a couple of disgusting ones, and then says, "... and worse (yes, it gets worse)." Another good part is where the CEO jokes that his memoir should be titled "A Barrage of Dicks."

During the course of the article, the site decides to start banning forums that cross a line of acceptability. So the staffers have this list of candidates and are going through them one by one, and they realize that while DogSex is on the list, SexWithDogs is not. So there's this scene (recounted from my memory):

Staffer: We forgot to list SexWithDogs.
Supervisor: What's on it?
Staffer: I mean ...
Supervisor: Does it show people having sex with dogs?
Staffer: Oh yes, it does, very much so.
Supervisor: Ban it.

The ending is somewhat upbeat, and really really well done.

PS To connect the topics of TV and sex with dogs, I read a brief story yesterday (somewhere, not in TNY) about a scene from Sex in the City that HBO decided crossed the line and never aired. So Sarah Jessica Parker's character has a boyfriend who keeps pushing her head down to give him blow jobs. She gets sick of it and storms out of the guy's apartment. Then she has second thoughts, decides she overreacted and goes back into his apartment. There's the guy lying naked on the floor, and his dog ... well, let's say the guy didn't need SJP.

 :P

(In shooting the scene, apparently, they used peanut butter.)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2018, 10:56:04 am
So this past week I took some planes and read an article from March about Reddit. It was really well done -- interesting and appalling in about equal measures.

I remember that article, and I agree with your assessment.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 12, 2018, 10:58:48 am
PS To connect the topics of TV and sex with dogs, I read a brief story yesterday (somewhere, not in TNY) about a scene from Sex in the City that HBO decided crossed the line and never aired. So Sarah Jessica Parker's character has a boyfriend who keeps pushing her head down to give him blow jobs. She gets sick of it and storms out of the guy's apartment. Then she has second thoughts, decides she overreacted and goes back into his apartment. There's the guy lying naked on the floor, and his dog ... well, let's say the guy didn't need SJP.

 :P

(In shooting the scene, apparently, they used peanut butter.)

Creamy or crunchy?  ;D

(Couldn't somebody have ended up in jail for that? I know it was a scene for a TV show, but if it was really staged, the guy and the dog really had to do it.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 12, 2018, 11:35:38 am
The only article I was able to read so far in last week's NY was the longish one on Christopher Steele: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

The latest issue arrived today and I have read half of it already, online. Watch out for the Reddit story. Be prepared for a look into the obscene world of online trolling:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/reddit-and-the-struggle-to-detoxify-the-internet?mbid=&mbid=nl_Magazine%20Weekly%20031218%20without%20Web&CNDID=18632875&spMailingID=13105294&spUserID=MjI2MjM0MTY1NjYyS0&spJobID=1361154261&spReportId=MTM2MTE1NDI2MQS2


I posted a warning about this article back in late March.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2018, 01:03:19 pm
I posted a warning about this article back in late March.

I wondered if anyone had already discussed it, since it's a couple of months old. I can't say I found much of it surprising, but then I've read a lot about internet trolling. I reviewed a book about people who were attacked so harshly on the internet that they lost their jobs, got death threats, were afraid to leave their houses, etc. I was kind of gratified that in the Reddit story, the admins had decided that the gross stuff had gotten out of hand. And the ending is somewhat, if not entirely, hopeful.

I've been the subject of trolling myself. I have a google alerts out for my name but somehow I'd missed this one. I was looking (in vain, it turned out) to see if old, pre-internet newspaper articles of mine were available on the internet. I stumbled across one of those horrifying sites (not a Reddit -- even their admins would probably ban it) where posters treated the c-word as synonymous with "women" and the front page said that people should avoid using the n-word because it's considered offensive, then offered a bunch of other common racial slurs to be used instead.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2018, 03:51:32 pm
Another good reason to read TNY (column filler):

"A former meerkat expert at London Zoo has been ordered to pay compensation to a monkey handler she attacked with a wine glass in a love spat over a llama-keeper."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 14, 2018, 04:46:06 pm
Do undergamekeepers really say things like "Come without fail" and "We shan't never be parted"?

(At least the second one has a double negative.)

Notwithstanding the lack of impression Maurice made on me, I really have always been a fan of Merchant-Ivory films. You always knew a Merchant-Ivory film would be a classy, high-quality production.

Well, Jack said, "Nothing ain't never come to me the right way," and many other multiple-negative constructions. So, maybe gameskeepers and cowboys are related, in literature.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 14, 2018, 05:55:24 pm
hehe, I came here to write about Tad Friend's piece in the May 14, 2018 issue and I ended up reacting to a post from a year before that! Am I living in the past, or what? Anyway the article "Superior Intelligence" is witty, data-packed and chilling. He quotes from many sources on the subject of artificial intelligence as well as countless TV shows and films. "customer service bots will need to be designed, updated, and managed. Experts in unexpected disciplines such as human conversation, dialogue, humor, poetry, and empathy will need to lead the charge." Vladimir Putin is quoted as saying, "whoever becomes the leader in [AI] will become the ruler of the world." and most agree that AI can only be managed or fought with stronger AI.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 24, 2018, 10:45:46 am
Two articles I liked in the July 23 issue are "Delivering Modernity" by Jiayang Fan and "Drunk History" by Emily Nussbaum. The first article talks about the Amazon-like company that's bringing goods to rural China, sometimes by drone. "Drunk History" covers a new television show on Comedy Central that involves drunk people explaining the news.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2018, 02:31:47 pm
Two articles I liked in the July 23 issue are "Delivering Modernity" by Jiayang Fan and "Drunk History" by Emily Nussbaum. The first article talks about the Amazon-like company that's bringing goods to rural China, sometimes by drone. "Drunk History" covers a new television show on Comedy Central that involves drunk people explaining the news.

I've seen a few shortish episodes of "Drunk History" that people have posted online. They're pretty funny. I always wonder if the celebrities are actually drunk. Did Emily say?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 25, 2018, 10:39:17 am
She seemed to think they were.

Now, I'm into the article about rental families in the April 30 issue by Elif Batuman. Imagine people renting relatives for their wedding. Now imagine women renting a fake groom because their parents are pressuring them into getting married. A fake wedding costs the equivalent of $47,000.  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 30, 2018, 12:38:44 pm
Reviewing the July 30 issue, I wonder if TNY post-dates its issues to give readers a sense of being ahead of things?  :laugh:

Evan Osnos reviewed Trump's Helsinki debacle and Sam Knight reviewed his trip to London. The former was more insightful. Sam Knight also went into Brexit and Theresa May, how she came to power and what makes her tick. Except that the over-long article really didn't say anything new and didn't come to any conclusions.

Shouts & Murmurs on Elon Musk was actually funny for a change. Also very funny was Anthony Lane's review of the new Mamma Mia movie.

There were three book reviews, all very good, but I struggled to follow the utopian one. T. Coraghessan Boyle's "I Walk Between the Raindrops" was quite readable as yet another straight man going through mid-life angst. But I don't know as it had any major insights. He seemed to be overreaching for material.

Zadie Smith also seemed to be overreaching in her review of the artist Henry Taylor.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 06, 2018, 04:23:12 pm
I am way behind, even for me. There are just so many interesting things to read in the July 30 and August 6-13 issues.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 15, 2018, 09:40:00 am
Wow, that Aug. 6-13 issue is chock-full of interesting stuff. Of course there's Ronan Farrow's now-famous article about sexual harassment at CBS, but I think the Ariel Levy and Nathan Heller articles are interesting, too. Right now I'm reading the article about the Dutch crime family. (The Dutch? Who knew?)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 16, 2018, 01:29:31 pm
Tell you what, when I read Adam Gopnik on a book, I frequently come away with the feeling that I would not need to read the book, that I've gotten everything I need to know from Adam Gopnik.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 17, 2018, 08:38:39 pm
Everybody should read Rebecca Mead (Aug. 20).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 20, 2018, 01:38:25 pm
I've given up on the Bill Browder article (Aug. 20) because I found it boring. (I've heard that name before, but I can't remember the context.)

I may also give up on "Rocket Man" because I don't particularly care about "Virgin Galactic's quest to send tourists into space." Even if it happens in my lifetime, I'll never be able to afford it, so why should I care?

Uncharacteristically for me, I'm reading the short story, "A Refugee Crisis," by Callan Wink. So far I like the story, but the author may be more interesting than his fiction. According to the Contributors page, he lives in Livingston, Montana, and is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River. Now, how cool a life is that, to be a writer of short stories who is also a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 22, 2018, 01:34:06 pm
I may also give up on "Rocket Man" because I don't particularly care about "Virgin Galactic's quest to send tourists into space." Even if it happens in my lifetime, I'll never be able to afford it, so why should I care?

Typically, this is too long. I'm reading it after all because I'm out of stuff to read over lunch. Actually, it is kind of interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 22, 2018, 08:02:10 pm

Uncharacteristically for me, I'm reading the short story, "A Refugee Crisis," by Callan Wink. So far I like the story, but the author may be more interesting than his fiction. According to the Contributors page, he lives in Livingston, Montana, and is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River. Now, how cool a life is that, to be a writer of short stories who is also a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River?

I dug the issue out of the recycling to read this story on your recommendation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 23, 2018, 10:41:09 am
I'm in the middle of Elizabeth Kolbert's article in the latest issue, "Shaking the Foundations," which introduces at least one Big Idea involving billionaires, Andrew Carnegie, the wealth gap and charitable giving that I'd never even thought of before. It shifts my whole perspective.

Though it does help explain why I've always held somewhat mixed feelings about Bill Gates.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2018, 05:36:13 pm
"Refugee Crisis" started out very unpromising and sank even further but redeemed itself in the end. It contains insights into the tortured mind of the fiction writer. Although, it seemed to me that it should be classified as a memoir rather than a fiction piece.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 01, 2018, 08:43:01 pm
Help! My friend R. tells me that a recent issue featured a cover with a dog floating in a pool. I never seemed to get this issue. Has anyone else?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 02, 2018, 10:14:15 am
I have seen that. I'm not sure where it is in my house and am too lazy to look for it at the moment but will keep an eye out and report back here when I see it.

You probably know that as a subscriber, you can go to the site and read anything you want from any issue back to the 1920s. They're kind of a pain to read because, last I checked, they give you pictures of the pages and you have to flip through and enlarge and move around the columns. But of course much of the more recent content is available in regular screen-size online article form.

I thought I'd quickly google recent covers, but was having trouble finding the right one. Instead, I ran across this site, which has a bunch of New Yorker covers turned into GIFs.

https://giphy.com/explore/new-yorker-covers (https://giphy.com/explore/new-yorker-covers)


(http://media.giphy.com/media/1k3nt9h9KMYvUEiSNC/giphy.gif)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 04, 2018, 09:56:17 am
I renewed my subscription this morning.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 04, 2018, 08:03:42 pm
I wonder if they send different covers to different people.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 04, 2018, 09:06:19 pm
Found it. It's the July 9 and 16 issue.

It has a personal essay by David Sedaris about going to a shooting range, an profile by Ariel Levy, a vintage cartoon by Charles Addams and a critic at large by Nathan Heller about the concept of universal income.

For me, those would be the highlights, but of course YMMV.

Here's the Sedaris piece, which for me was/would be the first thing I turned to/would turn to.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/active-shooter (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/09/active-shooter)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 04, 2018, 10:23:11 pm
I wonder if they send different covers to different people.

Too expensive to print different covers.

I remember the dog cover, because I remember thinking, "dog days of summer," but don't ask me which issue. It's way gone out with the recycling.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on September 05, 2018, 01:48:23 pm
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-furious-that-woodwards-book-is-written-at-seventh-grade-reading-level

(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)

Satire from The Borowitz Report
Trump Furious That Woodward’s Book
Is Written at Seventh-Grade Reading Level


(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b748b51cf59fc423c5f/1:1/w_130,c_limit/borowitz-andy.png)By  Andy Borowitz   September 05, 2018 10:17 A.M.

(https://www.ara.cat/2018/08/28/internacional/Donald-Trump-Enrique-Nieto-Despatx_2078202236_56315005_1500x1030.jpg)

Photograph by Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty



WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump obtained an advance copy of Bob Woodward’s new book Monday evening and was “furious” to discover that Woodward had written it at a seventh-grade reading level, a White House aide has confirmed.

The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Trump was convinced that Woodward wrote the book for seventh-grade readers to make its assertions impossible for Trump to refute.

“Trump was turning page after page, becoming increasingly angry at its gratuitous use of a seventh-grade vocabulary,” the aide said. “It was like it was written entirely in a secret code.”

At one point, Trump became so frustrated trying to decipher the word “imbecilic” that he hurled the book across the room.

“Book bad!” he reportedly shouted.

According to the aide, Trump’s daughter Ivanka is dreading that she will be called upon to read the Woodward book aloud to her father, as he has demanded she do with books by James Comey and Omarosa Manigault Newman.

“In the past, Ivanka has begged off by saying she was too busy running her company, but she can’t do that anymore,” the aide said.



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b748b51cf59fc423c5f/1:1/w_130,c_limit/borowitz-andy.png) Andy Borowitz is the New York Times best-selling author of “The 50 Funniest American Writers,” and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes the Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news, for The New Yorker    newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 05, 2018, 02:59:52 pm
I just saw this on my New Yorker daily newsletter, John. Hilarious!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 05, 2018, 03:22:38 pm
"Book bad!"  :laugh: :laugh:

Thanks so much for the additional details on the cover. I found it buried way back under my bed!!

I read the issue and all of the stories you referred to, but the cover didn't register in my mind. Guess I'm just not a dog-lover!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on September 05, 2018, 06:06:44 pm
I just saw this on my New Yorker daily newsletter, John. Hilarious!



"Book bad!"  :laugh: :laugh:



Book Bad?? Be Best!!   ;D ;D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 17, 2018, 02:01:15 pm
I just finished Jeffrey Toobin's article on Rudy Giuliani (Sept. 10).

Why doesn't Toobin call a lie a lie instead of a bloody falsehood?

Have we already forgotten Giuliani's dictum, "Truth is not Truth"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 17, 2018, 04:23:34 pm
I just finished Jeffrey Toobin's article on Rudy Giuliani (Sept. 10).

Why doesn't Toobin call a lie a lie instead of a bloody falsehood?

Have we already forgotten Giuliani's dictum, "Truth is not Truth"?

Lie and falsehood are not synonymous. One implies intent to deceive; the other means making a false statement, but doesn't imply intent.

Sure, we can all assume that Giuliani knows he is lying. But one guess of why Toobin wrote it that way is that accusing someone of lying is on thinner legal ice, inviting a potential LIEbel suit.

And/or, "lie" is a hot-button word, subtly charged with accusation and outrage. Falsehood is a more neutral term. And when he uses it to describe a guy with decades of legal and political experience who is also a close friend of Donald Trump's and who frequently says things that are provably untrue and sometimes inadvertently contradict even Trump's statements, Toobin probably figures he can trust New Yorker readers to understand what that means. He doesn't want or need to convey potentially partisan outrage; he wants to convey the straight facts and let readers muster their own partisan outrage.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 05, 2018, 01:11:44 pm
As behind as always in my magazines, I nevertheless recommend the profile of Sarah Huckabee Sanders in the Sept. 24 issue (a woman once asked her, "How does it feel to be so good at your job--considering that you lie for a living?"), and also the article on Christian rock music, which I find an interesting look at a cultural phenomenon.

I don't follow music, so I'd only heard whispers/rumors about the Christianity underlying Bono and U2; therefore, it was interesting to me to read the following: "Few bands are more admired, in the world of Christian rock, than U2, precisely because Bono has spent four decades singing about his Christian faith, and his Christian doubts, without ever being boxed in."

U2 is a Christian rock band? Who knew?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on October 05, 2018, 06:07:51 pm
I never considered them a Christian rock band.  Interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 05, 2018, 09:32:30 pm
I was pretty into U2 in the '90s and so was familiar with several of their albums and don't remember Bono mentioning religion, at least not in any direct or overt way. Their lyrics can be kind of vague, though, so I suppose if you're intensely Christian you could find some sort of religious subtext.

Speaking of SHS, I may have mentioned this before but I'm casual friends with the owner of the Red Hen Restaurant, the place that kicked out SHS. My friend became famous when SHS tweeted about it, identifying the restaurant so they could be attacked by crazy Trump-trolls. I mean, I can understand why SHS would be upset but she's really powerful with her however many Twitter followers. Stephanie owns a small restaurant, has about 50 Twitter followers and hasn't even tweeted for like two years. But I thought she held up really well under the pressure.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on October 06, 2018, 11:31:30 am
Granted, I'm not a U2 fan, so I can't vouch for all of their songs.  One song that has a religious reference is "Pride (In The Name of Love)".   The song is about both Martin Luther King Jr., but has the line "one man betrayed with a kiss" which is a reference to Jesus.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 17, 2018, 02:48:44 pm
Over lunch today I finished the Oct. 8 article about the Swiss finishing school.

It seems to me it would be a lot more economical to buy a copy of Emily Post at a used book store.

Now it's on to the article about caring for patients with dementia. It looks harrowing, but I'll read it anyway.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 17, 2018, 03:06:57 pm
Granted, I'm not a U2 fan, so I can't vouch for all of their songs.  One song that has a religious reference is "Pride (In The Name of Love)".   The song is about both Martin Luther King Jr., but has the line "one man betrayed with a kiss" which is a reference to Jesus.

I can see where people get the idea. Take at look at the lyrics of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."


Quote
I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well yes I'm still running

You broke the bonds and you
Loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

"I have spoke with the tongue of angels" is just shy of a direct quote of I Corinthians 13:1. (That's the famous chapter on love.)

"You broke the bonds and you / Loosed the chains / Carried the cross / Of my shame" is flat-out Christian imagery.

And then you've got "I believe in the kingdom come."

"I have kissed honey lips" reminds me of something from the Book of Proverbs (Old Testament), but I can't place it off-hand.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 23, 2018, 11:13:05 am
Because of my recent trip, I'm way behind on reading my New Yorkers. That's why I'm so glad of this thread, so I know what the not-to-miss articles are.

Meanwhile, quixotically, I'm zooming ahead to the October 29 issue and this article on polychromy in ancient art, which references the giant statue of Athena that I saw at the Parthenon in Nashville, TN. Did you know that parthenon means, "place of the maidens"?

Link (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/29/the-myth-of-whiteness-in-classical-sculpture?mbid=nl_Magazine%20Only%20102218&CNDID=18632875&utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Magazine%20Only%20102218&utm_content=&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=Magazine%20Only%20102218&spMailingID=14478532&spUserID=MjI2MjM0MTY1NjYyS0&spJobID=1501726694&spReportId=MTUwMTcyNjY5NAS2)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on October 28, 2018, 06:55:06 am
(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5bca48e40d18cd75bce9b770/master/pass/181029_r33132_rd.jpg)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 28, 2018, 02:28:40 pm
I hate modern type-setting. The word bridges divided over a line break as bri-dges.

(The article "The Great Awakening," the Oct. 15 issue. Yeah, that's how far behind I am.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 02, 2018, 09:35:55 pm
This is hands down the best review I've seen of "A Star is Born." And it's only a Daily Shouts, not even in the print edition!

I know most of you except for Paul probably haven't seen it, and I'm not sure how often Paul reads this thread. But if you have any interest whatsoever this review is not only hilarious but also exactly nails what is good about the movie and what is less good about it. It's probably worth reading even if you don't plan on seeing it.

I'll post the significant part here, in case you're interested.

A few problems: there's a bunch of gobbledygook (at the top of the story at the link) about who's writing the review or saying what to whom. I don't get it and have no idea why they did this -- maybe it's an inside joke I'm not inside of? It starts out kind of slow with the cousin stuff. And after the ASIB part, it goes on to discuss other movies I haven't seen and am not interested in.

And if Blake Shelton had been like Bradley Cooper he would have deserved the Sexiest Man Alive designation instead of being the weird trolling joke that he was.

But otherwise the review is spot on!

I can't decide whether my favorite part is where it points out that Lady Gaga, although great and very charming in the role, never would have become a star looking like that and singing that kind of music ... or where it describes Bradley Cooper's eyes as "mouthwash blue."

Oh, also I edited a spoiler out of the excerpt, so if you want to avoid that you might not want to read the story at the link.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/if-you-ask-me-why-a-star-is-born-is-the-perfect-nonbinary-gender-reveal-and-all-things-bradley (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/if-you-ask-me-why-a-star-is-born-is-the-perfect-nonbinary-gender-reveal-and-all-things-bradley)

In order to fully appreciate the wonderful new remake of “A Star Is Born,” I called upon my cousin Andrew, and not just because Andrew’s senior thesis at Oberlin was titled “Determining the Definitive Performance of Mama Rose in ‘Gypsy’ and Why This Debate Caused My Boyfriend, Derek, to Throw a Mai Tai in My Face.” Andrew informed me that “the 1954 version of ‘A Star Is Born’ remains a gay man’s classic, because Judy Garland singing ‘The Man That Got Away’ is the only possible antidote to any breakup, and it’s what Lindsey Graham hums while he’s trying to get Jeff Sessions fired. The 1976 ‘A Star Is Born’ could be called the straight woman’s empowerment manifesto, because Barbra Streisand not only stars in it, and co-wrote many of the hit songs, but also there’s a credit that reads ‘Ms. Streisand’s clothes from her closet,’ and, during the final gut-busting number, Barbra wears a white pantsuit, as if prophesying the rise of Hillary.”

“This latest version stars and was co-written and directed by Bradley Cooper,” Andrew continued, “which makes it that rarest of all creatures—a musical for straight guys. It’s interesting that, though Bradley is even more controlling than Barbra, and gives himself more adoring, moist-eyed closeups, he’s considered an auteur rather than a diva.” I’d noticed this, too, along with the fact that Bradley establishes himself as the definitive anti-Trump heartthrob; through woke-bro feminism, he may not only nab himself an Oscar but also get elected. Bradley is a new archetype: the gravel-voiced, substance-abusing, manly liberal dude, who selflessly boosts his female co-star’s career. He’s a combination of Beto O’Rourke, Bruce Springsteen, and Matthew McConaughey in one of those moody TV ads for luxury town cars. And, although the movie is the grandest, most compassionate, and most award-friendly display of mansplaining ever, I totally surrendered, because I knew that if I didn’t Bradley would nod stoically and, with a tip of his artfully weather-beaten cowboy hat, tell me that he understood.

Lady Gaga is terrific in the movie, even if the whole thing is very much Bradley’s guide for hurtin’ guys. Bradley is smart about letting us rediscover Gaga without her usual performance-art trunk of wigs, platform shoes, and mega-eyelashes. She comes across as a fresh-faced, radiant young woman who showcases her powerhouse pipes, as if Blake Shelton were about to spin around in his judge’s chair on “The Voice” and mentor her. Blake, who’s had relationships with the singers Miranda Lambert and Gwen Stefani, is actually a template for Bradley’s character, right down to his deep tan, eye crinkles, and benevolent I-love-the-ladies grin. It’s a little odd when Gaga’s character is later condemned as a sellout for singing pop hits in glittering spandex, because that is exactly the brand of dance tunes that made Gaga a breakout star in real life.

I love Lady Gaga and still use “Bad Romance” and “Paparazzi” as my ringtone and spin-class go-tos, but I doubt that she’d have become a superstar warbling Bradley’s country-rock, singer-songwriter sincerity. But none of this matters, because “A Star Is Born” is an ideal route for introducing Gaga as a mainstream movie star; as Andrew put it, “She’s Gaga Lite, for all the straight people who were suspicious when she was carried into the Grammys inside a huge plastic egg, like a deconstructed pair of conceptual German pantyhose.” Bradley also keeps the iconic moment toward the end of the story, when the female lead is introduced at a memorial with, in Judy’s case, “This is Mrs. Norman Maine,” or, in Barbra’s, “Ladies and gentlemen—Esther Hoffman Howard.” Barbra’s movie name would be perfect for a professor of gender studies at Columbia in 1982; Gaga’s movie name is Ally Maine, which sounds a bit like a Second World War naval destroyer.

After swooning over Bradley’s mouthwash-blue eyes—and overlooking the fact that, while Gaga is shown frontally nude, Bradley remains buttoned up—Andrew and I went to see Tom Hardy in “Venom” ...
[goes on from there about Venom]


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 02, 2018, 09:54:31 pm
Looking forward to reading it, and thank you for the preview.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 07, 2018, 01:57:13 pm
I guess I don't need to bother with the article about Claire McCaskill (Oct. 29). She lost. Which is too bad.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 09, 2018, 02:26:32 pm
I had a bit of a surprise at lunch today. I turned to the article "Acts of Conviction" (Jennifer Gonnerman, Oct. 29), only to discover that the subject is the district attorney of Philadelphia.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 12, 2018, 02:36:33 pm
Meanwhile, quixotically, I'm zooming ahead to the October 29 issue and this article on polychromy in ancient art, which references the giant statue of Athena that I saw at the Parthenon in Nashville, TN.

I just finished that article over lunch today. I found it very interesting. I think the head on page 45 looks remarkably like Meryl Streep. I found the section on page 50 speculating about the dinner party in Pompeii with its "statues of nude homoerotic youths." and "slave boys that look just like those well-tanned bronzes" quite titillating.

Quote
Did you know that parthenon means, "place of the maidens"?

I did not know that precisely, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that "Athena Parthenos" means "Athena the Virgin," or something like that, since Athena was a virgin goddess.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 12, 2018, 04:08:40 pm
Yes, that was a lovely passage in the article.  :D

There are a lot of school groups that tour the Parthenon in TN, and I'm sure they didn't want to have to explain the word virgin to kids, so they used the word maiden.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 12, 2018, 10:05:00 pm
Yes, that was a lovely passage in the article.  :D

There are a lot of school groups that tour the Parthenon in TN, and I'm sure they didn't want to have to explain the word virgin to kids, so they used the word maiden.

I never thought about maiden being synonymous with virgin, but now that you say it I guess it kind of is. Especially since in the old days women would be expected to be both until they were married.

Of course, as usual there's no male equivalent.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 14, 2018, 07:42:47 pm
Considering the terrible destruction and loss of life in California due to wildfire, it seemed a little--I don't know--odd?--uncomfortable?--to read Ian Frazier's article on wildfires on the Great Plains (Nov. 5).

I found it fascinating that approximately have the population of Oklahoma is made up of Climate Change Deniers. Their reasons seem to be a combination of fundamentalistic religion and undoubted truth that the Great Plains has always been a place of extreme weather. Kansas used to be known for its Twisters, and the entire region used to be known as Tornado Alley. (I think we seem to be seeing more tornadoes in the South now, but maybe those storms are just more notable because the South is more heavily settled and populated than the Great Plains.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 15, 2018, 11:39:16 am
I received the new issue today and had to sit right down and read the Jon Anderson article about the mysterious illness suffered by the Cuban diplomats. No real answers, but good writing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 15, 2018, 08:33:59 pm
Considering the terrible destruction and loss of life in California due to wildfire, it seemed a little--I don't know--odd?--uncomfortable?--to read Ian Frazier's article on wildfires on the Great Plains (Nov. 5).

I just finished reading that article. Frasier paints quite a picture of Charlie Starbuck, and of Millie Fudge, as well. I was just one county over from there, to the east, in June, visiting my great grandfathers' graves in Hazelton, Kansas. No evidence of fire there; in fact, there were puddles here and there and some of the roads in Hazelton were so muddy it was tough going, even in my SUV.

I've noticed that reporters are taking a new interest in rural America these days. It was rural people who had a big role in the sudden change in political leadership, some think. This issue of the New Yorker had two articles about Oklahoma: the wildfire one and another one about how so many women in Oklahoma are being incarcerated, including victims of domestic violence.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 15, 2018, 10:42:02 pm
I've noticed that reporters are taking a new interest in rural America these days. It was rural people who had a big role in the sudden change in political leadership, some think. This issue of the New Yorker had two articles about Oklahoma: the wildfire one and another one about how so many women in Oklahoma are being incarcerated, including victims of domestic violence.

I'm looking forward to reading that article about the women. I just started the article about Gavin Newsome.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 16, 2018, 11:28:20 am
I've noticed that reporters are taking a new interest in rural America these days. It was rural people who had a big role in the sudden change in political leadership, some think. This issue of the New Yorker had two articles about Oklahoma: the wildfire one and another one about how so many women in Oklahoma are being incarcerated, including victims of domestic violence.

Agreed that the 2016 election and other political developments have increased interest in rural people. I think it made media outlets realize they'd been somewhat neglecting them. Media people are definitely more interested in cities because they live in cities, so to some extent it's like when your editor drives over a pothole on their way to work and then assigns you to do a story about potholes. Also, people in cities tend to do more things to write about, partly because there's a larger concentration of people in general as well as ambitious ambitious politicians, artists, authors, musicians, social-service programs etc. etc. And more money.

But around the 2016 election the media collectively realized that by neglecting rural areas they'd neglected political developments that would eventually prove important.

Rural people, in some ways, hold disproportionate political influence. Oklahoma and Wyoming have the same number of senators as New York and California. Also the same number of governors.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 16, 2018, 02:57:21 pm

Rural people, in some ways, hold disproportionate political influence. Oklahoma and Wyoming have the same number of senators as New York and California. Also the same number of governors.

I think the founding fathers set it up that way, so that landowners (farmers and ranchers) would wield more influence.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 16, 2018, 10:34:21 pm
I think the founding fathers set it up that way, so that landowners (farmers and ranchers) would wield more influence.

It was set up that way so that states with smaller populations (in 1787 that would have been Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Delaware, e.g.) would have an equal voice in one house, the Senate, compared to the House of Representatives, where representation was based on population, and where states with larger populations (e.g., Virginia, Pennsylvania) would have more influence.

I gave up on the Gavin Newsome article. I found it boring.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on November 16, 2018, 11:55:33 pm
I agree with Jeff about the Gavin Newsom article.

What did people think about the WWI article? Basically saying it needn’t have happened.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2018, 11:20:03 am
I think the founding fathers set it up that way, so that landowners (farmers and ranchers) would wield more influence.

Yes. They must not have foreseen the rise of Donald Trump and his ilk.

Several big issues over the past year or so have highlighted the stakes of one side or the other having even one or two more senators: under-oath liar seated on the Supreme Court, giant tax break for rich people, close call on health care (RIP, John McCain).

The FFs may not have foreseen how sharply divided sparsely vs. heavily populated states are in terms of politics, demographics and other characteristics.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 17, 2018, 12:10:43 pm
I've looked through the information online as to why the Senate was set up with an equal number of Senators for each state and the answer seems to fall into two camps:


The second reason doesn't make any sense, and the first reason puzzles me because states should have rights in their state, but should whole states have the right to set federal policy? Especially when the policies affect urban people disproportionally? I think not.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2018, 12:15:44 pm
Coincidentally, this just ran in the Washington Post.

Wonkblog Analysis
The big city paradox: They’re getting richer but losing electoral clout
By Andrew Van Dam
November 16 at 12:46 PM


Economically, America’s most prosperous regions are more dominant than ever. Politically, they’re not.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/16/big-city-paradox-theyre-getting-richer-losing-electoral-clout/?utm_term=.e0ebc4b8fc2c&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

Also, big city populations are more diverse, which of course not an issue the FFs would have taken into account.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 17, 2018, 12:31:30 pm
What did people think about the WWI article? Basically saying it needn’t have happened.

I liked the article, and the historians' judgment when I was in school was that, in deed, it need not have happened.

Talk about your domino effect. It's been a while, but I think I remember the sequence; I also checked with an old World History textbook. Austria-Hungary decided to crush Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand because Austria felt that Serbia was complicit in the assassination. Then Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary in support of its fellow Slavs in Serbia. Then Russia mobilized against Germany because it expected (correctly) that Germany would support its ally Austria-Hungary. Germany declared war on Russia because Russia wouldn't stop mobilizing against Germany. Germany also declared war on France because France was allied with Russia. Great Britain supported France and jumped in when Germany invaded Belgium.

Since I first read about this stuff in college, I always felt that if Austria-Hungary had not determined to crush Serbia, the war would not have happened, or at least not in 1914.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 17, 2018, 07:10:57 pm

  • Because "states have rights too" as well as individuals

  • Because the smaller states were afraid that the larger states would secede and so they agreed to a compromise that set the number of Senators

Jeff, thanks for explaining that I got the second reason turned around. It makes more sense the other way.

But in terms of states having their own rights, I only agree that states have rights within their own boundaries. Federally, I don't think it's right that Wyoming can have the same say in matters as California. That has led to Wyoming receiving more than $4k per capita in Federal aid, versus a small fraction of that for California. I'm sure there are some questions over which states could weigh in equally, but thinking about it for a while now, I can't think of one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 18, 2018, 11:36:03 am
Jeff, thanks for explaining that I got the second reason turned around. It makes more sense the other way.

But in terms of states having their own rights, I only agree that states have rights within their own boundaries. Federally, I don't think it's right that Wyoming can have the same say in matters as California. That has led to Wyoming receiving more than $4k per capita in Federal aid, versus a small fraction of that for California. I'm sure there are some questions over which states could weigh in equally, but thinking about it for a while now, I can't think of one.

Tell that to the Founding Fathers!  :laugh:

I don't know enough about the reasoning behind those decisions, but life was very different back then. Maybe they were looking out for the interests of gentleman-farmer types like Thomas Jefferson who lived in less densely populated areas?

What I do know is that there's a Thomas Jefferson quote carved into the Jefferson Memorial in the mall in Washington that says

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinion change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him as a boy as civilized society ever to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

I took a photo of it to show to anyone who argues against affordable single-payer healthcare with"there's no mention of health care in the Constitution." Because, true, these slave-holding white men, the only eligible voters, did not see the need for citizens to receive outside help paying for their bleedings and leech treatments. I don't think the founders discussed whether this would still make sense in an era of heart transplants and nueromodulation (inserting wires into the brain or spinal cord that deliver electrical currents to particular areas) for Parkinson's disease and chronic pain.

And from a modern perspective, the founders were barbarous in many ways. Though, paradoxically, far more brilliant than typical presidents nowadays.

So they might have decided differently if their culture was more like ours now. For one thing, the Founding Fathers would almost certainly be living in a big city; places like Monticello or Mount Vernon would be for an occasional getaway (a la Camp David) or summer house for the family. Also, they would be rich.

So livestyle-wise, they might be basically like Trump. Except they'd have completely different brains.  :laugh:







Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 20, 2018, 05:12:24 pm
Atul Gawande (on doctors and computers, Nov. 12 issue) is good as always.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 21, 2018, 10:02:54 am
Atul Gawande (on doctors and computers, Nov. 12 issue) is good as always.

I found that one more boring than his usual. Still, interesting points. I quoted it at work because our computer system there is terrible: unintuitive, confusing, wayyy too complicated. I prefer to write in Word and then paste it into the system because the word-processing part is so bad. Presumably it makes the whole process -- writer to editor to copy desk to designer to printer -- easier somehow, although everyone complains about it.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 01, 2018, 10:56:16 pm
I read fervently Rebecca Mead's article on podcasting in the November 19 issue. It was terribly long, but I just couldn't put it down.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 13, 2018, 03:14:14 pm
Atul Gawande (on doctors and computers, Nov. 12 issue) is good as always.

My father's primary care physician is dealing with just such issues as Gawande discusses.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 13, 2018, 03:15:52 pm
I'm sure it must be weird to enjoy an article about how we are destroying the planet, thanks to Exxon, the Koch brothers, et al,, and thus how we are destroying ourselves (I mean humankind), but I always enjoy reading Bill McKibben (Nov. 26).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 22, 2018, 05:23:00 pm
My favourite cartoons in the last issue of the year are on pages 57 and 70. No, they're not political. What are yours?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on December 29, 2018, 01:29:22 pm
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/how-mark-burnett-resurrected-donald-trump-as-an-icon-of-american-success
(https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/XTPkt5hMRAyvVpAFmWdt)
Profiles
January 7, 2019 Issue

How Mark Burnett Resurrected
Donald Trump
as an Icon of American Success
With “The Apprentice,” the TV producer mythologized
Trump—then a floundering D-lister—as the ultimate titan,
paving his way to the Presidency.

(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b71c14b3c606c109448/1:1/w_130,c_limit/keefe-patrick-radden.png)By Patrick Radden Keefe   January 7, 2019
(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5c1ad8cd81ab3335f580def0/master/w_727,c_limit/190107_r33509.jpg)
Burnett, like Trump, feels like an outsider, an associate says: “In the reality-TV business,
you’re never part of the true Hollywood.”

Illustration by Christian Northeast. Photographs: (Trump) M. Von Holden / FilmMagic / Getty; (Burnett) JC Olivera / Getty


(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5c1ad8e1666e913f4c43d7ad/master/w_774,c_limit/190107_r33525.jpg)
Burnett and Trump at a 2016 Inauguration party. Burnett unsuccessfully tried to enlist musicians
to perform.
Photograph by Jonathan Ernst / Reuters



"Expedition: Robinson,” a Swedish reality-television program, premièred in the summer of 1997, with a tantalizing premise: sixteen strangers are deposited on a small island off the coast of Malaysia and forced to fend for themselves. To survive, they must coöperate, but they are also competing: each week, a member of the ensemble is voted off the island, and the final contestant wins a grand prize. The show’s title alluded to both “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Swiss Family Robinson,” but a more apt literary reference might have been “Lord of the Flies.” The first contestant who was kicked off was a young man named Sinisa Savija. Upon returning to Sweden, he was morose, complaining to his wife that the show’s editors would “cut away the good things I did and make me look like a fool.” Nine weeks before the show aired, he stepped in front of a speeding train.

The producers dealt with this tragedy by suggesting that Savija’s turmoil was unrelated to the series—and by editing him virtually out of the show. Even so, there was a backlash, with one critic asserting that a program based on such merciless competition was “fascist television.” But everyone watched the show anyway, and Savija was soon forgotten. “We had never seen anything like it,” Svante Stockselius, the chief of the network that produced the program, told the Los Angeles Times, in 2000. “Expedition: Robinson” offered a potent cocktail of repulsion and attraction. You felt embarrassed watching it, Stockselius said, but “you couldn’t stop.”

In 1998, a thirty-eight-year-old former British paratrooper named Mark Burnett was living in Los Angeles, producing television. “Lord of the Flies” was one of his favorite books, and after he heard about “Expedition: Robinson” he secured the rights to make an American version. Burnett had previously worked in sales and had a knack for branding. He renamed the show “Survivor.”

The first season was set in Borneo, and from the moment it aired, on CBS, in 2000, “Survivor” was a ratings juggernaut: according to the network, a hundred and twenty-five million Americans—more than a third of the population—tuned in for some portion of the season finale. The catchphrase delivered by the host, Jeff Probst, at the end of each elimination ceremony, “The tribe has spoken,” entered the lexicon. Burnett had been a marginal figure in Hollywood, but after this triumph he, too, was rebranded, as an oracle of spectacle. Les Moonves, then the chairman of CBS, arranged for the delivery of a token of thanks—a champagne-colored Mercedes. To Burnett, the meaning of this gesture was unmistakable: “I had arrived.” The only question was what he might do next.

A few years later, Burnett was in Brazil, filming “Survivor: The Amazon.” His second marriage was falling apart, and he was staying in a corporate apartment with a girlfriend. One day, they were watching TV and happened across a BBC documentary series called “Trouble at the Top,” about the corporate rat race. The girlfriend found the show boring and suggested changing the station, but Burnett was transfixed. He called his business partner in L.A. and said, “I’ve got a new idea.” Burnett would not discuss the concept over the phone—one of his rules for success was to always pitch in person—but he was certain that the premise had the contours of a hit: “Survivor” in the city. Contestants competing for a corporate job. The urban jungle!

He needed someone to play the role of heavyweight tycoon. Burnett, who tends to narrate stories from his own life in the bravura language of a Hollywood pitch, once said of the show, “It’s got to have a hook to it, right? They’ve got to be working for someone big and special and important. Cut to: I’ve rented this skating rink.”

In 2002, Burnett rented Wollman Rink, in Central Park, for a live broadcast of the Season 4 finale of “Survivor.” The property was controlled by Donald Trump, who had obtained the lease to operate the rink in 1986, and had plastered his name on it. Before the segment started, Burnett addressed fifteen hundred spectators who had been corralled for the occasion, and noticed Trump sitting with Melania Knauss, then his girlfriend, in the front row. Burnett prides himself on his ability to “read the room”: to size up the personalities in his audience, suss out what they want, and then give it to them.

“I need to show respect to Mr. Trump,” Burnett recounted, in a 2013 speech in Vancouver. “I said, ‘Welcome, everybody, to Trump Wollman skating rink. The Trump Wollman skating rink is a fine facility, built by Mr. Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Because the Trump Wollman skating rink is the place we are tonight and we love being at the Trump Wollman skating rink, Mr. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.” As Burnett told the story, he had scarcely got offstage before Trump was shaking his hand, proclaiming, “You’re a genius!”

Cut to: June, 2015. After starring in fourteen seasons of “The Apprentice,” all executive-produced by Burnett, Trump appeared in the gilded atrium of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, to announce that he was running for President. Only someone “really rich,” Trump declared, could “take the brand of the United States and make it great again.” He also made racist remarks about Mexicans, prompting NBC, which had broadcast “The Apprentice,” to fire him. Burnett, however, did not sever his relationship with his star. He and Trump had been equal partners in “The Apprentice,” and the show had made each of them hundreds of millions of dollars. They were also close friends: Burnett liked to tell people that when Trump married Knauss, in 2005, Burnett’s son Cameron was the ring bearer.

Trump had been a celebrity since the eighties, his persona shaped by the best-selling book “The Art of the Deal.” But his business had foundered, and by 2003 he had become a garish figure of local interest—a punch line on Page Six. “The Apprentice” mythologized him anew, and on a much bigger scale, turning him into an icon of American success. Jay Bienstock, a longtime collaborator of Burnett’s, and the showrunner on “The Apprentice,” told me, “Mark always likes to compare his shows to great films or novels. All of Mark’s shows feel bigger than life, and this is by design.” Burnett has made many programs since “The Apprentice,” among them “Shark Tank,” a startup competition based on a Japanese show, and “The Voice,” a singing contest adapted from a Dutch program. In June, he became the chairman of M-G-M Television. But his chief legacy is to have cast a serially bankrupt carnival barker in the role of a man who might plausibly become the leader of the free world. “I don’t think any of us could have known what this would become,” Katherine Walker, a producer on the first five seasons of “The Apprentice,” told me. “But Donald would not be President had it not been for that show.”

Tony Schwartz, who wrote “The Art of the Deal,” which falsely presented Trump as its primary author, told me that he feels some responsibility for facilitating Trump’s imposture. But, he said, “Mark Burnett’s influence was vastly greater,” adding, “ ‘The Apprentice’ was the single biggest factor in putting Trump in the national spotlight.” Schwartz has publicly condemned Trump, describing him as “the monster I helped to create.” Burnett, by contrast, has refused to speak publicly about his relationship with the President or about his curious, but decisive, role in American history.

Burnett is lean and lanky, with the ageless, perpetually smiling face of Peter Pan and eyes that, in the words of one ex-wife, have “a Photoshop twinkle.” He has a high forehead and the fixed, gravity-defying hair of a nineteen-fifties film star. People often mistake Burnett for an Australian, because he has a deep tan and an outdoorsy disposition, and because his accent has been mongrelized by years of international travel. But he grew up in Dagenham, on the eastern outskirts of London, a milieu that he has recalled as “gray and grimy.” His father, Archie, was a tattooed Glaswegian who worked the night shift at a Ford automobile plant. His mother, Jean, worked there as well, pouring acid into batteries, but in Mark’s recollection she always dressed immaculately, “never letting her station in life interfere with how she presented herself.” Mark, an only child, grew up watching American television shows such as “Starsky & Hutch” and “The Rockford Files.”

At seventeen, he volunteered for the British Army’s Parachute Regiment; according to a friend who enlisted with him, he joined for “the glitz.” The Paras were an élite unit, and a soldier from his platoon, Paul Read, told me that Burnett was a particularly formidable special operator, both physically commanding and a natural leader: “He was always super keen. He always wanted to be the best, even among the best.” (Another soldier recalled that Burnett was nicknamed the Male Model, because he was reluctant to “get any dirt under his fingernails.”) Burnett served in Northern Ireland, and then in the Falklands, where he took part in the 1982 advance on Port Stanley. The experience, he later said, was “horrific, but on the other hand—in a sick way—exciting.”

When Burnett left the Army, after five years, his plan was to find work in Central America as a “weapons and tactics adviser”—not as a mercenary, he later insisted, though it is difficult to parse the distinction. Before he left, his mother told him that she’d had a premonition and implored him not to take another job that involved carrying a gun. Like Trump, Burnett trusts his impulses. “Your gut instinct is rarely wrong,” he likes to say. During a layover in Los Angeles, he decided to heed his mother’s admonition, and walked out of the airport. He later described himself as the quintessential immigrant: “I had no money, no green card, no nothing.” But the California sun was shining, and he was eager to try his luck.

Burnett is an avid raconteur, and his anecdotes about his life tend to have a three-act structure. In Act I, he is a fish out of water, guileless and naïve, with nothing but the shirt on his back and an outsized dream. Act II is the rude awakening: the world bets against him. It’s impossible! You’ll lose everything! No such thing has ever been tried! In Act III, Burnett always prevails. Not long after arriving in California, he landed his first job—as a nanny. Eyebrows were raised: a commando turned nanny? Yet Burnett thrived, working for a family in Beverly Hills, then one in Malibu. As he later observed, the experience taught him “how nice the life styles of wealthy people are.” Young, handsome, and solicitous, he discovered that successful people are often happy to talk about their path to success.

Burnett married a California woman, Kym Gold, who came from an affluent family. “Mark has always been very, very hungry,” Gold told me recently. “He’s always had a lot of drive.” For a time, he worked for Gold’s stepfather, who owned a casting agency, and for Gold, who owned an apparel business. She would buy slightly imperfect T-shirts wholesale, at two dollars apiece, and Burnett would resell them, on the Venice boardwalk, for eighteen. That was where he learned “the art of selling,” he has said. The marriage lasted only a year, by which point Burnett had obtained a green card. (Gold, who had also learned a thing or two about selling, went on to co-found the denim company True Religion, which was eventually sold for eight hundred million dollars.)

One day in the early nineties, Burnett read an article about a new kind of athletic event: a long-distance endurance race, known as the Raid Gauloises, in which teams of athletes competed in a multiday trek over harsh terrain. In 1992, Burnett organized a team and participated in a race in Oman. Noticing that he and his teammates were “walking, climbing advertisements” for gear, he signed up sponsors. He also realized that if you filmed such a race it would make for exotic and gripping viewing. Burnett launched his own race, the Eco-Challenge, which was set in such scenic locations as Utah and British Columbia, and was televised on various outlets, including the Discovery Channel. Bienstock, who first met Burnett when he worked on the “Eco-Challenge” show, in 1996, told me that Burnett was less interested in the ravishing backdrops or in the competition than he was in the intense emotional experiences of the racers: “Mark saw the drama in real people being the driving force in an unscripted show.”

By this time, Burnett had met an aspiring actress from Long Island named Dianne Minerva and married her. They became consumed with making the show a success. “When we went to bed at night, we talked about it, when we woke up in the morning, we talked about it,” Dianne Burnett told me recently. In the small world of adventure racing, Mark developed a reputation as a slick and ambitious operator. “He’s like a rattlesnake,” one of his business competitors told the New York Times in 2000. “If you’re close enough long enough, you’re going to get bit.” Mark and Dianne were doing far better than Mark’s parents ever had, but he was restless. One day, they attended a seminar by the motivational speaker Tony Robbins called “Unleash the Power Within.” A good technique for realizing your goals, Robbins counselled, was to write down what you wanted most on index cards, then deposit them around your house, as constant reminders. In a 2012 memoir, “The Road to Reality,” Dianne Burnett recalls that she wrote the word “family” on her index cards. Mark wrote “more money.”

As a young man, Burnett occasionally found himself on a flight for business, looking at the other passengers and daydreaming: If this plane were to crash on a desert island, where would I fit into our new society? Who would lead and who would follow? “Nature strips away the veneer we show one another every day, at which point people become who they really are,” Burnett once wrote. He has long espoused a Hobbesian world view, and when he launched “Survivor” a zero-sum ethos was integral to the show. “It’s quite a mean game, just like life is kind of a mean game,” Burnett told CNN, in 2001. “Everyone’s out for themselves.”

On “Survivor,” the competitors were split into teams, or “tribes.” In this raw arena, Burnett suggested, viewers could glimpse the cruel essence of human nature. It was undeniably compelling to watch contestants of different ages, body types, and dispositions negotiate the primordial challenges of making fire, securing shelter, and foraging for food. At the same time, the scenario was extravagantly contrived: the castaways were shadowed by camera crews, and helicopters thundered around the island, gathering aerial shots.

Moreover, the contestants had been selected for their charisma and their combustibility. “It’s all about casting,” Burnett once observed. “As a producer, my job is to make the choices in who to work with and put on camera.” He was always searching for someone with the sort of personality that could “break through the clutter.” In casting sessions, Burnett sometimes goaded people, to see how they responded to conflict. Katherine Walker, the “Apprentice” producer, told me about an audition in which Burnett taunted a prospective cast member by insinuating that he was secretly gay. (The man, riled, threw the accusation back at Burnett, and was not cast that season.)

Richard Levak, a clinical psychologist who consulted for Burnett on “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” and worked on other reality-TV shows, told me that producers have often liked people he was uncomfortable with for psychological reasons. Emotional volatility makes for compelling television. But recruiting individuals for their instability and then subjecting them to the stress of a televised competition can be perilous. When Burnett was once asked about Sinisa Savija’s suicide, he contended that Savija had “previous psychological problems.” No “Survivor” or “Apprentice” contestants are known to have killed themselves, but in the past two decades several dozen reality-TV participants have. Levak eventually stopped consulting on such programs, in part because he feared that a contestant might harm himself. “I would think, Geez, if this should unravel, they’re going to look at the personality profile and there may have been a red flag,” he recalled.

Burnett excelled at the casting equation to the point where, on Season 2 of “Survivor,” which was shot in the Australian outback, his castaways spent so much time gossiping about the characters from the previous season that Burnett warned them, “The more time you spend talking about the first ‘Survivor,’ the less time you will have on television.” But Burnett’s real genius was in marketing. When he made the rounds in L.A. to pitch “Survivor,” he vowed that it would become a cultural phenomenon, and he presented executives with a mock issue of Newsweek featuring the show on the cover. (Later, “Survivor” did make the cover of the magazine.) Burnett devised a dizzying array of lucrative product-integration deals. In the first season, one of the teams won a care package that was attached to a parachute bearing the red-and-white logo of Target.

“I looked on ‘Survivor’ as much as a marketing vehicle as a television show,” Burnett once explained. He was creating an immersive, cinematic entertainment—and he was known for lush production values, and for paying handsomely to retain top producers and editors—but he was anything but precious about his art. Long before he met Trump, Burnett had developed a Panglossian confidence in the power of branding. “I believe we’re going to see something like the Microsoft Grand Canyon National Park,” he told the New York Times in 2001. “The government won’t take care of all that—companies will.”

Seven weeks before the 2016 election, Burnett, in a smart tux with a shawl collar, arrived with his third wife, the actress and producer Roma Downey, at the Microsoft Theatre, in Los Angeles, for the Emmy Awards. Both “Shark Tank” and “The Voice” won awards that night. But his triumphant evening was marred when the master of ceremonies, Jimmy Kimmel, took an unexpected turn during his opening monologue. “Television brings people together, but television can also tear us apart,” Kimmel mused. “I mean, if it wasn’t for television, would Donald Trump be running for President?” In the crowd, there was laughter. “Many have asked, ‘Who is to blame for Donald Trump?’ ” Kimmel continued. “I’ll tell you who, because he’s sitting right there. That guy.” Kimmel pointed into the audience, and the live feed cut to a closeup of Burnett, whose expression resolved itself into a rigid grin. “Thanks to Mark Burnett, we don’t have to watch reality shows anymore, because we’re living in one,” Kimmel said. Burnett was still smiling, but Kimmel wasn’t. He went on, “I’m going on the record right now. He’s responsible. If Donald Trump gets elected and he builds that wall, the first person we’re throwing over it is Mark Burnett. The tribe has spoken.”

Around this time, Burnett stopped giving interviews about Trump or “The Apprentice.” He continues to speak to the press to promote his shows, but he declined an interview with me. Before Trump’s Presidential run, however, Burnett told and retold the story of how the show originated. When he met Trump at Wollman Rink, Burnett told him an anecdote about how, as a young man selling T-shirts on the boardwalk on Venice Beach, he had been handed a copy of “The Art of the Deal,” by a passing rollerblader. Burnett said that he had read it, and that it had changed his life; he thought, What a legend this guy Trump is!

Anyone else hearing this tale might have found it a bit calculated, if not implausible. Kym Gold, Burnett’s first wife, told me that she has no recollection of him reading Trump’s book in this period. “He liked mystery books,” she said. But when Trump heard the story he was flattered.

Burnett has never liked the phrase “reality television.” For a time, he valiantly campaigned to rebrand his genre “dramality”—“a mixture of drama and reality.” The term never caught on, but it reflected Burnett’s forthright acknowledgment that what he creates is a highly structured, selective, and manipulated rendition of reality. Burnett has often boasted that, for each televised hour of “The Apprentice,” his crews shot as many as three hundred hours of footage. The real alchemy of reality television is the editing—sifting through a compost heap of clips and piecing together an absorbing story. Jonathon Braun, an editor who started working with Burnett on “Survivor” and then worked on the first six seasons of “The Apprentice,” told me, “You don’t make anything up. But you accentuate things that you see as themes.” He readily conceded how distorting this process can be. Much of reality TV consists of reaction shots: one participant says something outrageous, and the camera cuts away to another participant rolling her eyes. Often, Braun said, editors lift an eye roll from an entirely different part of the conversation.

“The Apprentice” was built around a weekly series of business challenges. At the end of each episode, Trump determined which competitor should be “fired.” But, as Braun explained, Trump was frequently unprepared for these sessions, with little grasp of who had performed well. Sometimes a candidate distinguished herself during the contest only to get fired, on a whim, by Trump. When this happened, Braun said, the editors were often obliged to “reverse engineer” the episode, scouring hundreds of hours of footage to emphasize the few moments when the exemplary candidate might have slipped up, in an attempt to assemble an artificial version of history in which Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip decision made sense. During the making of “The Apprentice,” Burnett conceded that the stories were constructed in this way, saying, “We know each week who has been fired, and, therefore, you’re editing in reverse.” Braun noted that President Trump’s staff seems to have been similarly forced to learn the art of retroactive narrative construction, adding, “I find it strangely validating to hear that they’re doing the same thing in the White House.”

Such sleight of hand is the industry standard in reality television. But the entire premise of “The Apprentice” was also something of a con. When Trump and Burnett told the story of their partnership, both suggested that Trump was initially wary of committing to a TV show, because he was so busy running his flourishing real-estate empire. During a 2004 panel at the Museum of Television and Radio, in Los Angeles, Trump claimed that “every network” had tried to get him to do a reality show, but he wasn’t interested: “I don’t want to have cameras all over my office, dealing with contractors, politicians, mobsters, and everyone else I have to deal with in my business. You know, mobsters don’t like, as they’re talking to me, having cameras all over the room. It would play well on television, but it doesn’t play well with them.”

“The Apprentice” portrayed Trump not as a skeezy hustler who huddles with local mobsters but as a plutocrat with impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth—a titan who always seemed to be climbing out of helicopters or into limousines. “Most of us knew he was a fake,” Braun told me. “He had just gone through I don’t know how many bankruptcies. But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.” Bill Pruitt, another producer, recalled, “We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise.”

Trump maximized his profits from the start. When producers were searching for office space in which to stage the show, he vetoed every suggestion, then mentioned that he had an empty floor available in Trump Tower, which he could lease at a reasonable price. (After becoming President, he offered a similar arrangement to the Secret Service.) When the production staff tried to furnish the space, they found that local venders, stiffed by Trump in the past, refused to do business with them.

More than two hundred thousand people applied for one of the sixteen spots on Season 1, and throughout the show’s early years the candidates were conspicuously credentialled and impressive. Officially, the grand prize was what the show described as “the dream job of a lifetime”—the unfathomable privilege of being mentored by Donald Trump while working as a junior executive at the Trump Organization. All the candidates paid lip service to the notion that Trump was a peerless businessman, but not all of them believed it. A standout contestant in Season 1 was Kwame Jackson, a young African-American man with an M.B.A. from Harvard, who had worked at Goldman Sachs. Jackson told me that he did the show not out of any desire for Trump’s tutelage but because he regarded the prospect of a nationally televised business competition as “a great platform” for career advancement. “At Goldman, I was in private-wealth management, so Trump was not, by any stretch, the most financially successful person I’d ever met or managed,” Jackson told me. He was quietly amused when other contestants swooned over Trump’s deal-making prowess or his elevated tastes—when they exclaimed, on tours of tacky Trump properties, “Oh, my God, this is so rich—this is, like, really rich!” Fran Lebowitz once remarked that Trump is “a poor person’s idea of a rich person,” and Jackson was struck, when the show aired, by the extent to which Americans fell for the ruse. “Main Street America saw all those glittery things, the helicopter and the gold-plated sinks, and saw the most successful person in the universe,” he recalled. “The people I knew in the world of high finance understood that it was all a joke.”

This is an oddly common refrain among people who were involved in “The Apprentice”: that the show was camp, and that the image of Trump as an avatar of prosperity was delivered with a wink. Somehow, this interpretation eluded the audience. Jonathon Braun marvelled, “People started taking it seriously!”

When I watched several dozen episodes of the show recently, I saw no hint of deliberate irony. Admittedly, it is laughable to hear the candidates, at a fancy meal, talk about watching Trump for cues on which utensil they should use for each course, as if he were Emily Post. But the show’s reverence for its pugnacious host, however credulous it might seem now, comes across as sincere.

Did Burnett believe what he was selling? Or was Trump another two-dollar T-shirt that he pawned off for eighteen? It’s difficult to say. One person who has collaborated with Burnett likened him to Harold Hill, the travelling fraudster in “The Music Man,” saying, “There’s always an angle with Mark. He’s all about selling.” Burnett is fluent in the jargon of self-help, and he has published two memoirs, both written with Bill O’Reilly’s ghostwriter, which double as manuals on how to get rich. One of them, titled “Jump In!: Even if You Don’t Know How to Swim,” now reads like an inadvertent metaphor for the Trump Presidency. “Don’t waste time on overpreparation,” the book advises.

At the 2004 panel, Burnett made it clear that, with “The Apprentice,” he was selling an archetype. “Donald is the real current-day version of a tycoon,” he said. “Donald will say whatever Donald wants to say. He takes no prisoners. If you’re Donald’s friend, he’ll defend you all day long. If you’re not, he’s going to kill you. And that’s very American. It’s like the guys who built the West.” Like Trump, Burnett seemed to have both a jaundiced impression of the gullible essence of the American people and a brazen enthusiasm for how to exploit it. “The Apprentice” was about “what makes America great,” Burnett said. “Everybody wants one of a few things in this country. They’re willing to pay to lose weight. They’re willing to pay to grow hair. They’re willing to pay to have sex. And they’re willing to pay to learn how to get rich.”

At the start of “The Apprentice,” Burnett’s intention may have been to tell a more honest story, one that acknowledged Trump’s many stumbles. Burnett surely recognized that Trump was at a low point, but, according to Walker, “Mark sensed Trump’s potential for a comeback.” Indeed, in a voice-over introduction in the show’s pilot, Trump conceded a degree of weakness that feels shockingly self-aware when you listen to it today: “I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt. But I fought back, and I won, big league.”

The show was an instant hit, and Trump’s public image, and the man himself, began to change. Not long after the première, Trump suggested in an Esquirearticle that people now liked him, “whereas before, they viewed me as a bit of an ogre.” Jim Dowd, Trump’s former publicist, told Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, the authors of the 2016 book “Trump Revealed,” that after “The Apprentice” began airing “people on the street embraced him.” Dowd noted, “All of a sudden, there was none of the old mocking,” adding, “He was a hero.” Dowd, who died in 2016, pinpointed the public’s embrace of “The Apprentice” as “the bridge” to Trump’s Presidential run.

The show’s camera operators often shot Trump from low angles, as you would a basketball pro, or Mt. Rushmore. Trump loomed over the viewer, his face in a jowly glower, his hair darker than it is now, the metallic auburn of a new penny. (“Apprentice” employees were instructed not to fiddle with Trump’s hair, which he dyed and styled himself.) Trump’s entrances were choreographed for maximum impact, and often set to a moody accompaniment of synthesized drums and cymbals. The “boardroom”—a stage set where Trump determined which candidate should be fired—had the menacing gloom of a “Godfather” movie. In one scene, Trump ushered contestants through his rococo Trump Tower aerie, and said, “I show this apartment to very few people. Presidents. Kings.” In the tabloid ecosystem in which he had long languished, Trump was always Donald, or the Donald. On “The Apprentice,” he finally became Mr. Trump.

“We have to subscribe to our own myths,” the “Apprentice” producer Bill Pruitt told me. “Mark Burnett is a great mythmaker. He blew up that balloon and he believed in it.” Burnett, preferring to spend time pitching new ideas for shows, delegated most of the daily decisions about “The Apprentice” to his team, many of them veterans of “Survivor” and “Eco-Challenge.” But he furiously promoted the show, often with Trump at his side. According to many of Burnett’s collaborators, one of his greatest skills is his handling of talent—understanding their desires and anxieties, making them feel protected and secure. On interview tours with Trump, Burnett exhibited the studied instincts of a veteran producer: anytime the spotlight strayed in his direction, he subtly redirected it at Trump.

Burnett, who was forty-three when Season 1 aired, described the fifty-seven-year-old Trump as his “soul mate.” He expressed astonishment at Trump’s “laser-like focus and retention.” He delivered flattery in the ostentatiously obsequious register that Trump prefers. Burnett said he hoped that he might someday rise to Trump’s “level” of prestige and success, adding, “I don’t know if I’ll ever make it. But you know something? If you’re not shooting for the stars, you’re not shooting!” On one occasion, Trump invited Burnett to dinner at his Trump Tower apartment; Burnett had anticipated an elegant meal, and, according to an associate, concealed his surprise when Trump handed him a burger from McDonald’s.

Trump liked to suggest that he and Burnett had come up with the show “together”; Burnett never corrected him. When Carolyn Kepcher, a Trump Organization executive who appeared alongside Trump in early seasons of “The Apprentice,” seemed to be courting her own celebrity, Trump fired her and gave on-air roles to three of his children, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Eric. Burnett grasped that the best way to keep Trump satisfied was to insure that he never felt upstaged. “It’s Batman and Robin, and I’m clearly Robin,” he said.

Burnett sometimes went so far as to imply that Trump’s involvement in “The Apprentice” was a form of altruism. “This is Donald Trump giving back,” he told the Times in 2003, then offered a vague invocation of post-9/11 civic duty: “What makes the world a safe place right now? I think it’s American dollars, which come from taxes, which come because of Donald Trump.” Trump himself had been candid about his reasons for doing the show. “My jet’s going to be in every episode,” he told Jim Dowd, adding that the production would be “great for my brand.”

It was. Season 1 of “The Apprentice” flogged one Trump property after another. The contestants stayed at Trump Tower, did events at Trump National Golf Club, sold Trump Ice bottled water. “I’ve always felt that the Trump Taj Mahal should do even better,” Trump announced before sending the contestants off on a challenge to lure gamblers to his Atlantic City casino, which soon went bankrupt. The prize for the winning team was an opportunity to stay and gamble at the Taj, trailed by cameras.

“The Apprentice” was so successful that, by the time the second season launched, Trump’s lacklustre tie-in products were being edged out by blue-chip companies willing to pay handsomely to have their wares featured onscreen. In 2004, Kevin Harris, a producer who helped Burnett secure product-integration deals, sent an e-mail describing a teaser reel of Trump endorsements that would be used to attract clients: “Fast cutting of Donald—‘Crest is the biggest’ ‘I have worn Levis since I was 2’ ‘I love M&Ms’ ‘Unilever is the biggest company in the world’ all with the money money money song over the top.”

Burnett and Trump negotiated with NBC to retain the rights to income derived from product integration, and split the fees. On set, Trump often gloated about this easy money. One producer remembered, “You’d say, ‘Hey, Donald, today we have Pepsi, and they’re paying three million to be in the show,’ and he’d say, ‘That’s great, I just made a million five!’ ”

Originally, Burnett had planned to cast a different mogul in the role of host each season. But Trump took to his part more nimbly than anyone might have predicted. He wouldn’t read a script—he stumbled over the words and got the enunciation all wrong. But off the cuff he delivered the kind of zesty banter that is the lifeblood of reality television. He barked at one contestant, “Sam, you’re sort of a disaster. Don’t take offense, but everyone hates you.” Katherine Walker told me that producers often struggled to make Trump seem coherent, editing out garbled syntax and malapropisms. “We cleaned it up so that he was his best self,” she said, adding, “I’m sure Donald thinks that he was never edited.” However, she acknowledged, he was a natural for the medium: whereas reality-TV producers generally must amp up personalities and events, to accentuate conflict and conjure intrigue, “we didn’t have to change him—he gave us stuff to work with.” Trump improvised the tagline for which “The Apprentice” became famous: “You’re fired.”

NBC executives were so enamored of their new star that they instructed Burnett and his producers to give Trump more screen time. This is when Trump’s obsession with television ratings took hold. “I didn’t know what demographics was four weeks ago,” he told Larry King. “All of a sudden, I heard we were No. 3 in demographics. Last night, we were No. 1 in demographics. And that’s the important rating.” The ratings kept rising, and the first season’s finale was the No. 1 show of the week. For Burnett, Trump’s rehabilitation was a satisfying confirmation of a populist aesthetic. “I like it when critics slam a movie and it does massive box office,” he once said. “I love it.” Whereas others had seen in Trump only a tattered celebrity of the eighties, Burnett had glimpsed a feral charisma.

On June 26, 2018, the day the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s travel ban targeting people from several predominantly Muslim countries, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent out invitations to an event called a Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. If Pompeo registered any dissonance between such lofty rhetoric and Administration policies targeting certain religions, he didn’t mention it.

The event took place the next month, at the State Department, in Washington, D.C., and one of the featured speakers was Mark Burnett. In 2004, he had been getting his hair cut at a salon in Malibu when he noticed an attractive woman getting a pedicure. It was Roma Downey, the star of “Touched by an Angel,” a long-running inspirational drama on CBS. They fell in love, and married in 2007; together, they helped rear Burnett’s two sons from his second marriage and Downey’s daughter. Downey, who grew up in a Catholic family in Northern Ireland, is deeply religious, and eventually Burnett, too, reoriented his life around Christianity. “Faith is a major part of our marriage,” Downey said, in 2013, adding, “We pray together.”

For people who had long known Burnett, it was an unexpected turn. This was a man who had ended his second marriage during a live interview with Howard Stern. To promote “Survivor” in 2002, Burnett called in to Stern’s radio show, and Stern asked casually if he was married. When Burnett hesitated, Stern pounced. “You didn’t survive marriage?” he asked. “You don’t want your girlfriend to know you’re married?” As Burnett dissembled, Stern kept prying, and the exchange became excruciating. Finally, Stern asked if Burnett was “a single guy,” and Burnett replied, “You know? Yeah.” This was news to Dianne, Burnett’s wife of a decade. As she subsequently wrote in her memoir, “The 18-to-34 radio demographic knew where my marriage was headed before I did.”

In 2008, Burnett’s longtime business partner, a lawyer named Conrad Riggs, filed a lawsuit alleging that Burnett had stiffed him to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. According to the lawsuit, the two men had made an agreement before “Survivor” and “The Apprentice” that Riggs would own ten per cent of Burnett’s company. When Riggs got married, someone who attended the ceremony told me, Burnett was his best man, and gave a speech saying that his success would have been impossible without Riggs. Several years later, when Burnett’s company was worth half a billion dollars, he denied having made any agreement. The suit settled out of court. (Riggs declined to comment.)

Years ago, Burnett told Esquire that religion was “a waste of time.” Dianne Burnett told me that when she was married to him he had no interest in faith. “But you know what? People change,” she continued. “So I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.” When Burnett met Downey, he reinvented himself. Having made a fortune producing television that was often exploitative, he announced that he would now focus exclusively on “family-friendly franchises,” declaring, “You don’t need to be mean to create drama.” Burnett and Downey launched a production company that has specialized in Christian-themed programming, including a hundred-million-dollar remake of “Ben-Hur,” which flopped. Burnett has spoken enthusiastically to colleagues about the role that prayer and religious devotion now play in his life. He and Downey describe themselves as “the noisiest Christians in Hollywood.”

Kym Gold told me she thinks that Burnett tends to adapt to his current partner. Before he married Gold, who is Jewish, he took a six-week course in Judaism. “I’ve never known Mark to be religious,” Gold observed. But she noted that “people close to him have said, ‘He follows the wind.’ ”

Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor, is a friend of Burnett’s. “Mark is not at all the person he was a decade ago,” he told me. “Hollywood is built on money, sex, power, and fame. I would say that none of those things are driving forces for him anymore.” Warren assured me, unprompted, that Burnett is sincere in his Christianity—that he is a “genuine believer” who has committed to being an “ambassador” for his faith. Others who know Burnett noted to me that the Christian community is itself a significant viewer demographic. Burnett talks with colleagues about the “faith audience,” and describes the Christian community as “the largest army on earth.” In 2013, he and Downey produced “The Bible,” a History Channel miniseries that, Burnett claims, was watched by a hundred million people. The Good Book, in Burnett’s words, is “the ultimate period piece.”

At the State Department, Burnett mentioned religious intolerance “throughout the Middle East,” genocide in Darfur, and the persecution of religious minorities in Myanmar. “I’m simply a TV producer,” he said, noting that he was “far less educated” than his audience. But he was good at communicating with the masses, he went on. He explained his formula for storytelling: “K-I-S-S—‘Keep it simple, stupid.’ ” Burnett said that when he and Downey travel, strangers sometimes “ask her to lay her hands upon them,” as if she were actually an angel. This, he confided, is “the power of media.” He suggested that his position in Hollywood gave him some leverage when it came to pressing politicians to do the right thing: “In the end, nobody wants to look bad in the media.” But Burnett did not cite any controversial White House policies that he hoped to change; he didn’t even mention Trump’s name.

Burnett had remained close to the President. At the National Prayer Breakfast in 2017, he introduced Trump, saying that there “has never been a single bad word between us,” and describing their fourteen-year friendship as “one of the greatest relationships of my life.” Over the years, Burnett and Downey have given to Democratic causes, and in 2008 they donated the maximum contribution to Barack Obama’s campaign. But Burnett has never been especially political. One longtime “Apprentice” staff member told me that Burnett did not welcome the idea of losing his star to a Presidential campaign, noting, “Trump running for President cost Mark a lot of money. He made millions on ‘The Apprentice,’ and Trump killed the franchise.”

By the time Trump announced his campaign, ratings for “The Apprentice” had fallen, and the show had been repackaged as “The Celebrity Apprentice.” The contestants were now D-list celebrities, including Gary Busey, the zonked-out actor, and Gene Simmons, the repellent front man of Kiss. There were the same business challenges and boardroom eliminations, but the stakes felt conspicuously lower. A lot of the drama in the original “Apprentice” had stemmed from the idea that, for aspiring entrepreneurs, competing on the show could be a career-defining opportunity. For the aging, Botoxed cohort on “The Celebrity Apprentice,” their presence was a tacit admission that their best days were behind them. Still, everyone gamely pretended to take it seriously. Describing the show in one public appearance, Donald Trump, Jr., said that it could be intimidating for Trump’s children to pass judgment on someone “as accomplished as a Gene Simmons.”

In the opening episode of Season 11, the theatrical tension of the boardroom was suddenly punctured by an electronic trill. “Whose cell phone?” Trump growled.

“How do I turn this off?” Busey stuttered, fumbling with the tiny buttons.

“Gary, turn your cell phone off!” Trump said. It is strange to watch this kind of malarkey now and consider that only a few years later one of these men would be President.

“Donald mentioned a number of times, ‘Maybe I’ll run for President one day,’ ” Burnett told the Washington Post in January, 2016. “And sad to say, politics is kind of a TV show.” When Burnett was asked whether he supported Trump’s candidacy, he deflected the question, retreating behind his conceit that politics is simply entertainment by other means. “I have no idea about the politics,” he said, adding, “I have had great fun—great fun—watching it.”

After Trump won the election, he turned to his old friend for advice on the inaugural festivities. Like a starlet who keeps returning to a favorite director, Trump had always loved the way that Burnett made him look. Burnett was summoned to New York for a consultation with the President-elect and another Trump confidant, the financier Tom Barrack. Burnett pitched a few Riefenstahlian notions: a parade up Fifth Avenue; a televised helicopter ride ushering Trump from Manhattan to D.C. Barrack, who became the chairman of the inaugural committee, later said that Burnett was actively involved in producing the Inauguration, adding, “Mark is a genius, and the President-elect loves him.”

I spoke to several people who recalled Burnett telling them that he was busy working on the Inauguration. A Democratic political operative who was involved in a back-channel campaign to dissuade big-name stars from appearing at the event told me that Burnett had tried to enlist musicians to perform. “Mark was somebody we were actively working against,” the operative said. Trump’s wish list included Elton John, Aretha Franklin, and Paul Anka—who, he hoped, would sing “My Way”—but they all claimed to be otherwise engaged. The event ended up with sparse crowds and a feeble roster of performers.

Burnett eventually played down his role in the Inauguration. His representatives told me that “he did not produce” the event. One person who knows Burnett pointed out, “It wasn’t successful, so he probably doesn’t want to be associated with it.”

On October 8, 2016, the day after the Washington Post released the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was caught on a hot mike bantering about grabbing women’s crotches, Bill Pruitt tweeted, “As a producer on seasons 1 & 2 of #theapprentice I assure you: when it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse.” In other interviews, Pruitt said that, during his time on “The Apprentice,” he’d heard Trump make not only sexist statements but also racist ones. This was not so difficult to imagine. Trump’s natural idiom is vulgarity, and the targets of his ire—Colin Kaepernick, “shithole countries,” any African-American journalist who asks him a tough question—are clearly not chosen at random. Part of what was mesmerizing about him, to Mark Burnett and, ultimately, to the American people, was his compulsion for offensive talk.

But, in the heightened political atmosphere of an impending Trump Presidency, the notional existence of more “Trump tapes” assumed a potent urgency. Last summer, Omarosa Manigault Newman, the former “Apprentice” contestant and aide to the President, reignited such speculations when she claimed to have heard a tape, recorded during the period when “The Apprentice” was made, in which Trump said the N-word. Manigault Newman produced a recording of her own, taken surreptitiously, of a conversation with two aides from the Trump campaign, in which they appeared to discuss the existence of such a tape. On the recording, one of the aides, Lynne Patton, says that she raised the issue with Trump, and that he said he had no recollection of using such language. “No, he said it,” Katrina Pierson, the other aide, interjects. “He’s embarrassed.”

On August 13, 2018, Trump denied that he had ever used racial slurs, tweeting, “@MarkBurnettTV called to say that there are no tapes of the Apprentice where I used such a terrible and disgusting word as attributed by Wacky and Deranged Omarosa.”

This was a peculiar thing to tweet: if Trump had never uttered the epithet, why would he need to be assured by Burnett that there were no tapes of him doing so? The tweet was also notable because, when the “Access Hollywood” tape leaked, Burnett had taken his most definitive step toward distancing himself from Trump. In a statement, he had said, “Given all of the false media reports, I feel compelled to clarify a few points. I am not now and have never been a supporter of Donald Trump’s candidacy. I am not ‘Pro-Trump.’ Further, my wife and I reject the hatred, division and misogyny that has been a very unfortunate part of his campaign.”

Trump generally answers such criticism with a hyperventilating rebuttal, but he didn’t fire back at Burnett—at least not publicly—and their friendship does not appear to have suffered. Scarcely two months after issuing his statement about not being “Pro-Trump,” Burnett attended a fund-raiser for the President-elect at Cipriani, in New York, and in January, 2017, he and his two sons flew to Washington for the Inauguration. Burnett may have wanted to downplay his friendship with the President, but Trump felt no similar compunction. Last March, at a rally in Richfield, Ohio, he announced, “I got a call from Mark Burnett! He did ‘The Apprentice,’ he’s a great guy. He said, ‘Donald, I called just to say hello and to tell you, did you see Roseanne’s ratings?’ ” (Roseanne Barr, a rare Trump supporter in Hollywood, had just rebooted her sitcom.) “I said, ‘Mark, how big were they?’ ‘They were unbelievable! Over eighteen million people!’ ” When I asked Burnett’s representatives about the President’s characterizations of his exchanges with Burnett, they declined to either confirm or deny their accuracy.

Burnett’s reluctance to discuss the Trump Presidency is dismaying to many people involved with “The Apprentice,” given that Trump has succeeded in politics, in part, by borrowing the tropes of the show. Jonathon Braun pointed out to me that when Trump announced his candidacy, in 2015, he did so in the atrium of Trump Tower, and made his entrance by descending the gold-colored escalator—choreography that Burnett and his team had repeatedly used on the show. After Trump’s announcement, reports suggested that people who had filled the space and cheered during his speech had been hired to do so, like TV extras, for a day rate of fifty dollars. Earlier this year, the White House started issuing brief video monologues from the President that strongly evoke his appearances on Burnett’s show. Justin McConney, a former director of new media for the Trump Organization, told New York that, whenever Trump works with camera people, he instructs them, “Shoot me like I’m shot on ‘The Apprentice.’ ”

Randal Pinkett, who won Season 4 of “The Apprentice,” told me that he had watched Trump’s campaign with a growing sense of dread. Pinkett had long since concluded that Trump was racist. When Trump named Pinkett, who is African-American, the winner, he asked him if he would consider sharing the title with another contestant, a white woman. Pinkett declined. “The only conclusion I can draw is that he didn’t want to see a black man be the sole winner of his show,” he told me. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen said Trump told him that he had not chosen Kwame Jackson, the Goldman Sachs banker, to win in Season 1, because “there’s no way I can let this black fag win.”

As a winner, Pinkett went to work for the Trump Organization. “The closer I got to Donald, the less I liked what I saw,” he recalled. “It’s like a person with bad breath.” After Pennsylvania legalized casino gambling, in 2004, Trump applied for a license to build a casino in a predominantly African-American community. “The community hated Donald,” Pinkett said. So the company dispatched Pinkett as an advocate. Upon returning, he said, “I’m not going out there again to represent you folks.” The Trump Organization was using him like a prop, he felt, and he did not want to sell a project that the community so roundly opposed. The casino was never built. Even the grand prize on “The Apprentice” was a bit of a fake, Pinkett told me. His Trump Organization job was actually paid for by NBC. “It wasn’t even his money!” he said.

When Trump announced his campaign, Pinkett and Kwame Jackson decided to make a public statement opposing him. “This wasn’t about policy or politics, this was about fitness for office,” Jackson recalled. “This was about basic American character and decency.” They reached out to scores of former contestants and planned a press conference. In the end, apart from Pinkett, Jackson, and two other contestants, nobody showed up. In a statement, Trump said, “How quickly they forget. Nobody would know who they are if it weren’t for me.”

“I think the reality for Mark Burnett is he’s a Hollywood guy,” Jackson told me. “He probably feels that if he torpedoes Donald Trump he’ll torpedo a part of his own legacy. And it’s funny, because he has enough money and enough power in Hollywood that he could actually afford to speak up.” Burnett’s silence “is abdication,” Jackson said. “It’s collusion. It’s being complicit, just like an Ivanka Trump. I’m very disappointed in Mark for that.”

A recent piece in the Ankler, a widely read online newsletter about Hollywood, noted that Burnett “has spent the past couple years reigning over his corner of resistance territory with nary the slightest hint of backlash.” Donald Trump was a folk devil in Hollywood, and everyone in the industry knew about Burnett’s close association with the President, yet no prominent liberals were refusing to work with Mark Burnett. It’s one thing to “take brave stands on the red carpet,” the article observed. “But you wouldn’t want to go so crazy as to . . . get on the wrong side of a mid-sized mini-studio.”

Burnett was recruited to the television arm of M-G-M in 2015, by Gary Barber, the company’s chairman and C.E.O. Barber, a former accountant, had brought the studio back from bankruptcy, slashing costs and shepherding profitable titles like the James Bond franchise. In his effort to build up M-G-M, Barber wanted to augment the studio’s television business. So he bought Burnett’s company and enlisted him tooversee television production.

Ostensibly, Barber and Burnett got along. But, whereas Mark Burnett Productions had been characterized by profligate dazzle, Barber was thrifty, and monitored every expense. The chairman of M-G-M’s board is Kevin Ulrich, a financier whose private-equity fund holds a controlling stake in the company. People who know Ulrich describe him as someone who relishes the flashy perquisites of Hollywood moguldom. Whereas Barber liked to spend weekends quietly tending to the racehorses he owns, Ulrich liked going to parties and premières.

Barber was interested in selling the studio—a move that Ulrich opposed. According to several sources, Burnett began cultivating Ulrich, inviting him to events and introducing him to celebrities. Then, last March, M-G-M’s board informed Barber that he had been fired; he had just signed a contract extension, so the studio would pay him two hundred and sixty million dollars to leave. Despite this payment, he was incensed. Three months after Barber’s ouster, Burnett was promoted to chairman of television at M-G-M. Barber declined to speak with me, but a friend of his said that he was “blindsided” by his ouster: Burnett had made an alliance with Ulrich and got Barber kicked off the island.

As a younger man, Burnett made it known that he wasn’t content to be the producer of a few hit shows—he wanted to run a television studio one day. According to someone who has worked closely with him, Burnett had always felt like an outsider, “because in the reality-TV business, you’re never part of the true Hollywood.” He had long aspired to transition to scripted television and films but did not have much talent for such storytelling. At M-G-M, he would oversee both scripted and unscripted shows, including the acclaimed series “Fargo” and “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

He had now achieved such a level of power that, even in reflexively liberal Hollywood, his association with Trump was discussed mostly in whispers. Many people who spoke to me for this piece would not do so on the record, citing fears of being blacklisted. Nevertheless, “The Apprentice” continues to dog Burnett. In 2017, when he took the stage at the Producers Guild of America Awards to accept the award for Outstanding Producer of Competition Television, there were boos in the audience. In September, he skipped the Emmy Awards, though “The Voice” and “Shark Tank” were nominated; the night before the ceremony, however, he and Downey attended the annual gala for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, at a hotel in Century City. Walking into the event, they had a confrontation with the actor Tom Arnold.

Arnold, a wild-eyed industry veteran best known for his role in the 1994 film “True Lies” and for a former marriage to Roseanne Barr, had been on a quest to uncover damaging “Apprentice” outtakes of Donald Trump. He had even launched a gonzo TV show, produced by Vice, called “The Hunt for the Trump Tapes.” As Arnold relates on the show, he and Trump knew each other for years, because they had occupied “the same level of Hollywood.” Indeed, in 2010, Burnett had e-mailed Arnold, “Is there any way I can get you to do Celeb Apprentice? . . . I do think that Celeb Apprentice has an awesome brand. Trump really wants you. I really want you.” Arnold was, in his own estimation, a prankster and a marginal celebrity. And it disturbed him to think that someone just like him might be entrusted with managing the country.

What precisely happened in Century City is a matter of dispute, but there was a scuffle between Arnold and Burnett. Soon afterward, Roma Downey tweeted a photograph of the back of her hand, writing, “Got this bruise tonight when Tom Arnold tried to ambush my husband Mark and me at a charity event. Is your TV show worth it Tom? Please stop.” Some observers wondered whether a bruise could have emerged that quickly. Arnold himself offered a very different account on Twitter: “Mark Burnett just went apeshit & choked me at this huge Emmy party then he ran away with his torn Pink shirt & missing gold chain. I’m waiting for LAPD.”

It might seem improbable that Burnett, the smiling glad-hander, would physically attack someone. But it would not be unprecedented. His second wife, Dianne Burnett, told me that one day, in Santa Monica, Mark left her and one of their sons in the car in order to fetch frozen yogurt. While he was gone, a vagrant began aggressively banging on the car window, presumably in search of a donation. When Burnett returned, Dianne recalled, he punched the man in the face, knocking him down, then drove away.

Hours after the Century City event, TMZ published an account by an eyewitness, who said that “Mark had his hands on Tom’s throat, and Tom was tearing at Mark’s shirt and ripping off his crucifix.” The authorities have declined to press charges against Burnett, and several people close to him characterized Arnold as a puerile stunt artist who cornered Burnett in a bit of performance art in order to promote his lousy show.

That may well be true, but there is a certain cosmic poetry in the notion that the only person in Hollywood willing to antagonize Burnett about his relationship with Trump is a figure like Tom Arnold. Someone who has worked with Burnett told me, “Mark created the world in which Tom Arnold is the only guy who can go after him. Tom Arnold is trolling Mark Burnett just like Donald Trump trolled all his opponents. And he’s doing it for a reality show!”

After Season 1 of “Survivor,” a contestant named Stacey Stillman sued CBS and Burnett, claiming that he had improperly shaped the competition by whispering to contestants about whom they should vote to eliminate. In a deposition, another cast member said that Burnett “believed that certain people would make a better TV show than others, and he did what he could to have influence over those people staying on the island.” Burnett denied any wrongdoing, and the suit was ultimately settled. One consequence of the lawsuit was that, when it came time to make “The Apprentice,” producers tried to have cameras on Donald Trump from the moment he walked onto the set until the moment he left—and all that footage was preserved. When M-G-M bought Burnett’s company, it assumed ownership of those outtakes and, after the “Access Hollywood” tape leaked, it had to contend with public demands to unseal the “Apprentice” tapes.

Marvin Putnam, a lawyer who represents M-G-M, told me, “Mark Burnett cannot release the tapes. Period. Even if Mark Burnett wanted to release the tapes, Mark Burnett cannot release the tapes.” Putnam explained that the contracts that Trump and other cast members signed contained standard industry stipulations limiting the manner in which outtakes and other footage could be used. These are binding obligations, which means that if M-G-M were to violate them—by releasing footage not just of Trump but of anyone who appeared with him onscreen—the studio could be sued. Brian Edwards, the president of television operations at M-G-M, who has worked with Burnett for more than a decade, pointed out that, even without such legal constraints, Burnett couldn’t release the tapes—if he did, talent would refuse to work with him in the future. “If everybody in reality television knew that their outtakes were going to be made public at the first sign of pressure, what do you think would happen to the business?” Edwards asked.

Neither Putnam nor Edwards would comment on whether M-G-M possesses tapes in which Trump says something offensive; nor would they say how much, if any, of the archive has been reviewed. Over the fourteen seasons hosted by Trump, nearly two hundred hours of “The Apprentice” aired on NBC. If Burnett indeed shot three hundred hours of footage for each episode, there could be some sixty thousand hours of outtakes to sift through.

Most of the former “Apprentice” staffers I spoke to recalled hearing Trump speak coarsely about women. “He wasn’t going around saying ‘pussy, pussy, pussy’ all the time,” Walker said. But he regularly made comments about the bodies of female contestants and female staffers. One “Apprentice” employee told me, “He’d say, ‘How about those boobs? Wouldn’t you like to fuck her?’ ”



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Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Aloysius J. Gleek on December 29, 2018, 01:39:51 pm

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Even so, Braun said he doubted that there was any “Apprentice” tape in which Trump uses the N-word. “I was the supervising editor on the first six seasons,” he said. “I didn’t watch every frame, but in everything I saw I didn’t hear him saying anything so horrible.” Braun noted that editors on reality shows often amuse themselves by compiling “gag” reels of a cast member’s most off-color or embarrassing moments. The producers may be barred, legally, from airing such outtakes, but that doesn’t stop editors from sharing them internally. Tom Arnold told me that he has seen one such reel from “The Apprentice,” in which Trump uses the N-word. But Braun, who is dismayed that Trump is President, is dubious. “If there was a tape, it would have spread like wildfire,” he said. Another “Apprentice” staffer made the same point: “If somebody had the goods, it would have leaked long ago. There were no Trump fans on the set. I don’t know a single person who worked on the show who voted for Trump.”

Whenever Trump appeared on the show, the staffer explained, there were “at least a hundred people watching him,” with a dozen cameras capturing every angle. Live feeds were transmitted to executives not just at NBC but at corporations sponsoring the episode. The staffer continued, “In the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, Donald was on a bus. He thought he was alone. He never thought he was alone in the boardroom. It was a set.”

To Braun, the hunt for the tapes feels like a distraction. “We’ve seen that it doesn’t matter,” he said. “He now says plenty of things that are outwardly racist, misogynist, and fascist. It just doesn’t hurt him.” After Manigault Newman made her claims about the “Apprentice” tapes, The Economist conducted a survey, and found that seventy-seven per cent of white Trump voters felt that “it is possible that a person who uses the ‘N-word’ while in office can still be a good President.” More than a third of white Trump voters admitted to using the word themselves.


One day this past fall, Burnett got a call from his first wife, Kym Gold, with whom he remains friendly. Gold was upset about what was happening in the country, and asked Burnett to intervene with Trump. “We had it out,” she told me. “I said, ‘You’ve got to help our children, for the future and safety of this country.’ ” Gold implored Burnett, “Tell him this is not a reality show. This is real life. You’re the President. You’re saying things you cannot say—to reporters, to other world leaders.”

Burnett heard her out. “I’m not into politics,” he told her. “I’m not even on Twitter.” But he said that he had no intention of speaking out against Trump or of releasing any tapes. “I’m just a guy who produces shows,” he insisted.

Burnett may not be a policy maven, but he has long been fascinated with political star power. In 2010, he launched “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” on TLC, announcing, “With a dynamic personality that has captivated millions, I can’t think of anyone more compelling than Sarah Palin to tell the story of Alaska.” At the time, Burnett contended that the show was “completely nonpolitical.” The Daily Beast disagreed, suggesting that it “may qualify as the earliest, most expensive Presidential campaign ad ever made.”

Burnett and Trump have licensed the “Apprentice” format to dozens of other countries, and Burnett once noted that, increasingly, tycoons cast in the Trump role are “people with political aspirations.” At least half a dozen hosts have held political office, including João Doria, the governor-elect of São Paulo State, who is an ally of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s strongman President-elect. Last year, Kevin O’Leary, one of the hosts of “Shark Tank,” announced his intention of running for Prime Minister of Canada, as a member of the Conservative Party, noting that he and Trump had “both worked for Mark Burnett, and we both got famous on reality television.” Burnett joked to more than one person that he was no longer simply a TV producer but a producer of political leaders. (Four months later, O’Leary dropped out of the race and returned to the show.)

For nearly two decades, Burnett has also spoken about his desire to make a television show with Vladimir Putin. In 2001, he sought to enlist Putin in a project called “Destination: Mir,” a reality competition in which the winner would be sent into space. The idea was scuttled after Russia decommissioned the Mir space station. In 2015, Burnett expressed an interest in building a reality show featuring Putin—not so much a program about politics, Burnett suggested, as a hymn to the glory of Russia, “the humans, the nature, the animals of the nation.”

Burnett’s myopia about politics may be selective, but that does not mean it is feigned. He would hardly be the first Hollywood chieftain with a dim grasp of current events beyond Los Angeles, but even by industry standards he can seem remarkably disconnected. Shortly after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, this past February, Burnett attended a regular meeting of television executives at M-G-M. At one point, someone mentioned the marketing plan for a project in the studio’s film division: a remake of “Death Wish,” starring Bruce Willis. The movie, about an armed vigilante, was unabashedly pro-gun—Breitbart eventually hailed it as an “N.R.A. Public Service Announcement.” Someone asked whether M-G-M would be altering the rollout of the film, in light of the shooting.

“What shooting?” Burnett said, according to someone outside M-G-M who was briefed on the meeting. When his incredulous colleagues wondered how he could not have been aware of the Parkland massacre, Burnett said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” adding, “I’m not on social media.”

For all Burnett’s talk about being nonpolitical, his reluctance to disavow the President may stem, in part, from a fear of alienating Trump’s constituents. Like Republican lawmakers or evangelical pastors, Burnett is beholden to a faction of the public that, in many instances, thinks the President can do no wrong. “The moment you go political, you turn half of the nation against you,” Rick Warren told me. “And, when you’re trying to reach as many people as you can, you don’t want to do that.” The dilemma is compounded, Warren pointed out, when the occupant of the White House is so vindictive. “You know the way this President chews up people?” Warren said. “There’s a fine line in what you can say.”

Katherine Walker suggested that part of the reason Burnett seems so unfazed by the role he has played in the Trump saga may be that he is British. “There is something to being American and having these visceral reactions that Mark doesn’t have,” she said. “He just doesn’t get it on that level. I don’t think he has the same sense of Oh, my God, what have I done?” For many Americans, the Trump Presidency evokes a painful feeling of dispossession, as cherished norms and national institutions are eviscerated. “People are making it seem like Mark’s ignoring evil,” Walker continued. “But I think it’s more benign than that—and scarier, in a way. He doesn’t care. He just wants to stay out of it.”

“Mark is extremely smart,” Richard Levak, the psychologist who consulted for Burnett on “The Apprentice,” told me. “Mark has an eye for casting, and he cast Donald Trump.” I asked Levak what kind of personality profile he might have prepared for Trump as a candidate for the show. He said he would have noted “the energy, the impulsiveness, the inability to articulate a complete thought because he gets interrupted by emotions, so when he speaks it’s all adjectives—‘great,’ ‘huge,’ ‘horrible.’ ” What made Trump so magnetic as a reality-television star was his impulse to transgress, Levak continued, and it is the same quality that has made a captive audience of the world. “That somebody can become that successful while also being that emotionally undisciplined—it’s so macabre that you have to watch it,” he said. “And you keep waiting for the comeuppance. But it doesn’t come.”

There has likely never been a man who, in his own lifetime, has been as widely spoken and written about as Donald Trump. Politics has never been so spellbinding. “It’s the reason people watch a schoolyard fight,” Levak said. “It’s vicariously watching someone act out and get away with it.” Burnett once remarked that “Lord of the Flies” is so absorbing because all the characters are suddenly transported into a world in which “the rules are changed, and convention, law, and morality are suspended.” It’s an apt paraphrase of the Trump Presidency.

On Sunday afternoons, Burnett likes to pour himself a generous glass of wine and stroll out onto the balcony of his seven-thousand-square-foot home, off the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. He and Downey refer to the property, which was undamaged by the recent wildfires, as the Sanctuary. It is an exquisite spot, with white couches facing an unbroken view of the ocean. Burnett likes to reflect on the fact that his mansion is not far from one of the homes where, as a young immigrant, he worked as a nanny. He is on social media, as it happens. He seldom tweets, but he’s active on Instagram. Along with family snapshots and photographs of Burnett palling around with celebrities and religious figures, there are a couple of videos he has taken of himself relaxing on the balcony.

“Lazy Sunday afternoon,” Burnett says in one of them. He is barefoot, wearing a T-shirt that says “spiritual gangster.” He gestures at his expansive view, with undisguised satisfaction, and says, “Look at this. Wow.” He pans the camera across the sky, which is just starting to bruise red and violet in the twilight. “So grateful,” Burnett says. He often expresses wonderment at how blessed he is, and at the magnitude of his success—which, these days, he ascribes to “God’s favor.”

When I remarked to Jonathon Braun that Burnett seems eerily untroubled by the legacy of his own creation, he said that, for Burnett, the Presidency was just another game. He went on, “I think it’s a game for Trump, too. It’s a game for the audience. I think the voters like it. They’re enjoying the spectacle. It’s in the soul of who Mark is. They’re kindred spirits. There are no major causes driving them—it’s just about playing a game and winning it.”

Years ago, when Burnett did publicity for “Survivor,” interviewers tried to figure out how the contestants had fared that season. Of course, he could not reveal such secrets. So when they asked Burnett who would win the game, he told them, “Me.” ♦


This article appears in the print edition of the January 7, 2019, issue, with the headline “Winning.” 



(https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b71c14b3c606c109448/1:1/w_130,c_limit/keefe-patrick-radden.png)   Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer, has been contributing to The New Yorker since 2006. His new book, “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland,” will be published in the U.S. in February. newyorker.com (http://newyorker.com).



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 29, 2018, 02:09:11 pm
Thanks, John! I've been gradually making my way through this while eating lunch at my desk at work. (So far, eating while reading it hasn't been a problem, but I've got a ways to go.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 30, 2018, 03:01:07 pm
Being terminally behind in my reading, I just finished Ariel Levy's profile of Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Dec. 17). I'm afraid I'm obsessing on something that's important to J.L.D.'s life but not so much to the profile. Levy mentions the death of J.L.D.'s "youngest sister, Emma," but she also mentions that J.L.D.'s parents separated when she was one year old, and that her mother remarried. That marriage gave J.L.D. two half sisters, but in further discussion of the family, Emma is not mentioned. I'm guessing Emma was also a half sister, from a remarriage of J.L.D.'s father, since they were both on the board of trustees of her father's art collection.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2019, 02:36:07 pm
I just read the review of Aaron Sorkin's To Kill a Mockingbird (Dec. 24 & 31). The review is accompanied by a drawing that's supposed to be Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch, but I think it looks more like David McCallum.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2019, 10:44:11 pm
William Finnegan's surfing article (Dec. 17) is too long by half, and he uses language that's comprehensible only to other surfers, which I think is a bad idea in a magazine with general interest readers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 14, 2019, 04:21:37 pm
I found Patrick Radden Keefe's Jan.7 article about Mark Burnett, and Burnett's relationship to the Fake President, appalling, enthralling, and enlightening.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 14, 2019, 05:23:12 pm
Yes, John posted the article in its entirety here, just a few posts down.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 14, 2019, 09:52:27 pm
Yes, John posted the article in its entirety here, just a few posts down.

Yes, I saw that, and I wondered if posting it violated some copyright or fair use provision (sorry, John), but I didn't say anything.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 14, 2019, 11:22:14 pm
Yes, I saw that, and I wondered if posting it violated some copyright or fair use provision.

Not really.

Reprinting part of an article (with credit and ideally a link) is fine, and reprinting all of it probably isn't a big deal if you credit the author and publication. If the New Yorker or the writer (whichever owns the rights) saw it on BetterMost and wanted it taken down, we'd have to do it. But I doubt they'd consider it a big deal under the circumstances -- John credited the author and publication and it's available for free online (albeit on a New Yorker page, which would have ads and get clicks that could help sell space to advertisers, which I guess would be the only possible issues -- they'd lose the clicks from the four or five people who would read it here instead of there).

Jeff probably won't see this, but FWIW for anyone else who's interested.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 15, 2019, 10:26:14 am
I had my bedside-table New Yorker open to Malcolm Gladwell's piece about marijuana and was all ready to read it until I ran across a thread on Twitter pointing out serious flaws in it. The guy on Twitter, a science journalist, had covered the same issues for ProPublica and had used some of the same research. He pointed to places where Gladwell had cherry-picked data or misrepresented conclusions from the research. He posted screenshots of Gladwell's sentences next to shots of the research paper, so it was pretty persuasive.

How disappointing, because I've always liked Malcolm Gladwell, and have learned a lot from reading his articles and a couple of his books. I realize in recent years he's come to be seen as kind of a hack who manipulates data to support points he wants to make. The opinions were always sort of vague as far as I knew, but this really spelled it out.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 21, 2019, 08:39:15 pm
Today is January 21, and today I actually began reading the January 21 issue! :laugh: (And the issue doesn't seem to have much of interest to me.  :( )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 23, 2019, 01:37:25 pm
In the Jan. 21 issue, there was an article on the filmmaker Donnersmark's biopic of the artist Gerhard Richter. It quotes Donnersmark saying, "There's a German word, übergriffig, which means reaching into a space that isn't really yours. You know how some people just do not respect your space? It's usually people whose space was violated in a meaningful way. They don't recognize the difference between me and you, and just go right into your soul."

He was saying it about Richter but, ironically, Richter could say the same about him.

The author, Dana Goodyear, mused later on that "Charting the underpinnings of one's own creative impulses is a murky, perhaps counterproductive, business. That's what interpreters--journalists, biographers, filmmakers, shrinks--are for." As interpreters, we think we are doing a service, but are we?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 23, 2019, 02:21:40 pm
I was disappointed by the article about Hell.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2019, 02:20:31 pm
While I ate my lunch today, I read the article about the graphic artist Nick Drnaso because I had run out of other things to read. I found it quite a downer, except that I was charmed by the name of a company where Drnaso had worked to earn money: The Busy Beaver Button Company.  :)

I guess I will move on to the article about the filmmaker Florian von Donnersmarck because I think Florian is a wonderful name, like a name you would expect for a character in a novel by Oscar Wilde.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2019, 07:37:14 pm
The Jan. 28 issue was waiting in my mailbox when I got home today, and I'm looking forward to reading it. It appears to have a lot of interesting articles, including one each by two of my favorite writers, Jill Lepore and Adam Gopnik. I keep telling myself I really should write Jill Lepore a fan letter.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 26, 2019, 12:01:31 pm
I am eager to read those two things, especially since Lepore's piece is about journalism. Other potentially good pieces, based on the table-of-contents bylines: a profile of Marlon James, a prizewinning author who lives in MInneapolis or Saint Paul, by Jia Tolentino, a young newish writer I like, and what appears to be a personal essay by Robert Caro about working on his massive, multi-volume biography of LBJ.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 28, 2019, 02:53:07 pm
I highly recommend Jill Lepore's article on the future and fate of journalism in the Jan. 28 issue.

Of course, I highly recommend anything Jill Lepore writes.

Adam Gopnik's article on translating sacred texts is very interesting, too. I do, however, question one of Gopnik's statements concerning the King James Version of the Bible. Gopnik writes, "The K.J.V. rose to meet a moment when growing literacy and Protestant feeling made the individual connection with the text matter: it was for men reading on their own or preachers seeking a passage to elucidate." I find the part of his statement that I boldfaced a bit problematic because it doesn't quite fit the history of the K.J.V.

When the K.J.V. was first published, in 1611, it was only in folio size, that is, a size for a Bible to be used in church. A folio was way too big and way too expensive for ordinary people to own for their own reading. When the K.J.V. was published, the Bible of choice for literate Protestant Englishmen was the English translation known as the "Geneva" Bible from the mid-sixteenth century. (It was produced by English exiles living in Geneva during the reign of Mary Tudor, hence "Geneva.") The Geneva Bible was the first to use verse numbers (easy to cross-reference). It was printed in Roman type (easier to read than Blackletter), and it also was issued in quarto and octavo editions (sizes convenient for individual reading). The K.J.V. didn't really take off and begin to displace the Geneva Bible for another 50 years after its first publication, when the clergy responsible for compiling the 1662 issue of the Book of Common Prayer used the K.J.V. for the epistles and gospels included in the Prayer Book, so that people started to hear the K.J.V. read in church every Sunday. (Previous editions of the Prayer Book had used the so-called Bishop's Bible, from the sixteenth century, which was inferior to the Geneva Bible.) So I find Gopnik's statement a little shaky in its history.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 04, 2019, 10:17:41 pm
In the Jan. 21 issue, there was an article on the filmmaker Donnersmark's biopic of the artist Gerhard Richter.

Tonight on NPR the film Never Look Away was reviewed. Apparently it is much more than a biopic but also another look at the Holocaust. The soundtrack sounds wonderful; there are works by Handel. I'd like to see this even though it is 3 hours long. It is nominated for two Oscars.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 05, 2019, 10:53:14 am
I guess I will move on to the article about the filmmaker Florian von Donnersmarck because I think Florian is a wonderful name, like a name you would expect for a character in a novel by Oscar Wilde.

Tonight on NPR the film Never Look Away was reviewed. Apparently it is much more than a biopic but also another look at the Holocaust. The soundtrack sounds wonderful; there are works by Handel. I'd like to see this even though it is 3 hours long. It is nominated for two Oscars.

That was a very interesting article. I'd never heard of either Donnersmarck or Gerhard Richter, and I have no interest in the film, but the article was interesting.

This happens to me quite frequently. There will be a profile of someone I've never heard of, and he or she turns out to be a very interesting person, and I'm glad I read the profile.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 05, 2019, 09:01:15 pm
I am eager to read those two things, especially since Lepore's piece is about journalism. ... what appears to be a personal essay by Robert Caro about working on his massive, multi-volume biography of LBJ.

I read the Lepore article about journalism. Very well written. Sometimes her long paragraphs leave me a little breathless; how do others feel about that?

The Caro article will probably be too long for me. Caro is definitely LBJ's Boswell! I did a no-no, I read the ending where he admits that he will probably never complete the eighth book in the series. That's why he collected all these anecdotes for the New Yorker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 06, 2019, 09:31:59 am
The Caro article will probably be too long for me. Caro is definitely LBJ's Boswell! I did a no-no, I read the ending where he admits that he will probably never complete the eighth book in the series. That's why he collected all these anecdotes for the New Yorker.

I've always liked and respected Robert Caro but I'm less likely to read even one of his LBJ volumes than he is to finish the eighth one so, long as this is, it could be a shortcut. :laugh:

I feel slightly sorry for Caro. I think LBJ is one of the most interesting presidents -- a mix of good intentions, legislative skills and Shakespearean flaws -- but, like all presidents short of possibly Nixon, kind of bland compared to Trump. All the other presidents are infinitely smarter, wiser, more mature, more competent,  etc. -- including even George W. Bush and certainly including Nixon. But they're so overshadowed by the current monster.

Hopefully Caro's lifelong project will be admired by historians for centuries to come, while the years 2016 through 2020 will be seen as a crazy dark time in American history but such a momentary aberration we can all just forget about it and focus on serious national leaders.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 06, 2019, 12:41:33 pm
I've always liked and respected Robert Caro but I'm less likely to read even one of his LBJ volumes than he is to finish the eighth one so, long as this is, it could be a shortcut. :laugh:

I feel slightly sorry for Caro. I think LBJ is one of the most interesting presidents -- a mix of good intentions, legislative skills and Shakespearean flaws -- but, like all presidents short of possibly Nixon, kind of bland compared to Trump. All the other presidents are infinitely smarter, wiser, more mature, more competent,  etc. -- including even George W. Bush and certainly including Nixon. But they're so overshadowed by the current monster.

Hopefully Caro's lifelong project will be admired by historians for centuries to come, while the years 2016 through 2020 will be seen as a crazy dark time in American history but such a momentary aberration we can all just forget about it and focus on serious national leaders.

I have only skimmed it so far but, from what I've seen, you may revise your view of Johnson once you read the article! There are some surprising things there!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 06, 2019, 12:59:25 pm
I have only skimmed it so far but, from what I've seen, you may revise your view of Johnson once you read the article! There are some surprising things there!

What I thought was neat about Caro's piece was the part about solving the mystery of how and why LBJ became a powerhouse virtually overnight.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 06, 2019, 10:00:36 pm
My late uncle Sam had a large cattle ranch in Iowa and sold cattle to LBJ.

"Folks came out of the cemeteries to vote the day he got elected!" Sam used to roar, laughing, implying of course fraudulent election practices.

Sam was kind of a character. Also, I believe, a Republican.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2019, 10:45:38 am
My late uncle Sam had a large cattle ranch in Iowa and sold cattle to LBJ.

"Folks came out of the cemeteries to vote the day he got elected!" Sam used to roar, laughing, implying of course fraudulent election practices.

Sam was kind of a character. Also, I believe, a Republican.

An Iowan sells cattle to a Texan? Seems like it would be the other way 'round! I'm just now learning about some of my ancestors in Iowa and there may be a trip in my future to that place.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 07, 2019, 02:08:42 pm
An Iowan sells cattle to a Texan? Seems like it would be the other way 'round! I'm just now learning about some of my ancestors in Iowa and there may be a trip in my future to that place.

I'll meet you there! My folks was Iowan, along with many other ancestors.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 07, 2019, 02:29:57 pm
Anybody want to try Nashville hot chicken (Feb. 4)?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 11, 2019, 01:08:13 pm
Anybody want to try Nashville hot chicken (Feb. 4)?

Just reading about it was painful! My boyfriend R. loves hot chicken and waffles, even worse than just hot chicken, because you slather the waffles with butter, top with the hot chicken, and pour maple syrup over everything!!

I also read the article about the young Dutch man, Boyan Slat, who is proposing to clean up the ocean's plastic with a plastic horseshoe-shaped boom named Wilson. He's getting a lot of criticism but methinks the criticism is mostly jealousy from those with more reasonable ideas and more experience who haven't been able to draw the interest and funding that Slat has. I myself felt a growing resentment/sigh of resignation as I read his many quotable sayings that echoed those of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Why do people listen so intently to what comes out of a 22-year-old's mouth and so quickly dismiss what a 82-year-old says? Still, I wish him well and am cheering for him as so many people are.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2019, 02:39:02 pm
Just reading about it was painful! My boyfriend R. loves hot chicken and waffles, even worse than just hot chicken, because you slather the waffles with butter, top with the hot chicken, and pour maple syrup over everything!!

Chicken and waffles is a kind of Pennsylvania Dutch thing, too, but never like that, with butter and syrup. Around here it was something you did with leftover chicken and chicken gravy. You put the chicken and gravy over the waffles and ate it that way. This wasn't a breakfast food. It was something you ate for Sunday "supper."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2019, 04:55:32 pm
My boyfriend R. loves hot chicken and waffles, even worse than just hot chicken, because you slather the waffles with butter, top with the hot chicken, and pour maple syrup over everything!!


In the South, it's fried chicken in a biscuit. That's not usually something I'd crave for breakfast, but I ate it once while waiting for a plane in Atlanta. It was pretty good, of course. Still, not quite breakfast-y in my book.

At least it didn't have maple syrup, though!  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 14, 2019, 02:31:08 pm
I am finding "Unreliable Narrator" (Feb. 11) to be a ripping good read. It reads like a fine mystery story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 15, 2019, 12:37:39 pm
I am finding "Unreliable Narrator" (Feb. 11) to be a ripping good read. It reads like a fine mystery story.

Yes, that was a good read. One wonders if the author has some kind of vendetta against his subject. But, on looking at his biography, I see that he specializes in profiles of complicated people.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 01, 2019, 10:01:24 pm
I've been meaning to write that I read Jeffrey Toobin's piece in the Feb. 18 & 25 on Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, and it left me feeling profoundly hopeless.

As an American I am feeling profoundly hopeless because if Corsi's Alt-right political pornographies are best sellers, then there really is no hope for this nation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2019, 02:21:50 pm
(http://)

Wait, you mean like this, when you click on the button above with an icon of a framed picture? Then you would put the image address between the two bracketed img's?

Or maybe I'm not understanding what you're looking for.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 02, 2019, 05:32:46 pm
(http://)

Wait, you mean like this, when you click on the button above with an icon of a framed picture? Then you would put the image address between the two bracketed img's?

Or maybe I'm not understanding what you're looking for.

No. that's correct. When I click on the icon, I get the two bracketed img's, but I can't figure out how to get anything between those codes.

On my own blog yesterday, I was going to share a nice pic of some spring flowers that I found, but I can't figure out how to upload the pic from the Picture file on my PC.

Incidentally, when I hit "quote" to respond, the bracketed img's showed up, but I don't see them when I just read your post. If you put anything between the img's, I'm not seeing it.

And I guess I must have been too tired when I asked about this last night. That post should have gone on my blog, not here. My apologies. I just deleted it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2019, 06:26:13 pm
No. that's correct. When I click on the icon, I get the two bracketed img's, but I can't figure out how to get anything between those codes.

You can't just copy the URL, then place your cursor between the brackets and hit paste? (I didn't put anything there on my post.)

This only applies to online photos, though. I never did figure out how to post photos from my computer, even on the old site.

So this probably wouldn't work with your flowers.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2019, 05:30:17 pm
You can't just copy the URL, then place your cursor between the brackets and hit paste? (I didn't put anything there on my post.)

This only applies to online photos, though. I never did figure out how to post photos from my computer, even on the old site.

So this probably wouldn't work with your flowers.

Placing the cursor between the brackets did not allow me to insert a photo stored on my PC. I was beginning to suspect photos can only be inserted from another online source.

I was never able to insert pics within a post on the old site either, but FRiend Lee showed me a way to post pics under the line at the bottom of a post. It worked sort of like posting your avatar. I posted a few pics that way, and I was thinking about starting to post more, but I guess it's all a moot point, now.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 04, 2019, 09:54:52 pm
I've been away for a few days. Did your picture-posting problem get resolved?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2019, 11:27:16 pm
I've been away for a few days. Did your picture-posting problem get resolved?

Thank you for asking, but no. Apparently in this new site form, you cannot upload a photo from your PC to a post.

OTOH, I have not looked into how you might change your avatar. Perhaps that has to come from another website, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2019, 12:23:46 pm
Here is a photo I just uploaded from my PC. At the bottom of the dialogue box there is a button called "attachments and other options". Click on that and then on "Browse" (funny word for it!). You can attach up to 4 photos per post.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2019, 12:53:17 pm
Here is a photo I just uploaded from my PC. At the bottom of the dialogue box there is a button called "attachments and other options". Click on that and then on "Browse" (funny word for it!). You can attach up to 4 photos per post.

Thank you, FRiend. It works!  :D (See the spring flowers on my blog.)

I guess I didn't notice that before because I have no brain. I think I need to go see the Wizard. ...

So, what is the image button for?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2019, 01:00:16 pm
Oh, I see the image button. It just inserts open link and close link codes. You have to paste the location of your image between those codes. That's to use if you have your image parked in another location, like on photobucket.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2019, 01:48:31 pm
Oh, I see the image button. It just inserts open link and close link codes. You have to paste the location of your image between those codes. That's to use if you have your image parked in another location, like on photobucket.

Thanks, FRiend. I had come to suspect that.

I'm glad we didn't lose any of our smileys in the transition. I think we have a wonderful range of expressive smileys.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 08, 2019, 03:39:44 pm
Over lunch today I finished the article about health care in jails and prisons. It made  me very sad.

It also made me angry to note, as pointed out by with the author, that prisoners have a right to health care, but the rest of us do not!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 08, 2019, 08:04:49 pm
It also made me angry to note, as pointed out by with the author, that prisoners have a right to health care, but the rest of us do not!

Theirs isn't great, though, from what I've heard.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 08, 2019, 10:16:13 pm
Theirs isn't great, though, from what I've heard.

No, it isn't. It's frequently terrible.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 12, 2019, 09:06:15 am
Yesterday I read James Marcus' "Blood Relations" (March 11). I didn't want to read it, but I felt I needed to read it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 29, 2019, 05:18:07 pm
"Shouts and Murmurs" was good for a change this week. The title was "Disturbing Digital Coincidences" and made me think about my BetterMost friends.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 29, 2019, 08:54:17 pm
"Shouts and Murmurs" was good for a change this week. The title was "Disturbing Digital Coincidences" and made me think about my BetterMost friends.

I guess we can be quite disturbing, can't we?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 30, 2019, 01:55:21 pm
Read it and you'll see why!! It's about a guy's paranoia that his tech devices are listening to him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 01, 2019, 02:38:02 pm
I've always liked Peter Hessler's articles. His one on his gay Egyptian friend is riveting (April 10).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 04, 2019, 01:24:13 pm
I found the article on artist/poet Peter Sacks very interesting in the March 25 issue:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/an-artists-archeology-of-the-mind (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/an-artists-archeology-of-the-mind)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 05, 2019, 08:38:03 pm
Also enjoyed the article about Steve Earle. Jeff, what did you think of it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 06, 2019, 09:20:56 am
Also enjoyed the article about Steve Earle. Jeff, what did you think of it?

I haven't read the Steve Earle article and don't have a strong opinion about him. But I once saw his sister, Stacey Earle, live -- she opened for Joan Baez, and I took my mom to the concert because she was always a huge Joan Baez fan. Anyway, I liked Stacey enough to buy her CD at intermission!



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 06, 2019, 10:37:35 pm
Also enjoyed the article about Steve Earle. Jeff, what did you think of it?

I liked it. I thought it was interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 08, 2019, 08:33:18 pm
I may have to scan the cover of the April 8 issue. The artist calls the picture "The Acrobat," but it might just as well be "The Gymnast."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2019, 01:11:07 pm
I may have to scan the cover of the April 8 issue. The artist calls the picture "The Acrobat," but it might just as well be "The Gymnast."

I scanned it last evening, and it scanned fine. However, I didn't remove the mailing label because I was afraid it would tear the cover. I have since peeled off the label, and it did not damage the cover, so I'm planning to scan it again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2019, 08:55:15 am
I scanned it last evening, and it scanned fine. However, I didn't remove the mailing label because I was afraid it would tear the cover. I have since peeled off the label, and it did not damage the cover, so I'm planning to scan it again.

I did this last evening, and it turned out quite well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2019, 02:07:41 pm
I just finished "The Day the Earth Died," by Douglas Preston (April 8 ). On page 59, there is a beautiful description of the West. I won't type it out because it's a little long, but it's the paragraph that begins, "I got in, and we drove for an hour or so. ..."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 12, 2019, 03:18:17 pm
I just finished "The Day the Earth Died," by Douglas Preston (April 8 ). On page 59, there is a beautiful description of the West. I won't type it out because it's a little long, but it's the paragraph that begins, "I got in[to the pickup truck holding a paper bag], and we drove for an hour or so [in one direction across the screen]. ..."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 25, 2019, 08:41:13 am
I started reading Nicholas Lemann's piece about John Hersey. Wow, what an amazing guy. He worked closely with practically every famous person of his time. He wrote a book that won a Pulitzer, was turned into a long-running Broadway play and a movie, and he wrote it ... in a month. And that one wasn't Hiroshima!

He was so hugely successful that he was the object of schadenfreude from John F. Kennedy (whose girlfriend Hersey wooed away)!




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2019, 08:58:26 am
I started reading Nicholas Lemann's piece about John Hersey. Wow, what an amazing guy. He worked closely with practically every famous person of his time. He wrote a book that won a Pulitzer, was turned into a long-running Broadway play and a movie, and he wrote it ... in a month. And that one wasn't Hiroshima!

He was so hugely successful that he was the object of schadenfreude from John F. Kennedy (whose girlfriend Hersey wooed away)!

Is this online (only)? I'm still making my way through the April 15 issue, and I don't have the April 22 issue with me here at work.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 25, 2019, 08:40:16 pm
It might be online but I’m reading it in the 4/29 issue. Don’t think I’m that up to date. I’m sure my pile contains issues going back to at least October.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2019, 10:39:55 pm
It might be online but I’m reading it in the 4/29 issue. Don’t think I’m that up to date. I’m sure my pile contains issues going back to at least October.

Yeah, 4/29 arrived in my mailbox today. I see it's in there. I just finished the article in 4/15 about the arbitrators involved in paying out money to victims of clergy sex abuse.

How can any amount of money ever make up for being sexually abused whether by a priest or by anybody?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 26, 2019, 08:40:16 am
How can any amount of money ever make up for being sexually abused whether by a priest or by anybody?

I actually know someone who got money for this. I'm sure he's an extreme outlier, but he was completely nonchalant about it. This guy did some small painting jobs in my house last year over a period of weeks, as I was getting it ready to sell. He was a friendly, chatty guy, prone to long conversations (luckily I didn't pay him by the hour and I was working from home back then so my time was pretty flexible). He told me within the first five or six times he was here I saw him that he was a plaintiff in this big Catholic church abusive priest payout.

What happened, he said, was that a priest invited him and his brother to stay overnight. At bedtime, the priest asked them to strip down to just underwear, not to wear their pajamas. Then the priest got in bed with them and sort of horsed around -- but, the painter said, didn't do anything to them or touch them in any overtly sexual way. The next day when their mother picked them up, they told her what happened and she screeched the car to a stop, demanded details immediately and told them they couldn't stay overnight there again.

So the explanations include:

1) The painter is lying -- not to me (his photo was in the paper at one of the events) and not telling a fake story just to get money. but possibly downplaying the abuse from something more severe. He was very friendly and frank, but there were one or two other things, unrelated to this, that raised my suspicions about his honesty (not as a painter -- that part was fine). So maybe he was just feigning his happy-go-lucky attitude.

2) The circumstances -- underwear left on, no out-and-out sex stuff, his brother was with him and their mom immediately believed them and took action -- softened the trauma and lasting damage. Though he did say it had bothered his brother throughout life more than it had him.

Anyway, he was now one of a group in a class-action suit splitting millions of dollars. I can't remember the exact numbers, but if they'd just divided the money by individuals he would have received well into the 6 figures.

But the painter said they were planning to divide it according to some sort of ranking system by the survivors' degree of assault or level of trauma. That sounds like it would be really difficult -- as his own story attests, two people can have the same experience and be affected differently by it. But I secretly thought that if they did divide it that way the painter shouldn't get much because he seemed very untraumatized.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 26, 2019, 11:09:16 pm

.... he did say it had bothered his brother throughout life more than it had him.

Possibly the brother was abused but the other one wasn't.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 27, 2019, 08:44:23 am
Possibly the brother was abused but the other one wasn't.

Right, but I got the impression they were either in the same room or had shared stories enough to know they'd had the same experience. Who knows.

But sometimes different people react to things differently. Stormy Daniels found herself in a hotel room with Donald Trump and figured she had to go ahead and have sex with him because she'd gotten herself into that situation. For other women it would be a huge #metoo story (not to mention sickening in many other ways). But people just have different levels of sensitivity, I guess.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 27, 2019, 02:57:57 pm
I read the article about John Hersey. Seems like I would know of him better but I'm only vaguely familiar with him. The article is a bit of a review of the new biography The Straight Arrow.

Funny that it talks a lot about the notion that fiction is better than nonfiction, that we were discussing on The Renters topic. Apparently, Hersey, Tom Wolfe, and other journalist/authors had the same impression that fiction is superior. But the notion didn't hold true in practice. None of Hersey's fiction works had the same acclaim as his nonfiction.

Then, there's the notion of the nonfiction novel. In many cases, it's essential to novelize a person's story in order to breathe life into the pages. But authors can get carried away easily.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 28, 2019, 10:00:13 am
Seems like I would know of him better but I'm only vaguely familiar with him.

I've never read anything by him but now I'm tempted to read Hiroshima. I had no idea he was sort of the forefather of New Journalism, as they called writing by Wolfe, Mailer, Talese, Capote, Hunter Thompson, etc.

Quote
Funny that it talks a lot about the notion that fiction is better than nonfiction, that we were discussing on The Renters topic. Apparently, Hersey, Tom Wolfe, and other journalist/authors had the same impression that fiction is superior. But the notion didn't hold true in practice. None of Hersey's fiction works had the same acclaim as his nonfiction.

Then, there's the notion of the nonfiction novel. In many cases, it's essential to novelize a person's story in order to breathe life into the pages. But authors can get carried away easily.

I was surprised to see Lemann repeatedly use the term "nonfiction novel." I never hear anybody use that term these days, nor do they say New Journalism except when referring to writing by Wolfe et al. But Lemann is dean emeritus at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, so he must know his terminology.

The term I hear most often is "creative nonfiction."

I think there's still some notion out there that fiction is superior. Most literary contests have competitions in fiction, poetry and nonfiction, but some only have fiction and poetry. The famed Iowa Writers Workshop does not have a nonfiction department -- you can study creative nonfiction writing at Iowa, but it's a separate program.

But I applauded Hersey's emphasis on absolute adherence to fact. That's a big controversy today among creative nonfiction writers. Most, especially people like me who came from journalism, vehemently insist on facts only. But there's a school of writers who argue that it's OK to blur the lines and if it works, it works. They call it the "lyrical essay."

A few years ago I was on a panel at AWP, the big annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. While I was there I attended a bunch of other panels and wrote a few blog posts for the paper where I work. One panel I wrote about discussed the "lyrical essay." I assumed going in was about literary style essays, but it turned out to be almost entirely about the fact-fudging thing. The session got so heated that attendees were screaming swear words across the hotel ballroom at each other.

Not the usual quiet decorum typical of those sessions.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 29, 2019, 02:11:37 pm
The term I hear most often is "creative nonfiction."

New one on me, and I'd be very suspicious of anything called that.

Quote
But I applauded Hersey's emphasis on absolute adherence to fact. That's a big controversy today among creative nonfiction writers. Most, especially people like me who came from journalism, vehemently insist on facts only. But there's a school of writers who argue that it's OK to blur the lines and if it works, it works. They call it the "lyrical essay."

My word for it would be baloney.  ;D

But with some journalism and more history in my own background, I'm with you on insisting on facts.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 29, 2019, 02:22:02 pm
Over lunch today, I finished Anne Boyer's article on being a breast cancer patient (April 15). Horrible. Just horrible. At work I read a lot about the treatments, but never about the side effects.

I suppose what shocked me the most is that she made it sound as if her double mastectomy was almost treated like out-patient surgery. And she was expected to return to work ten days after that major surgery? That's barbaric. And I think her point about being single and having no one to participate in her care after surgery applies to just about any serious illness and treatment. What are we supposed to do?

BTW, I know of at least one man who died of breast cancer. I knew him in college. He wrote a column (he had a rapier wit) while I was editor of the campus paper. Later he was editor for a time of the Philadelphia Gay News. IIRC, that's how I learned of his death and the cause of it. As a former editor, his death merited a short article in the paper.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 29, 2019, 09:27:35 pm
New one on me, and I'd be very suspicious of anything called that.

No need to be suspicious -- it's been more or less the broadly accepted, reasonably neutral, standard term for years. It refers to nonfiction that's written with a little (or in some cases a lot) more literary flare than, say, a straight-up newspaper article or an encyclopedia entry or an article for a peer-reviewed scientific journal. I would classify many or most New Yorker articles as creative nonfiction. For one example of what distinguishes them, they often include physical descriptions of the people they talk to even if their appearances aren't essential to the story.

Here's Jeffrey Toobin's description of Michael Cohen in a piece I just saw today:

Cohen, who is fifty-two, has an unlined face, more or less permanently set in a hangdog scowl, and a voice that retains the unmistakable trace of his childhood on Long Island. In conversation, he jumps from topic to topic in a jittery staccato. To sit with him today is to listen to a fugue of self-pity and rage, from a man who also exhibits some understandable bewilderment at his plight.

Wow, most people know what he looks like and don't need to be told, but this is a perfect description of the guy, which enhances the prose. You wouldn't see that in an ordinary newspaper story. It might seem like a stretch to call Jeffrey Toobin's very factual reporting of legal affairs "creative," but at least some would qualify. They're definitely at one end of the spectrum; creative nonfiction goes all the way to kind of more avante garde stuff that even I don't like that much. My tastes fall somewhere in between. (Even many "duty" NYer articles are creative nonfiction, if they're written in a colorful, novelistic way about something you're not especially interested in but seems important enough to read.) Some people call it literary nonfiction.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 02, 2019, 04:27:18 pm
I read the John Hersey article (April 29) over lunch today. (Hersey was quite good-looking, wasn't he?) I've never read Hiroshima; clearly, I should. I was fascinated by the quotation on page 68 of the opening of the book. It immediately reminded me of another book, published nine years after "Hiroshima" first appeared in The New Yorker. Walter Lord used pretty much the same form in his A Night to Remember (1955), about the sinking of the Titanic, that Hersey had pioneered in The New Yorker: "It was almost 11:40 p.m. on Sunday, the 14th of April, 1912." I found Lord's use of "time stamps" and the perspectives of different people riveting. Now I guess I know where he got the idea.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 17, 2019, 04:42:03 pm
It was a pleasure to begin reading about Lie With Me, which has been called the French Brokeback Mountain. It's by Phillipe Besson. Interesting, also, that Besson also wrote Un Personnage de Roman about Emmanuel Macron and a reviewer thought the two books are "sort of the same book." I've always thought Macron was a bit of a Brokiesque character, so by reading these I could maybe discover why.

Another trivia nugget: Lie With Me was translated into English by Molly Ringwald. Yes, that Molly Ringwald!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 28, 2019, 08:58:35 am
It was a pleasure to begin reading about Lie With Me, which has been called the French Brokeback Mountain. It's by Phillipe Besson. Interesting, also, that Besson also wrote Un Personnage de Roman about Emmanuel Macron and a reviewer thought the two books are "sort of the same book." I've always thought Macron was a bit of a Brokiesque character, so by reading these I could maybe discover why.

Another trivia nugget: Lie With Me was translated into English by Molly Ringwald. Yes, that Molly Ringwald!

I read that, too! That was very interesting. Makes me want to read the novel. And about Molly Ringwald? Who knew?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 28, 2019, 01:44:47 pm
I liked Adam Gopnik's article on aging (May 20) because the first couple of pages more or less confirmed my own thoughts--people don't want to accept that they're old. But then when he moved on to the scientists, it got boring for me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 29, 2019, 09:34:44 am
I liked Adam Gopnik's article on aging (May 20) because the first couple of pages more or less confirmed my own thoughts--people don't want to accept that they're old. But then when he moved on to the scientists, it got boring for me.

I missed that, but I'll have to look for it. I'm interested in the subject, probably including the scientists. We'll see!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 29, 2019, 06:06:44 pm
New Yorker contributor Tony Horwitz has died.  :'(

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2019/05/28/author-historian-tony-horwitz-dies?fbclid=IwAR3zX0XyVMK4aInM0QPQWfdDTn_7NvCkjTTkhP20hBKqi4FZISeTVeoxWqc (https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2019/05/28/author-historian-tony-horwitz-dies?fbclid=IwAR3zX0XyVMK4aInM0QPQWfdDTn_7NvCkjTTkhP20hBKqi4FZISeTVeoxWqc)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 30, 2019, 09:02:08 am
New Yorker contributor Tony Horwitz has died.  :'(

https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2019/05/28/author-historian-tony-horwitz-dies?fbclid=IwAR3zX0XyVMK4aInM0QPQWfdDTn_7NvCkjTTkhP20hBKqi4FZISeTVeoxWqc (https://vineyardgazette.com/news/2019/05/28/author-historian-tony-horwitz-dies?fbclid=IwAR3zX0XyVMK4aInM0QPQWfdDTn_7NvCkjTTkhP20hBKqi4FZISeTVeoxWqc)

Sad news.  :(

Essentially, he was my age. He would have turned 61 in about a week and a half.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 30, 2019, 09:09:37 am
Slate ran a nice tribute to him:

https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/tony-horwitz-author-of-confederates-in-the-attic-dies.html (https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/tony-horwitz-author-of-confederates-in-the-attic-dies.html)

Now I want to read Confederates in the Attic. I remember hearing good things about it when it came out.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 30, 2019, 09:09:54 am
I've started Jia Tolentino's account of how she lost her Christian faith (I guess that's an accurate description of the article) (May 27).

I'm only on page 40, but as I was double checking to write this post, my eye was caught by the paragraph on page 41 that begins, "I have been walking away from institutional religion for half my life now. ..." Yet in that paragraph she writes that she is glad she had the upbringing in institutional religion that she had. I find that interesting, and I can't wait to read more of the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 20, 2019, 08:35:19 am
I can't believe it, but I've actually outrun my New Yorkers. I've finished the June 10-17 issue, but as of yesterday's mail the June 24 issue has not yet arrived. Instead of the magazine, I'm reading a book at lunch.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 20, 2019, 08:46:40 am
I can't believe it, but I've actually outrun my New Yorkers. I've finished the June 10-17 issue, but as of yesterday's mail the June 24 issue has not yet arrived. Instead of the magazine, I'm reading a book at lunch.

What book?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 20, 2019, 02:01:00 pm
What book?

Some weeks ago I decided that over the course of the summer I was going to re-read the entire series of Brother Cadfael mystery novels. After I finish, probably all will go in for recycling. I need to start thinning my library, and my copies are all mass-market paperbacks. They go back to the Eighties, so the paper has gone brown. The cover of the first book was so brittle that a large piece of the back cover broke off while I was reading the book, and by the time I was finished the back cover had come off altogether.

I'm reading the third book now. It's called Monk's Hood, after the poisonous herb also known as wolfsbane. All of them are very nice little mystery stories. It's been so many decades since I last read them that they're all new to me again.   :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 21, 2019, 09:25:38 am
I've done that with Raymond Chandler books. And someday I'd like to read an old Rex Stout/Nero Wolfe book or two.

But I'm always reading about 20 books at a time already, not to mention the New Yorker, the newspaper and the internet, so it's hard to fit in re-readings.

Maybe I'll save the Nero Wolfe books until I'm in a nursing home and a) have plenty of time and b) won't remember the endings!  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 21, 2019, 11:06:00 am
That sounds like my copy of The Virginian. Very brittle covers.

I didn't read all of the fiction in the fiction issue, so I'm saving that issue to read over the course of the summer. I often get ideas of books I want to read from the stories in the NY.

A series I like is the Isabel Dalhousie novels by Alexander McCall Smith. The main character lives in Edinburgh and is the editor of the Review of Applied Ethics. She is a philosopher and gets entangled in adventures and mysteries, nothing as serious as a Sherlock Holmes problem. Perfect summer reading. But, why is everyone always talking about summer reading? Winter is the time for reading, when you can't go outside.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 21, 2019, 04:03:07 pm
Perfect summer reading. But, why is everyone always talking about summer reading? Winter is the time for reading, when you can't go outside.

That's why they distinguish summer reading. In summer, you want to read something you can absorb while lying on the beach or in a hammock, something you would take on vacation to fill the time between sightseeing. Summer books are light in mood, not too intense or deep or difficult. More effortlessly entertaining. So for me that would be, like, a Tom Perrotta novel or Gone Girl or Raymond Chandler or maybe something like The Great Gatsby.

Winter is when people tackle books that require more time and attention: War and Peace or Ulysses or Moby-Dick or maybe, if something relatively light is needed, Middlemarch


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 21, 2019, 04:29:26 pm
Some weeks ago I decided that over the course of the summer I was going to re-read the entire series of Brother Cadfael mystery novels. After I finish, probably all will go in for recycling. I need to start thinning my library, and my copies are all mass-market paperbacks. They go back to the Eighties, so the paper has gone brown. The cover of the first book was so brittle that a large piece of the back cover broke off while I was reading the book, and by the time I was finished the back cover had come off altogether.

Since posting this, I have learned that there have also been "omnibus" editions of the Cadfael mysteries, with three stories per book (there are 21 stories in all in the series). I'm thinking it might be nice to assemble a collection of the omnibus editions, as that way I can still have all the stories to read again in retirement (if I live that long), but they will take up half the space on a bookshelf.

I wonder why they call them omnibus editions?  ???  Isn't omnibus the real, full name for a public transportation "bus"?   ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 22, 2019, 08:16:51 am
I wonder why they call them omnibus editions?  ???  Isn't omnibus the real, full name for a public transportation "bus"?   ???

According to the internet, that usage is dated.

Quote
om·ni·bus
/ˈämnəˌbəs/

noun
1.
a volume containing several novels or other items previously published separately.
"an omnibus of her first trilogy"
2.
DATED
a bus.

adjective
1.
comprising several items.
"Congress passed an omnibus anticrime package"

"Omni-" means "all; of all things," as in omnipresent or omniscient. They must have called it omnibus because compared to a car it seemed huge at first and able to hold all, but once they got used to them they just called it bus.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 22, 2019, 11:36:39 am
The June 24 issue finally arrived in yesterday's post. The articles about Elizabeth Warren and Boris Johnson look interesting.

I've read Anthony Lane's reviews of The Dead Don't Die and A Bigger Splash.

I can't believe he wrote, in his review of A Bigger Splash, "[W]hen Hockney examines his Proktor portrait, he does so with the aid of a lighter's flame, and the scene ignites."

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 22, 2019, 02:15:41 pm
I could easily spend the summer reading articles about the perfect summer reading. Here's one:

https://lithub.com/20-perfect-summer-books-for-this-and-every-year/ (https://lithub.com/20-perfect-summer-books-for-this-and-every-year/)

I'm curiously what you all think about this list. I saw a couple of books I'd like to read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 23, 2019, 11:29:17 am
I could easily spend the summer reading articles about the perfect summer reading. Here's one:

https://lithub.com/20-perfect-summer-books-for-this-and-every-year/ (https://lithub.com/20-perfect-summer-books-for-this-and-every-year/)

I'm curiously what you all think about this list. I saw a couple of books I'd like to read.

I've only read one of them: Sophie's Choice. I've read other books by about six of the authors (Jennifer Egan, Elizabeth Gilbert, Michael Ondaatje) and someone once gave me Angle of Repose. Most of the others I haven't heard of, but the excerpts from their reviews are enticing. The one I'm most likely to read is Sally Rooney's Normal People, because I've heard such good things about that from many normal people.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on June 24, 2019, 09:14:26 am

"Omni-" means "all; of all things," as in omnipresent or omniscient. They must have called it omnibus because compared to a car it seemed huge at first and able to hold all, but once they got used to them they just called it bus.

"Omnibus" is the dative plural case of "omnis" (all) in Latin, so it means "for all".  Initially it was the French "voiture omnibus":  carriage for all. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2019, 11:46:30 am
"Omnibus" is the dative plural case of "omnis" (all) in Latin, so it means "for all".  Initially it was the French "voiture omnibus":  carriage for all.

Oh, I get it. It's not "for all" because it's a lot of people at once, it's "for all" because anyone can use it -- they don't have to own the voiture.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 27, 2019, 01:40:32 pm
I would be interested to read opinions on the June 24 article about menopause.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 28, 2019, 01:41:14 pm
At lunch today I read the article about the gay pop star Troye Sivan (June 24). I'd heard the name somewhere, so I checked out the article.

Anyway, I had to laugh when I read the sentence, "The accompanying music video ... spliced images of Sivan resting his had on the bare chest of his boyfriend, the model Jacob Bixenman. ..."

I said to myself, "Of course a gay pop star is going to have a model for a boyfriend."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 28, 2019, 01:49:41 pm
I said to myself, "Of course a gay pop star is going to have a model for a boyfriend."  :laugh:

 :laugh:  It's the eternal show-biz rule across genders and orientations, right?

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, for example, both married models (Mick is long divorced from Jerri Hall; Keith has been married to Patti Hanson for decades.) Bowie and Iman would be another example.

The Stones come to mind especially because I just made an overnight whirlwind trip to Chicago to see them. The ticket and hotel room were free, so all I had to pay for was $260 plane fare -- not ideal, since it was same-day flying, but could be worse. And the ticket was cheaper than either the room or the ticket would have been by themselves.

It was kind of crazy, because it was so last-minute and even the ticket was a splurge. But it could easily be their last tour and I like to think I"m not too old to be madcap now and then.  :D



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 28, 2019, 01:52:56 pm
:laugh:  It's the eternal show-biz rule across genders and orientations, right?

I guess it is!  :laugh:

I'm glad you enjoyed the trip and the concert.  :)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 29, 2019, 12:51:41 am
I'm glad you enjoyed the trip and the concert.  :)

Thsnks!  :-*



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 09, 2019, 07:10:50 pm
Not a total rule; David Furnish was an ad executive before becoming the husband of pop star Elton John.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2019, 01:21:10 pm
I was completely charmed by "Mueller's Mouseketeers" (Talk of the Town, July 8 & 15). Three Disney descendants financed a dramatization of the Mueller Report that was called "The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts," where stars read verbatim from Mueller's report. And what a cast! John Lithgow, Joel Grey, Jason Alexander, Michael Shannon, Annette Bening, Kevin Kline, Alfre Woodard, Alyssa Milano, and Piper Perabo. This wasn't just reading; this was reading as acting and characterization with the report as the script (e.g., John Lithgow was Trump, Jason Alexander was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie). I would have loved to have seen that show!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 17, 2019, 12:07:00 pm
Thanks to a two-week issue, I am once again entirely caught up on my issues of the magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 17, 2019, 02:41:13 pm
I was completely charmed by "Mueller's Mouseketeers" (Talk of the Town, July 8 & 15). Three Disney descendants financed a dramatization of the Mueller Report that was called "The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts," where stars read verbatim from Mueller's report. And what a cast! John Lithgow, Joel Grey, Jason Alexander, Michael Shannon, Annette Bening, Kevin Kline, Alfre Woodard, Alyssa Milano, and Piper Perabo. This wasn't just reading; this was reading as acting and characterization with the report as the script (e.g., John Lithgow was Trump, Jason Alexander was former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie). I would have loved to have seen that show!

I'm watching it now at https://impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org/2019/06/27/watch-now-the-investigation/ (https://impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org/2019/06/27/watch-now-the-investigation/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 19, 2019, 01:49:45 pm
OMG I LOVE this! "Dissent by Doily" in the July 22 "Talk of the Town"! What's not to love about the Tiny Pricks Project, stitching Trumpisms on napkins, handkerchiefs, and other cloth items?  :laugh:

I love the idea of "I AM A VERY STABLE GENIUS" on a seat cushion!  :laugh:

Somebody should do a sampler.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 01, 2019, 12:58:22 pm
The new issue -- the one with the blonde woman in sunglasses eating an ice-cream cone whose scoops exactly echo one color each of the colors in the rest of the picture -- is full of pieces that look at least pretty good. Either good subject matter or pretty reliable writers, as well as graphic novelist Chris Ware. It's a two-week issue, so maybe it's more prestigious to get published in and they can draw bigger names.


P.S. When I opened this thread I saw Aloysius J. Gleek had posted a story about how the New Yorker might be the "next" magazine to fold. I panicked for a second until I scrolled up and noticed I had accidentally hit the first page, and AJG's post was dated 2000.  :laugh:  Whew ...


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 01, 2019, 01:06:48 pm
The new issue -- the one with the blonde woman in sunglasses eating an ice-cream cone whose scoops exactly echo one color each of the colors in the rest of the picture -- is full of pieces that look at least pretty good. Either good subject matter or pretty reliable writers, as well as graphic novelist Chris Ware. It's a two-week issue, so maybe it's more prestigious to get published in and they can draw bigger names.

What's the date on that one?  ??? I just got July 29, which has two hikers on the cover.

But, OMG, I'm in love with Jill Lepore. In every issue with an article by her, I go directly to it.  I enjoyed her article on Herman Melville (actually makes me want to read some of him--well, maybe). She quotes a  Melville biographer who wrote that Melville "was experiencing sexual deprivation" because his wife was pregnant when he was writing his novel, Pierre.

Lepore's comment? "Holy smokes."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 01, 2019, 04:05:53 pm
What's the date on that one?  ??? I just got July 29, which has two hikers on the cover.

Aug. 5 and 12 (double issue, though the same size as always).

Quote
But, OMG, I'm in love with Jill Lepore. In every issue with an article by her, I go directly to it.

Did you like the one about her friend who died? I skipped most of it, but I saw other people praising it so I'm considering going back.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 01, 2019, 08:39:46 pm
Aug. 5 and 12 (double issue, though the same size as always).

That issue arrived in my mailbox today. So now I've gone from being so far ahead in my magazines that I had to take a book along to work to read at lunch to being way behind!  :laugh:

Quote
Did you like the one about her friend who died? I skipped most of it, but I saw other people praising it so I'm considering going back.

Yes, I liked it. I thought it was very touching. Plus, I found it fascinating to read about Lepore's background, trying to build an academic career while raising two small children.

Every time I read her, I tell myself I need to send her a fan letter, and every time I never do.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2019, 11:36:44 am
That issue arrived in my mailbox today. So now I've gone from being so far ahead in my magazines that I had to take a book along to work to read at lunch to being way behind!  :laugh:

Yes, I liked it. I thought it was very touching. Plus, I found it fascinating to read about Lepore's background, trying to build an academic career while raising two small children.

Every time I read her, I tell myself I need to send her a fan letter, and every time I never do.  :-\

She published a book recently, which you could take her out to lunch next time you get ahead in your magazines!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 02, 2019, 03:04:42 pm
There is a cartoon on p. 42 of the July 29 issue that, in my opinion, is quite pertinent to the discussion of the division of household labor--or lack thereof.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2019, 03:25:08 pm
There is a cartoon on p. 42 of the July 29 issue that, in my opinion, is quite pertinent to the discussion of the division of household labor--or lack thereof.

Haha! I've been reading the Franken exposé and was just four pages away from the cartoon! Yes, that is an excellent illustration of the issue. I took a photo and emailed it to myself.

Thanks!  :D




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 02, 2019, 11:59:01 pm
I read the Franken article, and it just made me sad all over again at what politics in this country has become.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 08, 2019, 09:35:00 am
"Devils Advocate" was a long and wild ride through the depraved world of Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, and a host of teenage girls. Hard to read but great reporting!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 09, 2019, 01:39:12 pm
Over lunch today, I enjoyed John Lanchester's article on the invention of money. I may have more to say about that later.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 09, 2019, 07:13:05 pm
Yes, that was a surprisingly good article. The amazing story of John Law!

I read the Al Franken story today as well as Jill Lepore's piece on Melville. Both were good.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 10, 2019, 09:00:04 am
I read the Al Franken story today as well as Jill Lepore's piece on Melville. Both were good.

Makes me mad about Franken. I knew that photo and her story were not exactly what they seemed. I was less skeptical of the seven other women, but his transgressions in their cases, whether deliberate or not, seem relatively forgivable. I thought he was a good senator (he's from my state; in fact, grew up near where I did) and would have made a good presidential candidate.

However, I will say that I mentioned him as a potential candidate to a woman I worked with, about a week or two before the photo scandal erupted. My coworker, an attractive 40-ish woman whose politics are about like mine, said she agreed, but ... she added that she'd sat next to him once at a banquet once and he gave off "a vibe."

"Oh, well, a vibe," I said kind of (politely) dismissively.

"No, it was a pretty strong vibe," she said. But she added that she still liked him as a politician.

But I think the main reason he was forced to resign was because a pedophile was running for office in Alabama.

Fun fact: Franken grew up in the same Minneapolis suburb, around roughly the same time, as the Coen Brothers, Tom Friedman, and a couple of other less famous but still successful writers. (All were Jewish; it was the suburb that, for whatever reason, many Jewish families lived back then.) I've often wondered if there was something in the water!  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 10, 2019, 10:42:11 am
"Devils Advocate" was a long and wild ride through the depraved world of Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz, and a host of teenage girls. Hard to read but great reporting!

Now comes the news that Epstein has taken his own life in prison. He was on a suicide watch. Whoever was watching dropped the ball. Or was told to drop it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 18, 2019, 04:39:35 pm
I recall that article mentions Dag Hammarskjöld as one of the first people who died who were linked to a conspiracy theory.

With my recent criticisms that I was practicing implicit racism, I felt it imperative to read "The Color of Injustice" in the August 19 issue. It was well written and compelling, and I didn't feel like I was reading a duty article. I am now better able to accept the criticism and not feel like I have to defend myself. The article mentions a couple of books that I may order and read. There are many forms of racism, as well as something called "white fragility" which I suspect I have.

The author is Kelefa Sanneh (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/kelefa-sanneh).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 18, 2019, 04:57:12 pm
I recall that article mentions Dag Hammarskjöld as one of the first people who died who were linked to a conspiracy theory.

With my recent criticisms that I was practicing implicit racism, I felt it imperative to read "The Color of Injustice" in the August 19 issue. It was well written and compelling, and I didn't feel like I was reading a duty article. I am now better able to accept the criticism and not feel like I have to defend myself. The article mentions a couple of books that I may order and read. There are many forms of racism, as well as something called "white fragility" which I suspect I have.

The author is Kelefa Sanneh (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/kelefa-sanneh).

I read that one, too, and loved it. The author of the essay points out some flaws in the black man's book but overall makes it sound solid and interesting; it got me thinking about some things in a different way. Then he demolishes the white woman's book, which it deserves. I really can't stand that kind of attitude and social media is filled with it.

One thing about the "white fragility" concept that I find weak is the complaint that white people get defensive when they're told they're being racist. To be fair, that might help people who haven't thought all this through and need their unconscious microaggressions pointed out,

But the answer to "why do white people get so defensive when they're called racist" is that in decent society being racist is a huge taboo, and most people (excluding part of Trump's base, I guess) are horrified to be slapped with that label. They may still need some enlightening words, but the fact that most people are horrified to be called racist is a good thing, IMO. Most people in 1954, especially in the South, wouldn't even have minded.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 19, 2019, 02:42:20 pm
Then he demolishes the white woman's book, which it deserves. I really can't stand that kind of attitude and social media is filled with it.

People like her come off to me as so condescending that I just want to slap them.

Over lunch today I began the article about Transition House. Articles like that are much more interesting to me than Sanneh's article because they deal more with individual people than with abstract concepts.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 20, 2019, 09:13:29 am
People like her come off to me as so condescending that I just want to slap them.

Same.

Quote
Over lunch today I began the article about Transition House. Articles like that are much more interesting to me than Sanneh's article because they deal more with individual people than with abstract concepts.

I'm just the opposite. I like essays about abstract concept, though preferably with some real people anecdotes, as Saneh's had. I've started the Transition House piece and so far finding it mildly interesting. It helps that I like its author, Larissa MacFarquhar.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 21, 2019, 09:12:33 pm
New issue came today!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 22, 2019, 06:39:46 pm
August 26 arrived in my mailbox today. Looks like lots of interesting stuff.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 23, 2019, 08:06:12 am
I thought so, too!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 28, 2019, 08:59:04 am
I mailed my renewal this morning.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 28, 2019, 05:34:58 pm
Yay! By this time, they should be paying us to read it!

What's with the fiction about bad mothers? I read "Motherless Child" in a recent issue and today I read "To Do" in the new issue that just came out and now I'm all depressed.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 29, 2019, 09:30:02 am
Yay! By this time, they should be paying us to read it!

What's with the fiction about bad mothers? I read "Motherless Child" in a recent issue and today I read "To Do" in the new issue that just came out and now I'm all depressed.  :(

It's a long literary tradition. Now try to find fiction from a mother's point of view. Until very recently it was almost nonexistent.

I decided not to read "To Do" because I read the first few paragraphs and didn't really get swept into it. I almost never read the short stories anymore.

But now, thanks to you, I've looked up "Motherless Child" and focuses on the character of Olive Kitteridge. That one I will read, because I read a whole book by Strout in the form of short stories with connected characters, Olive Kitteridge being kind of a central figure even though she wasn't in all the stories. I rarely read fiction, but I loved that book. And I'd read Strout has a new one out, so this must be an excerpt.



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 04, 2019, 01:48:59 pm
I have not yet started the Sept. 2 issue article about Iggy Pop, but I skimmed through it today on my way to the article about measles. I noticed a quotation from a New York Times article that referred to him as "Mr. Pop."  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 05, 2019, 08:56:46 am
I have not yet started the Sept. 2 issue article about Iggy Pop, but I skimmed through it today on my way to the article about measles. I noticed a quotation from a New York Times article that referred to him as "Mr. Pop."  :laugh:

I just saw a similarly odd NYT honorifics situation lately. Can't remember what it was. Of course, there's the legendary (perhaps apocryphal) time they referred to the singer Meatloaf as Mr. Loaf.  :laugh:

Wonder what they do for people like Cher, Bono, Madonna and Prince? "Ms. Cher" would sound odd.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 05, 2019, 02:00:42 pm
I just saw a similarly odd NYT honorifics situation lately. Can't remember what it was. Of course, there's the legendary (perhaps apocryphal) time they referred to the singer Meatloaf as Mr. Loaf.  :laugh:

 :laugh:

Quote
Wonder what they do for people like Cher, Bono, Madonna and Prince? "Ms. Cher" would sound odd.

Indeed. Does the Times even use "Ms."?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 05, 2019, 03:41:38 pm
Wikipedia says that "he New York Times embraces the use of all three: Mrs., Miss, and Ms.,[23] and will follow the individual’s preferences."

I caught up on some reading while my computer was down. The review of "Cold Case Hammarskjöld" by Anthony Lane in the August 19th issue was good. It's important to know about historical figures like him when we despair about the elevation of thugs and criminals to the highest levels. "Surround Sound" about Erich Wolfgang Korngold, was also very good. Vinson Cunningham was not very impressed with "Sea Wall/A Life" but he blamed it mostly on Nick Payne rather than on Tom Sturridge or our Jake.

In the August 26 issue, I'd be interested in what you, Katherine, thought of "The Looking Glass" about Margaret Mead, the Boas school of anthropologists, and the supposed end of the nature-nurture debate. The article doesn't really answer the question, IMO, although maybe the book it is critiquing might. I like reading book reviews in TNY because then I don't feel that I have to read the book. Lazy me. "Skin Deep" about Renoir is also good. What's with these revivals and retrospectives of the Impressionists? They are happening almost as fast as Disney remakes!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 05, 2019, 06:32:11 pm
In the August 26 issue, I'd be interested in what you, Katherine, thought of "The Looking Glass" about Margaret Mead, the Boas school of anthropologists, and the supposed end of the nature-nurture debate.

So you don't care what I thought of it?  ;D  Actually, I enjoyed it. I'd heard before about Mead's work having been discredited. I keep forgetting I would like to learn more about Ella Deloria, because her family is, or was, distinguished. A Vine Deloria, Jr., presumably a relative, wrote a book called Custer Died for Your Sins, or something like that.


Quote
I like reading book reviews in TNY because then I don't feel that I have to read the book.

Me, too, same here. I also like the movie reviews, theater reviews, and dance reviews for much the same reason.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 05, 2019, 11:40:11 pm
Of course I care, otherwise I would have sent a private message. Sorry for compressing the info too much.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 06, 2019, 08:34:47 am
Of course I care, otherwise I would have sent a private message. Sorry for compressing the info too much.

Nah, it was just too good an opportunity to tease you to pass up.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 06, 2019, 08:43:44 am
Oh, I just noticed a couple of posts I'd missed before writing this. Oh well -- here it is.

:laugh:

Indeed. Does the Times even use "Ms."?

It's the default. I would have thought it's the standard, but apparently in many cases they let women choose their honorific:

https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/ms-or-mrs-its-up-to-you-as-for-me-just-call-me-spayd/ (https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/ms-or-mrs-its-up-to-you-as-for-me-just-call-me-spayd/)

But regarding Cher et al, it's more complicated than we thought. As of 2018, they no longer use honorifics for pop stars, unless it's an investigative piece and various other conditions. They do, however, retain their use for high arts -- classical music, dance, etc. That seems even more, and needlessly, complicated. What about someone like Dame Maggie Smith? Is she Smith?

https://observer.com/2018/10/new-york-times-drops-pop-culture-honorifics/ (https://observer.com/2018/10/new-york-times-drops-pop-culture-honorifics/)

Personally, I'm with this guy, who thinks the Times should dump the whole system:

http://www.matthewdicks.com/matthewdicksblog/2015/12/19/the-new-york-times-use-of-honorifics







Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 06, 2019, 08:55:47 am
In the August 26 issue, I'd be interested in what you, Katherine, thought of "The Looking Glass" about Margaret Mead, the Boas school of anthropologists, and the supposed end of the nature-nurture debate. The article doesn't really answer the question, IMO, although maybe the book it is critiquing might.

Oh, I didn't see that! Thank you for mentioning it. I'll go find it!

So you don't care what I thought of it?  ;D 

I suspect FRiend Lee addressed me because she knows I have read and written and have strong opinions about the nature/nurture debate.

The Franz Boas era is interesting. They were hugely progressive for their time. And although this quote by the early 20th century psychologist John B. Watson, who was inspired by Boas, now seems ridiculous, at the time it was progressive to say that race did not determine success, etc.:

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years." —John B. Watson, "Behaviorism," 1925


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 06, 2019, 10:44:02 am
Oh, I just noticed a couple of posts I'd missed before writing this. Oh well -- here it is.

It's the default. I would have thought it's the standard, but apparently in many cases they let women choose their honorific:

https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/ms-or-mrs-its-up-to-you-as-for-me-just-call-me-spayd/ (https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/ms-or-mrs-its-up-to-you-as-for-me-just-call-me-spayd/)

Did I miss something here? What do they do with women who are not married, women who are married but keep their own names for professional reasons, and women who are married to other women? Are they stuck with Ms. whether they like it or not?

Quote
But regarding Cher et al, it's more complicated than we thought. As of 2018, they no longer use honorifics for pop stars, unless it's an investigative piece and various other conditions. They do, however, retain their use for high arts -- classical music, dance, etc. That seems even more, and needlessly, complicated. What about someone like Dame Maggie Smith? Is she Smith?

https://observer.com/2018/10/new-york-times-drops-pop-culture-honorifics/ (https://observer.com/2018/10/new-york-times-drops-pop-culture-honorifics/)

I guess traditionally she would/should be Dame Maggie, Dame being the traditional title for a woman granted a knighthood, but I guess that raises issues itself. Since I never see these things, seriously, what are they doing with Sir Elton John?


Quote
Personally, I'm with this guy, who thinks the Times should dump the whole system:

http://www.matthewdicks.com/matthewdicksblog/2015/12/19/the-new-york-times-use-of-honorifics

I guess I still have mixed feelings. I think Mr. and Mrs. should be dispensed with, but I have no problem with titles like Sen. (senator), Sec. (secretary, as in cabinet secretary), and Dr. (though a Ph.D. in the humanities who wants to be called Dr. is just being pretentious [except for Indiana Jones  ;D ]). You can call me--what?--because I still incline to military titles (Col., Gen., Adm.)--but I'm not sure what I would do about an officer of a lower rank.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 07, 2019, 08:44:40 am
Did I miss something here? What do they do with women who are not married, women who are married but keep their own names for professional reasons, and women who are married to other women? Are they stuck with Ms. whether they like it or not?

No, the way I read it they let them pick. I'm saying Ms. should be the default, not that it is. So under their system, an unmarried woman would get either Ms. or Miss, depending on her preference. A married woman keeping her own name for whatever reasons (professional or otherwise) would be Ms. or Miss. So they wouldn't call her Mrs. Taylor when she was married to Richard Burton. As for women married to other women, again I suppose they'd offer them a choice. But I would think it would be Ms. DeGeneres or possibly Miss DeGeneres, not Mrs. de Rossi (or vice versa in Portia's case).

Quote
I guess traditionally she would/should be Dame Maggie, Dame being the traditional title for a woman granted a knighthood, but I guess that raises issues itself. Since I never see these things, seriously, what are they doing with Sir Elton John?
Good question. They must have written about Sir Elton at some point before switching to not using pop stars' titles. But otherwise, would second reference be Dame Smith and Sir John?

Quote
I guess I still have mixed feelings. I think Mr. and Mrs. should be dispensed with, but I have no problem with titles like Sen. (senator), Sec. (secretary, as in cabinet secretary), and Dr. (though a Ph.D. in the humanities who wants to be called Dr. is just being pretentious [except for Indiana Jones  ;D ]). You can call me--what?--because I still incline to military titles (Col., Gen., Adm.)--but I'm not sure what I would do about an officer of a lower rank.

Maybe I didn't read that blog post closely enough, but I thought the guy was just referring to Mr., Mrs., etc. But all newspapers use Sen., Sec. and Dr. (the last only for MDs, however -- sorry, Indiana!). The point of those is to identify who they are, not to be extra polite. They don't want readers saying, "Wait, who is this McConnell guy and what does he have to do with anything?" But I suppose the NYT would use Sen. McConnell on second reference, whereas other papers would say Sen. on first reference then switch to just McConnell.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 08, 2019, 04:19:24 pm
Maybe I didn't read that blog post closely enough, but I thought the guy was just referring to Mr., Mrs., etc. But all newspapers use Sen., Sec. and Dr. (the last only for MDs, however -- sorry, Indiana!). The point of those is to identify who they are, not to be extra polite. They don't want readers saying, "Wait, who is this McConnell guy and what does he have to do with anything?" But I suppose the NYT would use Sen. McConnell on second reference, whereas other papers would say Sen. on first reference then switch to just McConnell.

Going forward, then, do you suppose they would ask Hillary Clinton what she would prefer (Sen.? Sec.?--or Mrs.?)? Otherwise they would have a double standard on their hands, and I'm sure that wouldn't go over very well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 08, 2019, 06:10:54 pm
I just finished the piece about Prince. Strange that he selected a guy who had never authored a book to help him write his autobiography. The guy, Dan Piepenbring, must have really aced the essay question about his relationship to Prince's music.

He has written mostly reviews for TNY. A piece in June examined the cynical politics of Donald Duck:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-book-that-exposed-the-cynical-politics-of-donald-duck
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 08, 2019, 06:39:05 pm
Going forward, then, do you suppose they would ask Hillary Clinton what she would prefer (Sen.? Sec.?--or Mrs.?)? Otherwise they would have a double standard on their hands, and I'm sure that wouldn't go over very well.

Well, there's one good reason why they should drop it -- statuses of women change and they'd have to worry about keeping up. And obviously the whole custom of designated women's status by their title, but men not, has sexist foundations.

Don't people have enough to worry about today just with pronouns? What do non-binary people choose as their preferred honorific? Don't make this more difficult than it was to be, NYT!



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 11, 2019, 03:39:20 pm
Often I think the fashion issue will not contain much that I find interesting but the September 9 issue had several good articles by excellent writers. An example is "The Gay Genealogist" by Rebecca Mead, an excellent writer, about Matthew Lopez, also an excellent writer. Lopez has written an update of the E.M. Forster novel Howard's End that is bound for Broadway, and I was struck by Forster's heroine's motto "Only connect." It seems to me that I read somewhere else recently of a person whose motto was "Always connect." I'll have to look up the coincidence. I'm starting to collect coincidences.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 12, 2019, 09:04:36 am
I've heard of "only," but not of "always."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 12, 2019, 09:34:26 pm
The Sept. 16 issue arrived in my mailbox today. I checked the TOC and went directly to Michael Shulman's article on fans. I enjoyed it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 12, 2019, 10:56:48 pm
Read that too, and later wondered if the "Stans" phenomenon was the precursor to the school mass killer phenomenon. They seem to have a lot in common.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 24, 2019, 02:10:52 pm
Over lunch today, I read Janet Malcolm's article on the new biography of Susan Sontag. I note that Malcolm adhered to the old way of referring to her hypothetical interviewee by masculine pronouns.

Anybody ever read "Notes on Camp"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 24, 2019, 05:17:07 pm


Anybody ever read "Notes on Camp"?


Probably chunks of it, but not the whole thing. Nor "Illness as Metaphor," nor "On Photography."

I resist people whose job description is "intellectual." And maybe I'm mischaracterizing, but I don't tend to like essays that muse abstractly on "big ideas." I like essays that imply big ideas through small particulars -- more Didion than Sontag. But that may be unfair to Sontag -- I should read at least one of hers first.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 24, 2019, 06:26:24 pm
Probably chunks of it, but not the whole thing. Nor "Illness as Metaphor," nor "On Photography."

I resist people whose job description is "intellectual." And maybe I'm mischaracterizing, but I don't tend to like essays that muse abstractly on "big ideas." I like essays that imply big ideas through small particulars -- more Didion than Sontag. But that may be unfair to Sontag -- I should read at least one of hers first.

I wonder whether Sontag put "public intellectual" as her occupation on her tax returns?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 24, 2019, 08:08:23 pm
The article on Susan Sontag covered two or three books based on her diaries and writings that she sold to UCLA. One of the books was quite critical of her and the other was a little more charitable. The writings themselves were quite self-critical. Made me think of all the diaries and writings I have around the house. Should I have a bonfire? Maybe.

I have read "On Photography" and think of it almost every time I take a picture. She raised valid questions about how we live. Do we just consume experiences or do we actually live? What is it like to live anyway? I prefer storytelling as a way to find meaning; nevertheless, what Sontag said and wrote resonates far beyond her times. I also recently acquired The Volcano Lover and am planning to read it. I resist dismissing someone just because of some label that has been attached to them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 25, 2019, 08:59:01 am
The writings themselves were quite self-critical. Made me think of all the diaries and writings I have around the house. Should I have a bonfire? Maybe.

Yeah, I'm sure SS would not be thrilled to know some of that stuff has been published. I wonder why David Rieff allowed it?

Quote
I also recently acquired The Volcano Lover and am planning to read it.

I read it long ago and liked it. I still recall the part about the differences between people who live in the north and people who live in the south. She was talking primarily about Europe, but also more generally and her points apply to the United States, too.

Quote
I resist dismissing someone just because of some label that has been attached to them.

Oh, you're right. I was being flippant. There are plenty of public intellectuals I like perfectly well and would go out of my way to read (as well as some I like but probably wouldn't read a whole book by  ;D). Ta-Nehesi Coates, Roxane Gay, Robert Wright, Laura Kipnis ...

I'm reading a book right now by a guy I'd consider a public intellectual: Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian. The book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, traces human evolution and cultural development from the time when humans were just another species on earth, through the agricultural revolution (which Harari considers the worst thing to have ever happened to humans) through the development of language and finally, gaining the ability to talk about ideas and abstractions. I read it just before bed, to relax, like one might settle in with a favorite mystery writer. Practically every page contains some fascinating idea that you might never have considered quite that way before but once you think about it makes perfect sense. And best of all, it has nothing to do with Donald Trump or any other disturbing current events  :laugh: !


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 25, 2019, 12:04:18 pm
Yeah, I'm sure SS would not be thrilled to know some of that stuff has been published. I wonder why David Rieff allowed it?

Maybe he had no right to prevent it. I was confused about that point. Malcolm says SS sold her papers to UCLA, so I wonder if that entitled her to name a literary executor or not, or if she could but didn't, or if UCLA held all rights to say yes or no to publication? Malcolm says, "Access to them was largely unrestricted," but does that mean all rights belong to the university?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 25, 2019, 12:21:08 pm
Maybe he had no right to prevent it. I was confused about that point. Malcolm says SS sold her papers to UCLA, so I wonder if that entitled her to name a literary executor or not, or if she could but didn't, or if UCLA held all rights to say yes or no to publication? Malcolm says, "Access to them was largely unrestricted," but does that mean all rights belong to the university?

Good questions.   ???

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 26, 2019, 01:13:53 pm
Some articles are so well written that I find myself zipping through them even though I'm not interested in the subject. "Dr. Robot" by D. T. Max is such an article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 26, 2019, 01:55:02 pm
Some articles are so well written that I find myself zipping through them even though I'm not interested in the subject. "Dr. Robot" by D. T. Max is such an article.

I do that, too. I haven't done it with "Dr. Robot," and D.T. Max probably wouldn't be as big a draw for me as some other New Yorker writers (I read and liked Max's stuff about David Foster Wallace, but then DFW is already a subject of interest to me). But Malcolm Gladwell, Ariel Levy, Adam Gopnik, Jia Tolentino and others would be enough of a draw on their names alone. The writer I am most likely to open straight to before I even look at anything else is David Sedaris, but his subjects are always personal/universal enough that they'd be of interest anyway.






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 27, 2019, 09:32:53 am
I tried to like "The Stone" by Louise Erdrich in the September 9 issue. But I was strangely unmoved by the fable. So I went to an online interview with the author, where she says that the stone, which is the main character in the story, is neither benevolent or malevolent. "It is indifferent," Erdrich says. And that's how I felt about the story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2019, 11:16:28 am
I tried to like "The Stone" by Louise Erdrich in the September 9 issue. But I was strangely unmoved by the fable. So I went to an online interview with the author, where she says that the stone, which is the main character in the story, is neither benevolent or malevolent. "It is indifferent," Erdrich says. And that's how I felt about the story.

I read it, too, because of Louise Erdrich, but I didn't think much of it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2019, 01:48:36 pm
I interviewed Louise Erdrich about 20 years ago, a year or two after she'd gone through a messy time in her life. She had just published the first book after her husband/mentor/writing partner had committed suicide. Which happened not long after she'd gone to the police and accused him of physically and/or sexually abusing some of their six kids. I knew I had to ask her about that, and I knew she'd probably say "no comment." Still, I was really nervous about it. But it went exactly as I had expected and we just went on to talk other stuff: her new book and her bookstore in Minneapolis and the new baby she'd just had with a person whose identity she did not disclose.

One thing she said that was weird was that she wrote a scene in which a character in the new novel, a priest who had appeared in a previous novel, undresses and is revealed to be a woman pretending to be a man. Louise said she did not know until she wrote the scene that was going to happen, so she was as surprised as anyone when it did. That struck me as disingenuous. I would believe it didn't occur to her to have that happen before she started writing, but I didn't think it was possible for her fingers to start typing on their own (or writing longhand, if that's what she does) as she watched the scene unfold like someone in the audience at a movie.

I loved her first three novels and read a couple of others but after a while stopped trying to keep up with them.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 28, 2019, 05:48:23 pm
Some articles are so well written that I find myself zipping through them even though I'm not interested in the subject. "Dr. Robot" by D. T. Max is such an article.

Sigh. . . . After "Dr. Robot", I was halfway through the Tiktok article when I decided that I don't like my New Yorker Magazine writing the words "algorithm" and "server" so much. Checking the rest of the articles and the cover, methinks I'll have to give the rest of the issue a pass, at least for a day or two. I like my magazines to be analog, thank you very much!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 01, 2019, 07:25:00 pm
I've been attending a "Freelance Business Week" conference this week and, while I haven't learned very much, it's been a great refresher. Also, I've had a couple of good ideas for "Shouts and Murmurs" type articles.

Mostly when I read S&M, I think, oh that's kind of blah, I think I could do better. Guess I'm an armchair S&M author. There are at least two ideas I'd like to develop and maybe send to TNY. In my spare time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 01, 2019, 09:25:13 pm
I've been attending a "Freelance Business Week" conference this week and, while I haven't learned very much, it's been a great refresher. Also, I've had a couple of good ideas for "Shouts and Murmurs" type articles.

Mostly when I read S&M, I think, oh that's kind of blah, I think I could do better. Guess I'm an armchair S&M author. There are at least two ideas I'd like to develop and maybe send to TNY. In my spare time.

If I were you, I'd be careful using "S&M" as an abbreviation for "Shouts and Murmurs."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 02, 2019, 08:54:19 am
Mostly when I read S&M, I think, oh that's kind of blah

I think the same thing. Now and then I see some that are genuinely funny, but many are too over-the-top, more goofy than funny. I have a feeling that the worse ones tend to be by longtime New Yorker writers, either in the S&M space or in general. The possible exception is Jack Handey, who contributes from time to time and seems a little funnier. Do you all remember when SNL had "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey"? I remember one: "I'm scared of clowns. Maybe because I went to the circus once, and a clown killed my dad."





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 03, 2019, 01:31:06 pm
Has anybody read "Value Meal," by Tad Friend (Sept. 30)? It looks to me like it's another one of those articles that's longer by half than it needs to be.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 04, 2019, 06:52:03 pm
No, I thought the same thing, although I like his writing so I'll at least start it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2019, 09:06:06 am
Has anybody read "Value Meal," by Tad Friend (Sept. 30)? It looks to me like it's another one of those articles that's longer by half than it needs to be.

No, I thought the same thing, although I like his writing so I'll at least start it.

I finished it, and I found it interesting, but I think it was longer than necessary.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 07, 2019, 10:21:12 am
Tad Friend dates back to the old, wordy New Yorker, right?

I think history looks, or will look, kindly on some of the changes Tina Brown made. As you recall, she was hugely controversial -- Garrison Keillor, as I recall, was one of those who stomped out in a huff -- but one thing she did right, IMO, is to make New Yorker articles more relevant to current events and pop culture.

I might read a longish piece about, oh, ICE or Rudy Giuliani or Edward Snowden or, heck, Brad Pitt. But I remember one of the last straws for me in the old New Yorker was a piece of probably close to 10,000 words about the inner operations of a small Manhattan grocery store. "Thursday is the day the dairy delivery truck restocks the dairy case with milk, cream, yogurt, cheese ..." (Going from memory.  ;D)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2019, 10:45:50 am
Tad Friend dates back to the old, wordy New Yorker, right?

I don't know. The contributor page says he's been a staff writer since 1998.


Quote
I think history looks, or will look, kindly on some of the changes Tina Brown made. As you recall, she was hugely controversial -- Garrison Keillor, as I recall, was one of those who stomped out in a huff -- but one thing she did right, IMO, is to make New Yorker articles more relevant to current events and pop culture.

It seems to me that articles got shorter (and in my opinion more reader friendly) during the Brown era.

Quote
I might read a longish piece about, oh, ICE or Rudy Giuliani or Edward Snowden or, heck, Brad Pitt. But I remember one of the last straws for me in the old New Yorker was a piece of probably close to 10,000 words about the inner operations of a small Manhattan grocery store. "Thursday is the day the dairy delivery truck restocks the dairy case with milk, cream, yogurt, cheese ..." (Going from memory.  ;D)

Was that a real article? I don't remember. I wonder what anyone would say today about devoting an entire issue to one story--like John Hersey's "Hiroshima"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 08, 2019, 09:12:23 am
I don't know. The contributor page says he's been a staff writer since 1998.

Then no. The Brown era started in the '80s, as I recall.

Quote
It seems to me that articles got shorter (and in my opinion more reader friendly) during the Brown era.

Yes. Before her time the New Yorker did not regularly cover ongoing current events, politics or pop culture. I agree about the reader friendliness.

Quote
Was that a real article? I don't remember. I wonder what anyone would say today about devoting an entire issue to one story--like John Hersey's "Hiroshima"?

I think with a story that big and important and dramatic, they'd be OK with it. Now, on the other hand, the day-to-day operations of a small grocery store ...  ::)

How much of the issue that came out after 9/11 was about 9/11? Anybody remember?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 08, 2019, 10:29:39 am
I remember the cover of that issue. It was completely black, with the shadow of the twin towers depicted in varnish (or the aqueous coating that replaced varnish) so that you could only see the image by the light reflected from it.

As I recall, the issue was mainly about 9-11 and won awards. I think I still have it somewhere.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 08, 2019, 11:04:31 am
As I recall, the issue was mainly about 9-11 and won awards. I think I still have it somewhere.

Do you still have another famous issue on your bedside table?

I do remember that 9/11 cover. For some reason, I don't remember much of the contents.

The other really good post-9/11 issue, believe it or not, was The Onion. It was genuinely funny, and hit just the right tone so it didn't seem "too soon." My favorite line, quoting some random man on the street, was: "If the world were going to suddenly turn into a movie without warning, I wish it would have been one of those boring, talky Merchant-Ivory ones instead. I hate those movies, but I sure wish we were living in one right now."

Check out the front page if you didn't see/don't remember it. Every headline is funny while also being (IMO) inoffensive.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/cutline/remembering-onion-9-11-issue-everyone-thought-last-162024809.html (https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/cutline/remembering-onion-9-11-issue-everyone-thought-last-162024809.html)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 08, 2019, 11:06:23 am
I'll have to look that up; thanks for the link. Yes, that other famous issue is still there, even though I have a different bedside table!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 18, 2019, 11:37:17 pm
I've been catching up on my issues that were put aside during the summer. In the July 8-15 issue, I read the article about Hunter Biden. It was very comprehensive and apparently Hunter cooperated and was interviewed several times for it. It was heartbreaking to see how hard he tried and failed to break his addictions. One hopes for him going forward, but the future looks bleak.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 24, 2019, 09:03:31 am
The Oct. 28 issue arrived yesterday. The articles looked kind of "Ehhh, maybe ..." I started reading a profile of the actor Adam Driver because that seemed easy, at least, not a daunting "duty" article. I find him mildly interesting as an actor, and he's been in a lot of movies in the past few years.

But I got about three pages into it and realized the profile was nine pages long. It was like the long-ago nine-page article I once started reading on a grocery store. Driver has some mildly interesting characteristics, like pretty much all people do, but he wasn't particularly fascinating. I got to the part where the piece was offering moment-by-moment coverage of Driver preparing to go onstage. He gets his hair wet, then he puts gel in it, then he blowdries it, then he brushes his teeth because he has to kiss an actress onstage, then he ...

Well, I may never know whether he put his shoes on next, or a jacket or what. I bailed. If there's anything especially interesting about Adam Driver to warrant a nine-page piece, they sure buried the lede.

Meanwhile, Thomas Edison merited four pages. (Admittedly, the Edison piece is a book review/essay as opposed to a full-blown profile.)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 24, 2019, 10:29:29 am
I concur about the Adam Driver article. Did you get far enough to figure out why they call him "the original man"? IMO, the best thing about the article is the portrait of him. Such an interesting face! I liked "The avocado Whisperer" so far. The Shouts & Murmurs piece was, as usual, too nuanced for my taste.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 24, 2019, 08:47:38 pm
I concur about the Adam Driver article. Did you get far enough to figure out why they call him "the original man"?

No, and I figured if you're going to lure people with a phrase like that you'd better reveal the meaning in far less than three pages. To me, Adam Driver seems like kind of a pleasant, mildly interesting man. If he asked me out to dinner, I'd go. But original? Um, Okaayyy, how so? ...  I liked him a lot in BlackKKlansman, but that was just a good movie overall.

Quote
IMO, the best thing about the article is the portrait of him. Such an interesting face!

Yes, kind of. I think that's one reason he's become a star. He's not exactly cute like the Chrises or Ryan Gosling or whoever, but he has an interesting and not unappealing face. Did you watch Girls? His character evolved from being kind of a distancing weirdo at first, as the article implies, but then gradually became a sympathetic (albeit less weird) figure.

Quote
I liked "The avocado Whisperer" so far. The Shouts & Murmurs piece was, as usual, too nuanced for my taste.

I haven't gotten to either of those yet, but I'm looking forward to the Jerome Groopman piece on habits.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 24, 2019, 09:25:12 pm
I haven't gotten to either of those yet, but I'm looking forward to the Jerome Groopman piece on habits.
Unfortunately, I found it disappointing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 24, 2019, 09:25:42 pm
I need to read "The Florida Shuffle" before I call Oct. 21 complete. I never read the "Shouts and Murmurs."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 24, 2019, 10:24:30 pm
I never read the "Shouts and Murmurs."

I usually check it out. I find that if it's one of their usual writers who writes them all the time, they're inevitably boring. But the ones by first-time or lesser known writers are often clever or even funny. I shout and murmur about them.  ::)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 29, 2019, 11:51:09 am
Since the latest issue was disappointing, I'm going back to earlier issues that I didn't finish. The July 8 & 15, 2019, issue has a couple of good articles: "Uncle Jim Called" by David Rabe is the best fiction I've read in a few years. It captures the mind of a writer, who oftentimes stands on the outside observing.

Also I read "Kipling in America" about the author's time in Brattleboro, Vermont, where his new wife was from. It reviews the new book If: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years by Christopher Benfey. He sidesteps Kipling's questionable politics and beliefs and concentrates on his personal life, and the close relationship he had with Wolcott Balestier. They were so close that when Balestier died suddenly at age 29, Kipling married his sister. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 31, 2019, 02:00:07 pm
I enjoyed the astrology article (Oct. 28), but it reminded me of a question I've had about astrology for some time. You need your birth time to calculate a chart, but what exactly is your birth time for astrological purposes?

If you are born in the U.S. while (most of) the nation is on Daylight Saving Time, is your birth time the clock time, or do you subtract an hour for the time on Standard Time? Is your birth time the time on Greenwich Mean Time? Have birth times been affected by the adoption of world-wide time zones?

The almanac I buy every year always has a page devoted to listing personal characteristics according to signs of the Zodiac. I certainly seem to be a classic Taurus.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 31, 2019, 05:48:43 pm
Since the latest issue was disappointing, I'm going back to earlier issues that I didn't finish. The July 8 & 15, 2019, issue has a couple of good articles: "Uncle Jim Called" by David Rabe is the best fiction I've read in a few years. It captures the mind of a writer, who oftentimes stands on the outside observing.

I've been reading the Emmanuel Macron profile from July 1. It's slightly "duty," but Macron is a pretty interesting person -- much more than Adam Driver, that's for sure. And he's even attractive, like all world leaders except ours.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 01, 2019, 09:01:46 am
I admire how the two of you can save your issues for months and then go back and read them. If I don't read one as soon as it arrives, it won't get read, because there is always something else to read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 01, 2019, 09:11:22 am
I admire how the two of you can save your issues for months and then go back and read them. If I don't read one as soon as it arrives, it won't get read, because there is always something else to read.

It's not so much "save" as "don't get around to throwing out because I keep thinking I'm going to read them and by the time I've read one or two pieces a new one arrives.

I almost never get through all the possible readable articles (not including ones I wouldn't read anyway) but until I do I don't throw them out. So they pile up. When I'm looking for something to read, I grab a random one out of the pile, which is how I got on the Macron profile.

When the pile gets too high, I go through and try to throw out as many as possible, or at least rip out an interesting article or two and throw the rest out. If thre are multiple interesting articles, I put those in a pile along with the ripped-out articles. Then I never get around to reading those!

I used to keep a few of the ripped-out articles in my purse at all times in case I got stuck waiting somewhere and needing to pass the time. But since I've had a smart phone, that tends to take priority and the articles sit in my purse until they get too wrinkled and worn to read.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 02, 2019, 10:41:37 am
To make matters even more nonlinear, I read forward this morning to the article about Jeremy Renner and the take-down of his app. There was a link to a piece on "Sad Affleck" from March of 2018. I read that too. A strange world we live in where people obsess about figures in popular culture.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 03, 2019, 12:21:15 pm
A strange world we live in where people obsess about figures in popular culture.

I don't know if you mean "world" literally -- as in, the entire human species -- or the world of modern developed countries where people might be interested in Jeremy Renner or Ben Affleck. But I think of it in the former sense, as something that happens in every culture. In the absence of mass media or widespread mobility, where people would live in villages or towns or tribes, often seeing the same smallish group of families and neighbors throughout their lives, people would obsess about -- their local versions of celebrities. The chief or mayor, the successful warrior, the handsome butcher and so on. That wold be a far smaller group, of course, than the thousands of celebrities modern people obsess about, with our access to images and information involving strangers all over the world whom we will never meet in person.

Interesting topic on a site specifically offered for people who are literally obsessed with one particular item of popular culture (well, two items), both in fictional and real-life ways. And with a group that for months has been playing a fun game based on real-life figures people obsess about, mostly entertainers!  :)  Wait -- have we done Ben Affleck yet?  :laugh:



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 04, 2019, 05:06:07 pm
Sometimes I astonish myself at what I miss. The Nov. 4 issue includes letters referring to an article by Joan Acocella on "Gilgamesh" that appeared in the Oct. 14 issue under Books. Somehow I missed that, because that's something I would assuredly have read. I'll have to see if that issue is still in my recycling bag.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 04, 2019, 06:53:26 pm
Sometimes I astonish myself at what I miss. The Nov. 4 issue includes letters referring to an article by Joan Acocella on "Gilgamesh" that appeared in the Oct. 14 issue under Books. Somehow I missed that, because that's something I would assuredly have read. I'll have to see if that issue is still in my recycling bag.

Well, how strange is this? I went through my recycling bag, and I still have the issues of Sept. 30, Oct. 7, Oct. 21, and Oct. 28, but not Oct. 14.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 05, 2019, 10:15:44 am
That was a good article, you'll definitely have to find and read that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 05, 2019, 10:26:43 am
Sometimes I astonish myself at what I miss. The Nov. 4 issue includes letters referring to an article by Joan Acocella on "Gilgamesh" that appeared in the Oct. 14 issue under Books. Somehow I missed that, because that's something I would assuredly have read. I'll have to see if that issue is still in my recycling bag.

I do this, too, although in my case they aren't in the recycling yet, they're just piled up on the dining room and bedside tables. So when I go through them, or even just grab a random issue, I usually find something good that I missed the first time around.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 05, 2019, 01:49:21 pm
That was a good article, you'll definitely have to find and read that.

When I look at the date, October 14, it now occurs to me that I may have taken that issue when I went out to my dad's place while he was in the hospital and then discarded it out there. In that case it's irretrievably gone. So I still missed the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 05, 2019, 05:46:43 pm
But if you're a subscriber, which you are, you can access every article ever printed in the magazine online.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 05, 2019, 08:17:05 pm
Here you go:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 05, 2019, 10:36:10 pm
Thanks!  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 06, 2019, 10:42:32 am
Maybe I deliberately skipped it because of that title, "Beyond the Waters of Death," but I probably just overlooked it and put the magazine out for the trash at my dad's place.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 06, 2019, 11:39:35 am
Maybe I deliberately skipped it because of that title, "Beyond the Waters of Death," but I probably just overlooked it and put the magazine out for the trash at my dad's place.

 :laugh:

Yeah, it's not the most appealing title. They probably realized that themselves and changed it online, too late to change it for the print edition. We do that at the newspaper all the time. Usually with outright errors, but sometimes with bad headlines.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 06, 2019, 02:27:02 pm
I recommend Arthur Krystal on the literature of old age in the Nov. 4 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 06, 2019, 04:50:09 pm
I recommend Arthur Krystal on the literature of old age in the Nov. 4 issue.

I read that last night. Well done, but depressing.

Here's a good one Tad Friend wrote two years ago. I had just written a piece about ageism using the exact same sources. My story had to be kind of upbeat, and this one is less so. But that's part of what makes it good, and thought provoking. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/why-ageism-never-gets-old (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/why-ageism-never-gets-old)

And finally, here's one by Adam Gopnik from just this past May. I missed it then, but it's probably on my dining room table somewhere.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/can-we-live-longer-but-stay-younger (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/can-we-live-longer-but-stay-younger)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 07, 2019, 02:25:50 pm
Even if you don't give a fig about Brexit, I highly recommend the article about it in the Nov. 4 issue. I'm finding it highly entertaining and in places quite funny. Even if you don't read the whole article, read the section beginning in the middle column of page 20, where the author describes a chap called Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is described as "preternaturally posh." He has six children, the sixth named Sixtus, and he has a sister called Annunziata Rees-Mogg--how can you even say that name and keep a poker face? (From this article I learned that David Beckham, Stephen Hawking, and J.K. Rowling all opposed Brexit.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 07, 2019, 03:28:20 pm
I'm losing steam on the Emmanuel Macron profile. (I've been reading other stuff along the way.) He seems like an interesting guy and he's another one of those "better looking than Trump" world leaders, which pretty much includes everyone except arguably Kim Jong Un.

But my interest in French politics only goes so far. My main interest in Macron is that he's been with his wife since he was a 15-year-old student and she was his 39-year-old teacher. That's a pretty big age difference even if the genders were reversed and almost unheard of when the man is younger AND more successful.

If it happened in this country, the 39-year-old (man or woman) would probably have wound up in jail instead of French First Lady.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 07, 2019, 03:30:21 pm
I was just about to settle down with the new issue last night.I had barely looked through its table of contents. Then I remembered to go get the mail and what do I find but an even newer new issue! I can't keep up.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 07, 2019, 04:21:09 pm
I was just about to settle down with the new issue last night.I had barely looked through its table of contents. Then I remembered to go get the mail and what do I find but an even newer new issue! I can't keep up.

Welcome to my New Yorker world.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 08, 2019, 10:34:16 am
Welcome to my New Yorker world.

Thanks!  :laugh:  It's probably everybody's New Yorker world.

I wrote a column for the books page of the paper once about having way too much to read. I mentioned the many things on my computer, Kindle, bedside table, etc., as well as my New Yorker pile. The column invited readers to share their experiences with information overload. One wrote something reasonably friendly but she said she thought my mentioning the New Yorker was snooty.

I can see her point. I've been annoyed, at times, by a friend who sometimes writes things like, "I was reading the New Yorker when there was a knock on the door ... [goes into story that has nothing to do with the New Yorker.]"

But in this case, I wasn't including it to brag. I was including it because it comes every f'in week.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 11, 2019, 11:53:51 am
I realized this morning I did want to read that profile of Adam Driver. It seems at least I still have that issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 11, 2019, 02:04:21 pm
I realized this morning I did want to read that profile of Adam Driver. It seems at least I still have that issue.

Report back if you can figure out why he warranted such a long profile!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 11, 2019, 02:08:46 pm
Right now I'm trying to decide if I should bother with the cybersecurity article in Nov. 4. It looks awfully, awfully long.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 12, 2019, 09:52:16 pm
I realized this morning I did want to read that profile of Adam Driver. It seems at least I still have that issue.

Report back if you can figure out why he warranted such a long profile!

You probably weren't wrong to skip the Driver profile. I didn't think it was particularly long. It was interesting to me because I've been hearing the name a lot, but I had no idea who he was--Girls isn't exactly my taste in TV.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2019, 09:21:55 am
I didn't think it was particularly long. It was interesting to me because I've been hearing the name a lot, but I had no idea who he was--Girls isn't exactly my taste in TV.  ;D

Well, by long I meant multiple pages. I'd read a one-page profile of Adam Driver. Maybe even two or three. But I think it was like, five or more, right? And he seemed like just an average guy who's a good actor.

Girls probably isn't your taste because you like Westerns and things like that, and it's more urban, ironic, etc. I watched the whole thing and thought it was good. It's not as "girly" as you might imagine. I actually would read a longish profile of Lena Dunham. Her parents were fairly successful artists, she made her first full-length feature theater film in her early 20s. Her younger sibling, Cyrus Grace Dunham, just published a book called A Year Without a Name that was excerpted as a New Yorker personal essay a while back. He's either a trans man or possibly just nonbinary -- the essay wasn't entirely clear -- but he does use he/him and was born a biological girl. I didn't realize as I was reading the essay that he was Lena Dunham's brother; I just found that out yesterday.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2019, 10:04:22 am
Well, by long I meant multiple pages. I'd read a one-page profile of Adam Driver. Maybe even two or three. But I think it was like, five or more, right? And he seemed like just an average guy who's a good actor.

It seemed to me that the length was pretty typical for The New Yorker. I can see where it might be too long for you because you've already read profiles of him. I had not; I only knew the name.


Quote
Girls probably isn't your taste because you like Westerns and things like that, and it's more urban, ironic, etc. I watched the whole thing and thought it was good. It's not as "girly" as you might imagine. I actually would read a longish profile of Lena Dunham. Her parents were fairly successful artists, she made her first full-length feature theater film in her early 20s. Her younger sibling, Cyrus Grace Dunham, just published a book called A Year Without a Name that was excerpted as a New Yorker personal essay a while back. He's either a trans man or possibly just nonbinary -- the essay wasn't entirely clear -- but he does use he/him and was born a biological girl. I didn't realize as I was reading the essay that he was Lena Dunham's brother; I just found that out yesterday.

You know, there was a longish profile of Lena Dunham in ... wait for it ... The New Yorker. I read it for the same reason I read the Adam Driver profile--knew the name, nothing else.


My taste for old Westerns and so forth really has nothing to do with whether or not I might have liked Girls. Good or not, what possible interest could a show that centers on young, generation-whatever women living in NYC have for me? No relevance whatsoever. (Neither did a show like Queer as Folk, about the travails of a bunch of young gay guys.) Before you ask, for me, anyway, relevance doesn't enter into action shows or procedurals. They're escapism for me. Urban drama is not.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2019, 10:05:04 am
Right now I'm trying to decide if I should bother with the cybersecurity article in Nov. 4. It looks awfully, awfully long.

I read less than a page, then quit.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2019, 10:36:28 am
It seemed to me that the length was pretty typical for The New Yorker. I can see where it might be too long for you because you've already read profiles of him. I had not; I only knew the name.

Neither had I. I knew nothing about him except what he's like as an actor. But I read a couple of pages into it and realized I was just reading a profile of some fairly ordinary guy from Indiana who became an actor. It was about the same length as a typical New Yorker story, which was the problem.


Quote
My taste for old Westerns and so forth really has nothing to do with whether or not I might have liked Girls. Good or not, what possible interest could a show that centers on young, generation-whatever women living in NYC have for me? No relevance whatsoever. (Neither did a show like Queer as Folk, about the travails of a bunch of young gay guys.) Before you ask, for me, anyway, relevance doesn't enter into action shows or procedurals. They're escapism for me. Urban drama is not.

Oh, I don't know. I don't limit my TV watching to shows in which the characters match my demographics. The show wasn't just about girls, it was about boys, too. Admittedly the girls were the main drivers (haha) of the plot. But the only thing I have in common with them that you don't is that I'm female. Oh, and I lived in NYC for a year. Anyway, I watch shows based on whether they're entertaining or interesting. A show about a middle-class, 60+-year-old woman in Minnesota had better be pretty damn entertaining.  :laugh: (Though Fargo came close, and it was entertaining.)

I loved the series Justified. Most of its main characters were men, most at least 10 years younger than me. It's set in Harlan County, KY, where I've never been. It's about law enforcement officers and small-time criminals, neither of which I've ever been. And yet ...

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 13, 2019, 12:12:11 pm
Neither had I. I knew nothing about him except what he's like as an actor. But I read a couple of pages into it and realized I was just reading a profile of some fairly ordinary guy from Indiana who became an actor. It was about the same length as a typical New Yorker story, which was the problem.

That's exactly why I liked it and read the whole thing.


Quote
Oh, I don't know. I don't limit my TV watching to shows in which the characters match my demographics. The show wasn't just about girls, it was about boys, too. Admittedly the girls were the main drivers (haha) of the plot.

As far as girls driving the plot, that was kind of my point, however poorly expressed. (I also never watched Sex in the City  ;D you could say for more or less the same reason.)


Quote
I loved the series Justified. Most of its main characters were men, most at least 10 years younger than me. It's set in Harlan County, KY, where I've never been. It's about law enforcement officers and small-time criminals, neither of which I've ever been. And yet ...

That looked interesting to me, but there was certainly a reason I didn't/couldn't watch it. Possibly I didn't/don't get the channel/network it aired on. Or I may have watched something else in the same time slot.

And, please, let's not go back to the recording thing again. As I've said before, many times, there are so many choices these days that there is always something to watch "live" instead of something recorded. But there is also the fact that I'm very brand loyal, otherwise, why have I been watching N.C.I.S. and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit for well over a decade? If I like a show, I tend to stick with it until the end, or until I feel it really goes off the rails.

(I guess I was brought up to be brand loyal. A few weeks ago I was really pissed off that I had to buy Endust because the supermarket seems not to carry Lemon Pledge, my mother's preferred dusting product.  ;D )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2019, 09:28:38 pm
That's exactly why I liked it and read the whole thing.

Ha! :laugh: I guess we're just opposites in that way.

Quote
As far as girls driving the plot, that was kind of my point, however poorly expressed. (I also never watched Sex in the City  ;D you could say for more or less the same reason.)

I understood your point. Mine was that if I let gender, sexual orientation, age and location determine my viewing choices I'd never turn the TV on.

I never watched SitC because a) at the time I didn't have HBO and b) it didn't sound that interesting. Even though the characters roughly matched me, demographically.

Girls was more interesting. I guess that's at least part of why they let Lena Dunham make an indie feature film when she was like 23.

When I finally did get HBO, the show I watched was The Sopranos. I put it off for a long time, but once I started watching I was hooked and consumed an episode almost every night through five or six seasons or however many. I liked it a lot, even though I don't live in a wealthy New Jersey suburb and am not involved in organized crime. Hell, I've never even killed anybody!

Now the one that's hanging over me is The Wire. I know I would like it once I got into it, even though I don't live in a gritty neighborhood in Baltimore. I'd probably wind up watching it like I did The Sopranos. But it's many seasons, and I did watch the first episode or two and wasn't hooked. But I've semi-joked that it should be my project this winter.

Quote
That looked interesting to me, but there was certainly a reason I didn't/couldn't watch it. Possibly I didn't/don't get the channel/network it aired on. Or I may have watched something else in the same time slot.

Well, I highly recommend it -- all, I think, six or seven seasons? -- if you ever find yourself in a position to watch it.

Quote
And, please, let's not go back to the recording thing again.

 :-X :-X :-X

Quote
As I've said before, many times, there are so many choices these days that there is always something to watch "live" instead of something recorded.

I'm pickier, I guess. I decide what I'm going to watch before I turn the TV on, based on what I already know or have read/heard about it. Then I watch that thing and afterward turn the TV off. So you can see why non-streaming wouldn't work for me.

Sometimes I like combining a heavy and a light and watching for 90 minutes, though. I think while I was watching The Sopranos, I was lightening up afterward with Curb Your Enthusiasm. That was a golden era. Justified might have been on weekly in them days, too.

Quote
(I guess I was brought up to be brand loyal. A few weeks ago I was really pissed off that I had to buy Endust because the supermarket seems not to carry Lemon Pledge, my mother's preferred dusting product.  ;D )[/font][/size]

I can't remember what my mom had but here's a shocker: I don't think I have ever in my life purchased a dusting product of any brand.  :o



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 14, 2019, 10:51:36 am
Sometimes I like combining a heavy and a light and watching for 90 minutes, though. I think while I was watching The Sopranos, I was lightening up afterward with Curb Your Enthusiasm. That was a golden era. Justified might have been on weekly in them days, too.

Interesting that you mention Curb Your Enthusiasm. I have watched only one episode, where Larry's car breaks down, he has to go to the bathroom, and he starts knocking on doors. The only person who would let him in is a lady in a burka. At first, he won't go in, but she insists and then she takes him to get the car repaired, and then a friend of his wants to meet her, but he won't introduce them, etc. It was hilarious.

So that's why I was again interested in reading "Shouts and Murmurs" in the new issue (ta da! Back to the topic at hand!) But, it was mediocre. I could have done better, I think, just using the resources of the food wars in my permaculture group.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 14, 2019, 01:10:16 pm
So that's why I was again interested in reading "Shouts and Murmurs" in the new issue (ta da! Back to the topic at hand!) But, it was mediocre. I could have done better, I think, just using the resources of the food wars in my permaculture group.

Agreed. I've seen one or two other things Larry David has written for print and they weren't great, either.

In this case, the topic was kind of interesting, I guess, although politically it seemed like a confusing message. I mean, it wasn't really trying to make a political point, but obviously there are lots of people in this country whose problems are worse than first world problems. However, it's an interesting concept and would have worked if he'd set it up better. Like, better established that this candidate was specifically seeking the votes of people with FWPs (which many candidates actually do -- they're called Republicans  :laugh:).

That said, it would have worked much better if he'd had a wide variety of examples involving different people. As is, I couldn't even really get through it. Maybe it would have worked better as a CYE episode.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 17, 2019, 08:05:47 pm
Once again I'm way behind in my reading. I visited my dad this weekend, and I had the Nov. 11 issue with me. This should have been the perfect time to catch up, but the trouble was, I just didn't feel like reading TNY. I was more interested in re-reading a book I'd first read many years ago, so that's what I did.

The Nov. 18 issue was waiting for me when I returned home late this afternoon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 17, 2019, 08:43:05 pm
Careful ... an issue here, an issue there, and next thing you know you’ve got a pile dating back to the previous presidential administration.

:laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 30, 2019, 01:02:23 pm
Last night at only 6 pm I retired to my fireplace setting and read three (3!) articles from the latest issue. "The Defector" is another in the almost-weekly series of articles about how the Internet is taking away our privacy and humanity. "Ecstacsy and Ruin" is about Beck, where Los Angeles attempts, and nearly succeeds in stealing the spotlight. "Can You Forgive Her?" draws subtle parallels between Thatcher-era Britain and what we are going through in the U.S. now. I also read parts of "The Interview" about volunteers who try to get parole for people imprisoned for serious crimes. It seems like an exercise in futility. Even the criminals themselves don't understand why the volunteers are doing it.

Even though some of these topics are heavy, I find reading The New Yorker a good stress reliever. People tell me to watch shows like "The Sopranos", etc. but I find them very depressing and it often takes me several days to get over a watching session.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 30, 2019, 01:05:02 pm
During Thanksgiving I listened to NPR's "On Giving" show and delighted to hear Adam Gopnik talk on several subjects. Apparently he has a new book out called The Table Comes First, which I'd like to give my son for Christmas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 30, 2019, 05:39:23 pm
Last night at only 6 pm I retired to my fireplace setting and read three (3!) articles from the latest issue. "The Defector" is another in the almost-weekly series of articles about how the Internet is taking away our privacy and humanity. "Ecstacsy and Ruin" is about Beck, where Los Angeles attempts, and nearly succeeds in stealing the spotlight. "Can You Forgive Her?" draws subtle parallels between Thatcher-era Britain and what we are going through in the U.S. now. I also read parts of "The Interview" about volunteers who try to get parole for people imprisoned for serious crimes. It seems like an exercise in futility. Even the criminals themselves don't understand why the volunteers are doing it.

Those sound interesting. I don't think I would have read the Beck story without your endorsement. I'll try it.

It happened again this week. I was looking forward to reading the New Yorker, which contained a piece by David Sedaris. I usually turn immediately to anything he writes. But when I got the mail that evening I found another, newer New Yorker.


Quote
Even though some of these topics are heavy, I find reading The New Yorker a good stress reliever. People tell me to watch shows like "The Sopranos", etc. but I find them very depressing and it often takes me several days to get over a watching session.

I put off watching The Sopranos until a few years ago, then I watched all six seasons -- an episode a night. Mostly I enjoyed them but I'll admit there were a few in there that were hard to take.

And I know what you mean. I'm in a TV rut right now and I should either finish the season of Orange is the New Black, or watch the new season of The Handmaid's Tale, but both sound like such downers I'm never in the mood to turn them on. (OITNB is occasionally light, but also often depressing. THT is never light.)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2019, 12:07:26 pm
So, what do you Brokie moms think of Burkhard Bilger's article about baby food (Nov. 25)?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 07, 2019, 02:57:39 pm
So, what do you Brokie moms think of Burkhard Bilger's article about baby food (Nov. 25)?

I didn't read it because a) I've never been that interested in baby food, even when I had babies. I believe people tend to way overthink the subject and that young children are more resilient than we seem to think and b) what appeared to me to be the premise -- babies should eat more vegetables -- doesn't necessarily ring true to me. I could be misinterpreting the point, though -- was that what he was saying? What did you think of the article?

I've long held a theory that most children dislike vegetables for completely healthy evolutionary reasons. Back in caveman days, if an infant wandered away from adult supervision and ate some meat s/he'd probably be OK unless the meat was rotten, in which case the smell alone might prevent tasting. But if an infant wandered away and ate some random plant, it could easily be poisonous without giving off any warning sign. Kids who did that were less likely to live long enough to reproduce and pass on their veggie-consuming genes. So an aversion to vegetables is hardwired until kids are old enough to use better judgement or follow adult guidance.

So I have assumed (possibly incorrectly!) that most babies throughout history have not consumed a ton of vegetables and yet the human race did not die out, so it's probably OK.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2019, 05:19:21 pm
I didn't read it because a) I've never been that interested in baby food, even when I had babies. I believe people tend to way overthink the subject and that young children are more resilient than we seem to think and b) what appeared to me to be the premise -- babies should eat more vegetables -- doesn't necessarily ring true to me. I could be misinterpreting the point, though -- was that what he was saying? What did you think of the article?

Seems to me that in the end, he more or less comes to the same conclusion, that people overthink the subject, and young kids are more resilient than we think. He also discusses how much sugar is in commercially produced baby food, even when sugar is not added.


Quote
I've long held a theory that most children dislike vegetables for completely healthy evolutionary reasons. Back in caveman days, if an infant wandered away from adult supervision and ate some meat s/he'd probably be OK unless the meat was rotten, in which case the smell alone might prevent tasting. But if an infant wandered away and ate some random plant, it could easily be poisonous without giving off any warning sign. Kids who did that were less likely to live long enough to reproduce and pass on their veggie-consuming genes. So an aversion to vegetables is hardwired until kids are old enough to use better judgement or follow adult guidance.

He touches on that, too, about the poisonous plant thing.


Quote
So I have assumed (possibly incorrectly!) that most babies throughout history have not consumed a ton of vegetables and yet the human race did not die out, so it's probably OK.

In everything I've read about family life in past centuries, I don't recall anybody discussing what was fed to babies and how it was fed. All I remember reading is that small children drank small beer just like grown-ups because the water was impure.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2019, 11:34:23 am
In everything I've read about family life in past centuries, I don't recall anybody discussing what was fed to babies and how it was fed. All I remember reading is that small children drank small beer just like grown-ups because the water was impure.

I did know that everybody of every age drank from morn til night because they didn't trust the water. I've always wondered, though, whether they were right about the water in this country. I can see why they would be right about the water in European cities, but you'd think it would be purer here. So were they just paranoid because of previous experiences or were there "natural" diseases in the water here?

I think the reason you have read less about what was fed to babies in the past is because there were fewer options. Breast milk vs. formula was, of course, a non-issue until the late 1800s. And once children were old enough to eat solid foods, there were no commercial varieties. So I suppose most families breastfed babies as long as possible then fed them whatever they had on hand.

One thing that was common was for wealthier families to hire wet nurses so the mother wouldn't have to bother with breastfeeding. Sometimes they dropped babies off with professional wet nurses, which because of diseases and stuff, often led to the babies' deaths. But I believe people took babies' deaths more in stride back then -- they would had to have, because infant death was so common as to be almost expected.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 08, 2019, 02:43:30 pm
Why would you think water is and was purer in the Americas? In the stories of Western expansion, there were many reports of impure water leading to illness and death from diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever and the like. Also in mountainous places, water can have high levels of metals, including lead, mercury, arsenic and uranium.

For example, in Wyoming, there is an area called Sweetwater where the water is naturally filtered with sand and aquatic plants, so it gained the reputation of being safe to drink. It was along the Oregon Trail. But there are many other places called Badwater, Bitter Creek, etc. Along the central western part of Wyoming is the "Muddy Gap", a place where water flows neither west or east, and the Continental Divide is fractured. Stagnant water bred disease. But we've ventured a long ways from baby food.

I fed my daughter baby food but my son got soft regular food. All of my grandchildren were fed from their mother's plate, with the addition of applesauce and the like that comes in a squeezable pouch. They started with the BRAT diet: bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. When ill, they go back to the BRAT diet until well. As a baby, my daughter loved olives, tuna, and green onions pulled out of the ground. Also, she loved tomatoes and broccoli. Babies seem to like the food their mothers ate while they were in the womb.

Warning, now, I'll say a few words about breast feeding. Breast milk is quite sweet. It also has a lot of fat. When I was breast feeding my daughter, I thought I needed to drink a lot of milk. Unfortunately, my husband would only have skim milk in the fridge. The milk was high in protein and low in fat and gave my daughter colic. She had stomach problems and her growth was stunted. When my son's turn came around, if I couldn't get whole milk, I drank extra water. He didn't have colic and has grown tall and strong.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2019, 04:35:39 pm
Why would you think water is and was purer in the Americas?

Because Europe had more big cities. In 1800, London's population was about 1 million; the population of New York, the largest U.S. city, was 60,500 (per Wikipedia). Population density promotes diseases and sanitation problems.

So while I realize that not all water impurities are caused by human contamination, I wasn't sure whether "natural" diseases in water were as big a problem as sanitation-related diseases in city water supplies.

Also, I have read that Europeans came here with the assumption that water was unsafe. This was before germ theory developed; they just knew that water had caused problems in Europe. I have read the one of the reasons the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, rather than farther south where they'd been headed, was that they were running low on beer.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 08, 2019, 10:52:25 pm
I did know that everybody of every age drank from morn til night because they didn't trust the water. I've always wondered, though, whether they were right about the water in this country. I can see why they would be right about the water in European cities, but you'd think it would be purer here. So were they just paranoid because of previous experiences or were there "natural" diseases in the water here?

Yes, the water was purer, and yes, they were paranoid. If you grew up in Europe where you had reason to distrust the water, and then you came to the New World, where you weren't familiar with the water, you'd be hesitant to drink it. People, or at least some English colonists, brought their prejudices against drinking water with them. (I'd have to go back and research, but I remember that somebody, maybe William Bradford, wrote that some people who came to New England got discouraged when they realized they would have to drink water because there was no beer.) It apparently took a while before people generally got the idea that the water in America was safe to drink.

There were exceptions (aren't there always?). The water in Tidewater Virginia (think Jamestown), and I guess Maryland, too, was lousy because wells got contaminated by seawater. When the tides came in, the lower reaches of the James River were infiltrated by ocean water. Exactly how it gets into the ground along the river and seeps into wells, I don't know. I just know that it did.

I guess there are some waterborne illnesses native to America, like "beaver fever,"  but by and large the water was purer.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 08, 2019, 11:09:49 pm
Why would you think water is and was purer in the Americas? In the stories of Western expansion, there were many reports of impure water leading to illness and death from diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever and the like. Also in mountainous places, water can have high levels of metals, including lead, mercury, arsenic and uranium.

During the centuries of colonization of Eastern North America, the water "back here" was purer than the water in Europe. There were no dense centers of population in Eastern North America where the water would get contaminated by human waste.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 09, 2019, 01:14:20 pm
Fun side story! In the area I cover for the newspaper, there's a big lake with an island called Big Island with a cove where boaters like to party. It gets so crowded in the summer it has the charming nickname of Sperm Bay. Boats line up in rows tied together with rope. This year, after the July 4th weekend people who'd been to Big Island started getting sick. As I recall something like 90 reported to the county that they'd been sick. The number grew over 4-5 days as the case was in the news, so as they heard about it more people thought to call the county. Otherwise, who gets sick and immediately says, "I'd better report this to the county"?  :laugh: Presumably many people didn't, so the actual number was probably much higher.

Anyway, the cause of the illness was presumed to be poop in the water, possibly from someone swimming or, grosser, a boat emptying its sewage tank into the lake. Nobody thought to blame any naturally occurring water impurity. There is a kind of algae that grows on lakes and can make you sick, but even that is created by human disruption -- phosphorous fertilizer and the like running off lawns into the water and encouraging algae growth.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 12, 2019, 09:33:44 pm
The new issue came today and I had a couple of deja vue moments reading it. In the front section, I read the part about Lil Peep and Terrence Malick. Lil Peep's beloved grandfather was a charismatic fellow named John Womack, Jr., a "Marxist historian." Then, another sketch where Keanu Reeves' name pops up randomly. I skipped a few articles and then got interested, halfway in the middle of an article about the science fiction writer William Gibson. Lo and behold, Keanu Reeves keeps popping up. But I really started getting the creepy deja vues when the author interviews an old friend of his, Jack Womack. a fellow writer from whom Gibson takes advice.

"In a hyperconnected world, patterns can repeat in different idioms," the author, Joshua Rothman, writes. So true.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 14, 2019, 01:15:16 pm
Later in the Gibson article, someone is drinking out of a coupe glass. I had just read earlier in the issue about bubbly served in flutes or coupe glasses. The writer complained that the former "bottles up" the wine too much while the coupe makes it go flat. Is our magazine playing with us? Will there be a test?

Anybody know the origin story of the coupe glass?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 14, 2019, 04:59:06 pm
I've only been able to come up with captions for the cartoons on the last page of each issue a handful of times. This time, I finally did come up with a caption I thought was halfway funny, but of course the deadline had passed. So, I'll post it here:

Caption: “As one of the knights of Delorean, I must vanquish foreign invaders and return them to their own time.”

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 15, 2019, 10:59:39 am
I've only been able to come up with captions for the cartoons on the last page of each issue a handful of times. This time, I finally did come up with a caption I thought was halfway funny, but of course the deadline had passed. So, I'll post it here:

Caption: “As one of the knights of Delorean, I must vanquish foreign invaders and return them to their own time.”

Maybe it would be better if the caption said “As one of the knights of Delorean, I must vanquish foreign invaders and return them back to the future.”
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2019, 03:10:53 pm
As a reformed gin drinker I was charmed by Anthony Lane's article about that alcoholic beverage in the Dec. 9 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 16, 2019, 08:51:40 pm
As a reformed gin drinker I was charmed by Anthony Lane's article about that alcoholic beverage in the Dec. 9 issue.

I've just recently started to find gin drinkable. In the tastings that regional distilleries do at my local liquor store, I've noticed they're coming out with all sorts of nuanced complex flavors now -- not so junipery..

But as I've told the people at the tastings, I couldn't drink gin for years because when I was a teenager that's what my parents kept in their (unlocked) liquor cabinet.  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2019, 11:01:43 pm
But as I've told the people at the tastings, I couldn't drink gin for years because when I was a teenager that's what my parents kept in their (unlocked) liquor cabinet.  :laugh:

After all the years I drank several beer-mug-size gin and tonics on Friday and Saturday nights, it's a wonder I still have a liver. Add to that, I'd go home and take two Tylenols and two Sudafeds to keep from waking up the next morning with a headache and bad sinuses (from all the smoke in the bar).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 16, 2019, 11:54:09 pm
I also really enjoyed Anthony Lane's article on gin. It more than made up for the lackluster Shouts and Murmurs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 31, 2019, 03:50:31 pm
I'm way behind in my reading. Over lunch today, I read Peter Schjeldahl's article "77 Sunset Me," about himself dying of cancer (Dec. 23). Kind of funny that I read it because I almost never read his regular articles because I think art criticism and literary criticism both are pompous bullshit (or, they are for me, anyway). But sometimes I find artists and writers lives more interesting than their art or their writing. For me that was certainly the case with Schjeldahl.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 31, 2019, 05:41:52 pm
I almost never read his regular articles because I think art criticism and literary criticism both are pompous bullshit (or, they are for me, anyway).

As a reader and sometime practitioner of of literary criticism, I must speak in its favor. If done well, I love it. The New Yorker's book reviews are especially great; usually they are as close as I come to actually reading the book, yet I come away feeling almost familiar with its contents. Often, they're as much essay as they are book review.

Unless! Unless you're talking about academic literary criticism, like in textbooks. I don't know if they're pompous bullshit because they're utterly unreadable. My aunt was the head of the English department at the University of Georgia. Her specialty was gothic literature. I picked up one of her books once and thought, well, goth is at least a popular art and somewhat interesting, so this could be good. I could not finish the first page. I don't mean because it was boring, I mean because I literally couldn't read it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 31, 2019, 07:00:34 pm
I am talking about the academic stuff, and I have more or less classified Schjeldahl and Simon Schama in that category--that is, academic. I love the book reviews in TNY. Often they strike me more as essays in their own right, especially when the writer talks about more than one book in the article. I like the "Briefly Noted" book reviews, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 31, 2019, 07:41:49 pm
Some of the literary criticism of Brokeback Mountain has been p.b., I agree. Especially those that purport to reveal the novel as some kind of polemic against the cultural relativism of the 1960s or whatever.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 31, 2019, 09:27:54 pm
I was a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed the article about the Hallmark movies (Dec. 23). I've never watched one; until recently I did't know we received the Hallmark channel in my building. But I remember when I was a kid the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentations were kind of a big deal. HHoF was the first place a saw a production of "Harvey," with Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd, a lovable eccentric whose best friend is an invisible six-foot-tall white rabbit; Helen Hayes played his sister. I also saw "The Belle of Amherst," with Julie Harris in a one-actor play about Emily Dickinson. That was my introduction to Dickinson. (I'm sure that production must exist in DVD form somewhere. I really should try to find it, because I loved it.) I also saw Julie Harris as Mary Todd Lincoln in "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln." Robbie Benson played one of her sons. I sort-of remember a drama about Queen Victoria, but I don't remember anything about it. They were quality productions back in the day.

I would also call attention to the paragraph in the middle of page 49, where the author talks to the C.E.O. of the Hallmark Channel about seeing a gay male couple in a Hallmark movie. I tend to agree with what the C.E.O. says about including gay characters. Of course it's a Good Thing to see gay couples in TV shows, even commercials, but usually when I see them I have a sneaking suspicion that it's just gaysploitation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 01, 2020, 02:39:57 pm
I have more or less classified Schjeldahl and Simon Schama in that category--that is, academic.

True, I think art criticism is more likely to lean that way because the concepts are so much more abstract and don't lend themselves to tales about larger social issues.

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I love the book reviews in TNY. Often they strike me more as essays in their own right, especially when the writer talks about more than one book in the article.[/font][/size]

For example, I loved the recent essay about the mythification of Thanksgiving -- a fairy tale coverup of an actually brutal history,  though the much-embellished "nice" story is what kids are taught in school. It was mostly about one newly published book, but I think the writer briefly mentioned a couple of others on the topic.

That's usually harder to do with visual art.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 01, 2020, 02:45:22 pm
Of course it's a Good Thing to see gay couples in TV shows, even commercials, but usually when I see them I have a sneaking suspicion that it's just gaysploitation.

Really, why? I haven't read the Hallmark piece, but isn't it just a matter of diversifying characters, like including actors of color in TV shows and commercials?

I can see why people might dislike Will and Grace (I don't like it myself and have never watched a whole episode). But you'd think a plot in which gay characters go about their normal lives, with gayness being just one aspect of their identity rather than something they would mention every other sentence like they do on W&G, would be welcome.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2020, 10:04:31 am
Really, why? I haven't read the Hallmark piece, but isn't it just a matter of diversifying characters, like including actors of color in TV shows and commercials?

Of course I can't and wouldn't presume to speak for people of color, but my reaction to gay people/couples in commercials is, and probably will remain, "It's an effen commercial trying to sell something. Who gives a shit whether people in it are gay or straight?" Do they really think that more gay people will buy their product because they have gay people in their commercials? (Maybe they do, and maybe they're correct. There are an awful lot of stupid gay people out there who will no doubt fall for that.)

(Come to think of it, I can't think of the last time I saw a commercial featuring people of color who weren't at least upper Middle Class, if not higher. But then maybe the target audience of the commercial is  people of color who are top-flight lawyers and likely to buy a Lexus.)


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I can see why people might dislike Will and Grace (I don't like it myself and have never watched a whole episode). But you'd think a plot in which gay characters go about their normal lives, with gayness being just one aspect of their identity rather than something they would mention every other sentence like they do on W&G, would be welcome.

The thing about the Hallmark article: The reporter mentioned to the C.E.O. that she thought she saw a gay couple--two (hot) guys running an animal shelter--in a Hallmark movie, and she asked the C.E.O. about it. He replied that she was correct. He responded that Hallmark did want to "reflect the broader population." He also said "[W]e believe that if we do it authentically, without doing it just to do it--which is the wrong reason to do it, by the way--people will feel good about it, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum." He also said, "They're not being called out and made to either look cool or weird." So the thing is, the gay couple was just there. There were no gay PDAs, nobody was waving a rainbow flag to say, "Hey, Hallmark viewers, we're gay!"

This sort of thing I do welcome--the "not being called out," or having attention called to them.

BTW, I do take commercials as a category apart from scripted TV shows.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2020, 10:06:20 am
Meanwhile, I've got bogged down on the piece about the Ukrainian prosecutor. There's a duty article if I ever saw one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 03, 2020, 12:39:08 pm
He also said, "They're not being called out and made to either look cool or weird." So the thing is, the gay couple was just there. There were no gay PDAs, nobody was waving a rainbow flag to say, "Hey, Hallmark viewers, we're gay!"

This sort of thing I do welcome--the "not being called out," or having attention called to them.
[/font][/size]

I think that's a very important point and one I'm always trying to make to R, that people don't like to be called out for their preferences, either negatively or positively. They--we--just want to be quietly accepted and appreciated for who we are, individuals. Agree?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2020, 01:14:46 pm
I think that's a very important point and one I'm always trying to make to R, that people don't like to be called out for their preferences, either negatively or positively. They--we--just want to be quietly accepted and appreciated for who we are, individuals. Agree?

Definitely.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 04, 2020, 11:06:51 am
Of course I can't and wouldn't presume to speak for people of color, but my reaction to gay people/couples in commercials is, and probably will remain, "It's an effen commercial trying to sell something. Who gives a shit whether people in it are gay or straight?" Do they really think that more gay people will buy their product because they have gay people in their commercials? (Maybe they do, and maybe they're correct. There are an awful lot of stupid gay people out there who will no doubt fall for that.)

I'm writing an essay/article about women in TV commercials as we speak, which may be why I've noticed there are suddenly way more characters of color than there used to be. I've even wondered whether there are more black people than white people in commercials these days, as if making up for lost time.

I don't see advertising as quite as sinister as you do. Maybe because my mom worked in advertising and I have (briefly) worked in copywriting that included ads. I don't think advertisers are saying "let's use an actor from a marginalized community so we'll get more buyers from that community" in some scheming way of tricking dupes. Since their mission is to sell products, of course selling to diverse consumers would be an objective. But also I think they, like most companies these days, are simply starting to value diversity. I worked part time for a medical devices company that did a lot of diversity outreach -- for instance, helped sponsor a GLAAD gala. Their motives, as far as I could tell, were to get the most qualified employees, and the bigger the potential hiring pool the better. In that case, they wouldn't be trying to get gay people to buy their products. If you need a pacemaker, you most likely won't even think about brands; the doctor will choose one for you.

Newspapers has been working to diversify since at least the '90s. There's partly a sales motive, I guess-- seeing a Latinx or Somali byline would probably appeal to readers in those communities. But you can't always tell by a byline whether someone is black. So again, it's a mix of "the right thing to do" with getting more diverse perspectives in the building.

By the way, the newspapers' push to hire more journalists of color generally didn't really extend to sexual orientation, probably because there are already plenty of gay people working at newspapers.

Back to gay couples in commercials, I've seen only one and it was a Father's Day ad that showed all these dads doing extreme sports with their kids, like hang gliding and so on. But there's one peaceful scene where one man is rocking a baby in a darkish room and another man leans over and gives him a kiss on the forehead. It seemed kind of weird that the only gay people in the commercial were not doing extreme sports, but then again, the other dads aren't necessarily straight; they aren't identified one way or another.

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Come to think of it, I can't think of the last time I saw a commercial featuring people of color who weren't at least upper Middle Class, if not higher. But then maybe the target audience of the commercial is  people of color who are top-flight lawyers and likely to buy a Lexus.)

I've seen very few commercials with characters of any race who aren't middle to upper-middle class. That just seems logical to me. Consumers don't identify with really rich people and advertisers don't want to associate their product with poverty. Ad content is supposed to be relatable or aspirational.

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So the thing is, the gay couple was just there. There were no gay PDAs, nobody was waving a rainbow flag to say, "Hey, Hallmark viewers, we're gay!"

But that's what I'm talking about. Having gay characters being just normal people, whether it's running an animal shelter or buying dish soap like straight people do. Yes, they might want to appeal to gay viewers and consumers but what they're also doing is getting straight audiences to see gay people as average Americans.

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BTW, I do take commercials as a category apart from scripted TV shows.

Of course. I was just talking about media images in general.

Until recent years, the only time I ever saw gay couples presented as just average folks is in home-decorating articles in newspapers and magazines. They've been doing it for decades.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 04, 2020, 12:42:04 pm
I don't see advertising as quite as sinister as you do. Maybe because my mom worked in advertising and I have (briefly) worked in copywriting that included ads. I don't think advertisers are saying "let's use an actor from a marginalized community so we'll get more buyers from that community" in some scheming way of tricking dupes. Since their mission is to sell products, of course selling to diverse consumers would be an objective. But also I think they, like most companies these days, are simply starting to value diversity.

Well, I'm willing to entertain the notion that my views boil down to being a gay man of a certain age, but I do not believe they are doing this because they are "starting to value diversity." It all comes down to money. We're not talking philanthropic organizations here. Best I can give them is that they're giving themselves a pat on the back for how evolved they are for featuring gay characters, but even that isn't very good. They don't give a damn about gay people as gay people.


Quote
I worked part time for a medical devices company that did a lot of diversity outreach -- for instance, helped sponsor a GLAAD gala. Their motives, as far as I could tell, were to get the most qualified employees, and the bigger the potential hiring pool the better. In that case, they wouldn't be trying to get gay people to buy their products. If you need a pacemaker, you most likely won't even think about brands; the doctor will choose one for you.

Yeah, but that's different. Or not. "Let's sponsor a gay event because it's an event for gay people." I really don't see companies wanting to hire gay people because they're gay any differently than companies firing gay people because they're gay. Just two sides of the same coin.


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Back to gay couples in commercials, I've seen only one and it was a Father's Day ad that showed all these dads doing extreme sports with their kids, like hang gliding and so on. But there's one peaceful scene where one man is rocking a baby in a darkish room and another man leans over and gives him a kiss on the forehead. It seemed kind of weird that the only gay people in the commercial were not doing extreme sports, but then again, the other dads aren't necessarily straight; they aren't identified one way or another.

I'll give one a pass. Back around Thanksgiving I once say a commercial (I saw it last year, too) featuring a large white family gathering for a holiday dinner. The door opens, and in comes a young-ish white man along with a young-ish black man. They are later shown seated at the table with everyone else.

Of course, they were hitting two demographics at once, there: Gay and Black.


Quote
But that's what I'm talking about. Having gay characters being just normal people, whether it's running an animal shelter or buying dish soap like straight people do. Yes, they might want to appeal to gay viewers and consumers but what they're also doing is getting straight audiences to see gay people as average Americans.

See, I see a categorical difference between a gay couple in a scripted drama and a gay couple in a commercial (except, of course, the whole point of the Hallmark channel is to see Hallmark products).
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Quote
Until recent years, the only time I ever saw gay couples presented as just average folks is in home-decorating articles in newspapers and magazines. They've been doing it for decades.

That's also playing to a gay stereotype.

As for commercials being aspirational, I guess I see that as a whole other issue. "Buy our product and you, too, will have a nice house in an upscale community with a designer kitchen."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 04, 2020, 12:43:16 pm
I guess we're straying form The New Yorker, aren't we?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 04, 2020, 05:33:29 pm
Well, I'm willing to entertain the notion that my views boil down to being a gay man of a certain age, but I do not believe they are doing this because they are "starting to value diversity." It all comes down to money. We're not talking philanthropic organizations here. Best I can give them is that they're giving themselves a pat on the back for how evolved they are for featuring gay characters, but even that isn't very good. They don't give a damn about gay people as gay people.

Well, of course everything a publicly traded company does comes down to money. But they're not being philanthropic, they're trying to project an image -- to straight as well as gay viewers -- of progressiveness, which they feel will help them sell products. And sure, they may be trying to appeal to gay consumers. But note that they're not worried about the risk of offending homophobic consumers. Most of all, they want to appeal to as many customers as they can. It's really not a sinister process, it's how businesses work. (Not that businesses never do anything sinister, of course! They do sinister things all the time. I just don't happen to think this is one of them.)

To say they "don't give a damn about gay people" is like saying they don't give a damn about any of their customers. If somebody has money and wants to buy soap or whatever, the company gives a damn about them. In most cases, they probably aren't particularly homophobic in the way you're implying. For one thing, a lot of advertising professionals are gay themselves. Back in the 1970s and '80s when my mom was in advertising, she had lots of gay coworkers.

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Yeah, but that's different. Or not. "Let's sponsor a gay event because it's an event for gay people." I really don't see companies wanting to hire gay people because they're gay any differently than companies firing gay people because they're gay. Just two sides of the same coin.

No, my company didn't want to hire gay people because they're known to be particularly good at developing medical devices. They wanted to hire gay people because they wanted whoever was the best at developing medical devices, whether gay or straight, and apparently they thought reaching out in that way would help increase the pool of potential candidates.

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Back around Thanksgiving I once say a commercial (I saw it last year, too) featuring a large white family gathering for a holiday dinner. The door opens, and in comes a young-ish white man along with a young-ish black man. They are later shown seated at the table with everyone else.

Of course, they were hitting two demographics at once, there: Gay and Black.

OK, but why do you see that as cynical or worse? They're showing a gay couple in an ordinary -- even family and celebratory! -- environment, which must be helpful to diminishing homophobia in the general population as well as selling products to gay consumers. How would it be better if commercials only showed straight white people?

Lots of people, myself included, boycotted Chik-Fil-A for its homophobic politics (recently rescinded, I guess). Why wouldn't companies that aren't led by homophobic CEOs want to go in the other direction to generate good will?

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That's also playing to a gay stereotype.

Yeah, but they're not "playing into it." The job of people who write about home decorating is to find people with cool homes and write about them. Often they involve couples, and many of those couples are gay. The magazine or newspaper would run the stories just like they do with straight couples.

Of course, the rest of the newspaper would quote gay people, too, in contexts where their sexual orientation was not obvious or relevant. But only relatively recently (past 20 years or so) have they begun covering issues involving sexual orientation or gender identity. It's not that they were necessarily homophobic or transphobic -- if they did mention them they didn't demonize them, but just didn't get into the subjects much at all.

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As for commercials being aspirational, I guess I see that as a whole other issue. "Buy our product and you, too, will have a nice house in an upscale community with a designer kitchen."

Yeah, but the way advertising works is not quite so overt. When you see a commercial with Matthew McConaughey driving a Lincoln, you don't think, "I should buy a Lincoln so I'll look every bit as great as Matthew McConaughey does." But at some level it registers as positive. Which is why they don't show an overweight, unattractive, poorly dressed person driving the Lincoln. That applies to other products and, as you noted, class is as much an issue as other demographic factors.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 04, 2020, 05:34:19 pm
I guess we're straying form The New Yorker, aren't we?

Perhaps a bit.  ;D  I need to catch up on my New Yorkers so I'll have something to say about them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 05, 2020, 05:52:21 pm
Tell you what, I wouldn't use sinister to describe my view on the actions of advertisers. The word I would use is cynical--to describe myself as well as the advertisers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 05, 2020, 08:12:53 pm
Fair enough. I’d say the same about myself.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 05, 2020, 09:01:23 pm
It's okay with me to stray away from discussing the NY for a bit. . .I was very disappointed with their comic issue. Didn't laugh once.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 05, 2020, 09:36:59 pm
It's okay with me to stray away from discussing the NY for a bit. . .I was very disappointed with their comic issue. Didn't laugh once.

Over dinner I read the article about early animation.  I had no idea animation existed so early in the history of  movies.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 06, 2020, 12:37:09 pm
It's okay with me to stray away from discussing the NY for a bit. . .I was very disappointed with their comic issue. Didn't laugh once.

I haven't even flipped through it. At first I was eager to see it, then I remembered I don't like most of the cartoons in the regular magazine. I thought maybe I would jump right to a Roz Chast section, if there is one, and go through that.




Over dinner I read the article about early animation.  I had no idea animation existed so early in the history of  movies.

That sounds interesting.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 06, 2020, 02:36:43 pm
I haven't even flipped through it. At first I was eager to see it, then I remembered I don't like most of the cartoons in the regular magazine. I thought maybe I would jump right to a Roz Chast section, if there is one, and go through that.

Adam Gopnik's profile of her was very funny to me. I read it over lunch, and I couldn't stop laughing (I'm still laughing). People looked at me funny.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 06, 2020, 11:52:01 pm
Adam Gopnik's profile of her was very funny to me. I read it over lunch, and I couldn't stop laughing (I'm still laughing). People looked at me funny.

Adam Gopnik profiled Roz Chast? In my reference above, I just meant I figured there'd be a section of her stuff amid all the lesser cartoons. I've definitely got to open that issue!  :o :D

When I was in San Francisco a couple of years ago, a gallery near my hotel had a Roz Chast show going on. It was kind of a hectic trip and I didn't make it there, but I always kind of wish I had.

Hers aren't the only funny NYer cartoons, but she's by far the most reliably funny/interesting cartoonist among a lot of kind of mediocre ones.

Given how high the bar is for publishing articles, stories, reviews and essays in the New Yorker (and poetry, I assume, though in that case I don't know) it's kind of amazing how the cartoons are pretty meh and many of the Shouts & Murmurs aren't funny (though some are).







Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 12, 2020, 06:36:07 pm
Lee, have you read the Ariel Gore story about pain (and mostly lack thereof) in, I think, the second to last one? (I'm confused because I received two at once the other day; they were a week apart so the first one was late).

Anyway, it focuses on a couple in Scotland with character attributes I'm sure you'll appreciate.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2020, 10:58:06 pm
And Robert Louis Stevenson's characterization of the climate of Scotland.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 13, 2020, 10:52:26 pm
Lee, have you read the Ariel Gore story about pain (and mostly lack thereof) in, I think, the second to last one? (I'm confused because I received two at once the other day; they were a week apart so the first one was late).

Anyway, it focuses on a couple in Scotland with character attributes I'm sure you'll appreciate.

Yes, that was an amazing article on so many levels. And, yes, I caught the RLS quote. I have his book on Edinburgh.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 14, 2020, 09:44:40 am
Ordinarily I like reading John McPhee, but I think his Jan. 13 piece is kind of lame.

I had no idea he was that old.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 14, 2020, 10:36:36 am
Ordinarily I like reading John McPhee, but I think his Jan. 13 piece is kind of lame.

I had no idea he was that old.


[*googles*] Oh yeah, he is pretty old.

Sorry to hear about that piece. It's about writing, right? I've liked his previous pieces about writing.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 14, 2020, 12:52:37 pm
[*googles*] Oh yeah, he is pretty old.

Sorry to hear about that piece. It's about writing, right? I've liked his previous pieces about writing.

It's his memoirs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2020, 07:02:05 pm
My curiosity was piqued to read the McPhee memoirs. I agree that they seem flawed, with anecdotes, name-dropping, and regrets about subjects not developed into writing pieces. It's still captivating, though. I only made it through half of "Tabula Rasa" but intend to finish it. The most interesting parts, I find, are from his travels. The Princeton campus parts, not so much.

I was wondering what made you feel like McPhee was "so old". Does his writing seem antiquated or creaky?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2020, 07:36:16 pm
I was wondering what made you feel like McPhee was "so old". Does his writing seem antiquated or creaky?

It's not a matter of feeling that he is "so old." He is old. He will be 89 years old in March.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2020, 09:55:54 pm
I love when he writes about writing, and he's free to drop names as far as I'm concerned because i'm usually interested in those people, too.

Speaking of which, did I ever tell you Calvin Trillin came to visit the reporters in our newsroom a few years ago? He was speaking in town anyway, so he stopped by to get together with the writers for conversation.

Anyway, back to McPhee, I'll have to admit I've never been drawn to any of his books. Not because they sound creaky at all -- from what I've read they're really well written and vigorous -- but because I'm just not that into their subject matter. I feel like they're usually about something kind of nature-y, and I'm interested in more people-y stuff. But my brother, a geologist, likes him.

And whether I like his topics or not, he's an acclaimed writer so I'm interested in anything he has to say to say about the craft.

It's not a matter of feeling that he is "so old." He is old. He will be 89 years old in March.

I wrote a newspaper story about ageism a couple of years ago. One point people made is that it's better to embrace "old" (some go with "elder") rather than deny, which stigmatizes it. Like, don't compliment people by telling them they look young. Baby boomers don't like being called seniors so they're hesitant to take the senior discount and can't imagine living in "senior housing" or going to the "senior center." And "senior" itself was initially intended as an upbeat euphemism. Any word to describe something with negative aspects gets replaced from time to time. I'm sure you can think of other examples. I don't mind ditching "senior" but we shouldn't do that with old. Instead of saying people aren't old, say they are old and that's fine because old is fine.

I'm all for that. I'm actually slightly fearful of how ageism might affect politics around Social Security, Medicare, etc., as boomers age with fewer people in the workforce.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 17, 2020, 10:43:17 am
Speaking of which, did I ever tell you Calvin Trillin came to visit the reporters in our newsroom a few years ago? He was speaking in town anyway, so he stopped by to get together with the writers for conversation.

No! I bet that was interesting.  :)

Quote
Anyway, back to McPhee, I'll have to admit I've never been drawn to any of his books. Not because they sound creaky at all -- from what I've read they're really well written and vigorous -- but because I'm just not that into their subject matter. I feel like they're usually about something kind of nature-y, and I'm interested in more people-y stuff. But my brother, a geologist, likes him.

I've enjoyed his nature-y stuff in TNY, but I've never read his books. I have a vague memory of some article that had to do with the growth of the Rockies or the wearing down of the Appalachians, or something like that.


Quote
I wrote a newspaper story about ageism a couple of years ago. One point people made is that it's better to embrace "old" (some go with "elder") rather than deny, which stigmatizes it. Like, don't compliment people by telling them they look young. Baby boomers don't like being called seniors so they're hesitant to take the senior discount and can't imagine living in "senior housing" or going to the "senior center." And "senior" itself was initially intended as an upbeat euphemism. Any word to describe something with negative aspects gets replaced from time to time. I'm sure you can think of other examples. I don't mind ditching "senior" but we shouldn't do that with old. Instead of saying people aren't old, say they are old and that's fine because old is fine.

I used my AARP discount once.  ;D  But anyway, a Medicare Advantage Plan (something I need to start studying up on  :( ) includes a gym membership called "Silver Sneakers."  :P


Quote
I'm all for that. I'm actually slightly fearful of how ageism might affect politics around Social Security, Medicare, etc., as boomers age with fewer people in the workforce.

Me, too. It's been said that "old people vote," but I guess we'll have to wait and see. Maybe it would make a difference if we Boomers get over our reluctance to admit our Boomer-ishness and stick together as a voting block.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 17, 2020, 11:50:52 am
I used my AARP discount once.  ;D  But anyway, a Medicare Advantage Plan (something I need to start studying up on  :( ) includes a gym membership called "Silver Sneakers."  :P


I have a "Silver Sneakers" card, and I use it to go to the free-climbing sessions on Wednesday evenings at the Rec Center. It saves me $6 to get in to the climbing wall area. I think you can also use it to get in to the weight room and gym for free and can get discounts on classes. It's a good deal.

I would like a little more clarification on the point about John McPhee being 89. Are you surprised because he is still writing for TNY at age 89?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 17, 2020, 03:35:43 pm
So, I hear Betty White is 98 today!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 17, 2020, 04:17:50 pm
I would like a little more clarification on the point about John McPhee being 89. Are you surprised because he is still writing for TNY at age 89?

What's to be clarified? I'm surprised to learn that the man is 89 years old, period. I did not know he was that old. I was never that interested in him to look him up, but from the nature-y topics I remember him writing about, I assumed he was my generation--possibly even younger--so that it came as a surprise to me to learn that he is of my father's generation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 17, 2020, 05:18:09 pm
Okay, thank you for clarifying that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2020, 09:31:58 pm
I've enjoyed his nature-y stuff in TNY, but I've never read his books. I have a vague memory of some article that had to do with the growth of the Rockies or the wearing down of the Appalachians, or something like that.

My brother would like something like that. I can imagine it being interesting and compellingly written, just not my highest priority when there's already so much else to read.

Quote
I used my AARP discount once.  ;D  But anyway, a Medicare Advantage Plan (something I need to start studying up on  :( ) includes a gym membership called "Silver Sneakers."  :P

Yeah, I've heard about those. I once wrote a story on a gym specifically designed for oldies. It had pretty cool equipment and people of all ages from 40 up, but it was in a wealthy neighborhood and costly.

Quote
Me, too. It's been said that "old people vote," but I guess we'll have to wait and see. Maybe it would make a difference if we Boomers get over our reluctance to admit our Boomer-ishness and stick together as a voting block.

It's tricky to embrace "boomer" when it's being used as an insult. But I've castigated people on social media when they've said saying something that they wouldn't say if they substituted the name of any other demographic group.

But voting bloc wise, our numbers are shrinking. Donald Trump, the official oldest boomer in my mind because he was born 10 months after the end of the war, is still pretty active. Unfortunately. There are now more millennials than boomers and the youngest millennials are of voting age.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2020, 09:50:48 pm
I would like a little more clarification on the point about John McPhee being 89. Are you surprised because he is still writing for TNY at age 89?

What's to be clarified? I'm surprised to learn that the man is 89 years old, period. I did not know he was that old. I was never that interested in him to look him up, but from the nature-y topics I remember him writing about, I assumed he was my generation--possibly even younger--so that it came as a surprise to me to learn that he is of my father's generation.

Same. Although I would have guessed him to be in his 70s. Maybe even late 70s, but not 89 for sure. It's not related to his personal characteristics, it's that I don't feel like I started hearing about him that long ago (I mean, long ago but not that long ago). Also, I don't think I've ever seen a picture of him.

I mean, he writes about things that happen in rugged places, which I suppose you could consider are slightly more likely to be written by youngish writers, but obviously not necessarily. Plus, even the fact that he's working, period, is a bit unusual at 89. But not unheard of.

A year or two ago Christopher Plummer, now 90, stepped into some role that was scheduled to be played by some actor who was #MeToo-ed out of it. As I recall, he was said to have been prepared in three weeks. And just last week I just saw a movie (Knives Out) in which Christopher Plummer played a key role and was great.

The longtime famous sports columnist at my newspaper is still working at 99. He comes in with a walker and a nurse, and gets help from some younger guy typing up his columns. But he's hanging in there, which is good because I might still be there at 99 myself. He started at the newspaper at 25 and the paper is 150 years old, so he has worked there for almost half its history.

On Facebook the other day, I saw a woman at least in her 60s and possibly over 70 say she didn't support Bernie as president (though would vote for him if he's the nominated Democratic candidate) because she didn't think he'd live through his term(s). I pointed out that according to actuarial tables, at Bernie's age, 78, your life expectancy is over 9 years, so statistically he's likely to make it through two terms.

I'm still amazed, though, that people over 60 have a hard time getting hired for just about any job in the world ... except the one job that's presumably the most important in the country. It's not that we should have younger candidates, it's that people should stop being ageist and thinking people who are 60 and beyond can do all kinds of great work.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 17, 2020, 11:36:34 pm
But voting bloc wise, our numbers are shrinking. Donald Trump, the official oldest boomer in my mind because he was born 10 months after the end of the war, is still pretty active. Unfortunately. There are now more millennials than boomers and the youngest millennials are of voting age.

Are there statistics on Millenial voting? I don't know--I really don't. It just struck me that just because there are more Millenials than Boomers doesn't necessarily mean they vote. If they do, then maybe we're fucked.

I guess you and I both were among the first 18-year-olds eligible to vote in the Presidential election of 1976. My dad even offered to come pick me up at college (a half-hour drive away from home) and take me home to vote, and I couldn't be bothered. I'll regret that till the end of my days because I can't say that I voted for President when I was 18.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2020, 10:34:48 am
Are there statistics on Millenial voting? I don't know--I really don't. It just struck me that just because there are more Millenials than Boomers doesn't necessarily mean they vote. If they do, then maybe we're fucked.

I guess you and I both were among the first 18-year-olds eligible to vote in the Presidential election of 1976. My dad even offered to come pick me up at college (a half-hour drive away from home) and take me home to vote, and I couldn't be bothered. I'll regret that till the end of my days because I can't say that I voted for President when I was 18.


I voted, but I voted for John Anderson, the third party candidate, because he'd spoken on my campus and seemed good. A huge mistake, because then Reagan won and made terrible policy changes. Not as bad or crazy or self-serving as Trump, and certainly a much more pleasant person. Trump is like Reagan on steroids.

Last night I read part of an article about all the suffering caused by cuts Reagan made to SS disability. People with severe medical conditions were left with no safety net, a guy killed himself, etc. Apparently the benefits were restored by subsequent presidents but now Trump is making even harsher cuts.

I'll never vote for another third-party candidate, however good they seem, unless the two main candidates are, like, Trump and Hitler. The third-party candidate will never win and it just throws the election to the other side.

I suppose if the third-party candidate were right-leaning I could consider voting for them to throw the election in favor of Democrats, but that sounds like a risky strategy and I wouldn't feel good about it.

As for millennials, the youngest ones are now about 23 or 24, so if they voted in low numbers last time they might step it up this time, especially because of what's at stake. I think young people are more politicized now than they were four years ago.

On election night 2016, as it became increasingly apparent that Trump was going to win, my younger son texted me from Chicago to assure me he had "voted for Hildawg." (Rapperish slang.) My other son was living in LA at the time and forgot to register in time to vote remotely, so he couldn't vote. He was initially a Bernie supporter, but in the end he would have voted for Hildawg, too. I told him not to worry, because there's no way Trump would win Minnesota, which he did not, but the election revealed a lot more red in outstate Minnesota than I knew existed.

The older son got to vote for Obama in the previous election, though.


 

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2020, 10:38:11 am
I finally started reading the cartoon issue. As usual, I don't find many of them funny, even though they're supposedly people's favorite cartoons ever. And I don't know who those people (who picked them) even are. Also, a major flaw: the cartoons aren't labeled by year. Knowing the historical context in which they originally ran might have helped make the more accessible.

I just started the Gopnik/Chast piece, though, and it's good so far.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 18, 2020, 10:53:33 am
Yes, the comics are labelled by year! In fine print at the bottom of the page.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2020, 04:56:52 pm
Yes, the comics are labelled by year! In fine print at the bottom of the page.

Ohhh. Thanks, FRiend!  :D


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 28, 2020, 10:02:32 am
I thought there wasn't anything in the Jan. 27 issue that would interest me. Then I took another look, and there seems to be quite a lot.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 13, 2020, 02:19:56 pm
I recommend the profile of Vivian Gornick in the Feb. 10 issue. I'd heard the name, probably, of course, in TNY, but I knew nothing about her. There is something in the article that I hope to comment on in my blog; it seems more appropriate there than in a post on the profile. I hope I can find the time to do it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 13, 2020, 10:10:05 pm
I haven't received my Feb. 17-24 issue, so I fear my subscription may have run out, and I might miss it altogether unless I buy it on the newsstand. But I've already seen, online, an article I'm really looking forward to reading, a profile of Yuval Noah Harari. I find that guy fascinating and his book Sapiens is my favorite late-night reading (genuinely engaging, surprising and entertaining -- and best of all, in no way connected to current events). I've now bought that book for myself (on Kindle) and two other people (in paper).

So we'll see ... hope the profile doesn't turn me against him somehow! He goes through all of homo sapien history to modern cultures, which is fascinating. But I have heard that he ultimately gets into human-AI things like The Singularity and usually that's where I bail. We'll see if he can keep me fascinated.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 13, 2020, 10:54:03 pm
I haven't received my Feb. 17-24 issue, so I fear my subscription may have run out, and I might miss it altogether unless I buy it on the newsstand.

 :o

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 14, 2020, 12:34:15 am
:o

Do you have yours?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 14, 2020, 09:40:05 am
Do you have yours?

Yes. It arrived yesterday, or maybe it was Wednesday. It's the anniversary issue. I do not like the cover.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 14, 2020, 11:06:42 am
I received mine a couple of days ago. I'm on the auto-renew plan. If your subscription has run out, that would be a GDBOAUS!!

I started reading that profile that you recommended. Interesting, so far.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 14, 2020, 09:52:53 pm
Mine came today! I might be on auto-renew. I was going to renew at Christmas because you could give someone a gift subscription for free but of course I never got around to it.

I haven't examined the cover. Nor have I read the profile. Hope it's good!



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 14, 2020, 09:57:40 pm
 :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 18, 2020, 03:20:39 pm
I finished the profile on Harari last night. For the first five or so pages I was wondering what all the fuss was about. It covered all the people around him, his organization, etc. Then it started talking about some of his ideas and writings and became a little more interesting. I grasp that his main achievement is to write about the history of all humanity. Other than that, I didn't see any new ideas. The author perhaps didn't either because he ended the article with a "who cares" statement.

I then read about Jeanne Calment, the reportedly oldest person who ever lived. Also a very interesting article, and would have also benefited from shortening by at least a page.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 18, 2020, 03:48:11 pm
I then read about Jeanne Calment, the reportedly oldest person who ever lived. Also a very interesting article, and would have also benefited from shortening by at least a page.

I agree, hunnerd percent.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2020, 12:42:57 am
I finished the profile on Harari last night. For the first five or so pages I was wondering what all the fuss was about. It covered all the people around him, his organization, etc. Then it started talking about some of his ideas and writings and became a little more interesting. I grasp that his main achievement is to write about the history of all humanity. Other than that, I didn't see any new ideas. The author perhaps didn't either because he ended the article with a "who cares" statement.

I haven't finished it but I agree with you on the first part. I'm not sure I can describe off the top of my head why his book is so compelling. For one thing, it does not embrace standard comforting assumptions about human organizations and progress. He talks about several revolutions: cognitive, agricultural and scientific. The cognitive revolution allowed humans to communicate in abstractions and hypotheticals. Other animals can communicate "There's a lion at the watering hole." But humans suddenly became able to speculate on whether the lion would or wouldn't be present, to tell a story about why the lion goes there, worship the lion as a god, etc. And when those hypotheticals/stories eventually took the forms of religion, politics, royalty, moral structures, patriotism, capitalism, money, etc., that's what ultimately allowed humans to form larger groups. He's also one of those who judges the agricultural revolution as more damaging than beneficial to humans: suddenly people had to work harder, cities sprang up, diseases ran rampant. Yes, agriculture ultimately allowed humans to specialize skills so now we have great books, antibiotics, computers, planes. Except that the vast majority of humans still didn't/don't have access to those things, and those people's lives are worse (he says) than hunter gatherers'. As for the scientific revolution, it enabled colonialism and vice versa -- for good and for ill. I don't agree with all of his notions, but they're always interesting.

At this late hour off the top of my head, I'm not doing the book justice. But if the article ends in "who cares?" it's definitely not doing him justice.

Quote
I then read about Jeanne Calment, the reportedly oldest person who ever lived. Also a very interesting article, and would have also benefited from shortening by at least a page.

Good thing Jeanne herself wasn't shortened by a page!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2020, 09:51:06 am
He's also one of those who judges the agricultural revolution as more damaging than beneficial to humans.

I've heard that idea before. I haven't read the profile yet, but maybe he's the source of whatever I read wherever I read it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2020, 10:19:11 am
I've heard that idea before. I haven't read the profile yet, but maybe he's the source of whatever I read wherever I read it.

I had heard it before, too, and wondered the same. In a quick google just now, I found lots of articles about the idea.

Here's a piece by Jared Diamond from 1999, so that must predate Harari. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race (https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race)

And here's one from 2014 by Yuval Noah Harari himself. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/05/were-we-happier-in-the-stone-age (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/05/were-we-happier-in-the-stone-age)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2020, 02:28:35 pm
Over lunch I was reading Hilton Als on Louis C.K., and the language had me thinking, WWMSS? (What would Mr. Shawn say?)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2020, 04:31:03 pm
Over lunch I was reading Hilton Als on Louis C.K., and the language had me thinking, WWMSS? (What would Mr. Shawn say?)

I'm sure Mr. Shawn has turned over in his grave so may times by now they had to reinstall the tombstone and replant the grass.

Was the Hilton Als piece good? I always hear him praised so highly but I have trouble getting into his pieces.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2020, 05:21:52 pm
Was the Hilton Als piece good? I always hear him praised so highly but I have trouble getting into his pieces.

I could take it or leave it. Not good, not bad. I read him because he's there. I wouldn't miss him if he wasn't. Mainly I read it because I knew Louis C.K. had got caught in sexual improprieties, and I wanted to read what Als had to say about it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2020, 10:05:17 pm
I could take it or leave it. Not good, not bad. I read him because he's there. I wouldn't miss him if he wasn't. Mainly I read it because I knew Louis C.K. had got caught in sexual improprieties, and I wanted to read what Als had to say about it.

And then not only that but that C.K. attempted a return -- this time as someone who seemed to accept the creepy things he had joked about before. It's a sordid story, and I can't tell from my own sentence whether that makes me especially want to read it or especially not to.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 20, 2020, 10:05:08 am
I finished the profile on Harari last night.

I might start this one at lunch today, but I'm also looking forward to the article about Britain's land, and the one about slavery reenactments ("The Fugitive Cure").

And I just noticed that there seems to be a new TV critic!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 20, 2020, 10:09:48 am

And I just noticed that there seems to be a new TV critic!


I hadn't even heard that!

https://www.thewrap.com/new-yorker-reshuffles-emily-nussbaum-to-expand-her-writing-doreen-st-felix-named-new-tv-critic/ (https://www.thewrap.com/new-yorker-reshuffles-emily-nussbaum-to-expand-her-writing-doreen-st-felix-named-new-tv-critic/)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2020, 09:54:43 am
I finished the profile on Harari last night.

I'm reading that now. I don't find the article, or him, particularly engaging. I haven't finished it yet, so I haven't come to the "who cares?" conclusion, but as I read it, I find myself thinking, Maybe he's right that the invention of agriculture sowed the seeds of the eventual destruction of Homo sapiens, but it seems a little strange that someone who has benefited from thousands of years of civilization would be complaining about or condemning civilization.

Without civilization, the lives of Homo sapiens would no doubt be "nasty, brutish, and short."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 21, 2020, 12:11:19 pm
I've been rethinking the roots of civilization lately after reading about early cultures in the Americas. We've been taught to think that real civilization started when people stopped wandering, settled down, started agriculture and formed cities. But there are other models if you look at indigenous populations outside of the borders of Mesopotamia. In Central America, there were cultures who farmed and were settled that lasted thousands of years. They followed sustainable practices, not having the advantages of being in a flood plain between the Tigris and Euphrates.

Harari is thinking big but not big enough. His lens is the Jewish and proto-Jewish cultures of the Middle East. If he knows anything about other cultures, he has dismissed them or is excluding them. His bias is showing. Of course, I've only read the article, not the books, and I plan to.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2020, 02:00:59 pm
I'm still struggling through the first part of the profile, which seems much more about his husband than about Harari. So far the piece has divulged very little about what has made Harari famous and successful, except where it has very briefly touched on The Singularity. I haven't reached the future part of his book, so I'll withhold judgment but I don't really buy into the whole Singularity thing, but maybe he'll convince me.

it seems a little strange that someone who has benefited from thousands of years of civilization would be complaining about or condemning civilization.

Without civilization, the lives of Homo sapiens would no doubt be "nasty, brutish, and short."


Was Hobbes talking about hunter-gatherer life, or just life without a central government? In any case, I can't imagine 17th-century Europeans were all that knowledgeable about prehistory.

I wouldn't say Harari is condemning civilization per se. He's saying hunter-gatherer life was, in some ways, less nasty and brutish back then than we like to think. It was short, no doubt, because an infected cut, poison berry, intertribal conflict or attack by a saber-tooth tiger (or whatever they had back then) could kill people at a young age, bringing the average lifespan way down.

And yes, I'm sure Harari recognizes that civilization has made his own life more comfortable and enriched. The argument is that hunter gatherers as a whole were, some ways, more comfortable. More leisure time, less viral or chronic disease, less dependence on successful crops to avoid starvation, etc. And that while it's easy for Harari or for us to say our lives are way better because of agriculture and consequent civilization, his point is that many, many people in the world still do not share those benefits, even now, let alone for the past however many millennia.

So he's not really tossing out his computer and complaining that he himself can't live on a nice soft bed of leaves in the forest.

I have an article he wrote on this topic on a tab on my computer. I'll try to read it over lunch.


Harari is thinking big but not big enough. His lens is the Jewish and proto-Jewish cultures of the Middle East. If he knows anything about other cultures, he has dismissed them or is excluding them. His bias is showing. Of course, I've only read the article, not the books, and I plan to.

Actually he writes quite extensively about other parts of the world. For example, the one that comes to mind is how quickly and brutally a small number of Spaniards managed to destroy longstanding Latin American cultures like the Incas and Aztecs. He takes examples from all over the place -- including many from this country. His book starts out with the evolution of homo sapiens, so by necessity it's in a particular part of the world, but he follows as humans spread through Europe and other continents. One interesting part is his exploration of how Europeans managed to subdue and colonize other cultures, partly because non-European cultures didn't take as much interest in exploring the world outside their own areas, let alone conquering other places.

 

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2020, 04:27:31 pm
This wasn't the article i was looking for, but here's a science publication with a pretty concise summary of the anti-ag argument, which actually long predates Harari, though it quotes him, too.

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/03/the_agricultural_revolution_historys_biggest_fraud.html (https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/03/the_agricultural_revolution_historys_biggest_fraud.html)


And here are some excerpts from Sapiens on Harari's website regarding agriculture and other things.

https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and-politics/ (https://www.ynharari.com/topic/money-and-politics/)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 23, 2020, 12:26:16 pm
This article 1999 article in Discover -- so, before Harari -- is by Jared Diamond, another writer of controversial ideas about pre-history. He describes what seems pretty solid archaeological research showing hunter-gatherers were healthier than early farmers based on the condition of their teeth and bones.

Because wild animals and berries offer more varied and nutritional foods, compared to the starchy grains on which ag has always emphasized, average human heights shrunk when they adopted agriculture. In some places that height loss has never been regained. Agriculture also created classist societies -- elites had far better bones and teeth than peasants. Of course, that's still the case today, the elite are not only better off in terms of wealth and power -- they also have far better teeth!

Of course, by our standards prehistoric hunter-gatherers had much shorter lives -- average was only 26 years. But get this, the average lifespan in early agricultural societies was 19.

https://www.swnewsmedia.com/lakeshore_weekly/news/local/plymouth-planning-commission-hears-testimony-on-proposed-hollydale-golf-course/article_1e56138a-15a5-5a4d-97ea-6d67d5e85f95.html (https://www.swnewsmedia.com/lakeshore_weekly/news/local/plymouth-planning-commission-hears-testimony-on-proposed-hollydale-golf-course/article_1e56138a-15a5-5a4d-97ea-6d67d5e85f95.html)

Regarding your mention of his Jewishness, Lee, one other interesting argument Harari makes is that Christianity and Judaism and Islam were all small obscure groups that happened to catch on with masses for one reason or another and have now become the dominant religions of the world. But the same could have happened just as easily with many other religions, he says.

Of course, that's easy for him to say, as he's agnostic. And it's easy for me to accept, because so am I.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 28, 2020, 09:58:18 pm
I don't think I've ever disliked an article by David Sedaris, but I don't like the one in the March 2 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 29, 2020, 09:34:07 am
I think my subscription must have run out, because I don't have that one yet. The Sedaris piece is online, though. What didn't you like about it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 29, 2020, 01:35:06 pm
I think my subscription must have run out, because I don't have that one yet. The Sedaris piece is online, though. What didn't you like about it?

I presume his father is dead by now. I won't criticize Sedaris for his feelings about his father, because they are what they are, or for writing the article, but to publish those feelings in a widely circulated general interest magazine strikes me as airing the family dirty linen in public. To me that's distasteful, even kind of embarrassing, that's all. (Clearly Sedaris isn't embarrassed.) I've never before found anything he's written distasteful, so that saddens me.

I am nosy enough to wonder if his siblings knew about this ahead of publication, and what they think of it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 29, 2020, 02:47:49 pm
...airing the family dirty linen in public.

Isn't that one of the things he's most known for?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 29, 2020, 03:22:03 pm
Isn't that one of the things he's most known for?

That was my thought, too. I've only read about half of this piece, so maybe it gets much worse and I should wait until I've seen it. But he's written about his mother's alcoholism, unpleasant relationships among his siblings and other things. Apparently the one subject he hasn't written much about is his sister's suicide, and what happened in their relationship -- they hadn't spoken in four years when she died and he had a security guard keep her from entering one of his readings. (At least, that was the status a couple of years ago, according to a book review, so maybe he has since then.)

The other thing is, confessional and deeply personal essays and memoirs are so common by now -- by people who've experienced sexual assaults, incest, domestic abuse, homelessness, addiction, etc. -- this one (so far) hardly stands out. Of course most of the writers aren't as talented as Sedaris.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 29, 2020, 04:44:40 pm
Sedaris's pieces that are most memorable to me are one's where he airs his own linen, writing about things that happen to him. Of course humorists do that all the time. To me this reads like an attack piece, almost a character assassination, even though I have no doubt it's all true. I mean, writing that he told his dying father to his face, "You're more like a vegetable," and, "You're vain. ...Always were. I was at the house this morning and couldn't believe all the clothes you own. Now you're this person, trapped in a chair. ..." It appalls me that anyone would say anything like that to a dying person, no matter how true it might be, no matter much he might want to say it. It's hurtful, even if the dying person acknowledges that it's correct. Then he publishes to the whole world that he actually said it.

The beginning of the article, where he writes about his urologist and his prostate exam, that struck me as vintage Sedaris, the sort of thing I expect to read when I read him. After this, I think I will be skipping his articles, at least for awhile. This one is a real turn-off to me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 29, 2020, 04:46:34 pm
Backing up a bit, I enjoyed the article about Underground Railroad reenactments (Feb. 17 & 24). I read that over lunch today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 02, 2020, 07:53:43 pm
... writing that he told his dying father to his face, "You're more like a vegetable," and, "You're vain. ...Always were. I was at the house this morning and couldn't believe all the clothes you own. Now you're this person, trapped in a chair. ..."

Yes, that is a character assassination, but of himself. As you said, his most successful pieces are "where he airs his own linen, writing about things that happen to him." I was taken aback when he wrote about what he said to his father, but my curiosity was piqued as to why he would feel the need. He sprinkles clues throughout.

Did you notice that Hugh was always doing something to defuse the situation? Hugh notes that the icky thickener in the water is just cornstarch. When David's dad cried out for water, Hugh filled a cup and mixed in the cornstarch himself. He even got rid of a pet turd on the dad's carpet, using his bare hands, and saying "You people, my God." David and his sisters, in contrast, mainly bungled around and called the nurses for help. They were obviously freaked out by their one-time capable dad being reduced to a horrible wraith. Suddenly David and his dad's lifelong struggles come to a head, and Dad tells him "you won." David realizes that this suffering creature has replaced his father, and so he's lost his chance to finally get approval from him.

Throughout the story you can hear the dad's and Amy's soft voices, Hugh's voice of reason, and David's wry, slightly cynical and self-deprecating voice. I would like to say more about the article, but I'll wait until everyone who wants to has read it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 03, 2020, 10:33:27 am
I finally finished it.

It definitely was not my favorite DS piece ever. It wasn't very funny -- not surprising, given the subject matter, but even his more serious essays are usually intermittently amusing. And I found it ambiguous. My reactions were kind of a mix of both of yours.

To be clear, I don't have any objection to people "airing their dirty laundry." I have read so many essays and memoirs that could be accused of doing that, the idea doesn't really register with me anymore.

I got the impression David felt very conflicted himself. Obviously the dad had done some pretty terrible things, as he mentions briefly. And the condition of his house suggested some serious cognitive problems. David feels a lot of anger and contempt toward his dad. It's unclear to me whether he wants approval, revenge, closure or what.

Since the visit to the dad is paired with David's own medical test for what could have been a terminal illness, the piece seems a meditation on mortality without any specific conclusions. Maybe the point is that there are no specific conclusions. He's written of his dad fairly positively in the past -- or at least not this angrily -- so maybe he was really ambivalent. Or maybe he just did not like his father and didn't know how to deal with those feelings on his deathbed.

I should probably try to skim through it again.

Did you notice that Hugh was always doing something to defuse the situation? Hugh notes that the icky thickener in the water is just cornstarch. When David's dad cried out for water, Hugh filled a cup and mixed in the cornstarch himself. He even got rid of a pet turd on the dad's carpet, using his bare hands, and saying "You people, my God."

I actually got the impression they suspected it wasn't a pet's.

The other thing that's interesting about Hugh's role is that he's always being practical and helpful and kind -- even though the dad must have some objection to him, having first cut David out of the will then saying he'd put him back in as long as Hugh never got to touch any of the money.

So did the dad disapprove of David being gay? He never says so directly, and I've never seen any mention of that in the past, but that's the implication.



After this, I think I will be skipping his articles, at least for awhile. This one is a real turn-off to me.

That's too bad, if you've liked his work until now.




Meanwhile, I'm still trudging through the Harari profile. I still dislike it.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 03, 2020, 10:23:35 pm
The last issue was a bit problematic for us so it was a bit of a relief to see the latest issue come. The cover is comic, with a raging (yet again) Trump wearing a mask...over his eyes! I chuckled and then decided to put it on the bench in the entry hall of my house. Today was the day when my grandsons come over for art and gardening lessons. Little Charlie glanced at it when he came in. He is a very perceptive lad so I know he realized who was depicted, but he didn't say anything. Then, when my elder grandson came over, he glanced at it too. I'm not sure if it even registered with him. On the dashboard of their car is a figure of Trump wearing a hula skirt. So they probably think he is just some kind of cartoon character.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2020, 09:49:53 am
So they probably think he is just some kind of cartoon character.

I do, too, only it's a problem having a cartoon character as POTUS.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 04, 2020, 04:16:12 pm
Going back to the Sedaris piece, I was thinking about it this morning before rising and realizing that in my mother's final journey my family played several roles, as well as differing roles within myself. I played the Lisa role of course, and my sister played the David role, and my brother played the role of Hugh, I guess.

Internally, David was present most of the time and I tried to suppress that voice, but it would have been better just to sit with it and let it come out and understand it. Basically, to sum up, David's voice is "Why me?"

Sedaris' articles have often irritated me because of his self absorption, but then I realize that he is also serving as the narrator and looking at himself objectively. He is the casting director giving himself that role. His satirical, verging on cynical and sarcastic voice is part of the human condition. Lost in the article is the fact that his dad recovered and went back to the assisted living facility. As far as I could tell, he didn't die, despite all the obituary talk.

The writing that I like best is when Sedaris talks about nature, and this is no exception. The siblings are distracted from their combing of dad's home by a deer wandering around outside. Their awestruck voices ring of forgotten childhoods in this home and they recapture some of the joy of it. This feeling returns at the very end when they spy a naked woman through a window. They marvel at the sight just as they did at the deer. Maybe this experience will help them connect with their father.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 04, 2020, 10:03:11 pm
I think to some extent we all bring our own reading backgrounds into this. I am really used to reading memoirs and essays about the writers' own experiences, including extremely private ones. For example, five minutes ago I read an essay in Time by an author I know slightly IRL about her rape in college and how she came to think of it afterward. And that was pretty normal because at this point I have read sooo many first-person accounts of rapes (never from the rapist, though -- which actually would be interesting), gang rapes, domestic abuse, incest, mental illness, addiction and so on. In fact, there are so many of those things there's been a backlash that says, essentially, don't bother unless you have something fresh and universal to say about it (which my IRL friend did). Which is actually what I've always thought. I don't want to read an essay that reads like someone's journal written for their own therapeutic benefits -- it should say something larger than that.

Which I think David Sedaris' do. I haven't read much of his early work but I gather that back then he was just trying to be funny. Since he's been writing for the New Yorker his essays seem to make deeper and more nuanced points. Those are almost always critical at his own expense -- he doesn't portray himself as heroic (that's generally been Hugh's role) which is why it doesn't come off as self-absorption to me. His behavior and character flaws are often used to make the point of the piece.

As I recall, I first noticed this with an essay some years ago about how a family had moved into his neighborhood from somewhere else, and at Halloween didn't realize you were expected to go trick-or-treating on the actual Halloween night. They came the following night instead. The Sedarises were out of candy at that point, so David's mother (I'm recreating this from dim memory, but it went something like this) asked him to share some of the candy he'd acquired trick-or-treating. He refused. He just sat there surrounded by piles of candy, greedily eating it all himself. I realized he was making a larger point about inequality and privilege -- either in general among all people or maybe just the United States compared to poorer countries/cultures. I think that might have been the first time I noticed how his writing seemed to have evolved (or at least evolved from what AFAIK was, previously, purely comedic). I think that's when I really started liking his stuff. His pieces had subsequently become more subtle and nuanced and -- in the case of the one we're discussing as well as the one about his mom's alcoholism -- more serious in topic. But they never come across as particularly self-serving to me; I think he usually makes himself the butt of the joke (or of the larger point). In the dad story, I think it's a little more ambiguous than that because his dad really does sound pretty bad.

OK, i just found the Halloween piece and skimmed through it. It's from 17 years ago and it's not as subtle as his more recent work. But it's pretty much as I remember. https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2003-11-03/flipbook/052d/
 (https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2003-11-03/flipbook/052d/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 04, 2020, 10:45:04 pm
Good insight, Katherine. It's easy to go back to his early work since "The Candyland Diaries" is broadcast every year during the holidays. His self-deprecating voice seemed to be fully developed even back then.

The following article, "The Altitude Sickness" by Nick Paumgarten is eerie to me, since I was aware of several incidences where alpinists died one way or another. I had an encounter with the main person in the article, Conrad Anker. I was trudging up the Khumbu Trail towards Everest Base Camp in 2012, and had arrived at the more difficult part just a day or two before arriving at the camp. I could only go 2-3 miles a day and then had to stop at a teahouse for the night. Because of the altitude, I could only eat soup and milk tea. I was sitting on the comfy divan when three men came in. Two of them were dark haired and another one had blondish hair and was very fair. He seemed to be mentoring the other two. He was strutting around with lots of energy in contrast to the rest of us, who were conserving our energy. He was saying things about the porters and guides. He said the porters earned a maximum of $7 a day, and that accommodations in the teahouses was more than that, even if they shared. So the porters, and oftentimes the guides, lodged in caves. He was very vocal about giving the porters more benefits and rights but still at the same time, was very full of himself.  I observed a lot of alpinists during that trip and found the same thing over and over.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 05, 2020, 09:47:02 am
Good insight, Katherine. It's easy to go back to his early work since "The Candyland Diaries" is broadcast every year during the holidays. His self-deprecating voice seemed to be fully developed even back then.

Somewhere on my shelves I have Me Talk Pretty One Day, which is more recent than "The Candyland Diaries" but still 20 years old and, I think, pre-New Yorker. I think I own 2-3 Sedaris collections. For some reason I never read his essays there, much as I enjoy them in the New Yorker.

Quote
I was sitting on the comfy divan when three men came in. Two of them were dark haired and another one had blondish hair and was very fair. He seemed to be mentoring the other two. He was strutting around with lots of energy in contrast to the rest of us, who were conserving our energy. He was saying things about the porters and guides. He said the porters earned a maximum of $7 a day, and that accommodations in the teahouses was more than that, even if they shared. So the porters, and oftentimes the guides, lodged in caves. He was very vocal about giving the porters more benefits and rights but still at the same time, was very full of himself.  I observed a lot of alpinists during that trip and found the same thing over and over.

Wait, so did the blond guy sleep inside and the dark-haired men slept in caves? How expensive was the teahouse? Could the blond guy have reasonably thrown in the extra to get them space inside?

I've probably told you this, but I once interviewed a woman who lived in Nepal for a while, outside of areas usually seen by foreign travelers. She said it was the worst experience of her life and for many years she vowed never to go back. But she had come to terms with it somewhat.

OK, I had to just look it up and refresh my memory. Here's the part of the story -- the whole thing was about the benefits of going outside your comfort zone -- involving her:

Last year, Molly O’Reilly of Mora, Minn., arranged to live in Nepal for six months to further her education as a hospice social worker. O’Reilly was a seasoned traveler, and Nepal is known as a beautiful tourist destination. But experiencing Nepal as a resident was a shock. She saw violence, cruelty, chaos, corruption, danger. People with serious diseases receiving inadequate treatment. Child-labor sweatshops and sex trafficking.

“I thought I was prepared, but I was not,” said O’Reilly, who turns 50 in December. “It was not scary going there, but once I got there, I thought, what have I gotten into? I felt like I had walked off a cliff.”

She drank tainted water that had been sold as purified, ingesting a debilitating parasite. She was bedridden, couldn’t eat and lost 40 pounds. She returned to the United States a month early, where she received an antibiotic not offered in Nepal and quickly returned to health.

“When I came home, I hated it there [in Nepal]. I didn’t have a positive word to say about it. I said I would never go back.”

Since then, her outlook has softened.

The experience was unpleasant, but leaving a comfort zone “is how we learn; it is how we grow,” O’Reilly said. “I would do it again, because it makes us stronger, wiser.”



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2020, 12:04:03 pm
To clarify, the three men I saw at the teahouse, the blond guy was Conrad Aker and one of the dark haired men was Sam Elias, whose memories are in the very last paragraph of the story. I don't know who the other man was, but he was also a climber, one of the elite who stay in the teahouses. Anker was educating them about the plight of porters and kitchen help, young Nepali men who trudge up the mountain with packs that weigh up to 100 lbs. At the end of the trip, my guide insisted I pay the porters only about $22 each. When his back was turned, I gave each of them $20 more in American dollars (about $60 each Nepali). They were much happier!!

Nepal is one of the poorest nations, which doesn't register if you are on the Khumbu trail, but even there, the workers don't earn much. It also has a very harsh climate, and about 20 to 25% of children don't make it to age two. Trafficking is a big problem. A book I read, The Little Princes of Nepal (https://www.amazon.com/Little-Princes-Promise-Bring-Children/dp/0061930067), details this. Nepal is where many people come together, and there is much conflict and exploitation. The Sherpas, people of the East, came from Tibet and China over the Himalayan passes. Others come from India and Malaysia. Regarding this person Molly, I think working in a hospice anywhere you would see a lot of disease and death. Tainted water is very common. There are no water treatment plants! At my hotel in Kathmandu, there was a contraption on the roof with several trays of sand. The water trickled through that and was called good (I have a UV water purifier). Despite that and avoiding raw produce, I got diarrhea several times to the point where it was no big deal. A friend of mine has a nonprofit company that installs water filters in Nepal, on reservations, etc. People in America just don't know how good we have it enjoying clean water that doesn't make us sick.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 05, 2020, 12:21:48 pm
Here's a short interview Anker did about the Everest situation:

https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/is-it-ethical-to-climb-everest-conrad-ankers-take-20151023/ (https://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/is-it-ethical-to-climb-everest-conrad-ankers-take-20151023/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2020, 09:55:29 pm
The following article, "The Altitude Sickness" by Nick Paumgarten is eerie to me

That was a fascinating article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 05, 2020, 10:00:51 pm
Good insight, Katherine. It's easy to go back to his early work since "The Candyland Diaries" is broadcast every year during the holidays. His self-deprecating voice seemed to be fully developed even back then.

I believe it's The Santaland Diaries.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 06, 2020, 12:43:18 am
Thanks for the deeper description and tales, FRiend! I actually do think quite often about how lucky we are to fresh, drinkable water handy — usually at numerous sites in our homes!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 14, 2020, 08:51:15 pm
I highly recommend that everyone read the last paragraph of the article about Brad Parscale in the March 9 issue. The article itself is too long, but I highly recommend the last paragraph.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 14, 2020, 10:04:43 pm
I was just reading that article too, and there were several hauntingly prophetic sentences, odd for a profile of a rube from Topeka, Kansas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 14, 2020, 10:47:46 pm
I finally finished the profile of Yuval Noah Harari and can report that I hated it. It was a deliberate cheap-shot takedown. It wasn’t a straight-up profile, nor was it a straight-up critique of his work. It was a pretend profile laced with snide, condescending little digs, some of which may have some truth to them but were not well argued in the piece. Don’t get me wrong — I like Harari’s book so am naturally inclined to defend him. But if, say, Adam Gopnik or Louis Menand had written a fair and thoughtful essay debunking it, that would be OK. This writer wasn’t good enough to do that. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 15, 2020, 12:26:55 am
That was the impression I got, as well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 15, 2020, 02:48:25 pm
It was a pretend profile laced with snide, condescending little digs, some of which may have some truth to them but were not well argued in the piece.

I remember thinking the tone was a little odd, like the author didn't like his subject.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 16, 2020, 11:33:59 am
I remember thinking the tone was a little odd, like the author didn't like his subject.

Exactly. Yuval mostly comes across as pleasant enough in the quotes, which makes the writer's nasty little asides seem even weirder.

If the writer had problems with Yuval's writing, he should just critique or review it. I'm sure there are plenty of valid arguments to be made against lots of things Harari hs written.

if writer just didn't like the guy, someone else should have written the profile. The editor is also responsible, for not having paid closer attention to this dynamic.
 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 17, 2020, 03:32:20 pm
I think Ian Parker is jealous of Yuval and it was a hatchet piece. After all, he's been working for TNY for nearly 30 years but I bet most people wouldn't know who he is. But some people really, really like his style. Here's a review of his profile of Alex Baldwin: https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/whys-this-so-good-no-62-ian-parker-profiles-alec-baldwin/ (https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/whys-this-so-good-no-62-ian-parker-profiles-alec-baldwin/)

In the same issue, I'm reading "Betting the Farm" by Sam Knight about Joseph Fiennes's twin brother who manages a great estate in England according to permaculture principles (although the word is not mentioned in the article). It's very interesting to me but I don't know if anyone else would find it interesting.

Articles in my interest area are starting to crop (pun intended) up a lot now. Who would think TNY would run an article about composting? But that is what "Letter from Seoul" is about in the March 9 issue. Also of interest in that issue are "Exodus" about the German expatriots in Los Angeles and "#Winning" (as Jeff mentioned) about how social media was used to elect Trump. I also learned a lot from "The Leveller" a review of the work of Thomas Piketty, the French economist.

I'm also re-reading "The Bristlecones Speak" by Alex Ross in the January 20 issue. That's another one that you wouldn't expect to see in TNY.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 30, 2020, 09:39:22 pm
So why did I stick it out through that entire profile of Jordan Wolfson (March 16)?  Boring is the best word I can come up with to describe it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 02, 2020, 11:28:29 am
I have now read every. Single. Article. in the March 23 issue, since it's the only one I brought with me to AZ. Go ahead, ask me a question about any article. I have practically memorized them!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 02, 2020, 12:19:00 pm
In the same issue, I'm reading "Betting the Farm" by Sam Knight about Joseph Fiennes's twin brother who manages a great estate in England according to permaculture principles (although the word is not mentioned in the article). It's very interesting to me but I don't know if anyone else would find it interesting.

Articles in my interest area are starting to crop (pun intended) up a lot now. Who would think TNY would run an article about composting? But that is what "Letter from Seoul" is about in the March 9 issue. Also of interest in that issue are "Exodus" about the German expatriots in Los Angeles and "#Winning" (as Jeff mentioned) about how social media was used to elect Trump. I also learned a lot from "The Leveller" a review of the work of Thomas Piketty, the French economist.

I'm also re-reading "The Bristlecones Speak" by Alex Ross in the January 20 issue. That's another one that you wouldn't expect to see in TNY.

I liked "Betting the Farm" and "The Bristlecones Speak," but the Piketty piece bored me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 02, 2020, 10:05:31 pm
I have now read every. Single. Article. in the March 23 issue, since it's the only one I brought with me to AZ. Go ahead, ask me a question about any article. I have practically memorized them!

I haven't consumed the March 23 issue, but once you get done with your New Yorkers do you have an internet connection that could get you to other publications -- the Atlantic, Slate, New York magazine, the NYT and WashPo, stuff like that ...?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 06, 2020, 11:48:31 am
Yes, I've gone online and read some of the latest issue of TNY, and I actually read the fiction by George Saunders (I like his work). I read certain articles in the Atlantic, NYT and WashPo when there is a link to something I want to read.

Friend asked me the other day if I knew how scientists determined the date that the volcano at Santorini, Italy, erupted, and I was able to answer, "yes, by the tree rings of the bristlecone pines." I was very impressed at myself.  ;)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2020, 10:27:39 pm
Peter Hessler's report on his life in China during the Covid-19 pandemic is very interesting.

He sure gets around. I read his article on his experience in China with the Peace Corps, and I knew he was in Cairo for the Arab Spring. I thought he settled on the Western Slope of Colorado, but now he's back teaching English in a Chinese university.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 13, 2020, 10:49:43 am
I'm not caught up in my magazines, but this morning I finished the March 30 issue. In the Briefly Noted column, there is a book I want to keep track of an I hope eventually read. The title is Yellow Bird, and it's a work of nonfiction about a real-life amateur sleuth who solved a mystery on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota in 2012. Since I enjoy the novels of Craig Johnson, Margaret Coel, and Tony Hillerman, I think I would enjoy this real-life detective story. When I was a kid I loved to read true-crime books, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 15, 2020, 05:47:12 pm
Woke up in the night with worry about the world situation, and read the article "Fractured Fairy Tale" about Meghan and Harry. It was mildly diverting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 16, 2020, 10:09:01 am
the article "Fractured Fairy Tale" about Meghan and Harry.

I haven't seen the article, but the headline takes me back about 50-55 years!  :laugh:




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 16, 2020, 11:20:40 am
I haven't seen the article, but the headline takes me back about 50-55 years!  :laugh:

I never did get around to adding Rocky and Bullwinkle to my DVD collection.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 19, 2020, 12:38:56 pm
A couple of days ago I watched the recent movie The Lighthouse which was favorably reviewed in TNY. It was so creepy it gave me nightmares.

Two guys in a Godforesaken lonely place out in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there was attraction, but not in the Brokeback way. Ends badly, but not in the Brokeback way.

I honestly can't recommend it. If you like psychological thrillers, then maybe. It could also be termed a horror movie, in the sense that you are horrified that it was made into a movie.

And yes, wonderful Robert Pattinson is one of the two guys. But still...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 19, 2020, 02:28:02 pm
I jumped ahead in my magazines to read "Fractured Fairy Tale," and I quite enjoyed it. I enjoyed the story of Augustus Frederick, duke of Sussex, as much as I joyed reading about Harry and Meghan.

I had an Aha Moment when Mead wrote that Queen Victoria had granted Augustus' wife the title Duchess of Inverness. That event was a plot point in one episode of Series I of Victoria, which ran on PBS. In the show, for a reason I can't remember, the queen awarded her the title so that she could be presented at Court. It probably had something to do with the queen's wedding to Prince Albert.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 19, 2020, 05:17:36 pm
A couple of days ago I watched the recent movie The Lighthouse which was favorably reviewed in TNY. It was so creepy it gave me nightmares.

Two guys in a Godforesaken lonely place out in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there was attraction, but not in the Brokeback way. Ends badly, but not in the Brokeback way.

I honestly can't recommend it. If you like psychological thrillers, then maybe. It could also be termed a horror movie, in the sense that you are horrified that it was made into a movie.

And yes, wonderful Robert Pattinson is one of the two guys. But still...

Yeah, I've heard that higly praised, but have been reluctant to watch it myself. If it's something that's going to make me feel bleak afterward, I'll skip it. I can handle sad, a la Brokeback, but not bleak, a la Requiem for a Dream, Platoon, Leaving Las Vegas, Manchester by the Sea ...

Have you seen Nice Guys, in which Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling play kind of bumbling cops? That one was light and fun. I have been thinking of watching it again.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 28, 2020, 10:58:55 am
Yeah, I've heard that higly praised, but have been reluctant to watch it myself. If it's something that's going to make me feel bleak afterward, I'll skip it. I can handle sad, a la Brokeback, but not bleak, a la Requiem for a Dream, Platoon, Leaving Las Vegas, Manchester by the Sea ...

Have you seen Nice Guys, in which Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling play kind of bumbling cops? That one was light and fun. I have been thinking of watching it again.

Yes, it was so bleak that it felt right that it was in black and white. I found out later that it was based on a story of 2 lighthouse keepers, one of which died by accident and the other one kept the body around to prove that he hadn't murdered him. But then he went crazy.

I need some more good, uplifting movie suggestions! I watched An Education again. I had forgotten that it is not uplifting or hopeful. Manchester by the Sea was one that scarred me for life. I could not understand what all the hoopla was about it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 28, 2020, 01:22:41 pm
I need some more good, uplifting movie suggestions!

Do you mean morally or spiritually, or just cheerful?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 28, 2020, 03:45:38 pm
Manchester by the Sea was one that scarred me for life. I could not understand what all the hoopla was about it.

Manchester by the Sea and other bleak movies don't usually scar me for life, but they do scar me for a few days.

In some cases, I can understand the hoopla even if I wished I hadn't seen the movie. Leaving Las Vegas, for example, is very well made. So is Requiem for a Dream. But after I saw them, I wished I hadn't. Still, some people -- including my son -- don't mind bleakness in movies at all.

About 20 years ago (after seeing Affliction with Nick Nolte), I realized I just don't want to see bleak movies, however well regarded. Occasionally I'm not sufficiently forewarned, but generally I try to keep an eye out for them and stay away. Most recently, The Joker. Some directors I know to avoid, such as Lars von Trier.

Speaking of bleakness and, ostensibly, the New Yorker, Atul Gawande's piece a couple of issues ago about deaths of despair is, in a way, well timed. I'm sure it was written before the pandemic hit this country, but I'm sure the pandemic will cause deaths of despair to skyrocket. There's a story in the paper today about a doctor who, with no history of mental illness, killed herself after working in ERs in NYC.

For a safe light but critically acclaimed viewing, you can't go too wrong with Wes Anderson.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 28, 2020, 06:03:50 pm
There's a story in the paper today about a doctor who, with no history of mental illness, killed herself after working in ERs in NYC.

That made TV news, too. So sad.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 28, 2020, 06:41:40 pm
That made TV news, too. So sad.  :(

And she was 39 years old.  Very sad indeed. 

This came up during a zoom call with my colleagues.  We psychiatric folk are trying to support our fellow medical workers, because the trauma has been extreme.  We sometimes have several deaths a day and it takes a toll on people.  We lost our first hospital employee and that hit hard.

We have social workers embedded in the ICU teams.  No one is taking any time off, because we're still in a surge.  I'm working directly with positive patients and it's exhausting at times.  And I have to support my staff as well who are on the front lines.  I fear this thing will be with us in some shape or form for quite a while.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 28, 2020, 07:36:52 pm
We have social workers embedded in the ICU teams.  No one is taking any time off, because we're still in a surge.  I'm working directly with positive patients and it's exhausting at times.  And I have to support my staff as well who are on the front lines.  I fear this thing will be with us in some shape or form for quite a while.

I fear you're right, and it sounds like your job is tough these days.  :-\

My job is actually easier than usual, so I can't complain. I did take a bit of a risk covering the anti-shutdown protest on Saturday, working around idiots who -- maskless, non-distancing -- are by definition dangerous to be near. But I did my best to keep a distance.

"I'm not sick! I have no symptoms! Why should I stay home?" one guy said.

I talked to a couple carrying a sign that blamed not just the governor but also Bill Gates. Since then, I've gathered that Bill Gates is being blamed for something or other. In this case, they couple said Bill Gates is "practicing population control" by supporting vaccinations, which they insist are killing children. Because of course vaccinations are far more deadly than the diseases they're designed to prevent.  ::)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 28, 2020, 09:37:37 pm
And she was 39 years old.  Very sad indeed. 

This came up during a zoom call with my colleagues.  We psychiatric folk are trying to support our fellow medical workers, because the trauma has been extreme.  We sometimes have several deaths a day and it takes a toll on people.  We lost our first hospital employee and that hit hard.

We have social workers embedded in the ICU teams.  No one is taking any time off, because we're still in a surge.  I'm working directly with positive patients and it's exhausting at times.  And I have to support my staff as well who are on the front lines.  I fear this thing will be with us in some shape or form for quite a while.

Hang in there, bud.  :-*  And take care of yourself.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on April 28, 2020, 10:36:27 pm
Hang in there, bud.  :-*  And take care of yourself.

Thanks, friend.  :-*
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 02, 2020, 11:47:38 am
I echo that. And I wonder how these health professionals are holding up and getting fed, since you probably don't have time to cook, but deserve to have the best of sustenance.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on May 02, 2020, 01:55:54 pm
This came up during a zoom call with my colleagues.  We psychiatric folk are trying to support our fellow medical workers, because the trauma has been extreme.  We sometimes have several deaths a day and it takes a toll on people.  We lost our first hospital employee and that hit hard.

We have social workers embedded in the ICU teams.  No one is taking any time off, because we're still in a surge.  I'm working directly with positive patients and it's exhausting at times.  And I have to support my staff as well who are on the front lines.  I fear this thing will be with us in some shape or form for quite a while.


I can't even imagine the toll this is taking on our health care professionals.  Sending you all hugs and love!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 07, 2020, 11:53:15 am
Very good article about the origins of the new coronavirus:

"The Warnings" by David Quammen
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/why-werent-we-ready-for-the-coronavirus

Talk about heroes. Ali Khan is a former CDC scientist, now with the National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-borne, and Enteric Diseases and dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. He began by studying Ebola in Zaire and was instrumental in stopping SARS before it became a pandemic.

The last part covers the origins of the new virus in Wuhan. Will it put the kibosh on all these conspiracay theories? It did for me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 07, 2020, 01:30:13 pm
On a perhaps cheerier note, Naomi Fry's article about Zoom (April 27) made me laugh so hard I couldn't stop.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 08, 2020, 09:24:05 am
Will it put the kibosh on all these conspiracy theories? It did for me.

So wait, you're saying it's not a conspiracy among Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and George Soros to destroy the American economy to keep Trump from getting re-elected?!*

Thank God, at least vitamin D keeps you from getting it!*

 :laugh: :laugh:

*Things people told me in all sincerity they actually believe.


It's so funny -- I have never heard anyone even mention George Soros who wasn't a far-right-winger. I would never have heard of him if it weren't for right wingers! I still don't even know what country he's from or precisely what he's done to become liberals' beloved leader.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 08, 2020, 11:28:46 am
So wait, you're saying it's not a conspiracy among Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci and George Soros to destroy the American economy to keep Trump from getting re-elected?!*

Actually it's a conspiracy among the Great Orange Satan and his minions to overthrow the Constitution so he can become another Vladimir Putin and hold onto power for life.


Quote
Thank God, at least vitamin D keeps you from getting it!

I love the smell of Clorox in the morning.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 09, 2020, 09:59:21 am
Actually it's a conspiracy among the Great Orange Satan and his minions to overthrow the Constitution so he can become another Vladimir Putin and hold onto power for life.

His staff cooked up the virus recipe in a secret lab in Trump tower in Moscow. Which "supposedly" was never actually built. Yeah right, that's what they want you to believe. From there they transported the deadly virus to China.

The Trump Administration keeps pretending the virus isn't scary -- no masks, handshakes, standing close together -- to encourage people to spread COVID. It's why Trump recommended treating it with chloroquine or injecting Lysol, figuring that would take out at least some of the people who don't get it. COVID stands for Covert Operation Very Intelligent, Duh.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 09, 2020, 11:06:46 am
His staff cooked up the virus recipe in a secret lab in Trump tower in Moscow. Which "supposedly" was never actually built. Yeah right, that's what they want you to believe. From there they transported the deadly virus to China.

The Trump Administration keeps pretending the virus isn't scary -- no masks, handshakes, standing close together -- to encourage people to spread COVID. It's why Trump recommended treating it with chloroquine or injecting Lysol, figuring that would take out at least some of the people who don't get it. COVID stands for Covert Operation Very Intelligent, Duh.

Now that some members of the White House staff have tested positive for Covid-19, I think Trump should set a good example for the nation by having a nice drink of Clorox and Lysol on live TV.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 09, 2020, 11:08:07 am
Now that some members of the White House staff have tested positive for Covid-19, I think Trump should set a good example for the nation by having a nice drink of Clorox and Lysol on live TV.

I'd also like to see him shove a flashlight up his ass.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 09, 2020, 02:32:00 pm
Now that some members of the White House staff have tested positive for Covid-19, I think Trump should set a good example for the nation by having a nice drink of Clorox and Lysol on live TV.

 :laugh: :laugh:



I'd also like to see him shove a flashlight up his ass.

Wait, was that another one of his treatment recommendations?

Having spent two Saturday afternoons (not today, thankfully) with people who believe every crazy thing Trump says -- in fact, they believe things even crazier than what Trump says -- i have to wonder how many of them had consumed or injected Lysol on his recommendation. None probably, since they were all still standing, but maybe the protest groups would have been even bigger if not for the Lysol chuggers.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 09, 2020, 02:34:39 pm
Wait, was that another one of his treatment recommendations?

Yes, he talked about intense, or UV light killing the virus, and suggesting that could be used as a treatment. 

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 09, 2020, 03:54:58 pm
Yes, he talked about intense, or UV light killing the virus, and suggesting that could be used as a treatment. 

Oh, I thought you were saying that in a purely "FU Trump" way. So I was joking!

That might explain why at least a couple of the shutdown protesters insisted that vitamin D can prevent it.

Hey, by that measure -- and since you certainly can't trust Dr. Fauci and his ilk to provide knowledgable advice -- just about anything could work!

Why not try eating live goldfish? Jumping up and down on broken glass? Plunging your head into a bowl of Liquid Plumber? Just keep trying random things, and then if you don't get COVID, you'll know they worked!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 10, 2020, 10:52:15 am
That last bit was so funny! BTW, happy Mother's Day to all who have nurtured anything, even a little flower (shades of Le Petit Prince)!

Yesterday, I pulled off a 35-participant Zoom meeting with videos, Powerpoints, photos, presentations, Q&A, and a talk by Winona LaDuke. It's amazing how well Zoom works to pull that all together. The article you reference, Jeff, says that Zoom was started by a Chinese-born man and has grown fast to become a multi-billion-dollar company. This year, he made Zoom free for all elementary and secondary educational institutions. I really like Zoom's features, the chat, where you can soundlessly comment, the sharing of screens, and the segues from screen sharing to the "portrait gallery" of Hollywood Squares-type participant videos. I used to use Skype and it was intermittent with poor sound quality. I don't know what Zoom is doing differently, but it sure works well! 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 10, 2020, 11:13:00 am
I haven't read the article yet, but I feel like in a short time Zoom has become almost like Google and Uber -- a brand name that's quickly become a verb, so strongly connected with the action it describes that people might even use it when referring to other services. Like, I might google on Bing, and although Lyft is my rideshare go-to, I often say I'm ubering just because it's easier for others to understand.

Seems like Skype could someday become the MySpace to Zoom's Facebook. But too soon to tell, I guess ...


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 10, 2020, 12:49:22 pm
Yeah, if you told somebody you were Lyfting, they might ask, Lyfting what, or, say something like, Be sure to Lyft with your knees, not your back.

Have you Zoomed anyone today? It's Mothers' Day. Did your son Zoom you?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 10, 2020, 01:45:12 pm
Be sure to Lyft with your knees, not your back.

Have you Zoomed anyone today? It's Mothers' Day. Did your son Zoom you?

 :laugh:

I've only zoomed a couple of times, always in groups. My son will no doubt call, but if he wants to add a visual element he'll probably FaceTime.

Haha! I just reached for my phone to remind myself whether it was called Facechat or what (I don't use that one very much, either) and there was a text from my son saying he'd FaceTime me later, once he finishes some project he's working on.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on May 10, 2020, 03:40:34 pm
I learned a new word:  oysgezoomt, meaning tired of zooming.

As in:  "Ich bin azoy oysgezoomt", or, "I'm so tired or zooming!"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 11, 2020, 10:41:38 am
I learned a new word:  oysgezoomt, meaning tired of zooming.

As in:  "Ich bin azoy oysgezoomt", or, "I'm so tired or zooming!"

Handy!  :D

I'm not oysgezoomt in terms of Zoom itself. But I'm oysgezoomt as an alternative to persönlich sprechen. Or rather, geredt in mentsh, גערעדט אין מענטש.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 15, 2020, 11:33:08 am
These COVID-related articles get tiresome. I'm sorry but I wasn't able to finish the profile of Dr. Fauci. There have been some really good illustrations and photos.

How refreshing it was to read Bill Buford's article "Good Bread" about being a baker's apprentice in Lyon, France, in the April 13 issue. It's one that came while I was in Arizona. It's nice to have a couple of unread issues to fall back on because the latest issue was one I dispatched in less than an hour. Sometimes the articles and my mood just don't synch.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 15, 2020, 01:22:45 pm
These COVID-related articles get tiresome. I'm sorry but I wasn't able to finish the profile of Dr. Fauci.

See, that one fascinated me--because I remember how important he was in fighting the AIDS epidemic. If anybody could get us through this current plague it would be him--if it weren't for the politicians. I thank God he's still with us.

Some of these articles, like the Buford, must have been in the pipeline for some time. With people dying by the thousands, who cares that he learned to bake bread in France?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 16, 2020, 12:58:47 pm
See, that one fascinated me--because I remember how important he was in fighting the AIDS epidemic. If anybody could get us through this current plague it would be him--if it weren't for the politicians. I thank God he's still with us.

Unsurprisingly as I was less personally affected, I don't remember him from that. But similar thoughts were expressed by a guy I know on Nextdoor. com -- a gay man, really intelligent, one of the few sensible voices when the Nextdoor discussions get loony.

Have you heard that Fauci is considered kind of a heartthrob these days? Practically up there with Sam Elliott in the (very small) hot geezer club. And you probably heard (or saw) that SNL cast Brad Pitt to play him.

Quote
Some of these articles, like the Buford, must have been in the pipeline for some time. With people dying by the thousands, who cares that he learned to bake bread in France?[/font][/size]

I probably won't read it; I've left Buford books unfinished that were on subjects I'm more interested in. I don't know why; I've heard avid recommendations for them, and what I have read is well-written and mildly entertaining. But learning to bake fancy bread wouldn't interest me personally, virus or no.

However, a lot of people are making bread lately, so having the piece ready to run now is probably serendipitous.

It's interesting to think what articles they may still have in the pipeline but are holding for now. "The Benefits of Hugging a Total Stranger," for instance.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 18, 2020, 01:31:50 pm
In the last year or so, I've seen a small uptick in nature-related articles. And there's even been an article or two about agriculture! Will food related articles looking at the production side become common? It could happen! Who knew New Yorkers would become interested in the farms that supply them?!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 18, 2020, 04:20:30 pm
In the last year or so, I've seen a small uptick in nature-related articles. And there's even been an article or two about agriculture! Will food related articles looking at the production side become common? It could happen! Who knew New Yorkers would become interested in the farms that supply them?!

I've always wondered how New Yorkers -- i.e., most of the national media -- write about things ordinary people experience around the country. Like, what if they wanted to do a story about organizing your garage? Or for that matter, landscaping your yard?

But I bet news stories related to the production side of food production will become more and more common as meat supplies dwindle. At my grocery store, customers are limited to four meat products. Which is at least better than the one skimpy roll of paper towels you're allowed.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 18, 2020, 06:08:33 pm
Unsurprisingly as I was less personally affected, I don't remember him from that. But similar thoughts were expressed by a guy I know on Nextdoor. com -- a gay man, really intelligent, one of the few sensible voices when the Nextdoor discussions get loony.

I've never heard of Nextdoor.com. Is it new?

Quote
Have you heard that Fauci is considered kind of a heartthrob these days? Practically up there with Sam Elliott in the (very small) hot geezer club. And you probably heard (or saw) that SNL cast Brad Pitt to play him.

Heartthrob? Uh, no. ... I heard of Pitt's portrayal.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 18, 2020, 06:13:39 pm
In the last year or so, I've seen a small uptick in nature-related articles. And there's even been an article or two about agriculture! Will food related articles looking at the production side become common? It could happen! Who knew New Yorkers would become interested in the farms that supply them?!

I vaguely remember one article about the farm-to-table movement, and people doing urban farming. But I seem to remember that the farm-to-table movement was described as a First World kind of thing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 18, 2020, 06:28:43 pm
I've never heard of Nextdoor.com. Is it new?

Heartthrob? Uh, no. ...

Yes! I've seen several articles to that effect. Here's one from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-crush/609544/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/04/anthony-fauci-coronavirus-crush/609544/)

I can kind of see it. Of course, he's no Sam Elliott, but he's personable, knowledgeable, seemingly honest and has a cute accent.



Nextdoor.com has been around 5-10 years. It's a site where you can exchange information with your neighbors, and those in adjoining neighborhoods. Sometimes it's very useful, like if you're looking for a good painter or your dog is lost or you're wondering what all those sirens last night were about.

Other times ... less so. Like scoldy threads that go on for hundreds of comments about whether people should wear masks when walking outside (even on the almost deserted streets of my residential neighborhood).

The site is national (though you can only sign up for areas around your own address). In your living situation, it might not be as useful. Though maybe you have something similar in your condo building itself.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2020, 10:03:43 am
How did we manage to get articles by my favorite Jill Lepore in two consecutive issues, May 4 and May 11?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 19, 2020, 12:15:10 pm
How did we manage to get articles by my favorite Jill Lepore in two consecutive issues, May 4 and May 11?

For that matter, how does she manage to write them between writing books and being a history professor at Harvard and winning top awards like the Pulitzer and the National Book Award?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2020, 04:55:52 pm
For that matter, how does she manage to write them between writing books and being a history professor at Harvard and winning top awards like the Pulitzer and the National Book Award?

Two words: Graduate assistants.  ;D

But, yeah, I have no idea how she does it.  ???

Meanwhile, I'm in the midst of Evan Osnos' May 11 article about the support for the Great Orange Satan among the wealthy elites of Greenwich, Connecticut. I'm not surprised, considering how much money the stinking rich Koch brothers have poured into conservative political causes that would benefit the stinking rich Koch brothers. But Osnos is explaining a lot. I'd say these people sold their souls, but I think at least some of them had no souls to sell in the first place.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 20, 2020, 01:45:29 pm
From reading this week's Letters, it appears that the Sesame Street people did not think very highly of her article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 20, 2020, 05:17:42 pm
From reading this week's Letters, it appears that the Sesame Street people did not think very highly of her article.

She was certainly very critical at the end of the article. I was surprised. But then, I was too old for Sesame Street when it began and have no children, so pretty much all I knew about the show was Jim Henson's involvement and the Muppet characters that have become a part of the popular culture. I found the early history of the show, how it came about to be, quite interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 20, 2020, 06:41:48 pm
She was certainly very critical at the end of the article. I was surprised. But then, I was too old for Sesame Street when it began and have no children, so pretty much all I knew about the show was Jim Henson's involvement and the Muppet characters that have become a part of the popular culture. I found the early history of the show, how it came about to be, quite interesting.

Now I'm intrigued. I was too old for the show, too, and my children never really got into it. But critical? Hmm!

For some reason I saw a clip online the other day of Prince on the show with Muppets -- he had even written a song for the occasion. I have a fair amount of interest in Prince, but I couldn't get through the segment.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 21, 2020, 10:29:34 am
Now I'm intrigued. I was too old for the show, too, and my children never really got into it. But critical? Hmm!

For some reason I saw a clip online the other day of Prince on the show with Muppets -- he had even written a song for the occasion. I have a fair amount of interest in Prince, but I couldn't get through the segment.

I guess I picked up bits and pieces over the years. I don't recall knowing that Prince appeared on the show, but I do know that Angel Corella, now the artistic director of the Pennsylvania Ballet, appeared when he was a Big Deal in the world of ballet in New York City. (I'm not being sarcastic, calling him a Big Deal. Twenty-odd years ago, he was considered one of the greatest dancers of his generation. He really was a huge star.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 25, 2020, 06:58:21 pm
Of course I really liked Anthony Lane on overnight train travel (May 11).

I'm two issues behind, but I still may go back and read Jill Lepore on Kent State, and on Sesame Street, again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 25, 2020, 07:21:03 pm
I was reading a letter that was a bit critical of Jill Lepore's essay on loneliness and went to find my April 6 issue to read it again, because the letter writer echoed my own views that solitude need not always be a curse. But I couldn't find the issue, so I guess I'll have to read it online.

There was an author who wrote about a year ago about the rise in persons living alone. He viewed this as a recent phenomenon, as older people tended to move in with their children's families in the past and become a kind of servant/governess/etc. Either that or they would join in group living arrangements such as boarding houses, retirement homes, etc. Other options have sprung up; older people could move in to subsidized housing, patio homes, condos, or the dreaded trailer park. They could take in boarders who could help maintain the home or just be close by if needed. Until recently, few older people had the option of staying in their prime-years home or maintaining their own autonomy and privacy.

The author also addressed young people living alone, and the housing options developed for them. Oddly, young people don't seem to be interested in the small post-war houses that still exist, preferring lofts, multi-story condos, or co-housing arrangements. Young people often try to seek solitude in Nature, at least in my area, but are thwarted by hordes of other young people seeking the same thing.

I have given myself a precious gift, a home where I feel safe and at home by myself. I don't know if I am an outlier, but I do know that people stare at me when they see me mowing or on my roof turning on my swamp cooler. It gives them an uneasy feeling, I can tell, but it gives me an immense sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 26, 2020, 10:20:49 am
I was reading a letter that was a bit critical of Jill Lepore's essay on loneliness and went to find my April 6 issue to read it again, because the letter writer echoed my own views that solitude need not always be a curse.

I only skimmed part of Lepore's essay, but I have written on this topic and gotten the same response -- people feeling my thesis is incorrect because they themselves don't feel lonely. That's understandable, because it's an individual taste. But as a group, research has shown that older people are more socially isolated and more unhappy because of it.

At least, that was the case in the Before Times. Now isolated young people may be suffering as much if not more.

Quote
There was an author who wrote about a year ago about the rise in persons living alone. He viewed this as a recent phenomenon, as older people tended to move in with their children's families in the past and become a kind of servant/governess/etc. Either that or they would join in group living arrangements such as boarding houses, retirement homes, etc. Other options have sprung up; older people could move in to subsidized housing, patio homes, condos, or the dreaded trailer park. They could take in boarders who could help maintain the home or just be close by if needed. Until recently, few older people had the option of staying in their prime-years home or maintaining their own autonomy and privacy.

I think in the past older people remained closer to their families, whether in the same house or the same street or town. If they were physically capable of living on their own, they often did. If not, moving in with their children was often an option.

Now young people move farther away (a phenomenon that has been reversing, however). If older people can't live in their own homes anymore, there are various multi-unit options. Many of them have movie nights and birthday parties and shopping trips, etc., where residents can socialize, but it's not always one big happy family. My mom rarely left her room in assisted living. My aunt, who is very gregarious, was in a nursing home and actually preferred to stay there rather than move to an assisted living place because at the nursing home people went around and socialized with each other, where as in the assisted living they mostly stayed in their own units all day.

My grandmother-in-law lived to 105, living alone in her own (duplex with renter) home until she was in her 90s. Her son, my ex-FIL, lived close enough that he could check on her, do chores, take her to the doctor, and eventually she went to live with my in-laws. She was not a servant or governess -- if anything, it was the other way around. I think it was a happy way for her to live her last years.

Quote
Oddly, young people don't seem to be interested in the small post-war houses that still exist, preferring lofts, multi-story condos, or co-housing arrangements. Young people often try to seek solitude in Nature, at least in my area, but are thwarted by hordes of other young people seeking the same thing.

Young people are definitely more in favor of social, walkable neighborhoods with restaurants, stores, bars, coffee shops and multi-unit housing. Boomers often favor those environments, too. Or at least they did -- how the onslaught of a contagious illness that's harder to avoid in close quarters will affect that preference for density has yet to be seen.

Quote
I have given myself a precious gift, a home where I feel safe and at home by myself. I don't know if I am an outlier, but I do know that people stare at me when they see me mowing or on my roof turning on my swamp cooler. It gives them an uneasy feeling, I can tell, but it gives me an immense sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

Why would they feel uneasy, I wonder? Do they worry about your, or ...?

I have the same arrangement as you (sans the tenants) except that my son is still living with me. I have never totally minded having him around because I actually don't particularly like living alone. But for both of our sakes, it was getting time for him to get a place of his own or with friends. Then COVID hit, and I'm really glad to have him here -- we get along better now and he's been good company.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 26, 2020, 01:01:17 pm
I think in the past older people remained closer to their families, whether in the same house or the same street or town. If they were physically capable of living on their own, they often did. If not, moving in with their children was often an option.

Depending on how past is past, don't forget economics. Before Social Security and such, economic necessity  played a role in causing older people to live with their children, or sometimes the other way around. My grandparents raised eight children while living with my great-grandparents in a house that was owned by my great-grandparents.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 27, 2020, 10:09:49 am
Depending on how past is past, don't forget economics. Before Social Security and such, economic necessity  played a role in causing older people to live with their children, or sometimes the other way around.

True. Or they'd go to a poor house or a poor farm. I'm not sure there were even nursing homes, but in any case there certainly weren't assisted living or senior housing facilities.

But I think that at least in many cases people liked living in multi-generational homes. Old people wanted to die at home, offspring felt an obligation to care for them just as they'd received care as children.

I have a friend from Georgia the country who was studying for a grad degree in gerontology and through a university program was able to live in a nearby senior complex at a discounted rate in exchange for spending time with the older residents. She loved it and was happy to spend more time than was even required. She grew up in Georgia living close to her grandmother, knowing all her grandmother's friends, etc., and thinks it's weird and sad that in this country different generations aren't as well connected.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 03, 2020, 08:56:00 am
The fiction issue has arrived just in the nick of time. Only three works of fiction, though, but one of them by Ernest Hemingway!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 03, 2020, 09:25:09 am
The fiction issue has arrived just in the nick of time. Only three works of fiction, though, but one of them by Ernest Hemingway!

Wow, they got Ernest Hemingway to write a story for their fiction issue? That David Remnick is a genius!

I've noticed that in recent years fiction issues don't have a lot of full short stories, though they might scatter through some little page-long reminiscences by prominent fiction writers like Zadie Smith or Jonathan Franzen.

I'm reading the story in an April issue about the search for a cure for viruses. Finally I at least kind of understand the difference between a bacterial infection and a viral infection and why antibiotics only work on the former. If more people understood that, antibiotics wouldn't be losing their potency as fast because doctors wouldn't over-prescribe them. Of course doctors understand the difference, but what I've heard is that they write the prescriptions to placate patients, causing the bacteria to evolve faster and make the antibiotics ineffectual.

Other factors, as I understand it, are giving farm animals too many antibiotics and -- get this -- overuse of sanitizing gels like Purell! I once had a big bottle of Purell that I threw out long ago after hearing that people were using it unnecessarily and exacerbating the antibiotic problem.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 04, 2020, 08:56:45 pm
I am now three issues behind. I can't recall ever being that far behind.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 05, 2020, 09:28:45 am
I am now three issues behind. I can't recall ever being that far behind.

I can recall being a presidential administration behind!  :laugh:

I find it especially hard to keep up in "these times." I also feel sorry for the New Yorker staff -- by the time an issue comes out so much other stuff has happened that the content of that issue isn't as relevant. And much of it must take a long time to research and write. But when I saw the recent one I thought, oh, this is from the good old days when there were only two gigantic once-in-a-lifetime catastrophes.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 05, 2020, 12:16:12 pm
I've experienced a similar thing.... Just when I get my thoughts together to say something about an issue, everything changes, morphs or mutates into something else!

I've started looking at TNY website sometimes to get the freshest news. But long-form journalism is still or more important than ever.

Have you noticed that the articles sometimes change, especially the titles? For instance, "Fungus Among Us" by Hua Hsu is listed as "What can fungus teach us?" in the table of contents and "The Secret Lives of Fungi" online. It's a good article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-secret-lives-of-fungi (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-secret-lives-of-fungi)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 05, 2020, 12:28:25 pm
Have you noticed that the articles sometimes change, especially the titles? For instance, "Fungus Among Us" by Hua Hsu is listed as "What can fungus teach us?" in the table of contents and "The Secret Lives of Fungi" online. It's a good article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-secret-lives-of-fungi (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-secret-lives-of-fungi)

I read that yesterday, and I noticed conspicuously absent was any mention that some mushrooms can kill you, and you have to be careful when you forage for them.

Not a fan here, but I eat them when they are an ingredient in something (e.g., gravy). A county to the southwest of Philadelphia is a notable mushroom producing area. If I were to buy mushrooms, I'd buy them from there.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 05, 2020, 02:32:49 pm
So, you would be one of those mycophobes mentioned in the article, right?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 05, 2020, 02:38:10 pm
So, you would be one of those mycophobes mentioned in the article, right?

More or less, one of those who does not like the texture (or taste) of a mushroom when I have to eat it.

But if I didn't know better, my take-away from that article would be that all mushrooms are good, when that is not true.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 06, 2020, 10:53:32 am
The mycophagist community has a saying: There are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters. But there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 06, 2020, 11:06:45 am
 :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 09, 2020, 07:11:07 pm
Today I read "White Noise" and "Pursuit as Happiness" in the latest (fiction) issue. It's interesting to compare them. One is about Harvey Weinstein and the other is about (and written by) Ernest Hemingway. Have hetero white males progressed over the years, or have they regressed?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 09, 2020, 10:08:17 pm
Interesting! I’m reading “White Noise” as we speak. I was going to skip the Hemingway but now you’ve got me intrigued.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 10, 2020, 09:16:22 am
Both are well written and terse. I particularly liked how Emma Cline described a car as "popping along the gravel." That's exactly how it sounds!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 10, 2020, 10:45:27 pm
Tonight I was reading aloud to EDelMar about how the house in the Hitchcock movie Psycho echoes Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". He googled the painting on his phone and agreed with me that they had similarities. Later, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed the photo almost at the top was of "House by the Railroad"!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2020, 08:44:35 am
Tonight I was reading aloud to EDelMar about how the house in the Hitchcock movie Psycho echoes Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". He googled the painting on his phone and agreed with me that they had similarities. Later, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed the photo almost at the top was of "House by the Railroad"!  :o

Facebook knows all. That's why some people are concerned.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2020, 09:59:41 am
Tonight I was reading aloud to EDelMar about how the house in the Hitchcock movie Psycho echoes Edward Hopper's painting "House by the Railroad". He googled the painting on his phone and agreed with me that they had similarities. Later, when I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed the photo almost at the top was of "House by the Railroad"!  :o

You mean it was in your FB newsfeed as an ad? (As opposed to EDelMar or someone else posting it?)

Facebook knows all. That's why some people are concerned.

Lots of people are concerned. Hasn't Zuckerberg testified before Congress about that? Or is that about Russian interference and fake news in FB posts?

I've seen ads pop up on FB after I mention the item in a post. Or when I do something online elsewhere -- buy a pair of shoes, make a hotel reservation -- and up comes an ad for those exact shoes or that exact hotel. Which strikes me as less than perfectly targeted; if you just bought those shoes, why would you want to buy them again? But I guess they figure it's more effective to remind you of the store or hotel than to randomly guess some other similar thing and hope for the best.

But rarest of all is what must have happened between you and EDelMar, where your phone "hears" a conversation and then FB posts an ad. A friend said she had that experience when she and her son were discussing a particular brand of breakfast cereal while the phone was sitting in the room, and right after that it was in an ad on FB.

To me, the scariest one is the fake news, though. It seems pretty undeniable that, collusion or not, those foreign-made fake news items -- Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a NYC pizza shop!! -- influenced the election.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 11, 2020, 12:08:17 pm
Yes, it was an ad for a gallery and the first painting shown was of "House by the Railroad".

But, get this. Adam and I were having a conversation and I was reading out loud to him from the NY article. He googled the painting on his phone, and he is not on Facebook. My computer was closed and my phone was in another room. I don't have Alexa. I can only conclude that a lot of people I'm Facebook friends with also googled that painting.

The whole part about the connections between Hitchcock and Hopper was fascinating. We have plans to see "North by Northwest" which I've never seen. It seems like they captured the Zeitgeist of that era.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 11, 2020, 12:33:17 pm
Wait! I just realized how this strange coincidence might have happened. A couple of days ago, under a photo of downtown Shoshoni, Wyoming, I wrote "this is my Hopper painting." So, cue the Hopper paintings! But that particular one? It's not one of his most famous. But, maybe because of the NY article, it might be gaining traction.

Now I've been looking all over for a hi-res version of this photo. I know I've got one somewhere on a hard disk or a phone, but I can't put my hands on it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 11, 2020, 01:56:21 pm
I wouldn't call this "a strange coincidence." I'm not particularly prone to conspiracy theories (except when it comes to social media  ;D ), but I've written before that it's creeped me out when I've been looking at, say, the JCPenny website on my PC in my office, and then I come home and get ads for JCPenney on my home PC. The office and home are roughly 26 blocks apart, and there is no connection between my office PC and my home PC. I can't explain it, but I'm sure that's not a coincidence.

(Hillary was operating that child sex ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington, not New York.  ;D )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 11, 2020, 02:15:19 pm
What browser do you use? I used to use Firefox. At one time you could get a profile of yourself based on your Google searches.

At work, I was a 70-year-old man; at home I was a 19-year-old girl. So the two computers were not in communication. As for why they were so different, the older man is easy: I covered aging at the time so was often looking up terms like alzheimer's and home care. At home ... well, apparently my googing choices aren't as sophisticated as I would have thought.  :laugh:

Anyway, now I use Chrome, which automatically syncs on all your computers. So if I looked myself up now, I guess I would be a 45-year-old nonbirary person.

Buf of course Google Chrome could easily track my browsing. Have fun looking through my searches for various models of push-reel lawnmowers, Putin.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 11, 2020, 07:23:58 pm

Buf of course Google Chrome could easily track my browsing. Have fun looking through my searches for various models of push-reel lawnmowers, Putin.

I have one of those and would gladly let you have it, if you were local. It works well for light duty, but you have to get the blades resharpened after a year or so.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2020, 10:16:29 am
I have one of those and would gladly let you have it, if you were local. It works well for light duty, but you have to get the blades resharpened after a year or so.

Thanks! I had one for about 12 years, did not always remember to get the blades sharpened annually, and eventually it just wore out -- you'd have to go over everything twice. So I bought a rechargeable electric mower, but now the batteries need replacing for the second time in the 8-9 years I've owned it. Apparently if you keep it in your garage over the winter you're supposed to either bring the batteries indoors or charge them every month or two, which I had heard years ago, forgot immediately and never did, including this past winter.

New batteries would cost >$100. My yard is small, I'm moving at some point and the mower is bulky and heavy, so I decided to get another push reel mower. I talked to a hardware store guy who said they've been redesigned, work much better now and only have to be sharpened every 10 years or so. The one I have in mind is small and weighs 25 pounds.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 12, 2020, 11:11:53 am
An interesting comment, to me, anyway. But one that will never appear in The New Yorker! Perhaps we should submit something and widen their horizons!

After finishing the fiction issue, I'm struck by how the different articles and works of fiction seem to tie in, balance, and riff off each other. It seems like this issue was given a lot of thought.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 12, 2020, 11:41:45 am
An interesting comment, to me, anyway. But one that will never appear in The New Yorker! Perhaps we should submit something and widen their horizons!

Sorry ... I guess I did go into a little more detail about my lawnmower journey than most people needed, especially since many of us don't have lawns.  ::)  :laugh:

Quote
After finishing the fiction issue, I'm struck by how the different articles and works of fiction seem to tie in, balance, and riff off each other. It seems like this issue was given a lot of thought.

I've read one or two of the short takes and am midway through Emma Cline's Harvey Weinstein story. You wonder how a novelist would be able to accurately depict his life from his own perspective, but so far it seems to work. So now I'm more interested in reading her novel, The Girls, which is fiction from the perspective of women in the Manson family.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 14, 2020, 03:53:58 pm


Next issue's cover:




(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaetKwxUEAI9xIg?format=png&name=small)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 18, 2020, 09:47:36 am
I've read one or two of the short takes and am midway through Emma Cline's Harvey Weinstein story. You wonder how a novelist would be able to accurately depict his life from his own perspective, but so far it seems to work. So now I'm more interested in reading her novel, The Girls, which is fiction from the perspective of women in the Manson family.

I finally finished the Harvey story -- really liked it. I'm going to download a free sample of The Girls on my Kindle and then possibly read the whole book. I hardly ever read novels, but lately I've been in the mood for one. Maybe because no nonfiction seems to apply to reality anymore.  :-\

I'm maybe midway through Hemingway's contribution. Not liking it so far, but I've never been a big Hemingway fan, except for Hills Like White Elephants. I might have liked a couple of his short stories in college, but I don't remember them.

I think of Hemingway and Fitzgerald as being like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and I'm a much bigger Fitzgerald fan. (Although in that analogy, Fitgerald is probably the Beatles, and I prefer the Stones.)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 18, 2020, 04:17:09 pm
I'm a little surprised you don't like Hemingway because he was a journalist.

But his stories and novels are mostly about himself and that can get tiresome, plus he had some sexist notions that wouldn't fly today.

I found his novel Across the River and Into the Trees instrumental in helping me understand my father and others of his generation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 18, 2020, 04:46:02 pm
I'm a little surprised you don't like Hemingway because he was a journalist.

There are plenty of journalists I don't like!  :laugh:

No, I probably should read one of his novels to say for sure. I've only read his short stories. I also didn't like that he dissed F. Scott, whose writing I loved before I read his. I can see that his unadorned style was probably novel and influential in his time. I do like Raymond Carver's version of that style.

I lived in Sun Valley, ID, for a couple of summers in college. Hemingway had lived there for a while and his family still did. They included Margaux Hemingway, who also killed herself, and Mariel Hemingway, who starred as Woody Allen's underage girlfriend in Manhattan. Not long ago, I saw that somebody had made a film about how Mariel leads this ultra-healthy lifestyle in an attempt to avoid her family's tragic suicidal legacy. I looked unsuccessfully for the video.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 18, 2020, 06:31:33 pm
When I was a kid my mother gave me a copy of The Old Man and the Sea. I didn't get it.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 18, 2020, 10:33:00 pm

Next issue's cover:




(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaetKwxUEAI9xIg?format=png&name=small)


That one arrived in my mailbox today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 19, 2020, 11:44:06 am



That one arrived in my mailbox today.


I still don't have it but I think lately they typically come on Fridays or Saturdays (used to be Tuesdays).



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 19, 2020, 12:48:19 pm
Well, I just saw the postal carrier walk right past my house, so I won't be getting my New Yorker or any of the usual exciting bills and real estate agents' pitches and cards with home-repair coupons. Or even that weekly packet of something -- I guess it's ads and coupons but I can't say for sure because I never so much as glance at it before throwing it in the recycling.

Meanwhile, however, I found this, which identifies all the people pictured (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cover-story/cover-story-2020-06-22) and says what happened to them. It was interesting although I thought some of the descriptions of their deaths were too brief.
 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 23, 2020, 05:07:30 pm
I'm feeling uneasy about my job right now, so this was probably not the best time to have read Nathan Heller on homelessness and Ariel Levy on the novelist Lionel Shriver (in particular, the first three paragraphs). (June 1 issue)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2020, 09:46:18 am
Finally made it through the Hemingway story. It was a slog.

First, I'm not interested in fishing. And it wasn't about a fishing trip where other stuff happens, but a fishing trip in which every cast line and reel spin are described in lengthy, meticulous detail. I wish I could have skimmed through that part, but it constituted most of the story.

 I'm not particularly interested in sheep herding either, so I'd be saying the same thing about BBM if the story was all a detailed account of how herding is done.

I suppose it's all a metaphor for something or other, but it was so boring I couldn't be bothered to analyze what it might be. Missed chances, perhaps? How life is a series of times when you briefly think you're going to win in some big way but then it all comes crashing down?

But his stories and novels are mostly about himself and that can get tiresome

That wouldn't be a problem for me. I love memoirs and personal essays.

Quote
plus he had some sexist notions that wouldn't fly today

No doubt, although I don't think I saw anything problematic in this particular story. But imagine a woman author writing a long extremely detailed account of an embroidery project. That would never happen (probably). But since fishing tends to be more of a "man's sport," it's assumed that everyone must be interested in it.
 
Meanwhile, I liked the Harvey Weinstein one by Emma Cline so much I'm now reading her critically acclaimed novel The Girls, a fictionalized account of Manson family members. So far it's really interesting -- she gets into the head of one of the young women in much the way she does with Harvey Weinstein -- gives the perspective of an extremely flawed person in an empathetic but unblinking way.

It's a little too lyrical for me, in parts -- her language and similes are often really nice but sometimes a bit over the top.

But here's one for you, Lee: Remember how you liked the word "popping" to describe the sound of a car driving over gravel? There's a similar sentence in the book, althogh this time the sound is "crackling," which also works!




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 24, 2020, 12:32:10 pm
Here's a link to a list of needlework fiction! https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/needlework-fiction (https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/needlework-fiction) Your post conjured up distant memories of books, movies, and art exhibits related to domestic pursuits. Yes, they are metaphorical. Yes, they are allegorical.

I hope you didn't feel that you had to read the story because of something one of us said about it. I found it interesting, as I always do Hemingway, because of the little clues he gives to his hidden and authentic nature. The details are there to create a smooth and impenetrable macho surface, but what are the hidden truths? I think they can be found in the description of the marlin. That is where Hemingway's true self lies.

It was also interesting to contrast the two articles. What is missing within a man that would lead him to pursue big fish, in the case of Hemingway, or women, in the case of Weinstein? What did they lose and what are they seeking, really?

I'd like to hear more about The Girls. Meanwhile, there's a story by Franz Kafka in the latest issue!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2020, 03:10:42 pm
I'd like to hear more about The Girls. Meanwhile, there's a story by Franz Kafka in the latest issue!

Would you consider giving us cover dates instead of just "the latest"? The latest issue I have has George Floyd on the cover.

Meanwhile, when the June 8 & 15 issue arrived, I skipped over everything to read the article on Longfellow.

I don't remember the exact details anymore. It may have been in connection with the American Lit. class I had in high school, but I do remember it occurred to me that back before radio, TV, movies, etc., people read things like "The Song of Hiawatha" for entertainment. (I'm sure they read Robert Browning's dramatic monologues for entertainment, too.) I found a book of Longfellow in the school library. I think specifically I wanted to read "The Courtship of Myles Standish." I don't remember what the book was called, but I wish I had a copy of it now.

A little anecdote about me and that volume:  The book included one poem (of course I can't remember the title) with the first two lines Our God, a tower of strength is He/ a goodly wall and weapon. That seemed familiar, especially the rhythm. Then it struck me why: It was a translation, by Longfellow, of Luther's hymn Ein Feste Burg is Unser Gott (usually translated as A Mighty Fortress is our God). In the usual English translation, the hymn begins A mighty fortress is our God/ A bulwark never failing. The meter is the same as the Longfellow. That's why it seemed familiar.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2020, 10:40:36 pm
Here's a link to a list of needlework fiction! https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/needlework-fiction (https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/needlework-fiction) Your post conjured up distant memories of books, movies, and art exhibits related to domestic pursuits. Yes, they are metaphorical. Yes, they are allegorical.

Cool, but (I’m on my phone so I haven’t gone to the link yet) what are their authors’ names? Are they legendary members of The Canon?  Is anyone required to read them for school? I guess I shouldn’t have made it sound like such a thing would never be published. And I’m sure a lot of fishing stories remoain obscure as well. But the literary world has definitely been a patriarchy with less acceptance of domestic issues, at least until lately.

And of course there is some domestic writing that is canonesque. The Yellow Room. Kate Chopin, Virginia Wolf. But there are a lot of studies and essays that show the imbalance. For example, Wolf’s “A Room of 9ned Own.”

Quote
hope you didn't feel that you had to read the story because of something one of us said about it.

Oh no. Only in that it made me curious and I felt I should give Papa a chance.

[quote I found it interesting, as I always do Hemingway, because of the little clues he gives to his hidden and authentic nature. The details are there to create a smooth and impenetrable macho surface, but what are the hidden truths? I think they can be found in the description of the marlin. That is where Hemingway's true self lies. [/quote]

You should teach a class! I’m not teasing — k seriously. Those things would be interesting and maybe I’m put off enough by my lack of interest in deep sea fishing. I did see several paragraphs toward the end that I actually circled thinking I found complex and interesting. The one about Mr. Josie’s nice face was one.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2020, 09:07:34 am
What is missing within a man that would lead him to pursue big fish, in the case of Hemingway, or women, in the case of Weinstein?

Insecurity about their manhood.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 25, 2020, 09:53:08 am
Cool, but (I’m on my phone so I haven’t gone to the link yet) what are their authors’ names? Are they legendary members of The Canon?  Is anyone required to read them for school? I guess I shouldn’t have made it sound like such a thing would never be published. And I’m sure a lot of fishing stories remain obscure as well. But the literary world has definitely been a patriarchy with less acceptance of domestic issues, at least until lately.

I'm sorry if the above sounded snarky. I should never try to write long comments on my phone! (That, and I can see my post was full of typos.) :laugh: I read the list, and had never heard of any of the authors or the books. The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club is not quite up there with The Old Man and the Sea.

But then, very few books are! Including books about fishing.

There definitely is a gender imbalance in many aspects of writing and literature, including bylines in the New Yorker. But I'm sure there's something to this Hemingway guy; he seems to have caught on.  :laugh:





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2020, 12:04:12 pm
There definitely is a gender imbalance in many aspects of writing and literature, including bylines in the New Yorker.

That's an interesting point. I wonder if anybody has ever tried to run the numbers on that?  ???

Then, too, are there women writers covering stories like Dexter Filkins, Jon Lee Anderson, and even Ben Taub? I don't remember.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 25, 2020, 12:57:33 pm
Would you consider giving us cover dates instead of just "the latest"? The latest issue I have has George Floyd on the cover.


The Kafka story is in the June 29 issue. I'm now reading the article about King David, and noticed that the word "cult" appears at least twice.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 25, 2020, 01:01:49 pm
That's an interesting point. I wonder if anybody has ever tried to run the numbers on that?  ???

Yes, Jessica Esch: https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/new-yorker-gender-tally-2017-jessica-esch (https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/new-yorker-gender-tally-2017-jessica-esch)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2020, 01:29:30 pm
The Kafka story is in the June 29 issue. I'm now reading the article about King David, and noticed that the word "cult" appears at least twice.

Five years ago the Briefly Noted book column included a novel about David called The Secret Chord. It seems the author portrays David's relationship with Jonathan as sexual, and his encounter with Bathsheba as a rape.

Maybe some day I'll finally get around to buying and reading it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 25, 2020, 04:00:02 pm
You should teach a class! I’m not teasing — k seriously. Those things would be interesting and maybe I’m put off enough by my lack of interest in deep sea fishing. I did see several paragraphs toward the end that I actually circled thinking I found complex and interesting. The one about Mr. Josie’s nice face was one.

I actually did start to write a book one time. It was called How to Read a Book (oddly that name was not taken). I use a method that pays particular attention to things like colors, names, weather, etc. The idea is that a writer chooses these things for a reason.

So, this is clearly a Christian allegory, as there are many references, starting with "Mr. Josie", the boat owner and mentor of the author. He chastises the police who are like the money lenders in the temple, and keeps a book of promises to provide fish for the community. He even tells the author to go take a shower. Baptism? And later pours salt water on him as he holds the fishing pole and line. Mr. Josie has a deal for "Cap": lay off the womanizing, follow me, and I will give you riches and big fish. Recognizing this, the author follows all of his instructions dutifully and becomes like his apostle.

Of course, the parallels of the police to our own time are eerily abundant. In fact, the story caused me to reflect that the U.S. is now a Third World country.  :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 26, 2020, 10:54:27 am
That's an interesting point. I wonder if anybody has ever tried to run the numbers on that?  ???

An organization called VIDA has been taking inventory of women vs. men in terms of bylines and reviewed books for about 10 years. Most have become more balanced, incrementally, over the decade but there's still a noticeable disparity.

 https://www.vidaweb.org/the-count/the-2018-vida-count/ (https://www.vidaweb.org/the-count/the-2018-vida-count/)

Here's the New Yorker through 2018:

(http://www.vidaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-New-Yorker-Historical-Data-2018-1160x1031.png)(http://www.vidaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-New-Yorker-2018-VIDA-Count-1160x1057.png)


Then there's all kinds of anecdotal stuff. One that comes to mind is that the year Jennifer Eagan won a National Book Critics Circle award and Jonathan Franzen was a competitor. The LA Times published the story with Franzen's photo on the first page and Eagan's on the jump. "Jonathan Franzen loses book award to some lady" was the satirical headline of one of the stories criticizing the choice.

Quote
Then, too, are there women writers covering stories like Dexter Filkins, Jon Lee Anderson, and even Ben Taub? I don't remember.

Do you mean are there women war correspondents? Sure. I don't know any except Christiane Amanpour. But then, I had to google the guys you mentioned. War articles are way down on my "duty" list. Why do you say "even" Ben Taub? (I see Ben Taub just won a Pulitzer. In his photo, he looks to be about 23.)

Here's the list of women war correspondents:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_war_correspondents (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Women_war_correspondents)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 26, 2020, 11:01:55 am
I actually did start to write a book one time. It was called How to Read a Book (oddly that name was not taken). I use a method that pays particular attention to things like colors, names, weather, etc. The idea is that a writer chooses these things for a reason.

So, this is clearly a Christian allegory, as there are many references, starting with "Mr. Josie", the boat owner and mentor of the author. He chastises the police who are like the money lenders in the temple, and keeps a book of promises to provide fish for the community. He even tells the author to go take a shower. Baptism? And later pours salt water on him as he holds the fishing pole and line. Mr. Josie has a deal for "Cap": lay off the womanizing, follow me, and I will give you riches and big fish. Recognizing this, the author follows all of his instructions dutifully and becomes like his apostle.


Excellent analysis, Lee! I'm familiar with the techniques, but I'm not always good at applying them. In this case, I thought it had something to do with life accomplishments. I'm probably partly more oblivious because I'm not Christian, but still. Given our current conversation about baptism on the other thread, I should have at least recognized that one!  :laugh:

Coincidentally, I first learned about that sort of deep analysis when reading The Great Gatsby. And of course we've all done our share of it with BBM!





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 27, 2020, 03:52:25 pm

Do you mean are there women war correspondents? Sure. I don't know any except Christiane Amanpour. But then, I had to google the guys you mentioned. War articles are way down on my "duty" list. Why do you say "even" Ben Taub? (I see Ben Taub just won a Pulitzer. In his photo, he looks to be about 23.)

I don't follow things like the Pulitzers, so that's news to me. He probably was about 23 when the picture was taken. I'm sure he's been discussed before. If I remember correctly, he went right out of the Ivy League into The New Yorker. I don't recall him writing the sort of stories that Dexter Filkins and Jon Lee Anderson write. They're not necessarily war correspondents. Filkins had an article about Iran in the May 25 issue--not a war story. I thought I remembered something by Anderson recently, but I can't locate it. I tend to associate them with stuff about politics in not-particularly-American-friendly places. But maybe if you read them you wouldn't have had to look them up. ...  ;)  Taub's May 18 article about the guy who wanted to dive to the deepest point in all the oceans  maybe qualifies for a Filkins-Anderson--type story.

I now think I remember something--maybe about Syria?--or something in the Middle East by a woman writer within the past couple of years, but I'd never be able to find it.

Incidentally, I'm now reading Emma Cline's story. I noticed that to refer to a woman, she uses blonde as a noun but blond as an adjective. I'm not saying I disagree with the usage, jut that I found it interesting because I'm not used to seeing them both used in that way in the same paragraph.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 29, 2020, 11:46:18 am
I tend to associate them with stuff about politics in not-particularly-American-friendly places.

Yeah, I guess that would be a better way to put it.

I generally look at stories like that and think, "Oh, this looks really important" and then never get back to it.

If you google "best middle-east correspondents" you'll see a ton of women. I don't know how many have written for the New Yorker, though.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 29, 2020, 12:15:17 pm
I generally look at stories like that and think, "Oh, this looks really important" and then never get back to it.

That happens to me regularly, too, though not with the Filkins-Anderson--type articles.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 30, 2020, 09:22:42 am
That happens to me regularly, too, though not with the Filkins-Anderson--type articles.

I'll keep that in mind and try one sometime. I must have read a Jon Lee Anderson story or two at some point.

In other news, I finally finished an article in an old issue about the scientific difficulty of finding virus treatments. That was really informative about all the challenges involved. I didn't even know what a virus was, exactly, and it helps you understand things like that.

Now I'm reading the Hilton Als piece about his childhood in the latest issue. It's really good too, though of course in a different way. It's probably the best thing I've read since George Floyd died about what it feels like to be black in America, especially growing up in poor neighborhoods as he did. It goes way deeper than other things I've seen.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 30, 2020, 10:34:02 am
Now I'm reading the Hilton Als piece about his childhood in the latest issue. It's really good too, though of course in a different way. It's probably the best thing I've read since George Floyd died about what it feels like to be black in America, especially growing up in poor neighborhoods as he did. It goes way deeper than other things I've seen.

You mean "Homecoming" (June 29)?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 30, 2020, 01:27:53 pm
I've been forgetting that I wanted to mention that I love that note about NewYorker.com at the end of Emma Cline's story:

"Emma Cline on fictionalizing odious men."

I like that word odious. Kind of onomatopoetic, don't you think?

And I was amused by Doreen St. Felix's comment in her article about streaming services: "We've invented cable."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 07, 2020, 06:11:56 pm
I never read the restaurant column, but the one in the June 22 issue caught my eye. I was amused by the quotation, "Ham held the same rating as the basic black dress. If you had a ham in the meat house, any situation could be faced."

It reminded me of a friend of mine from long ago. He once said to me that as soon as someone died, his partner baked a ham.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 22, 2020, 05:12:19 pm
I was going to make a comment about the "latest" issue, but then another one came today! July 27. It's interesting too, though, because it appears most if not all of the articles are from long-ago issues. At first I wondered, what could Calvin Trillin have to say about Martin Luther King Jr.? Well, maybe not much in 2020 but plenty in 1964. But my first tip off was the fiction: Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."

But the issue before that,  July 20, has several interesting articles, including one by Jill Lepore on the history of police. Also one about the history of plagues that I've referred to recently when talking to people who think all this mask and stay-home business is stupid and COVID is no longer a threat. Plagues, of course, usually went on for years, killing a third of Europe and so on.

But the point of the plague piece is that plagues are actually good in a way because they refresh society, helped launched the Renaissance, stuff like that.

My first thought was, that's excellent news! Everything will be better! Then -- oh, wait. It usually takes about a century or so.

But here's the most amazing thing about the July 20 issue. The Shouts & Murmurs is actually funny, something I've seen happen maybe five times in its entire history. Also, I literally LOLed at *two* of their cartoons, which has almost never happened in the entire history of the New Yorker. At least since James Thurber moved on.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 23, 2020, 08:42:19 am
I'm still way behind in my issues. I'm only up to the July 6 & 13 issues, though, of course, I always jump ahead and read anything by Jill Lepore as soon as I see her by-line.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 23, 2020, 10:57:55 am
I'm still way behind in my issues. I'm only up to the July 6 & 13 issues, though, of course, I always jump ahead and read anything by Jill Lepore as soon as I see her by-line.


I think you're much more methodical (and probably neater) than I am. I've got stacks of New Yorkers in several places in the house, many of them open to a particular article I was reading but then got distracted by something else.

Was Jeffrey Toobin's piece about how Robert Mueller screwed up in the July 6/13 issue? Anyway, I read that all the way through because the overall thesis and some of the individual points are interesting, but the play-by-play is really boring to read from beginning to end. I suppose he's writing for history or something, but I would have preferred that in about 1,000 words.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 23, 2020, 11:18:29 am
I think you're much more methodical (and probably neater) than I am. I've got stacks of New Yorkers in several places in the house, many of them open to a particular article I was reading but then got distracted by something else.

I've been reading just about everything in every issue, and in the order they arrive (except for skipping ahead for Jill Lepore), which isn't necessarily my usual habit.


Quote
Was Jeffrey Toobin's piece about how Robert Mueller screwed up in the July 6/13 issue? Anyway, I read that all the way through because the overall thesis and some of the individual points are interesting, but the play-by-play is really boring to read from beginning to end. I suppose he's writing for history or something, but I would have preferred that in about 1,000 words.

Yes, its that issue. I started that article yesterday. I'm not very far along, and already I'm horrified at the opportunity that was missed. (I've been pissed off at John Bolton for waiting to write a book instead of coming forward when he might have done some good, but that's another matter.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 23, 2020, 12:15:56 pm
Yes, its that issue. I started that article yesterday. I'm not very far along, and already I'm horrified at the opportunity that was missed. (I've been pissed off at John Bolton for waiting to write a book instead of coming forward when he might have done some good, but that's another matter.)

I would have preferred it in bullet points, actually.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 24, 2020, 09:06:13 pm
Today I read the July 6 & 13 issue article about rabbit fever. The parallels are obvious; I'm sure that's why they ran it.

It looks like all plagues come out of China.

From time to time I've thought I would like to have a rabbit as a pet.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 25, 2020, 09:35:27 am
From time to time I've thought I would like to have a rabbit as a pet.

I had one in about seventh grade. Not long after I got it, I was showing it off to some of the neighbor kids. I took it out of its cage and set it on the grass.

I'd forgotten that our dog, Twinkle, had gotten loose earlier in the day, as she was wont to do -- disappearing until she eventually came home or was picked up by a dog catcher.

Picture an idyllic scene of children circled around a cute bunny. Suddenly Twinkle shot out of the woods behind the house and through our group. She didn't even slow down. I could hear the rabbit squeaking and we threw stuff at Twinkle, but to no avail.

Not long afterward, I got another rabbit, which also didn't last long. Not a victim of violence, i don't think; it appeared to have dug its way out of its cage somehow.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 29, 2020, 09:59:27 am
It looks like all plagues come out of China.

What??? I thought Dr. Fauci created the coronavirus?! Fox News says so!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 29, 2020, 10:10:02 am
What??? I thought Dr. Fauci created the coronavirus?! Fox News says so!

Not all by himself! He had help from Bill Gates and George Soros.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 29, 2020, 09:17:11 pm
Oh, no, it's definitely China. Isn't it the Kung Fu Flu?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 30, 2020, 09:50:18 am
Oh, no, it's definitely China. Isn't it the Kung Fu Flu?

I've heard all kinds of different hoax beliefs among members of the conspiracy theorist community. It's no worse than the flu, doctors are required to list deaths as COVID even if they aren't, you can't get it if you're young and healthy, Vitamin D can prevent it ... and on and on.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 05, 2020, 08:46:13 pm
I'm now up to the July 27 issue. I remember the Toni Morrison article, but I wish they had included the original publication date of the stories they reprinted.

Edit to Add: Well, duh. If I'd paid attention I would have noticed that they included the original publication date above the article title.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 10, 2020, 02:07:36 pm
I just went through a stack of old New Yorkers that I "hadn't finished" but still "planned to read."  ::) I try to do that once or twice a year.

My usual practice is to throw out any that date back to the preceding presidential administration. (Then I rip out and staple individual articles that look good, stack them up, and then never read those either.) I don't think I have any from before 2017, let's hope, but this time I picked an even easier sorting method.

I threw out any that came out before March. I figured the world has changed so much since then a lot of the pieces will either no longer be relevant or will seem trivial in comparison to our current multiple crises. I realize I'm probably throwing out some great timeless articles (and probably quite a few "duty" ones  :laugh:) but I already have way more to read than I could get to even if I quit my job and read full time. So if I didn't pounce on them when the magazine first arrived, they probably weren't a priority in the first place.

Another silver lining to the pandemic -- it lets you weed out New Yorkers faster.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 10, 2020, 04:37:44 pm
I'm now up to the July 27 issue. I remember the Toni Morrison article, but I wish they had included the original publication date of the stories they reprinted.

Edit to Add: Well, duh. If I'd paid attention I would have noticed that they included the original publication date above the article title.  ::)


Don't feel too special. When I sat down with that issue, I leafed through it and had a feeling that most of it was not timely and relevant, like other recent issues have been. I even looked at the fiction, "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, and thought "well I read that in high school; it must be some kind of anniversary republishing". But I didn't put 2 and 2 together and notice that ALL of the articles were old! I thought Calvin Trillin's piece on MLK was a memoir.  :P

And Katherine, I think I will adopt your system! I'll throw out all the pre-pandemic issues after leafing through them to see all the crowds mingling freely and reminesce.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 10, 2020, 04:39:06 pm
I wish they had chosen "Brokeback Mountain" to republish rather than "The Lottery."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 10, 2020, 07:07:46 pm
Good point. “The Lottery” is a classic, but Lee is right, people read it in high school. Maybe they wanted to say “Nah, nah! We first published this story everybody reads in high school!” That sounds like something David Remnick would do.

If they wanted to show off, they could have published “Hiroshima” — or maybe excerpts, since I believe the original took up the whole magazine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 10, 2020, 09:52:37 pm
It occurred to me to wonder if they were going for a theme. (What do Martin Luther King, Toni Morrison, Larry Kramer, Shirley Jackson, and Cesar Chavez have in common? They're all dead. [Of course, Margaret Fuller is, too, but she's been dead since 1850.]) But Alicia Garza and James Hansen don't fit that pattern, so that can't be it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 11, 2020, 11:38:06 am
Plus, the first five are household words in my household, whereas the last two are not.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 11, 2020, 01:26:47 pm
Plus, the first five are household words in my household, whereas the last two are not.

Same here. (I looked them up to make sure they aren't dead, too.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 20, 2020, 12:07:48 pm
The very end of the article about the Army Corps of Engineers (Aug. 3 & 10) made me cry.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 20, 2020, 12:19:01 pm
Good to know, I probably would have skipped that one otherwise but now I'll take a look.

The Joseph McCarthy one is interesting -- it's amazing how much that guy had in common with our current president. I'm reading the soap one, also interesting.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 20, 2020, 04:12:37 pm
The Joseph McCarthy one is interesting -- it's amazing how much that guy had in common with our current president. I'm reading the soap one, also interesting.

The McCarthy one is indeed very interesting. I haven't gotten to the Clean one yet. I'm reading the Police one now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 23, 2020, 05:14:03 pm
I've started the Jon Lee Anderson article (August 17), and I'm finding it really interesting because the subject is ... Jon Lee Anderson. As I've been reading it, I've been thinking that to have a life like his, you have to be the sort of person who doesn't worry about where his next meal is coming from (or what it will be), or where you're going to sleep that night, or when you'll get your next bath. You can't have any lifelong chronic health issues, and it helps to have connections. He had family connections; not everybody has a father who served in the U.S. Foreign Service or a geologist uncle. It takes imagination, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2020, 10:06:57 am
I've started the Jon Lee Anderson article (August 17), and I'm finding it really interesting because the subject is ... Jon Lee Anderson. As I've been reading it, I've been thinking that to have a life like his, you have to be the sort of person who doesn't worry about where his next meal is coming from (or what it will be), or where you're going to sleep that night, or when you'll get your next bath. You can't have any lifelong chronic health issues, and it helps to have connections. He had family connections; not everybody has a father who served in the U.S. Foreign Service or a geologist uncle. It takes imagination, too.

It probably helps to be male, too. Ariel Levy's "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" talks about how much she loves dashing around the world to foreign countries, apparently often by herself. But if you remember what happened in the story, you'll know a theme of the essay is how much this lifestyle can be different for a woman.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2020, 11:44:36 am
It probably helps to be male, too. Ariel Levy's "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" talks about how much she loves dashing around the world to foreign countries, apparently often by herself. But if you remember what happened in the story, you'll know a theme of the essay is how much this lifestyle can be different for a woman.

I don't remember that at all.  :(

I'm sure you're right about it helping to be a man. I'm sure a woman has to face some things that a man doesn't simply because she's a woman.

I do remember an article by a woman that had something to do with the Middle East, but I'm afraid I don't remember the author or really the subject of the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2020, 03:39:13 pm
I don't remember that at all.  :(

(Spoiler alert!) She flies to Mongolia by herself when she's five months pregnant and miscarries the baby while alone in her hotel room. The baby is born alive, but quickly dies.

Quote
I'm sure you're right about it helping to be a man. I'm sure a woman has to face some things that a man doesn't simply because she's a woman.

Of course.

Quote
I do remember an article by a woman that had something to do with the Middle East, but I'm afraid I don't remember the author or really the subject of the article.

Among women who specialize in writing about overseas stuff, Jane Kramer comes to mind. I was going to say Anne Applebaum, but apparently she's with the Atlantic.

I'm sure there are others who either specialize or dabble in foreign reporting, but their names don't come readily to mind because, for me, almost all of those kinds of articles are very much "duty articles" -- in fact, they're the duties I'm most likely to shirk. If some woman wrote about the Middle East at some point, I almost certainly didn't read it, unless it's about the status of women in Middle Eastern countries, which I do find interesting.

But my choices aren't typically based on the gender of the author as much as subject matter and style. When I skim the authors on the ToC page, among those I'm most likely to open to immediately is David Sedaris, telling stories that are almost always about domestic situations. I much prefer those and stories about culture, like Malcolm Gladwell's.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2020, 09:47:32 pm
(Spoiler alert!) She flies to Mongolia by herself when she's five months pregnant and miscarries the baby while alone in her hotel room. The baby is born alive, but quickly dies.

Is this online? Is it in the August 28 issue, which I haven't yet received (no doubt thanks to the new postmaster general).

What on earth was she doing flying off to Mongolia when she was five months pregnant?  ???

I haven't seen Jane Kramer's by-line for a very long time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 25, 2020, 09:57:33 am
Is this online? Is it in the August 28 issue, which I haven't yet received (no doubt thanks to the new postmaster general).

It ran in November, 2013. I wouldn't have written a spoiler into something from an upcoming issue! But of course it's not so much the climax but the writing around it that makes it good. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/thanksgiving-in-mongolia (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/thanksgiving-in-mongolia)

I haven't received my new issue either, but hadn't put it together with the USPS problems. First we can't vote, now we can't read the New Yorker -- they're really going after intelligent left-leaning citizens!

Quote
What on earth was she doing flying off to Mongolia when she was five months pregnant?  ???

Because the whole essay was about how much she likes flying off to places, because she knew once the baby came she wouldn't be able to for a while, and because her doctor said it was OK. Hence the gender division we were discussing.

BTW, it sounds like flying to Mongolia in and of itself did not cause the miscarriage; there was a pregnancy problem. There's no indication it wouldn't have happened if she'd stayed home. But being in Mongolia complicated things -- she didn't speak the language and highly distrusted the health care system.

Quote
I haven't seen Jane Kramer's by-line for a very long time.

That's probably because she's 82. But she published something as recently as 2017. I've never paid much attention to her stuff because, again, too duty-ish. But I just opened a couple of pieces from her byline list at the magazine -- one about restaurants and one about Gloria Steinem, from 2016 and 2015.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 25, 2020, 02:00:34 pm
It ran in November, 2013. I wouldn't have written a spoiler into something from an upcoming issue! But of course it's not so much the climax but the writing around it that makes it good. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/thanksgiving-in-mongolia (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/18/thanksgiving-in-mongolia)

Is that how far behind you are in your magazines?  ;D

Quote
[Re: Jane Kramer] That's probably because she's 82. But she published something as recently as 2017. I've never paid much attention to her stuff because, again, too duty-ish. But I just opened a couple of pieces from her byline list at the magazine -- one about restaurants and one about Gloria Steinem, from 2016 and 2015.

I think I remember her writing something about food somewhere in Europe, but I might have her confused with somebody else.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 25, 2020, 03:26:45 pm
Is that how far behind you are in your magazines?  ;D

 :laugh: I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find that issue in one of my piles!

Quote
I think I remember her writing something about food somewhere in Europe, but I might have her confused with somebody else.

Yeah, I think she did do some food writing.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 27, 2020, 08:27:23 pm
So, what's going on? In today's mail I received the issue cover dated for this coming Monday, Aug. 31. I have never received an issue dated Aug. 24, and the Aug. 17 issue was not a "double issue."   ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 28, 2020, 12:25:19 am
Hmm, let me check. I got the Aug. 31 issue yesterday. I think I also got an issue the previous week, but in this case — possibly a first! — it looked so uninteresting I put it in recycling immediately. If I remember correctly.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 28, 2020, 09:01:04 am
While I'm thankful it doesn't happen too often, from time to time I do get a piece of mail way late and so chewed up it's in a plastic bag. It won't surprise me if that happens with my missing issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 09, 2020, 09:29:12 pm
Those poor pangolins.  :( (Aug. 31)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 10, 2020, 01:17:01 pm
I was thinking about reaching out to Customer Service to see about getting the August 24 issue, but I guess I'll just let it go. It seems a little late to do it now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2020, 11:57:29 am
I checked my account book. Last year I paid my subscription renewal in August. This year I haven't even got the notification, and September is half over.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 26, 2020, 05:48:55 pm
My subscription is renewed automatically. Also, I had my mail held when I was on vacation. I have four issues to catch up on! But I had to read "Nature and Nurture" by Rebecca Mead in the August 24 issue. It seems like TNY has decided to run a nature related article in almost every issue. That's fine with me, but sometimes they are contrived.

This one is about gardening in England. It says that 8 out of 10 people in Britain have a private garden. Where I stayed in London there were no gardens or even a pot on a balcony. That statistic seems suspicious to me.

The article is about therapy through gardening. When you get your hands into soil, you begin to heal. Your thoughts on this?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 26, 2020, 09:49:39 pm
My subscription is renewed automatically.

I'm seriously confused. I don't remember renewing for more than a year, but yesterday I noticed there is a date 27JAN22 on the mailing label of my issue. That kind of looks like an expiration date.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2020, 11:05:12 am
My subscription is renewed automatically. Also, I had my mail held when I was on vacation. I have four issues to catch up on! But I had to read "Nature and Nurture" by Rebecca Mead in the August 24 issue. It seems like TNY has decided to run a nature related article in almost every issue. That's fine with me, but sometimes they are contrived.

This one is about gardening in England. It says that 8 out of 10 people in Britain have a private garden. Where I stayed in London there were no gardens or even a pot on a balcony. That statistic seems suspicious to me.

The article is about therapy through gardening. When you get your hands into soil, you begin to heal. Your thoughts on this?

As far as gardening goes, I think to each her own. It's not really my thing, but it is for a lot of people. I am really interested in nature/nurture, but it doesn't sound like Rebecca Mead wrote about the parts I find most interesting.

Rebecca Mead, who is from England, recently moved back to England. I think she said it's partly because of what's going on here.

Does she mean plunging your hands into soil, in and of itself, is literally healing? As I said, it's not my thing, but the idea isn't totally farfetched. We evolved from people who (long after the beginning of human history, of course, but still) tended gardens. I'd better read the Mead piece.

There are places in the South where people eat clay. Or they did -- I don't know if anybody still does. That seemed really bizarre until I read that clay contains a lot of nutrients. As I recall, anyway.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2020, 05:17:57 pm
There are places in the South where people eat clay. Or they did -- I don't know if anybody still does. That seemed really bizarre until I read that clay contains a lot of nutrients. As I recall, anyway.

It is bizarre. Eating clay is a symptom of a medical condition called pica, which is caused by a vitamin deficiency.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 27, 2020, 05:36:21 pm
Well, now you've got me curious enough to do some intensive research -- i.e., skim a Wikipedia entry. Here's an excerpt:

In more recent times, according to "Dixie's Forgotten People: the South's Poor Whites," geophagia [soil eating] was common among poor whites in the Southeastern United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and was often ridiculed in popular literature. The literature also states, "Many men believed that eating clay increased sexual prowess, and some females claimed that eating clay helped pregnant women to have an easy delivery."[9] Geophagia among Southerners may have been caused by the high prevalence of hookworm disease, of which the desire to consume soil is a symptom.[10] Geophagia has become less prevalent as rural Americans assimilate into urban culture.[8] However, cooked, baked, and processed dirt and clay are sold in health food stores and rural flea markets in the American South.[11]
...

Clay minerals have been reported to have beneficial microbiological effects, such as protecting the stomach against toxins, parasites, and pathogens.[32][33] Humans are not able to synthesize vitamin B12 (cobalamin), so geophagia may be a behavioral adaption to obtain it from bacteria in the soil.[34] Mineral content in soils may vary by region, but many contain high levels of calcium, copper, magnesium, iron, and zinc, minerals that are critical for developing fetuses which can cause metallic, soil, or chewing ice cravings in pregnant women. To the extent that these cravings, and subsequent mineral consumption (as well as in the case of cravings for ice, or other cold neck vasoconstricting food which aid in increasing brain oxygen levels by restricting neck veins) are therapeutically effective decreasing infant mortality, those genetic predispositions and the associated environmental triggers, are likely to be found in the infant as well. Likewise, multigenerationally impoverished villages or other homogenous socioeconomic closed genetic communities are more likely to have rewarded gene expression of soil or clay consumption cravings, by increasing the likelihood of survival through multiple pregnancies for both sexes.[33][35]

There are obvious health risks in the consumption of soil that is contaminated by animal or human feces; in particular, helminth eggs, such as Ascaris, which can stay viable in the soil for years, can lead to helminth infections.[36][37] Tetanus poses a further risk.[36] Lead poisoning is also associated with soil ingestion,[38] as well as health risks associated with zinc exposure can be problematic among people who eat soils on a regular basis.[17] Gestational geophagia has been associated with various homeostatic disruptions and oxidative damage.




I'm guessing that's not what Rebecca Mead was talking about, though.  :laugh:


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 28, 2020, 08:32:33 am
Yes, chewing ice is another symptom of pica. I see this problem in my work, though not lately. The questions never go into the science behind it. It just gets treated as a pathology.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 28, 2020, 11:57:47 am
The article is about therapy through gardening. When you get your hands into soil, you begin to heal. Your thoughts on this?

Upon rereading the article, I see it makes no mention of eating or putting hands in soil. That was a phrase I made up, and I didn't expect it to turn into a research project!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 28, 2020, 01:17:12 pm
Upon rereading the article, I see it makes no mention of eating or putting hands in soil. That was a phrase I made up, and I didn't expect it to turn into a research project!

No problem, it's an interesting subject. I mentioned it in a conversation with someone lately and they didn't believe it, so I'm glad I confirmed I wasn't imagining things.

I would go out right now and get a big bowl of soil myself, but unfortunately here there have been infestations of "jumping worms." I don't know that much about them except they're the latest invasive species. None in my yard that I know of, although I may lose my huge ash tree in the backyard to emerald ash borer.

It's kind of like the thing about how people used to get up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night and do stuff. When I mention it to people, they never believe that, either. It is even weirder in a way, because it would have been back in the days before electricity or maybe even gas lanterns. But it does help explain middle-of-the-night insomnia.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/24/sleep-twice-a-night-anxiety (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/24/sleep-twice-a-night-anxiety)

Next up: fecal transplants. Jeff, you probably know about this.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325128 (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/325128)

I wish the New Yorker would write about these things (if they haven't already). I was so glad when they ran a story about LSD therapy, because people never believe that either but if you can't believe the New Yorker (and Michael Pollan, who wrote the article and whose book I have on Kindle but haven't read), who can you believe?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 28, 2020, 03:37:28 pm

Next up: fecal transplants. Jeff, you probably know about this.

Unfortunately, yes.  :P

To the best of my knowledge, we are not (yet) plagued with jumping worms (jumping worms?) or emerald ash borer, but the spotted lantern fly is a real problem (though not as deadly as that other import from China).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 28, 2020, 06:49:23 pm
The emerald ash borer is so common here that they've cut almost all of the city-owned ones down, either because they already have it, or prophylactically. I used to be able to walk three blocks to my house in a medium rain without getting wet. Now all the trees on the boulevard have been placed by little babies.

The branches of the ash tree in my yard covers the whole yard, so it's pretty shady. If I ever have to cut it down, I'll have all the wrong perennials (luckily, a lot of them are hostas, which I think can go either way). The roots also spread through the yard, which is kind of a pain if you're trying to dig or mow. But if the tree comes out, I suppose the roots would have to, too, so another huge mess.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 01, 2020, 11:39:14 am
I have a huge ash tree as well, and the emerald ash borer is on the way to Denver. It has been spotted just 10 or so miles away, so it is a very big threat.

Before my trip, we visited a friend in NE Pennsylvania. Last year when we were there, there were huge clouds of spotted lantern flies. They're really very pretty but a huge problem. So, this year, he said they were more under control. We had dinner in the tree house, which is a structure in a large tree but none of it actually touches the tree. It was a wonderful dinner and a great way to prepare for the trip.

Here's a link to that Rebecca Mead article in case any non-subscribers want to read it:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/24/the-therapeutic-power-of-gardening (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/24/the-therapeutic-power-of-gardening)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 01, 2020, 01:38:54 pm
I have a huge ash tree as well, and the emerald ash borer is on the way to Denver. It has been spotted just 10 or so miles away, so it is a very big threat.

Before my trip, we visited a friend in NE Pennsylvania. Last year when we were there, there were huge clouds of spotted lantern flies. They're really very pretty but a huge problem. So, this year, he said they were more under control.

They've moved south. My father sees them at his place, and complains about them, and I've even see one on my condo balcony.


Quote
Here's a link to that Rebecca Mead article in case any non-subscribers want to read it:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/24/the-therapeutic-power-of-gardening (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/24/the-therapeutic-power-of-gardening)

I guess I should make time to read it. I just realized over lunch that it was in the August 24 issue, which I never got. A little late to contact Customer Service now, I guess. I like Rebecca Mead.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 01, 2020, 02:32:00 pm
Can you guess who said this?

"The act of cooking is an escape from consciousness--the nearest thing that the nonspiritual man and woman have to Zen meditation; its effect is to reduce us to a state of absolute awareness, where we are here now of necessity. What you can't do is think and cook, because cooking takes the place of thought."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 01, 2020, 10:51:02 pm
Can you guess who said this?

"The act of cooking is an escape from consciousness--the nearest thing that the nonspiritual man and woman have to Zen meditation; its effect is to reduce us to a state of absolute awareness, where we are here now of necessity. What you can't do is think and cook, because cooking takes the place of thought."

This could almost go on the GtPPoT thread. Is it Alice Waters? Michael Pollan?

Re emerald ash borers: I hope Minneapolis has realized the folly of planting long rows with the same kind of tree. There may be some reason they did that at the time (they were cheap?) but city leaders should have learned a lesson from Dutch elm disease in the '70s or whenever it was. I hate to sound morbid, but the skinny thing in front of my house might grow up to be very nice, but it won't match the big one it replaced in my lifetime.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 11, 2020, 07:10:17 pm
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you! It's from Adam Gopnik's The Table Comes First, essays on family, France, and the meaning of food. Some of these probably began life in the pages of TNY. Do you agree with his thoughts on cooking?

In the latest issue (Oct. 12) Gopnik has a rather unflattering article about James Beard. I almost wish I hadn't read it. 

I continue to find gems in the August 24th issue. (Here's a link to it, but you have to log in: https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2020-08-24/flipbook/CV1/). Today I read "Nothing to Lose but your Masks", a very comprehensive article about the growth of the militia movement in Michigan that lead to the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer. It doesn't just cover anti-lockdown protests but goes all the way back to Waco, Texas, Idaho, and Oklahoma City. One of the things I think is important about this article is that it discusses the vocabulary of these groups so their hidden agendas are revealed. When Trump says, "stand down and stand by" it shows just how closely he is tied in with these groups. Their rhetoric turns logic on its head. To them, we are the Nazis and they are the persecuted. They believe they are protecting and preserving the Constitution rather than fomenting anarchy.

The author, Luke Mogelson, went to several of these anti-government rallies, and his experiences made me think of what you, Katherine, went through.

It's so ironic that the anti-government groups appropriated the title of a 1984 movie directed by an Israeli-American starring Black actors about break dancing, "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo", to name their movement Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo. The rhetoric they developed has been adopted everywhere from campsites to the White House and makes it easy for Facebook and others to flag and delete their accounts. In fact, the way the plot against the Michigan Governor was discovered and followed was by Facebook alerting authorities about these groups.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 19, 2020, 10:29:44 am
I would love to see "The Personal History of David Copperfield", reviewed by Anthony Lane in the September 7 issue, but it doesn't say where, or if, it is streaming. Anybody know?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 19, 2020, 03:18:31 pm
No, I always skip reviews of movies I've never heard of, figuring it's one of those movies they show in NYC that never make it out to flyover land.

These days, of course, us flyoverites could watch just about any movie.

I've heard Netflix's documentary My Octupus Teacher is really good. I watched the trailer and it looked promising.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 20, 2020, 10:53:51 am
I've seen it and, yes, it is good. It inspired a rash of Netflix documentary watching for me.

I finished the profile of Ethan Hawke in the September 21 issue. Written by John Lahr, it was pretty eye-opening. That man was involved in so many different projects! I wonder if any of them was able to go forward. Lahr's interviews and research were just before the corona virus hit. We are collectively experiencing a lot of nostalgia for those days and coming to the conclusion that relationships and art may never be the same again. 



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 20, 2020, 12:38:37 pm
Did you hear the news that Jeffery Toobin has been suspended from TNY for indecent exposure?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 20, 2020, 01:43:03 pm
I finished the profile of Ethan Hawke in the September 21 issue.

Do you remember the mention of all the different jobs his mother held, ending as college text-book editor? She worked at the publishing company where I worked from 1998 to 2001, though I think she was gone by 1998, and we were in different divisions of the company, anyway. My teammate on my current job worked with her; she described her as "kind of flaky." She said Ethan did xeroxing for them.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 20, 2020, 10:18:30 pm
Interesting! He seems to be very close with his mother.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 21, 2020, 09:40:47 am
Did you hear the news that Jeffery Toobin has been suspended from TNY for indecent exposure?

Yes. In fact, apparently it was more than just indecent exposure. He was, er, multitasking.

That's a ridiculous thing to do. Still, I feel sorry for him. What a thing to happen to a guy with an otherwise illustrious career.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 22, 2020, 11:15:38 am
I haven't read about the details, but my theory is that the male sex drive is quite the powerful and uncontrollable thing. I also wonder if a midlife crisis works in to this.

During a break, I read "Three Fathers" by Ann Patchett in the October 5 issue. Gosh, she is a very good writer. She had two stepfathers in addition to her biological father and one of them was envious of her writing ability. And success. I encountered that situation with my younger sister. She was jealous of my writing ability and it strained our relationship for a long time.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on October 22, 2020, 11:54:26 am
I haven't read about the details, but my theory is that the male sex drive is quite the powerful and uncontrollable thing. I also wonder if a midlife crisis works in to this.

Powerful, maybe.  Uncontrollable, that's debatable.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2020, 02:09:20 pm
Powerful, maybe.  Uncontrollable, that's debatable.

If you can't control the drive, you can control your actions.

The current crisis is making people do weird things, at least as I understand.

I wonder if he drinks?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 22, 2020, 10:05:30 pm
The October 26th issue arrived today. I can't believe I'm, like, a month behind in reading them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 23, 2020, 08:19:39 pm
If you can't control the drive, you can control your actions.

The current crisis is making people do weird things, at least as I understand.

I wonder if he drinks?


I was going to say, "he's a reporter, isn't he?" but that's stereotyping. I was also going to say, "Is the bear catholic?"  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 26, 2020, 10:36:43 pm
I read the Jane Austen article (Oct. 5). I guess only the Bible has had more things written about it than Jane Austen.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 27, 2020, 12:43:46 pm
I thought Sherlock Holmes was second to the Bible, but I may be wrong.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 27, 2020, 04:36:39 pm
Well, both Jane and Sherlock have a pretty broad fan base, with societies and meetings and stuff like that.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 04, 2020, 06:53:32 pm
I read the George Saunders fiction "Ghoul" in the latest issue. Usually, I like his work but I'm not in the mood for dystopian apocalyptic fiction these days, thank you.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 04, 2020, 09:32:23 pm
I'm not in the mood for dystopian apocalyptic fiction these days, thank you.

And if you were, just pick up any newspaper!  :(

I usually love GS. What I like about GS's DAF is that his he scenarios are so bizarre in their own individual ways that I can momentarily escape the bizarre scenarios of RL (again, I haven't read Ghoul, so that one may be different). And yet they're so eerily familiar in dialogue and social customs and so on! He takes RL and twists it just a bit.

I'll read it and report back.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 05, 2020, 11:08:34 am
Yes, I think this one would fit in that category. Very apt description!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 06, 2020, 12:29:02 am
Seriously, I can't believe I've fallen a month behind in my magazines. The political articles will all be moot in a day or two.

Meanwhile, I'm sure I found a typo  :o  in Adam Gopnik's short article on James Beard (Oct. 12). On page 69 there is a statement that Beard's cookbook American Cookery "'is a kind of secret record of twentieth-century gay migration to cities from across the county and beyond its shores.'"

If they just crossed the county, they didn't go very far.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 06, 2020, 12:57:10 pm
Seriously, I can't believe I've fallen a month behind in my magazines. The political articles will all be moot in a day or two.

Meanwhile, I'm sure I found a typo  :o  in Adam Gopnik's short article on James Beard (Oct. 12). On page 69 there is a statement that Beard's cookbook American Cookery "'is a kind of secret record of twentieth-century gay migration to cities from across the county and beyond its shores.'"

If they just crossed the county, they didn't go very far.

Good thing he didn't make a typo in the word all journalists fear: public.

Pretty good, though, that when there is a typo it stands out because it almost never happens.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 13, 2020, 04:28:49 pm
I read the George Saunders fiction "Ghoul" in the latest issue. Usually, I like his work but I'm not in the mood for dystopian apocalyptic fiction these days, thank you.

I finally read this and LOVED IT. It might be my favorite George Saunders story. It features a bizarre scenario -- set, as his stories so often are, in a strange future re-enactment attraction (the first story I ever read of his, decades ago, "CivilWarland in Bad Decline," was like that). There's a narrator who's sincere and naive and well meaning, who says offhand things he considers normal but are ironic because the reader can see them as horrifying. Narration and dialogue voices like modern slang on steroids.

But as the story unfolded, I gradually saw what he was doing and was really impressed. It's about a phenomenon I've only started to think about in fairly recent years. It's not particularly related to modern politics. Then comes a surprise ending that suddenly ties everything together in an enormous real-world analogy (again, nothing to do with Trump, etc.).

It's not cheery if you're really bummed out about current events, but at least it has nothing to do with current events.



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 14, 2020, 08:12:55 pm
I'm glad you liked it. I kept thinking that might be us someday.

I would like to read Lincoln in the Bardo. Has anyone here read it? Is it as out there as his short fiction?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 14, 2020, 09:14:48 pm
I still can't fathom how I came to be five issues behind. Tonight I read the article on Dolly Parton in the October 19 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 20, 2020, 10:26:50 am
I still can't fathom how I came to be five issues behind. Tonight I read the article on Dolly Parton in the October 19 issue.

Now it's the article about Andrew Cuomo.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 20, 2020, 09:36:26 pm
I love going through old issues and finding articles that are no longer relevant, so I can confidently toss the issue in recycling.

Nowadays that includes pretty much anything Trump ever did. Except whatever damage he does in the next two months that Biden will have to try to repair. Leave poop on the carpet in the Oval Room? At this point, nothing would surprise me.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 21, 2020, 11:19:43 am
I was also going to say something similar. I'm tossing out pre-election issues. As far as I'm concerned, recycling is too good for them. I used to take past issues to retirement homes, but they stopped accepting them. Now, of course, they couldn't accept them for health/safety reasons. (There are no magazines in the doctors' offices or in-flight).

Apologies to the many excellent articles on other topics, but I can read those online.

Somebody should be keeping all this stuff for research reasons. I'm sure people will be writing about this strange period in our history for decades to come. I wish them luck in figuring it out. (If civilization continues, of course.)

Speaking of excellent writing, the Salman Rushdie fiction in the latest issue is a really good allegory. He still has the gift!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 21, 2020, 02:35:44 pm
(There are no magazines in the doctors' offices or in-flight).

The other day I accidentally arrived 20 minutes early for a doctor's appointment. Which wouldn't have been too ba, except I forgot my phone! In desperation, I asked at the counter if they had any, but as I expected they did not.

Just sitting there for 20 minutes sounded awful. They should at least have a TV set! (I can never understand people I see on planes just sitting there with no reading material, headphones or anything.)

Luckily, I got called in ahead of time.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 21, 2020, 10:22:26 pm
The other day I accidentally arrived 20 minutes early for a doctor's appointment. Which wouldn't have been too ba, except I forgot my phone! In desperation, I asked at the counter if they had any, but as I expected they did not.

Just sitting there for 20 minutes sounded awful. They should at least have a TV set! (I can never understand people I see on planes just sitting there with no reading material, headphones or anything.)

Luckily, I got called in ahead of time.

You mean you actually got to see a doctor? In person?  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 22, 2020, 11:16:59 am
You mean you actually got to see a doctor? In person?  :o

Sure. Twice during the pandemic, in fact. This was a dermatologist, though, so maybe that's the difference. I went in for my regular skin cancer check, don't have any, whew, but the last time she froze some little pre-cancerous spots so I had to go back to make sure they're healing OK and don't need another freeze.

You have to wear a mask, come alone, only show up if you have no symptoms, sit in designated spaced chairs in the waiting room and get your temperature taken before you go back to the room. The doctor herself was wearing some kind of gas mask -- clear face shield with a tube for breathing. And when I pulled down my mask so she could examine my face I was allowed to breathe but not talk.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 23, 2020, 07:24:40 pm
Read the article about Margaret Fuller in the July 27 issue today. I went through my pile of New Yorkers to find it because I read a good letter in a later issue praising it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 28, 2020, 10:06:58 pm
Well, I am now six issues behind. How that happened I still have no idea. I believe I've been reading more articles than I have in the past. Also, I took two issues with me to my dad's, and while I was there I didn't open either one of them.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 29, 2020, 05:03:17 pm
Well, I am now six issues behind. How that happened I still have no idea. I believe I've been reading more articles than I have in the past. Also, I took two issues with me to my dad's, and while I was there I didn't open either one of them.  :-\

No time to read? I guess I should already know this, but do you drive to your dad's? Do you rent a car?

If you could take a train or bus, you'd have some reading time.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 29, 2020, 09:40:53 pm
Well, it's only a 90-minutes train ride. Most times I have to fight to stay awake. On my way home on Friday, I read "Stolen Valor" (Oct. 26).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2020, 09:42:26 am
Well, I'm now six weeks behind and counting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 04, 2020, 12:49:25 pm
When I get seriously behind, I put away the stack of old NYers and start in on the latest one. I save the unread NYers for a snowstorm or when I'm sick. Also, I'm getting rid of all the pre-election NYers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 04, 2020, 12:59:07 pm
Also, I'm getting rid of all the pre-election NYers.

I love it when some decisive historical change makes old NYers obsolete. It's the main reason I voted for Biden.

The new NYers are coming in fast and furious! I get one, set it aside to read when I can, and before I even have a chance to pick it up here's a new one. I looked at the latest issue's ToC yesterday and only a couple of the articles looked tempting. I'm going to try to stick to the ones in whose author or subject I have genuine interest and skip the "duty" articles (kudos again to Jeff for supplying that perfect name and concept!).

Also, I keep up with a fair amount of TV and movie news just in my normal online life. Not that I always, or even usually, watch the shows, but I'm at least dimly aware of their existence. So why does the magazine so rarely review shows whose titles I even recognize?



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2020, 01:51:24 pm
The new NYers are coming in fast and furious! I get one, set it aside to read when I can, and before I even have a chance to pick it up here's a new one.

That's my situation exactly.

Quote
I looked at the latest issue's ToC yesterday and only a couple of the articles looked tempting. I'm going to try to stick to the ones in whose author or subject I have genuine interest and skip the "duty" articles

That's what I'm going to have to do.

Quote
(kudos again to Jeff for supplying that perfect name and concept!).

I thought it was you who came up with that?  ???

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 04, 2020, 03:19:45 pm
I thought it was you who came up with that?  ???

I don't think so. I've long had that feeling about articles I thought of as important but boring. As I recall, you gave them that snappy name.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2020, 05:49:34 pm
I don't think so. I've long had that feeling about articles I thought of as important but boring. As I recall, you gave them that snappy name.

Your memory is better than mine. I would have sworn I picked it up from you!  :laugh:

I don't think I need finish the Oct. 26 article about Eugene Scalia basically destroying O.S.H.A. I imagine Biden will throw him out on his ear.  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 04, 2020, 09:00:29 pm
Your memory is better than mine. I would have sworn I picked it up from you!  :laugh:

I wish it were possible to open all the pages at once and do a search so we'd know for sure who deserves credit in the history books.  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 05, 2020, 11:59:05 am
Here's the first reference I could find about it, and it comes from serious, on August 24 of this year!

...
I'm sure there are others who either specialize or dabble in foreign reporting, but their names don't come readily to mind because, for me, almost all of those kinds of articles are very much "duty articles" -- in fact, they're the duties I'm most likely to shirk. If some woman wrote about the Middle East at some point, I almost certainly didn't read it, unless it's about the status of women in Middle Eastern countries, which I do find interesting.
...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 05:27:26 pm
Thanks for that sleuthing, FRiend!

However, the way I phrased it sounds to me like I'm quoting Jeff. I think if that's the first time the term came up i would have added a bit of definition.

their names don't come readily to mind because, for me, almost all of those kinds of articles are very much "duty articles" -- in fact, they're the duties I'm most likely to shirk.

Also, Jeff is more likely than I am to put phrases in quotation marks. So I might have said, "for me, those kinds of articles are duty articles -- I find them boring, but feel it's my duty to read them because they're important topics.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 05:49:01 pm
I went back as far as page 200. I still don't think we've reached the beginning because the earliest reference here (4/29/19) uses it like it's already a familiar term. I'm theoretically supposed to be working, so I should probably return to that rather than continue further, for the moment, on this dutiful but completely inconsequential search.


June 26, 2020
Me: I realize I'm probably throwing out some great timeless articles (and probably quite a few "duty" ones  :laugh:)

Jan. 3, 2020
Jeff: Meanwhile, I've got bogged down on the piece about the Ukrainian prosecutor. There's a duty article if I ever saw one.

Oct. 31, 2019
Me: I've been reading the Emmanuel Macron profile from July 1. It's slightly "duty," but Macron is a pretty interesting person

Oct. 24, 2019
Me: I started reading a profile of the actor Adam Driver because that seemed easy, at least, not a daunting "duty" article.

Aug. 18, 2019
Lee: I felt it imperative to read "The Color of Injustice" in the August 19 issue. It was well written and compelling, and I didn't feel like I was reading a duty article.

April 29, 2019
Me: Even many "duty" NYer articles are creative nonfiction [interesting historical side note: I quoted a nice passage written by *duh-duh-duuhhh* Jeffrey Toobin.]





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 05, 2020, 06:07:37 pm
Well, there you go. The search function used to be pretty reliable before the Great Crash, but it's just hit and miss now.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 06:53:26 pm
Oh, you did a regular search? I went page by page using the "find" function.

If we could open up all the pages at once -- which I believe we could on the old site -- we could find the first reference in a second.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 06:54:48 pm
I just tried the regular "search" function and all I got was my post from an hour ago.  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 07:00:22 pm
I just took a random stab on page 160 and go this, from April 2017.

I am still struggling to get through the April 3 "Health, Medicine & the Body" issue.

The whole damn issue is a "duty."  :(

I'm about to give up on it.

I'm currently reading one from a month or two ago about how science isn't all the fun stuff about major sweeping fascinating ideas. It's about spending your entire 40-year career performing tiny little incremental experiments on miniscule things.

That's kind of what this is like. Though this probably wouldn't take 40 years.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 05, 2020, 07:14:06 pm
I'm currently reading one from a month or two ago about how science isn't all the fun stuff about major sweeping fascinating ideas. It's about spending your entire 40-year career performing tiny little incremental experiments on miniscule things.

I read that one.

Right now I'm reading President Obama's article about how the Affordable Care Act got passed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 07:15:41 pm
2016, page 138

I was about to give up on the article about microbes and drug-resistant infections (June 20) (a duty article if there ever was one), but then at the top of the third column on page 56, it started to get really interesting. I felt a personal connection to the story when I read that streptomycin, "the first cure for tuberculosis," apparently was discovered in 1943. That was the year my grandfather died of tuberculosis.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2020, 07:23:07 pm
A little more research. The term was first introduced between pages 50 and 130. (I've ruled out everything on either side of that span.)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 10, 2020, 11:27:49 pm
I found the article on the Republican Party after a Trump presidency (Nov. 2) worthwhile, and I'm now reading the article on antifascists in the same issue.

Portland, Oregon, had been a center of white-supremacist activity? Portland, Oregon? Who knew? I had no idea. Explains what's been going on in Portland since George Floyd's murder.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2020, 04:38:22 pm
Now that we know the outcome of the election, I'm actually kind of enjoying reading articles that were published before the election.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 19, 2020, 09:40:22 pm
I am now six issues behind and counting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 26, 2020, 06:55:52 pm
It happened again today. I was just finally getting into a piece about "Lolita" by Ian Frazier, which opens with an intriguing premise. But that's in Dec. 14, which was displaced last week by Dec. 21. So today I opened my mailbox and ... well, you know the rest.

This latest issue has a few things worth opening up to, including a piece on humor by Calvin Trillin. I want to at least get through the damn Lolita thing before I start something else.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 26, 2020, 08:12:18 pm
I just finished reading that Lolita article too! It was interesting how he weaves his own story with that of Nabokov as well as Saul Steinberg, who provided the illustration of a seedy motel "Paradise Cabins". I have spent some time in those same areas, and have stood on a street corner in Winslow, Arizona, more than once. Although there was never a girl in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me  :'(.

The point he makes about foreigners defining America better than it defines itself is a good one. "America construes itself as a game that anybody can play, and Russians know how to play it well, as we learn and relearn."



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 26, 2020, 08:26:35 pm
I have spent some time in those same areas, and have stood on a street corner in Winslow, Arizona, more than once. Although there was never a girl in a flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at me  :'(.

So wait, the Nabokov piece is connected to an Eagles song? I'm not a huge Eagles fan (except "Hotel California"), but an essay that makes that connection sounds even more interesting than I expected. (My other first thought was, wait, did the Eagles get the lyrics from something Nabokov wrote? That seems unlikely, but maybe I underestimated them!) I'll keep reading it.

Quote
The point he makes about foreigners defining America better than it defines itself is a good one. "America construes itself as a game that anybody can play, and Russians know how to play it well, as we learn and relearn."

Especially the cyber game, apparently!  :-\


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 27, 2020, 02:35:18 pm
So wait, the Nabokov piece is connected to an Eagles song? I'm not a huge Eagles fan (except "Hotel California"), but an essay that makes that connection sounds even more interesting than I expected. (My other first thought was, wait, did the Eagles get the lyrics from something Nabokov wrote? That seems unlikely, but maybe I underestimated them!) I'll keep reading it.

No, no connection that I know of. It's just that, in our travels, whenever we pass through Winslow, Arizona, we always start singing that song. I often park at that intersection and take a picture.

The interesting and weird connection in the article is to Russian émigrés in the U.S. and the meddling of the Russians in our activities today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 27, 2020, 04:49:40 pm
I've never read Lolita. I do know they travel around the country and stay in little motels. Do they follow Route 66? I've done that. It's cool, but it probably gets less cool all the time as buildings age and fashions change. I'm sure it was more at its peak when Lolita and Humbert Humbert traveled it (if, in fact, they do). I look forward to finishing the essay!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 27, 2020, 05:47:34 pm
Yes, they do. (I never read the whole book myself. Dave Cullen did recently, and raved about it.)

The last time I was on Route 66 was when I was taking my mother's ashes to be buried in Oklahoma City. No, wait: I travel a small part of it when I go to Payson, AZ, to friend EdelMar's winter house. It passes through Gallup, NM into Arizona, through Holbrook, Winslow, and westward to Flagstaff. Some of the old highway has been turned into almost a superhighway and has completely lost its character.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 27, 2020, 08:44:49 pm
Should that map say "Winslow" instead of "Winona"?

"I was standin' on a corner in Winona, Arizona"?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 28, 2020, 11:58:24 am
Yes, they do. (I never read the whole book myself. Dave Cullen did recently, and raved about it.)

I haven't seen Dave Cullen's posts much lately so I went to his FB page, didn't find the Lolita reference but did catch up a bit on what up with him lately Apparently his book Parkland is doing well, and he wrote a well-received article about Gabby Giffords for Vanity Fair.

Quote
The last time I was on Route 66 was when I was taking my mother's ashes to be buried in Oklahoma City. No, wait: I travel a small part of it when I go to Payson, AZ, to friend EdelMar's winter house. It passes through Gallup, NM into Arizona, through Holbrook, Winslow, and westward to Flagstaff. Some of the old highway has been turned into almost a superhighway and has completely lost its character.

My then-husband and I drive around the Southwest once or twice, starting in Louisiana, through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and possibly into California (though that might have been a different Phoenix-to-San Diego trip). So we traveled Route 66 and stayed in some of those motels with the '50s neon signs. Somewhere I probably have photos. I used to always take photos of vintage neon back then.

Oklahoma is, I think, one of only two or three states among the 48 contiguous that I've never been in!  :-\


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 28, 2020, 12:04:38 pm
"I was standin' on a corner in Winona, Arizona"?  ???

 :laugh:

Winona is a cool old small river town in Minnesota, birthplace of Winona Ryder (who was named after the town, not the other way around  :laugh:).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 28, 2020, 06:31:14 pm
Should that map say "Winslow" instead of "Winona"?

"I was standin' on a corner in Winona, Arizona"?  ???


:laugh:

Winona is a cool old small river town in Minnesota, birthplace of Winona Ryder (who was named after the town, not the other way around  :laugh:).

I was standin' on a corner in Winona. Minnesota. ...

Doesn't exactly fit the meter, but it's close.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 28, 2020, 08:36:36 pm
I was standin' on a corner in Winona. Minnesota. ...

Doesn't exactly fit the meter, but it's close.  ;D


 :laugh:

Such a fine sight to see
It's Winona Ryder, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin' down to take a look at me



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 29, 2020, 10:20:34 am
 :laugh:

This is starting to look like material for a "Shouts & Murmurs" column. Keep it up!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 29, 2020, 12:39:07 pm
Well, now I'm six weeks behind.

I have the impression that this fall, there have been more articles per issue that I really want to read, and this is a part of why I've fallen so far behind.

Somehow I seem to have skipped over Nov. 16, and now I'm almost done with Nov. 23. I'm reading the (so far exciting) article on the clandestine movement to overthrow Kim Jong Un in North Korea.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 29, 2020, 01:05:23 pm
I'm reading the (so far exciting) article on the clandestine movement to overthrow Kim Jong Un in North Korea.

Wow, I would dismiss that as a "duty article"! Very impressive, and I'm glad you're enjoying it.

I tend to dismiss most articles about other countries as duty, especially if they're about global politics as opposed to, say, a famous artist. Long ago I was so overwhelmed with reading that I had to cut out something, so I cut out all global politics stories. As a result, unfortunately, 9/11 took me entirely by surprise. Immediately afterward, I read everything I could to catch up to speed.

Since then, though, I've slipped a bit into my old ways.  :-\



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 29, 2020, 06:37:29 pm
Since then, though, I've slipped a bit into my old ways.  :-\

I have no idea when, if ever, I'm going to catch up. I still don't understand how I've fallen so far behind. I'm skipping the fiction, but then I almost never read that anyway.

I jumped ahead to read Adam Gopnik on the Golden Age of animation (Dec. 28, the Cartoon Issue) because it just happens that this Saturday, MeTV will begin running three hours of cartoons on Saturday mornings.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 29, 2020, 07:10:15 pm
If I'm skipping the fiction, but then I almost never read that anyway.

Me neither. Although when I first subscribed in my 20s, that was the main thing I did read. (I attempted to write arty short stories back then.) Now I never read it unless the author is some recognizable name like George Saunders. If, when paging though it, it looks like it's mostly short paragraphs and dialogue, I might go to the beginning and give it up to 10 paragraphs to capture my attention. If the protagonist is referred to by his last name (although some protagonists are women, I've never seen one referred to by her last name), I almost immediately know it's not for me.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 29, 2020, 08:32:49 pm
I have no idea when, if ever, I'm going to catch up. I still don't understand how I've fallen so far behind. I'm skipping the fiction, but then I almost never read that anyway.

It's not a race, friend! Reading TNY should be nourishment for the writer's/reader's soul.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 29, 2020, 08:46:47 pm
What if you were to do what I do, which is go through the lagging issues (except instead of six, for me it's probably 30), rip out the articles you want to read and recycle the rest? Then staple those articles individually and put them in a manila folder and plan to take them to lunch and work your way through them?

Don't follow my next step, however, which is set the manila folder aside, forget where you even put it, then go back to it only when you're doing the next purge and get rid of the ones that no longer seem relevant -- no further back than Obama's first term, for example.   :laugh:

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 01, 2021, 05:30:45 pm
:laugh:

Winona is a cool old small river town in Minnesota, birthplace of Winona Ryder (who was named after the town, not the other way around  :laugh:).

What a coincidence. R. and I were talking about his late wife's collection, (she collected everything) and there is a postcard collection of scenic views of Winona, Minnesota.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2021, 03:50:36 pm
What if you were to do what I do, which is go through the lagging issues (except instead of six, for me it's probably 30), rip out the articles you want to read and recycle the rest? Then staple those articles individually and put them in a manila folder and plan to take them to lunch and work your way through them?

I tried that sort of thing with other publications years ago and found it unsatisfactory. I also don't see how that would help me catch up. If I went back to read the articles I had saved, then I wouldn't be reading the current ones.

I guess part of my problem is that lately there have been a great many articles I actually want to read. I know I could skip the pre-election political articles, but I'm finding it interesting to read what writers had to say before the election compared to what has actually happened.

At least my magazines are arriving on time--for now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 06, 2021, 11:07:19 pm
As far behind as I am, I jumped ahead to read Lawrence Wright's "The Plague Year" in the current (Jan. 4 & 11) issue. It's positively gripping to me. The stories I'm learning that never made the news "down here."

Example (I'm sure Paul knows this one):

The governor of Massachusetts arranged to buy 3 million N95 masks from China. When they got to the Port of New York, the feds seized them (I think Trump offered the Chinese more money). Then the governor managed to quietly get 1.2 million masks from China. The owner of the New England Patriots (football team) essentially snuck them into Boston on the team's private plane, and the Massachusetts National Guard was at Logan Airport to take them safely into the state's possession.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 07, 2021, 12:23:22 am
I thought about reading that, but I'm not ready to tackle a 40-page article!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 07, 2021, 09:36:38 am
I thought about reading that, but I'm not ready to tackle a 40-page article!

Understandable.

Just me, I know, but I'm finding it so engrossing that I'd read it in one sitting if I had the time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 07, 2021, 10:42:12 am
Good to know! Its length scared me off, too, and also it looked kind of dutiful. But based on what you've said here (and how the duty is even more intense now) I'll give it a shot.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2021, 12:56:52 pm
I was interested to learn that one of the people who has now quit the White House is a man named Matthew Pottinger. I believe he worked for the National Security Council (?).

He figures prominently--in a good way--in the Wright article.

The article is giving me a much better and higher opinion of Deborah Birx, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 08, 2021, 06:03:42 pm
Anyone want to speculate on what the next cover will look like?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 08, 2021, 06:38:54 pm
I'm sure it will be a keeper!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 08, 2021, 08:43:35 pm
I wish somebody more politically astute than me would write about the ironic trajectory of Trump's political career. He didn't care much about politics per se -- his main goal was to be famous, great, admired, etc. Like he was always making up for that Emmy he's still mad he didn't win! And if he'd ended things on a high note, like where he was in October -- still revered or at least meekly obeyed by his party and his scary base, there'd be plenty of people who'd still consider him the worst president ever but plenty of people who would still worship him. He'd have accomplished his goals and been well regarded, at least by his own definition.

Now, instead, he's going out in disgrace, indignity, infamy. Which is why his knowing the nuclear codes is so scary. It's one way he can still get attention.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2021, 02:58:22 pm
Now, instead, he's going out in disgrace, indignity, infamy. Which is why his knowing the nuclear codes is so scary. It's one way he can still get attention.

His base (and that word is an adjective as well as a noun) will see him as a martyr to the Dark State, or whatever. They will continue to worship him. Anybody arrested for Wednesday's insurrection will be deemed a hero. Any fall-out--arrests, convictions, and so forth--will be taken as a provocation. And these people have weapons. I find this much scarier than his having the nuclear codes.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 09, 2021, 09:40:14 pm
His base (and that word is an adjective as well as a noun) will see him as a martyr to the Dark State, or whatever. They will continue to worship him. Anybody arrested for Wednesday's insurrection will be deemed a hero. Any fall-out--arrests, convictions, and so forth--will be taken as a provocation. And these people have weapons. I find this much scarier than his having the nuclear codes.

Good point. I figured after he lost that we'd probably see violence by Trump supporters of some kind. But nothing like Wednesday's mob. They seemed to take the idea of civil war quite seriously.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2021, 09:54:30 pm
Good point. I figured after he lost that we'd probably see violence by Trump supporters of some kind. But nothing like Wednesday's mob. They seemed to take the idea of civil war quite seriously.

So do I.  :(

It was reported on NBC network news this evening that video demonstrates that at least some of these people had all sorts of tactical military equipment, not just guns (which is no surprise) but also armor and things like that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 10, 2021, 01:13:45 pm
I've gone back and read some of the articles and essays that were published after the 2016 election, and it's astonishing how prescient they were.  :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 10, 2021, 01:41:33 pm
I've gone back and read some of the articles and essays that were published after the 2016 election, and it's astonishing how prescient they were.  :'(

Like what?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 10, 2021, 01:45:47 pm
Like, for instance, this article in The Nation, on "What Would de Tocqueville Think of the 2016 Election?"

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-would-have-alexis-de-tocqueville-have-made-of-the-2016-us-presidential-election/ (https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-would-have-alexis-de-tocqueville-have-made-of-the-2016-us-presidential-election/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 14, 2021, 12:26:42 pm
This week's issue, with the flag at half mast, is kind of disturbing. The reporters did a good job of interviewing the insurrectionists. Never have I seen the F-word used so many times in an issue. I'm thinking about going back and reading more of the previous issue with all the comics.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 14, 2021, 05:23:38 pm
Never have I seen the F-word used so many times in an issue.

 :o  What would Mr. Shaw say?!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2021, 01:29:26 pm
He would probably be bewildered by that issue, but then he would be bewildered by how dark and strange our lives have become.

I went back to the August 31 issue, which came while I was in Europe so I never read it. Parts of "Wagner in Hollywood" by Alex Ross were good, and I really enjoyed a review of a feminist translation of Beowolf, by Ruth Franklin. The movie "Tesla" was reviewed (has anyone seen it?) and there was a long profile of Joe Biden by Evan Osnos. A very satisfying issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2021, 06:40:28 pm
...the movie "Tesla" was reviewed (has anyone seen it?)

The reviews of "Tesla" say it's really terrible! I'm going to pass.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 16, 2021, 09:42:25 pm
:o  What would Mr. Shaw say?!

I just realized why this confused me: It's not Shaw. It's Shawn, William Shawn, who would no doubt be shaken, not stirred, over the magazine as it is today--and as the world is, too, for that matter.

(I was, like, Who's Mr. Shaw?  ??? )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2021, 12:00:52 pm
I just realized why this confused me: It's not Shaw. It's Shawn, William Shawn, who would no doubt be shaken, not stirred, over the magazine as it is today--and as the world is, too, for that matter.

(I was, like, Who's Mr. Shaw?  ??? )

Oops! You're a better New Yorkerologist than I am.

In the new issue with the half-mast flag, I started reading Rachel Kushner's memories of the eccentric characters she knew growing up in seedy neighborhoods of San Francisco. It starts out promising, but it's all brief descriptions of one person after another that, to me, got kind of boring.

And couldn't most of us tell similar stories about the eccentric people we've known? I grew up in a middle-class suburb of Minneapolis, not cool seedy San Francisco, so the New Yorker would not would be clamoring for my stories. But I could, for example, tell about my casual friend and coworker in a restaurant who got in a traffic altercation on his way to the Christmas party, stabbed a guy to death with a pocket knife (in self defense, he later said), attempted to bind the wounds with tape, called 911 and then continued on to the Christmas party as if nothing had happened.

See? I'm 1/20th of the way through an essay of the same kind. Could I find 19 more colorful characters to write about? Maybe not. But probably at least five or six.

So I quit that one and flipped to Jlil Lepore's piece about work. I've only just started it but so far it's excellent. I already knew about most of the work-related things she's said so far, but they don't get said enough. It's one of those book-review essays and one amazing aspect is how she manages to read that many books, plus write that much, plus teach history at Harvard.

Imagine having someone at a cocktail party ask what you do for a living and you could say, "Oh, I'm a history professor at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker." 


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 18, 2021, 11:30:00 am
Today TNY released a 12-minute video (https://www.newyorker.com/news/video-dept/a-reporters-footage-from-inside-the-capitol-siege?fbclid=IwAR3FeQKLo7PX-4lpjGOh9IqSRcyJnE0j2n1qmpy9r8wVbztgMWX3-PjTV5I) taken by Luke Mogelson of the January 6 insurrection. It's riveting!

He was incredibly brave, IMO. I could not have done that.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2021, 11:37:16 am
Thanks for posting that, FRiend! I saw something about that last night but didn't have time to watch it, resolved to watch it today but could have easily forgotten. I'll watch it post haste!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2021, 12:04:05 pm
 ... OK, just watched it. It. Is. Scary.

I have no idea how the photographer got in that close (for those who haven't seen it, he's mingling right in with the insurgents, including in the chambers). He must have made himself look like one of them. Maybe he had a really subtle camera -- camera embedded in a MAGA hat, I kept thinking. But then, there are a lot of ordinary looking guys milling around holding up their cell phones, so I suppose he could have been taken for one of them.

How could so many people be so incredibly deluded?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 18, 2021, 12:34:46 pm
It's like he was wearing a cloak of invisibility! There was a moment when the horned man wanted a picture of himself taken standing at the center of the Senate chamber. He turned to a person just to the left of Mogelson and asked him to take the picture. What if he'd asked Mogelson?

Then, there's the spot where they were destroying all the media equipment. Mogelson just kept calmly filming.

I didn't even know TNY had a filming unit.

I can't see where he would have the foresight to wear a MAGA hat or otherwise disguise himself. Who could have possibly predicted what would happen that day, other than the insurrectionists themselves?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2021, 12:56:55 pm
I can't see where he would have the foresight to wear a MAGA hat or otherwise disguise himself. Who could have possibly predicted what would happen that day, other than the insurrectionists themselves?

Well, he could have kept one in his bag or worn one on purpose since he's going undercover and didn't want to be identified as a media person. I think the protest alone was already viewed as possibly turning violent or otherwise getting out of control. But then again, if he looked like all the other normal-looking guys hanging around they could just take him to be one of them.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 18, 2021, 06:05:35 pm
It's like he was wearing a cloak of invisibility! There was a moment when the horned man wanted a picture of himself taken standing at the center of the Senate chamber. He turned to a person just to the left of Mogelson and asked him to take the picture. What if he'd asked Mogelson?

Then, there's the spot where they were destroying all the media equipment. Mogelson just kept calmly filming.

I didn't even know TNY had a filming unit.

I can't see where he would have the foresight to wear a MAGA hat or otherwise disguise himself. Who could have possibly predicted what would happen that day, other than the insurrectionists themselves?

I seem to recall that last summer Mogelson  got himself in among the BLM demonstrators in Philadelphia. at some risk to himself from the police. At least, I think it was Mogelson. I think I remember there were still photos published. I had the impression, maybe incorrectly, that he was freelance. If my memory is correct, he must have a knack for blending in. With all the selfies the insurrectionists apparently took Jan. 6, maybe it wasn't too difficult to film what was going on. I mean, if everyone was filming stuff with their phones, maybe he didn't stand out that much. I've heard about his video--it's been mentioned on the NBC network news--but I haven't seen it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 18, 2021, 06:20:09 pm
Oops! You're a better New Yorkerologist than I am.

I just figured it was a typo.

Quote
Could I find 19 more colorful characters to write about? Maybe not. But probably at least five or six.

Well, you lived and worked in NOLA. Isn't that whole city full of colorful characters?


Quote
So I quit that one and flipped to Jlil Lepore's piece about work. I've only just started it but so far it's excellent. I already knew about most of the work-related things she's said so far, but they don't get said enough. It's one of those book-review essays and one amazing aspect is how she manages to read that many books, plus write that much, plus teach history at Harvard.

You know how much I adore her, but I confess to wondering sometimes about her teaching work. It's difficult for me to imagine her with a full teaching load. Maybe she just does a graduate seminar or two. If she has any undergraduate sections, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of them might actually be taught by graduate student assistants. I hope I'm wrong about that. If I were a Harvard undergrad and signed up for one of her classes and then found out it was taught by a TA, I'd feel cheated.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2021, 08:48:05 pm
Well, you lived and worked in NOLA. Isn't that whole city full of colorful characters?

True, although admittedly most of the people I actually knew-knew there were journalist colleagues, most too ordinary to make a good New Yorker essay. I did interview some more exotic people along the way, though.

Here's one interesting character I've heard about lately. Stop me if I've told it before (oh wait, I guess you can't! :laugh:). A photographer colleague just published a book called You Oughta Write a Book About Me. It's about this guy -- the "me" of the title -- who my friend followed around for, I guess, years. The way my photographer friend met the guy was that he loves taking photos of American flags, in all contexts -- flagpoles, tattoos, whatever -- he's known for it. So one time he saw a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk, using an American flag as a blanket. He took his picture and the guy woke up and said "You oughta write a book about me." Why, my friend asked. "Because I've been in two Superbowls."

 :o  Take that, Rachel Kushner!

Quote
It's difficult for me to imagine her with a full teaching load. Maybe she just does a graduate seminar or two. If she has any undergraduate sections, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of them might actually be taught by graduate student assistants. I hope I'm wrong about that. If I were a Harvard undergrad and signed up for one of her classes and then found out it was taught by a TA, I'd feel cheated.

Plus, her title is one of those "The [some venerable person] Professor of History Chair at Harvard." I never know what those mean. Maybe they mean you hypothetically teach history there, but you don't do that much.

Hmm. If this is her resume ...

-- Full load at Harvard
-- Staff writer regularly churning out deeply researched New Yorker stories
-- Author regularly churning out deeply researched (I assume) books

... even with summers off and long winter breaks, that sounds pretty superhuman. Perhaps she has a clone?

Well, I guess she probably does have a staff of researchers. Other famous historians like Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin do (or did, in Ambrose's case).




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 18, 2021, 10:28:13 pm
Here's one interesting character I've heard about lately. Stop me if I've told it before (oh wait, I guess you can't! :laugh:). A photographer colleague just published a book called You Oughta Write a Book About Me. It's about this guy -- the "me" of the title -- who my friend followed around for, I guess, years. The way my photographer friend met the guy was that he loves taking photos of American flags, in all contexts -- flagpoles, tattoos, whatever -- he's known for it. So one time he saw a homeless guy sleeping on the sidewalk, using an American flag as a blanket. He took his picture and the guy woke up and said "You oughta write a book about me." Why, my friend asked. "Because I've been in two Superbowls."

Seriously no joke. I swear I heard something like that story recently, something to do with a guy who had played in the Superbowl and had ended up homeless. Like one of those uplifting stories they do at the end of a news broadcast, or something like that. I wonder if it's the same guy? I don't remember anything about a photographer being involved, though. That could just mean I don't remember. ???

Quote
Plus, her title is one of those "The [some venerable person] Professor of History Chair at Harvard." I never know what those mean. Maybe they mean you hypothetically teach history there, but you don't do that much.
.

Could be. I really don't know what those mean, either. At the least I've assumed it means some super-rich person left enough money as an investment somewhere to pay the salary of the person who gets the chair.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 19, 2021, 11:22:53 am
Seriously no joke. I swear I heard something like that story recently, something to do with a guy who had played in the Superbowl and had ended up homeless. Like one of those uplifting stories they do at the end of a news broadcast, or something like that. I wonder if it's the same guy? I don't remember anything about a photographer being involved, though. That could just mean I don't remember. ???

I bet it's the same one, especially if this was recently, because the book came out recently. And although Ted is a great photographer and that's how they met, he also wrote the book, so the photo part wouldn't necessarily come up in a short segment.

I see I got the title slightly wrong. I thought that was weird yesterday -- Ted works for a newspaper, so the guy suggesting a book as soon as they met seemed a bit presumptuous. Definitely worth a story, though. And eventually, I guess, a book.

You Ought to Do a Story About Me: Addiction, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Endless Quest for Redemption Hardcover – August 25, 2020 by Ted Jackson  (Author)

 https://www.amazon.com/You-Ought-Story-About-Friendship/dp/0062935674 (https://www.amazon.com/You-Ought-Story-About-Friendship/dp/0062935674)

Quote
Could be. I really don't know what those mean, either. At the least I've assumed it means some super-rich person left enough money as an investment somewhere to pay the salary of the person who gets the chair.

That seems likely!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 19, 2021, 08:38:48 pm
I see I got the title slightly wrong. I thought that was weird yesterday -- Ted works for a newspaper, so the guy suggesting a book as soon as they met seemed a bit presumptuous. Definitely worth a story, though. And eventually, I guess, a book.

You Ought to Do a Story About Me: Addiction, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Endless Quest for Redemption Hardcover – August 25, 2020 by Ted Jackson  (Author)

That sounds familiar.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 22, 2021, 11:06:23 pm
The Dec. 21 issue has one of those multi-book review/essays about imagining other lives one might have had if they'd picked a different college, not missed the bus that day, took the other road that diverged in the yellow wood ... it's kind of a thin concept for an essay, IMO, but the writer makes it more or less work. It includes more than a paragraph about Jack and Ennis -- Ennis being grimly satisfied with his bleak choices but Jack always frustrated about not having the sweet life.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 22, 2021, 11:08:06 pm
The Dec. 21 issue has one of those multi-book review/essays about imagining other lives you might have had if you'd picked a different college, not missed the bus that day, took the other road that diverged in the yellow wood ... it's kind of a thin concept for an essay, IMO, but the writer makes it more or less work for 4+ pages. It includes more than a paragraph about Jack and Ennis -- Ennis being grimly satisfied with his bleak existence but Jack always frustrated about not getting the sweet life.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 23, 2021, 12:40:31 pm
The Dec. 21 issue has one of those multi-book review/essays about imagining other lives one might have had if they'd picked a different college, not missed the bus that day, took the other road that diverged in the yellow wood ... it's kind of a thin concept for an essay, IMO, but the writer makes it more or less work. It includes more than a paragraph about Jack and Ennis -- Ennis being grimly satisfied with his bleak choices but Jack always frustrated about not having the sweet life.

In noticed that when I paged through the issue.

I'm six issues behind and counting, now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 23, 2021, 01:24:36 pm
You have remarkable discipline, Jeff.

Me, I'm 16 pages in on a 22-page article by our buddy Luke Mogelson called "The Storm" about the insurrection. He sure is earning his keep at TNY! It turns out that he's been on this story for months now and knew exactly how it was going to unfold. I'm excited about discussing it more after y'all have read it, although it looks like that will be around Easter time.  :-\

Well, just this one anecdote SPOILER ALERT.



At one point, Mogelson mentioned that he was incapacitated for 20 minutes by pepper spray in his face. That would have been the end of the assignment for me, but not for brave Luke!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 23, 2021, 04:47:11 pm
At one point, Mogelson mentioned that he was incapacitated for 20 minutes by pepper spray in his face. That would have been the end of the assignment for me, but not for brave Luke!

I don't think any of my colleagues got sprayed when covering George Floyd unrest, but at least a couple were hit by rubber bullets, one was thrown to the ground (by a cop) and told he'd be shot if he moved an inch, and several got their tires slashed (also by cops).

I was happy to miss that kind of action. I've hung out with crazy right-wingers a few times, and some might have even been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but frankly my worst fear was catching COVID since they rarely mask or distance.

I forgot to finish that article! It's fascinating. Did nobody seem to mind him getting videos so close up because they thought he was one of them?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2021, 12:46:45 am
You have remarkable discipline, Jeff.

Maybe not. I'm becoming picky. I've started to skip the movie and TV articles, and the Talk of the Town political pieces.

I just finished "The Skeleton Lake" (Dec. 14). I'm always up for a good historical mystery story, and that's a good one. I especially like the part about what DNA can tell ups about history.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 24, 2021, 11:31:26 am
Maybe not. I'm becoming picky. I've started to skip the movie and TV articles, and the Talk of the Town political pieces.

I've been doing that for some time. I don't read movie or TV reviews unless I'm familiar with the shows. I kind of skim political Talk of the Town pieces, at most, depending on their authors and political events. I rarely read the cultural TotT pieces unless I recognize and like the byline. I glance at Shouts & Murmurs and can usually tell pretty quickly whether it's unusual and imaginative ... or more often, especially with frequent writers, a kind of formulaic tired humor.

I almost never read theater or art reviews because I'm unlikely to be familiar with -- or ever have a chance to see -- their subjects. But I often read book reviews, based on my familiarity with the books themselves or interest in the topic.

As for the rest, it's hit and miss depending on the topic and author. I miss a lot of good ones, though, I discover when I weed through the pile later. I pull those out for later reading and still rarely get to them.  :-\



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 24, 2021, 11:58:42 am


I just finished "The Skeleton Lake" (Dec. 14). I'm always up for a good historical mystery story, and that's a good one. I especially like the part about what DNA can tell ups about history.


Yes, that was a great article. So good, I read it twice. I've been in the Himalayas, so I was interested for that reason as well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 24, 2021, 07:39:13 pm
I've started checking the tables of contents in some of the issues I'm behind, and I'm surprised that some of them don't have much that looks interesting to me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 25, 2021, 12:37:51 pm
I almost always find at least one thing that looks worth reading.

A really good issue might have four or five things.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 29, 2021, 04:54:23 pm
:laugh:

Such a fine sight to see
It's Winona Ryder, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin' down to take a look at me

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 29, 2021, 09:54:43 pm
 :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 29, 2021, 10:45:26 pm
I almost always find at least one thing that looks worth reading.

I'm about ready to give up on the Jan. 4 & 11 issue. I'd jumped ahead and read Adam Gopnik on keeping the Republic, Lawrence Wright on "The Plague Year," and Vinson Cunningham on Thomas Jefferson's abridgment of the Bible. I started the article on newsletters, but it's not holding my interest.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 02, 2021, 03:04:50 pm
I finished Rachel Kushner's article about her young life in San Francisco. I found it sad. I was interested in what she wrote about the hustlers on Polk Street because something like 30-35 years ago I read a story about the young hustlers on Polk Street and never forgot it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 02, 2021, 03:06:57 pm
I finished Rachel Kushner's article about her young life in San Francisco. I found it sad.

You have more patience than I did. What did you find sad about it? The fact that she wrote about people who were down and out and/or had addictions and/or other problems?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 02, 2021, 05:17:01 pm
You have more patience than I did. What did you find sad about it? The fact that she wrote about people who were down and out and/or had addictions and/or other problems?

Yes.

It was interesting, but I found it sad. All those sad people.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 04, 2021, 02:27:48 pm
If you skipped Elizabeth Kolbert's "Life Hacks" (Jan. 18), I recommend going back and reading it. I'm finding a lot more fun than the title and subtitle suggest. She got to bioengineer a strain of E. coli in her kitchen! ("The E. coli went into the fridge, next to the butter.") (I question the advisability of bioengineering a new strain of E. coli, but it's kind of fun to think you could do it in your kitchen.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 04, 2021, 05:56:27 pm
Last night I read the weekly Jill LePore article in TNY's latest issue. It was all about cyberhacking, and it was terrifying!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 05, 2021, 02:34:01 pm
I'm reading Luke Mogelson's article now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 05, 2021, 05:57:16 pm
I read Nathan Heller's Shouts & Murmurs last night. At first it was LOL-level hilarious. Which was interesting because I think of Nathan Heller as a light-toned but fairly serious writer (even now I'm still slogging my way through his Joan Didion piece). It was original and really funny.

But then about midway through it devolved, like most S&Ms, into such over-the-top absurdity it wasn't funny anymore. Maybe he felt he had to go that way because it's a sensitive topic (based on the politician who made headlines for praising Hitler in a speech) to show it was really, really not meant to be taken seriously. But a) I think anyone who reads the New Yorker would get it and b) that pattern, kind of subtly funny at first but steadily ratcheting up until it's ridiculous and less funny, is so typical of S&Ms.

I've never understood why a humor column in the New Yorker, which you'd think could access the funniest writers in the business, is so often less funny than your standard SNL sketch.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 06, 2021, 11:29:26 am
(I question the advisability of bioengineering a new strain of E. coli, but it's kind of fun to think you could do it in your kitchen.)

Yes, isn't it usually done in the bathroom?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 06, 2021, 02:31:19 pm
... about midway through it devolved, like most S&Ms, into such over-the-top absurdity it wasn't funny anymore.
yes, that seems to be their formula.

I've never understood why a humor column in the New Yorker, which you'd think could access the funniest writers in the business, is so often less funny than your standard SNL sketch.

I actually have an idea for a S&M column that I'd like to run by everyone to see if y'all think it's worth developing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 06, 2021, 07:16:16 pm
I actually have an idea for a S&M column that I'd like to run by everyone to see if y'all think it's worth developing.

Let's hear (see) it!

I recently had an idea and actually did write it and submitted it to S&M. No response. Too subtle, maybe.  :laugh:

I tried a couple of other humor publications -- McSweeney's and The Rumpus, heard nothing, and gave up.



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 06, 2021, 09:57:42 pm
Let's hear (see) it!

I recently had an idea and actually did write it and submitted it to S&M. No response. Too subtle, maybe.  :laugh:

I tried a couple of other humor publications -- McSweeney's and The Rumpus, heard nothing, and gave up.

I guess I've told this story before. More than 40 years ago, now, I sent in something for those little column fillers. It was accepted, and I got, I think, ten dollars for it. My entry was a headline from the local hometown newspaper:

"Pot is the heart of winter cookery"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 06, 2021, 10:08:43 pm
I guess I've told this story before. More than 40 years ago, now, I sent in something for those little column fillers. It was accepted, and I got, I think, ten dollars for it. My entry was a headline from the local hometown newspaper:

"Pot is the heart of winter cookery"


 :laugh:

No, I don't remember you telling us that before! You could, with just a tiny stretch, put the New Yorker on your list of publications on your resume!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2021, 11:48:24 am
Wow, I'm in awe! Regarding my idea, I would have no intention of actually submitting it, but it's just a nice thing to think about.

So, here's my idea. You know those recipe blogs on the Internet? You google something like "blueberry cake" and click on the first thing that pops up. So there's a catchy title and a scrumptious photo of mouth-watering cake with blueberry filling oozing out. Then, the first paragraph tempts you with the recipe's best features: only one pan to clean up! Cooks in 30 minutes! You can substitute any kind of berry! Followed by a close-up of a fork going in to the fluffy cake.

Then follows a rhapsodic account of the author's memories of blueberry picking on a summer morning in Michigan, followed by a photo of a pail full of blueberries.
Then follows a ... you get the idea. If I were to follow the usual formula, it might include the author sculpting the head of Napoleon completely in blueberries, or something like that.

At the bottom, instead of the recipe there is an alert saying "message clipped."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 07, 2021, 12:15:17 pm
That's a great idea! Personally I hate those long musing essays on memories of the food -- I just want to get to the recipe, so I usually scroll through them. I'm sure some people like them. In any case, they'd be a great target for satire, and I haven't seen a S&M on that topic.

If you write it, it only has to be about 500-750 words. Try writing a quick draft and see where it takes you! If you like it, you could polish it up and send it off. Mine came from a Facebook post that I wrote quickly off the top of my head and then later realized I could expand.

The actual online submission process is very easy. Getting it accepted is probably close to impossible if you don't have an agent. But there are at least a couple of other places to try. I also submitted mine to a literary contest on Dec. 31 (the deadline of the contest) so I'll let you know if I win.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 07, 2021, 12:37:02 pm
I'm reading Luke Mogelson's article now.

Your thoughts?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 07, 2021, 04:40:23 pm
I'm reading Luke Mogelson's article now.

Your thoughts?

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And I ain't jokin'.

I was discussing the situation, not the article, with a friend yesterday, and I wondered, How many Timothy McVeaghs are out there now?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 07, 2021, 04:57:16 pm
Did you hear about the guy, a reformed QAnon member apparently, who apologized to Anderson Cooper for having once thought Cooper ate babies? I mean, I don't know if that particular guy has a high school diploma but it's hard to imagine graduating from elementary school and believing some of those things. At least without plenty of evidence. I'm still not sure I even believe Armie Hammer practices cannibalism, and didn't that come straight from him?

(I saw a headline in some respectable outlet saying "Armie Hammer rumors are offensive to ethical cannibals" or something like that. I didn't read the article and now wish I had -- what would constitute ethical cannibalism for those who haven't survived a plane crash in the Andes?)

Our local newspaper cartoonist just did one about ... well, why explain it in words?



(http://chorus.stimg.co/22285298/ows_e8952f15_7920_42c1_a219_a25059866568.jpg?auto=compress&crop=faces&dpr=1.100000023841858&w=525)


BTW, Jeff, it was from you I first heard of Occam's Razor, back in probably 2006. Or at least the first time I heard it outside a college classroom. Now I use it a lot.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 09, 2021, 12:39:14 pm
Here's a link to Jill LePore's article on cyber hacks, which are much worse than we thought:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/08/the-next-cyberattack-is-already-under-way

Looks like the Year 2000 scare happened, 20 years later than we thought.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 09, 2021, 01:41:20 pm
I just read where hackers tried to poison a Florida city's water by changing the chemical composition remotely.  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 09, 2021, 07:38:24 pm
I just read where hackers tried to poison a Florida city's water by changing the chemical composition remotely.  :o

That has made national TV news.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 14, 2021, 10:07:25 pm
I thought I was by way of catching up on my magazines, as I had two with me when I was at my father's place. However, I never looked at either one of them while I was there. Still, I have made headway.

I'm surprised no one has commented on Dorothy Wickenden's Jan. 25 article on Frances Seward and other women she knew and their involvement in Abolitionism and women's rights, or on Akash Kupur's article on the Himalaya.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 15, 2021, 10:34:28 am
Well, I'll have to catch up a bit first. Last night I read an article by Nathan Heller about cars in American culture. It was from July 2019.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2021, 02:17:33 pm
I read an article by Nathan Heller about cars in American culture. It was from July 2019.

I always read Nathan Heller.

I thought I was catching up, but then I ran into the Feb. 1 that turned out to have lots of authors I always read: Jane Mayer, Jon Lee Anderson, John Seabrook, Nathan Heller.

About Heller's article: I've never read Joan Didion, but she's the kind of author who gets mentioned in TNY, so I figured she's an Important Writer, and I ought to read about her.

The articles about smells, the Chinese Cultural Revolutilon, and the Blackwell sisters were interesting, too. I don't know why it cought my eye, but I even read the short fiction.  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2021, 04:54:00 pm
I always read Nathan Heller.

I usually do, too. I read his work when he was on the staff at Slate. But somehow I missed the car one.
 
Quote
I've never read Joan Didion, but she's the kind of author who gets mentioned in TNY, so I figured she's an Important Writer

She is. You could read her without committing too much time because she's most well known for her essays. You could probably find many of them online. The one about the Manson murders and the decay of Haight-Ashbury hippie culture in the late '60s is particularly celebrated. I haven't read it lately.

I did see a documentary about her a year or so ago. In one of her essays (maybe the one above) she wrote about finding a child (about 9, maybe?) on LSD. The interviewer asks her what she thought about that.

"I thought it was GOLD," she says.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2021, 05:56:48 pm
(Re: Joan Didion)

She is. You could read her without committing too much time because she's most well known for her essays. You could probably find many of them online. The one about the Manson murders and the decay of Haight-Ashbury hippie culture in the late '60s is particularly celebrated. I haven't read it lately.

I seem to remember a TNY article about her from not too terribly long ago. IIRC, the reason for Heller's article now is a new publication of a collection of her essays. He mentions the Haight-Ashbury essay.

I remember she published a book following the unexpected death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne--I think it was called The Year of Magical Thinking, or something like that. (Again IIRC, Heller says her daughter died, too.) I know she also published a novel--I think it's a novel--called A Book of Common Prayer, because it would turn up if I wasn't careful what I put in the search box when I was searching on eBay for The Book of Common Prayer.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 19, 2021, 08:51:28 pm
(Re: Joan Didion)

I seem to remember a TNY article about her from not too terribly long ago. IIRC, the reason for Heller's article now is a new publication of a collection of her essays. He mentions the Haight-Ashbury essay.

I remember she published a book following the unexpected death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne--I think it was called The Year of Magical Thinking, or something like that. (Again IIRC, Heller says her daughter died, too.) I know she also published a novel--I think it's a novel--called A Book of Common Prayer, because it would turn up if I wasn't careful what I put in the search box when I was searching on eBay for The Book of Common Prayer.  :laugh:

Yes, correct on all points. I think she might have written a second book about her daughter's death, although both deaths occurred in close succession. She published a novel in 1970 called Play it as it Lays and maybe one or two others later. I remember reading PIAIL at this job I had in college -- making appointments for air-conditioner sales people that mostly involved just sitting around until someone called, then getting their contact info.

She also published a number of book-length nonfiction books. Where I Was From which is about, I believe, Sacramento, has has always sounded kind of good. But it's those early essays that launched her stardom, collected in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. If you ever go to a literary event, like a reading in a bookstore or an annual book festival, you'll see a older women carrying canvas totes, and many of them are printed with drawings of Joan Didion. (Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe are also popular. Are these from Barnes & Noble or some big book-store chain?)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 19, 2021, 09:43:39 pm
She also published a number of book-length nonfiction books. Where I Was From which is about, I believe, Sacramento, has has always sounded kind of good. But it's those early essays that launched her stardom, collected in Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album.

Heller mentions all of them

Quote
If you ever go to a literary event, like a reading in a bookstore or an annual book festival, you'll see older women carrying canvas totes, and many of them are printed with drawings of Joan Didion. (Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe are also popular. Are these from Barnes & Noble or some big book-store chain?)

I'm sure I've seen Poe, at least, at Barnes and Noble--and is there any bookstore chain left besides Barnes & Noble?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 20, 2021, 11:13:07 am
I'm sure I've seen Poe, at least, at Barnes and Noble--and is there any bookstore chain left besides Barnes & Noble?

Brick and mortar chains? Not that I know of. But there are still some famous independent ones: The Strand in NYC, City Lights in San Francisco, Powell's in Portland, Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Tattered Cover in Denver ...

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 06, 2021, 10:17:03 pm
I hesitate to say I'm actually caught up, but I am now up to the March 8 issue.

I think this is partly because I just stopped reading the movie, TV, and theater articles.

In the March 1 issue I read "The Covid Conundrum." I was about to give up on it, but I pushed through to the end, and I'm glad I did because on the very last page, who should show up but my old friend William of Ockham?  :laugh:  Along with Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2021, 10:40:22 am
I think this is partly because I just stopped reading the movie, TV, and theater articles.

Do/did you read them even if you've never heard of the shows? I read them only when I'm familiar with the shows and would be able to see them. So that lets almost all theater (though I might read about the occasional show that stars someone I know from movies, or is a new take on a classic play), and many movies, although these days there's at least a chance I could see a movie that wouldn't, in the old days, have been available to see outside NYC.

Quote
I'm glad I did because on the very last page, who should show up but my old friend William of Ockham?

The guy whose razor you introduced me to many years ago, which has come in handy countless times since!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 07, 2021, 04:31:56 pm
Do/did you read them even if you've never heard of the shows? I read them only when I'm familiar with the shows and would be able to see them. So that lets almost all theater (though I might read about the occasional show that stars someone I know from movies, or is a new take on a classic play), and many movies, although these days there's at least a chance I could see a movie that wouldn't, in the old days, have been available to see outside NYC.

Yes, though in times past I'd frequently have heard of the TV shows, even if there's no chance I'll ever see them. Same for the plays and the movies. But reading about these things, even if I've never heard of them, keeps me informed about what's going on in Culture beyond my own little world. (This is one reason that I hated and hate the way they cut back on the movies and theater entries in Goings on About Town--I learned stuff by reading those things. That cutback happened long before the pandemic.)

Of course, I've been reading The New Yorker for, like, 40 years now, so, to make a hypothetical example, if somebody reviews a revival of a play by, say, August Wilson, I'll read it because I know who August Wilson was--thanks to reading TNY.

Quote
The guy whose razor you introduced me to many years ago, which has come in handy countless times since!

That's the one!  :laugh:  His razor may be not sharp enough to explain the discrepancies in Covid in different parts of the world.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2021, 07:10:51 pm
That's the one!  :laugh:  His razor may be not sharp enough to explain the discrepancies in Covid in different parts of the world.  :(

I don't know about the world, but I just saw comparisons of cases and death counts today between MN, SD, ND, WI and IA. Minnesota had by far the lowest case rate and lowest death rate. I think Occam would fairly quickly deduce that MN has a Democratic governor who ordered statewide mask-wearing and stricter shutdowns, whereas the others, with the exception of WI, have Republicans who did not.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2021, 09:31:15 am
I can't believe I'm actually caught up--well, at least sort-of.

I'm about to finish up the March 8 issue. However, the mails being what they are, I have yet to receive the March 15 issue.

(Yesterday I received a bill on its due date.  >:(  )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 11, 2021, 02:52:24 pm
A cause for celebration!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2021, 03:23:36 pm

I'm about to finish up the March 8 issue. However, the mails being what they are, I have yet to receive the March 15 issue.


For the first time in living memory I have no New Yorker to read.

There was one issue back in August, I think it was, that I never did receive.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2021, 11:07:11 pm
The March 15 issue arrived today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 12, 2021, 10:35:11 am
The March 15 issue arrived today.

I got mine two days ago and have started reading "How Parties Die."


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 17, 2021, 06:18:58 pm
Well, isn't this ironic? I go from being something like six weeks behind to still waiting for the March 22 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 18, 2021, 09:41:22 am
I just the other day finished Jill Lepore's article on work from the Jan. 18 issue. It didn't tell me much beyond what I already knew, but it hit a lot of important points.

The most infuriating one was that the CEO of Dunkin' Donuts (which did those commercials featuring the overworked "time to make the donuts" guy) made something like $5 million that year, down from $10.4 million the previous year, and called a $15 minimum wage "absolutely outrageous."




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 18, 2021, 09:05:26 pm
The March 22 issue arrived very timely in today's mail.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 19, 2021, 09:32:07 am
I got mine yesterday, too. Looks like a good one! I see four or five articles in the ToC that look worth checking out. I read the Shouts & Murmurs last night, and it was actually funny.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 19, 2021, 03:57:41 pm
Yes, the last two S&Ms were better, and I think one of the reasons is that they're shorter and don't have as much room to "jump the shark". Possibly an editor is doing his/her job well.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2021, 08:03:23 pm
You can skip the March 22 article on polygamy and polyamory. It's not very good. For one thing, it's too long.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2021, 08:33:49 am
Well, I've finished March 22.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 25, 2021, 09:07:03 am
Well, I've finished March 22.

What parts did you like?

On your advice, I skipped most of the polyamory piece. Not only is it long, but I got into it a little way and realized I'm just not that interested in that topic, though I'm sure plenty of people are.

How's the piece on the New Left? I usually like Louis Menand. Years ago I read a few things of his I really liked, then I lived in New York in 1993-94 and found you could look his name up in the phone book. Not that I wanted to stalk him or anything but I was amazed you could just look up famous people and there they were, along with their addresses. Not that Louis Menand is a household name, but his was a name I knew in 1993. I'm sure I looked up a few people even more famous, but he is one I remember.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2021, 11:46:41 am
What parts did you like?

That's pretty amazing that Louis Menand was in the phone book. I don't know that I recognized the name back in them days, or maybe I just don't remember recognizing it. I liked his piece on the New Left. (Wasn't Jane Fonda married to Tom Hayden once?)

But I liked the Jane Mayer--I always read her, and anything that makes Trump look bad.

I liked Jennifer Gonnerman on the hotel, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 25, 2021, 12:59:02 pm
(Wasn't Jane Fonda married to Tom Hayden once?)

Yes. In fact, I saw a Jane Fonda documentary that said Jane Fonda started her famous workout business as a way to raise money for her and Hayden's activism.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 25, 2021, 02:44:39 pm
Yes. In fact, I saw a Jane Fonda documentary that said Jane Fonda started her famous workout business as a way to raise money for her and Hayden's activism.

I just checked. They were married 1973--1990. Hayden died 23 Oct. 2016.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 25, 2021, 07:01:00 pm
I got the new one today and I'm sorry to report I see what looks like a lot of good articles. Slow down, New Yorker! I'm still trying to get through March 22!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 27, 2021, 11:29:13 am
Another killer article by Jill LePore on the writing of constitutions.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 27, 2021, 01:22:34 pm
Another killer article by Jill LePore on the writing of constitutions.

Yes! I've only just started it but fascinating opening anecdote about Gödel and the fatal flaw he found in the Constitution. And here I've been thinking the Constitution would protect us against a Trump takeover, but it came pretty close to not.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 05, 2021, 02:26:27 pm
Does anyone do the crosswords that have started appearing on the back page? I fill them out about halfway by the time my next issue comes.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 05, 2021, 02:30:36 pm
Does anyone do the crosswords that have started appearing on the back page? I fill them out about halfway by the time my next issue comes.

No, but I can see why they wanted to switch it up. Those cartoon captions were getting pretty lame.

I've probably said this, but one reason hard they're hard to produce good captions for is that the pictures are of absurd situations. Whereas most professional cartoons in the magazine show people walking down the street or sitting in their living room talking. I can see why these would be hard for amateurs to caption, but often they have to resort to kind of silly stretches.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 05, 2021, 11:00:28 pm
I recommend the knitting story in the March 29 issue. It includes the origin story of the pussyhats.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 06, 2021, 06:33:15 pm
No, but I can see why they wanted to switch it up. Those cartoon captions were getting pretty lame.

I've probably said this, but one reason hard they're hard to produce good captions for is that the pictures are of absurd situations. Whereas most professional cartoons in the magazine show people walking down the street or sitting in their living room talking. I can see why these would be hard for amateurs to caption, but often they have to resort to kind of silly stretches.

They still have the cartoon captions on the next-to-last page with the crossword on the last page.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 07, 2021, 09:14:59 am
They still have the cartoon captions on the next-to-last page with the crossword on the last page.

Oh, I know, I saw those. But they're not in as prominent a place, and if they do feel like phasing them out that would be a subtler way to do it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 08, 2021, 11:44:01 pm
I'm watching Ken Burns' latest oeuvre, a documentary about Hemingway, inspired by its review in this week's issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 09, 2021, 08:28:58 am
I'm watching Ken Burns' latest oeuvre, a documentary about Hemingway, inspired by its review in this week's issue.

That's been recommended to me, but, having no interest in Hemingway, I'll be skipping it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 09, 2021, 09:44:15 am
That's been recommended to me, but, having no interest in Hemingway, I'll be skipping it.

I have little interest in Hemingway, but I do have interest in Ken Burns. Also, Hemingway lived for a while in Sun Valley, ID, where I lived for a (much shorter) while and it would be fun to see any scenes set there.

A few years ago someone made a movie about Mariel Hemingway, who maintains this extremely healthy lifestyle (in Sun Valley) in hopes of avoiding the depression and suicide that claimed some of her family members, including her sister, Margaux, as well as her grandfather. I wanted to watch it, but couldn't find it anywhere.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 09, 2021, 10:11:44 am
I'm about halfway through Louis Menand's piece on the making of Midnight Cowboy, and it's really entertaining. Now I know why I liked Menand enough to look him up in the NYC phone book in 1993! Although most of the piece's interest comes from the details of the story itself as opposed to his writing per se.

I've only seen MC once, many decades ago -- on network TV! Meaning I probably missed about half of it, since it was rated X. I remember my mom, who had seen it in a theater, telling me it was really depressing. After I watched I said "What's so depressing about it?' She thought that was funny. Now I wonder if we reacted differently because we saw different cuts or because we were different ages. I don't remember finding movies depressing (as opposed to sad, like Brokeback Mountain) until I was in my 30s. At some point I decided to avoid them whenever possible.








Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 09, 2021, 10:28:43 am
I'm about halfway through Louis Menand's piece on the making of Midnight Cowboy, and it's really entertaining. Now I know why I liked Menand enough to look him up in the NYC phone book in 1993! Although most of the piece's interest comes from the details of the story itself as opposed to his writing per se.

Is this available only online? The latest hard copy I've received is this week, i.e., April 5.

It does sound very interesting.

I've never seen Midnight Cowboy.  :(

Incidentally, if you didn't read Judith Thurman on Ann Lowe in the March 29 issue, at least go back and look at the pictures.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 09, 2021, 12:38:14 pm
I'm about halfway through Louis Menand's piece on the making of Midnight Cowboy, and it's really entertaining. Now I know why I liked Menand enough to look him up in the NYC phone book in 1993! Although most of the piece's interest comes from the details of the story itself as opposed to his writing per se.
That was one of the few articles I thought was too short. There is much more to say about the movie. I may have to get the book. (Jeff, this was in the critics section, April 12 issue.)

I've only seen MC once, many decades ago -- on network TV! Meaning I probably missed about half of it, since it was rated X. I remember my mom, who had seen it in a theater, telling me it was really depressing. After I watched I said "What's so depressing about it?' She thought that was funny. Now I wonder if we reacted differently because we saw different cuts or because we were different ages.
I found it depressing for several reasons. First, it was in black-and-white and showed the gritty side of New York in the 1960s, when Times Square had become squalid. The innocent Joe Buck is traumatized by the culture. The ending is sad; Ratso never makes it to the Florida he has dreamed about. The class system has overpowered America's dreams of egalitarianism (which never really existed in the first place).
I don't remember finding movies depressing (as opposed to sad, like Brokeback Mountain) until I was in my 30s. At some point I decided to avoid them whenever possible.
Whoa, for a second there, I thought you meant you decided to avoid all movies. But that can't be, since you obviously saw Brokeback Mountain!

I'm not in the mood for a depressing movie very often, but when I look back on it, depressing movies have been among the best I've ever seen, including MC, BBM, The Hurt Locker, and Slumdog Millionaire. Just a day or so ago, I went to the theater to see the Oscar nominated animated shorts. There were seven of them, some very beautiful, some comical, some heartwarming. But the one I predict will win the Oscar is a very depressing one about gun violence. It's called "If Anything Happens, I Love You."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 09, 2021, 01:40:53 pm
That was one of the few articles I thought was too short. There is much more to say about the movie. I may have to get the book. (Jeff, this was in the critics section, April 12 issue.)

Thanks. I'm still waiting for that one.

OTOH, I'm currently enjoying the one about the Arecibo telescope in the April 5 issue. I remember hearing about that being used to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 09, 2021, 04:54:59 pm
Is this available only online?

Yes, if you don't want to wait. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/12/the-making-of-midnight-cowboy-and-the-remaking-of-hollywood (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/12/the-making-of-midnight-cowboy-and-the-remaking-of-hollywood)



That was one of the few articles I thought was too short.

I thought so, too!

Quote
I found it depressing for several reasons. First, it was in black-and-white and showed the gritty side of New York in the 1960s, when Times Square had become squalid. The innocent Joe Buck is traumatized by the culture. The ending is sad; Ratso never makes it to the Florida he has dreamed about. The class system has overpowered America's dreams of egalitarianism (which never really existed in the first place).

Well, to clarify, it's not like I mistook it for a rom-com. The ending is extremely sad. It's possible I was too young to get depressed about stuff like a squalid Times Square.

Years ago, I cowrote a story about depressing movies with a movie critic. I know we mentioned Platoon and Leaving Las Vegas. And there was some other movie out at the time about a refugee family that kept running into tragic troubles. I can't remember the name.

I think a friend who accompanied me to Blue Velvet was sorry she'd seen it, but for some reason that didn't bother me. Again, my youth may have shielded me a bit; the first depressing movie I recall -- I mean the kind that lingers for two or three days -- was Platoon. It's why I hate Barber's Adagio.

One year my mom and brother were looking for a movie to rent on Christmas Eve and were considering Leaving Las Vegas. I had to put my foot down and forbid it, even though I was going out for the evening. That one left me depressed for days, too -- it's very well made, so it's not like people shouldn't see it if they dare want. Just not on Christmas Eve!

But I didn't swear off depressing movies until I saw a 1990s Nick Nolte movie called Affliction. I don't remember how it went, but I clearly remember thinking afterward that I no longer want to see movies that leave me feeling worse than I was before, so I decided to avoid them.

Speaking of Nick Nolte, for some reason Prince of Tides didn't depress me too much. In fact I was inspired by that same film critic to write a story about male rape.

I did accidentally watch Requiem for a Dream, and at home on a rainy Saturday afternoon to make it worse. I didn't really know what was going to happen and it was critically acclaimed, so it took me off guard.

Quote
I'm not in the mood for a depressing movie very often, but when I look back on it, depressing movies have been among the best I've ever seen, including MC, BBM, The Hurt Locker, and Slumdog Millionaire. Just a day or so ago, I went to the theater to see the Oscar nominated animated shorts. There were seven of them, some very beautiful, some comical, some heartwarming. But the one I predict will win the Oscar is a very depressing one about gun violence. It's called "If Anything Happens, I Love You."

I distinguish between sad and depressing. BBM was obviously sad but didn't leave me depressed; it left me exhilarated and ready to see it again the very next day! I don't remember being especially depressed by The Hurt Locker, although I can't remember how it ended. I do remember a scene where Jeremy Renner, having been discharged, was grocery shopping and realized how disengaged he felt from that culture, and eventually returned to the war zone. That scene was really useful in helping me understand the culture shock vets must experience when they return from battle to ordinary life.

I can see how Slumdog Millionaire might be depressing, but didn't it have a happy ending?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 09, 2021, 09:06:32 pm
Yes, if you don't want to wait. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/12/the-making-of-midnight-cowboy-and-the-remaking-of-hollywood (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/12/the-making-of-midnight-cowboy-and-the-remaking-of-hollywood)

April 12 arrived in today's mail. Over dinner I read the Menand on Midnight Cowboy. I really want to see it now. Pretty much all I really new about it was that Jon Voight was a hustler, and Dustin Hoffman was somebody who coughed a lot.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 11, 2021, 08:45:26 pm
Lee, did you read the profile in January of David Lesh, the guy who's widely hated -- but also, by some idiots, admired -- for constantly violating conservation laws and doing gross things in federal wilderness areas in Colorado? Had you heard of him before?

I'm trying to pare down my old magazine pile and came across that one.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2021, 08:42:07 am
Lee, did you read the profile in January of David Lesh, the guy who's widely hated -- but also, by some idiots, admired -- for constantly violating conservation laws and doing gross things in federal wilderness areas in Colorado? Had you heard of him before?

I read it. He reminds me of someone else some idiots admire.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 12, 2021, 09:52:45 am
Lee, did you read the profile in January of David Lesh, the guy who's widely hated -- but also, by some idiots, admired -- for constantly violating conservation laws and doing gross things in federal wilderness areas in Colorado? Had you heard of him before?

I'm trying to pare down my old magazine pile and came across that one.

Yes, I read that one right away. Yes, I know people like him but not him specifically. The classic example is Aron Ralston, he of the movie 127 Hours, who had to cut off his impinged arm in a slot canyon when a rock rolled on top of it. I also met a Coloradan at Mt. Everest Base Camp who was a self-promoter who wrote a book about his "feat" of pitching a tent and sleeping on all 52 summits of Colorado's tallest mountains--the Fourteeners. I bought the book but tired of his exploits and was relieved when he stoppd posting on Facebook. Lesh is an extreme example of the idea of manifest destiny, that Nature is there for us to tear up, use, and exploit. Fortunately, guys like him are becoming fewer. I don't really know why TNY chose to give him attention like that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 12, 2021, 11:04:50 am
The classic example is Aron Ralston, he of the movie 127 Hours, who had to cut off his impinged arm in a slot canyon when a rock rolled on top of it.

Are you saying Ralston is an asshole like this Lesh guy? James Franco made him seem nice. Reckless for not telling anyone where he was going, though.

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Lesh is an extreme example of the idea of manifest destiny, that Nature is there for us to tear up, use, and exploit. Fortunately, guys like him are becoming fewer. I don't really know why TNY chose to give him attention like that.

I halfway bought his arguments that he wasn't doing that much harm to nature, that ski resorts do more (though arguably for better reasons). Mainly he seems like a guy who needs constant attention, thinks obnoxiousness is cool, and fools stupid people into thinking he IS cool. ... Wait, like Jeff said, who does that remind me of??

It is peculiar that assholes like that get profiled in the New Yorker, though. If all it takes to get published in the New Yorker is to profile some asshole I am already composing an email to David Remnick because I can think of plenty of assholes.

I wonder if there's something sexist about it. The writer is also a man (albeit a longtime staff member). There's an organization called VIDA that every year counts bylines for men vs. women in major magazines like TNY. When they started the imbalances were really extreme but they've gotten better, perhaps partly influenced by VIDA itself.

For example, in 2019 (the most recent count) TNY had 430 women's bylines and 524 men's -- 45.03% to 54.87%.  Not perfect, but it's the closest they've been since the count started. In 2010, there were 163 women's bylines and 449 men's.

What they can't really count is the content of the articles. If a woman writer pitched the David Lesh story would they still buy it? Maybe. But what if a woman pitched a story about a really obnoxious woman who wasn't particularly well known even in her own state, wasn't respected outside of a small population of idiots and did really stupid things?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2021, 11:22:15 am
I wonder if there's something sexist about it. The writer is also a man (albeit a longtime staff member).

If you're referring to the Lesh article in particular, If I remember correctly from the article how he regards and treats women, I don't think a woman writer could have done the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 12, 2021, 11:24:06 am
Are you saying Ralston is an asshole like this Lesh guy? James Franco made him seem nice. Reckless for not telling anyone where he was going, though.

He certainly seems like somebody who has a very high opinion of himself (not necessarily warranted, I'd say, considering the situation he got himself into).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 12, 2021, 01:30:37 pm
Where in the movie was he portrayed as a sympathetic character? I can't recall a spot. Maybe when he was further along in his ordeal and he was repenting all his sins.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 12, 2021, 09:43:42 pm
If you're referring to the Lesh article in particular, If I remember correctly from the article how he regards and treats women, I don't think a woman writer could have done the article.

A woman writer probably wouldn't want to, but sexist men often treat women writers with less sexism than you might think. Especially when they're offering an attention junkie a chance to be in a respected national magazine.



He certainly seems like somebody who has a very high opinion of himself (not necessarily warranted, I'd say, considering the situation he got himself into).

Where in the movie was he portrayed as a sympathetic character? I can't recall a spot. Maybe when he was further along in his ordeal and he was repenting all his sins.

Maybe I'm just forgetting parts of the movie. (It was 2010.) But by sympathetic, I don't mean they show him volunteering in a soup kitchen, he's just the protagonist and protagonists are usually automatically granted a certain degree of sympathy unless they're overtly bad in some way (i.e. American Psycho). I recall him as just a regular outdoorsy guy. Probably too risk-taking and certainly careless not to tell anybody where he was going, but I don't remember him being a jerk. I don't even remember him repenting all his sins! But I will give him props for slicing off his own arm.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 13, 2021, 11:46:57 am
That part was covered by his failed relationship with his girlfriend, the French lady.

Speaking of jerks, I've been watching the Ken Burns special "Hemingway" and am about to get into the later years. Don't know if I'm up for it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 13, 2021, 04:00:55 pm
That part was covered by his failed relationship with his girlfriend, the French lady.

Speaking of jerks, I've been watching the Ken Burns special "Hemingway" and am about to get into the later years. Don't know if I'm up for it.

I read a review that portrayed Hemingway as a writer as kind of outdated and inconsequential at this point. Since that's pretty much the way I felt about him in college lit classes, I haven't jumped on the Ken Burns' production. I wish he'd done F. Scott Fitzgerald instead.

https://slate.com/culture/2021/04/hemingway-documentary-ken-burns-influence-abuse-masculinity.html (https://slate.com/culture/2021/04/hemingway-documentary-ken-burns-influence-abuse-masculinity.html)

Or maybe a woman, for a change. His subjects are usually either specific men or activities dominated by men. There were women involved in the Civil War, but more on the sidelines, and of course there are women jazz and country musicians but I'm not sure how central they were in his renditions. I can't remember the jazz one very well and didn't finish the country music one.





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 15, 2021, 01:14:41 pm
I read a review that portrayed Hemingway as a writer as kind of outdated and inconsequential at this point. Since that's pretty much the way I felt about him in college lit classes, I haven't jumped on the Ken Burns' production. I wish he'd done F. Scott Fitzgerald instead.

I wouldn't have been any more interested in him than I am in Hemingway--which is not at all. I remember I read The Great Gatsby once, and I couldn't tell you a thing about it.

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Or maybe a woman, for a change. His subjects are usually either specific men or activities dominated by men. There were women involved in the Civil War, but more on the sidelines, and of course there are women jazz and country musicians but I'm not sure how central they were in his renditions. I can't remember the jazz one very well and didn't finish the country music one.

Maybe those women in the Civil War are on the sidelines because male historians put them there. I did watch the whole country music documentary, and my memory is that women have been pretty important. The Carters were practically a dynasty--three generations of women in country music. (Well, maybe that third generation only partly qualifies as part of a dynasty, but still.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 15, 2021, 01:16:53 pm
If you didn't read "On the Couch: Common Thread" in the Talk of the Town in the April 5 issue, I recommend it. I found it quite entertaining.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 15, 2021, 02:21:40 pm
I wouldn't have been any more interested in him than I am in Hemingway--which is not at all. I remember I read The Great Gatsby once, and I couldn't tell you a thing about it.

What? A well educated man such as yourself??  :o  I read This Side of Paradise for fun before I read The Great Gatsby, so probably junior high. Gatsby is genuinely great, so to speak -- I loved studying it in school and learning that, for example, when Nick Carroway leans against a mantle and tips a clock it means something about time (I can't remember more details about that particular symbol, but that kind of thing did prepare me for practicing Brokology). I read a couple of others of his, but the only one that stands out now is The Last Tycoon, half finished and published posthumously, based on Irving Thalberg. That's actually what got me interested in old films. He also wrote some good short stories and a classic first-person essay, The Crackup, about his own.

Hemingway was interested in bullfighting, war, fishing -- stereotypically "manly" topics that don't interest me. ("Hills Like White Elephants" is great, though.) Fitzgerald wrote about class, partying, alcoholism -- topics closer to my areas of interest. I also like Fitzgerald's writing style much better. The point the reviewer I read made was that Hemingway's style was fresh and evolutionary at the time but has since become familiar. I prefer Raymond Carver (well, his style is credited to his editor, Gordon Lish, but still).

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Maybe those women in the Civil War are on the sidelines because male historians put them there. I did watch the whole country music documentary, and my memory is that women have been pretty important. The Carters were practically a dynasty--three generations of women in country music. (Well, maybe that third generation only partly qualifies as part of a dynasty, but still.)

Yeah, I know, my bad. I didn't watch the whole series but I shouldn't have included it on the list. Even as I was writing it, I knew it was sketchy and only included it to support my point. Not just the Carters but Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynett, the Judds and of course Dolly Parton.

As for the Civil War, though, I think he made a decent effort to include women but fighting battles is probably always going to be a little more high-profile than nursing or running the farm



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 15, 2021, 03:30:31 pm
What? A well educated man such as yourself??  :o  I read This Side of Paradise for fun before I read The Great Gatsby, so probably junior high.

I know I didn't read Gatsby in school. I have this weird memory that my mother gave me a copy of it. I'm not even sure I finished it. But here's the thing. I think of a book like Gatsby as "literary fiction," and I just don't read literary fiction, other than the occasional short story in TNY. I do believe I've read a Hemingway and a Fitzgerald story in TNY.

I have another memory of my mother giving me a copy of The Old Man and the Sea, and not caring for that, either.

Quote
Yeah, I know, my bad. I didn't watch the whole series but I shouldn't have included it on the list. Even as I was writing it, I knew it was sketchy and only included it to support my point. Not just the Carters but Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynett, the Judds and of course Dolly Parton.

I don't think it was your bad. I thought of all those women, but for some reason I thought you meant the "rise" of Country Music, so I just mentioned the Carters because I had the impression that Mother Maybelle Carter was really important in the beginnings of the genre.


Quote
As for the Civil War, though, I think he made a decent effort to include women but fighting battles is probably always going to be a little more high-profile than nursing or running the farm

I guess The Civil War "made" Ken Burns, but I've never seen that, either--because that episode of American history never really interested me much. I would watch it now if PBS ever broadcast it again. I've also not watched his series on baseball because that subject didn't really interest me, either. I can't say why I watched The Roosevelts, but I know I watched Vietnam because I "lived" through it. I remember Kent State, after all.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 15, 2021, 04:35:09 pm
But here's the thing. I think of a book like Gatsby as "literary fiction," and I just don't read literary fiction, other than the occasional short story in TNY. I do believe I've read a Hemingway and a Fitzgerald story in TNY.

Literary fiction is the only kind of fiction I like. That said, I don't read much fiction these days.

Quote
I don't think it was your bad. I thought of all those women, but for some reason I thought you meant the "rise" of Country Music, so I just mentioned the Carters because I had the impression that Mother Maybelle Carter was really important in the beginnings of the genre.

I still take responsibility, but I agree with you about the earliest country music and the Carters. Years ago, I bought a four-disc album in Nashville called The History of Country Music and it contained a creaky old (1928, per Wikipedia) recording of "Keep on the Sunny Side of Life" by the Carter Family.

Quote
I guess The Civil War "made" Ken Burns, but I've never seen that, either--because that episode of American history never really interested me much. I would watch it now if PBS ever broadcast it again. I've also not watched his series on baseball because that subject didn't really interest me, either. I can't say why I watched The Roosevelts, but I know I watched Vietnam because I "lived" through it. I remember Kent State, after all.

You weren't interested in the Civil War era? Oh, for some reason I thought you were. Weren't you a reenactor for a while, or am I imagining that? And I guess when I think of reenactors I mainly think of the Civil War.

I was living in NOLA when The Civil War first aired, and it inspired me to write a package of stories about how various groups felt about the war. I interviewed Sons of and Daughters of the Confederacy, Black Civil War buffs, historian Stephen Ambrose (who taught at Tulane) and I can't remember who else. My main memory was of a woman sitting in a dining room under an approximately 4X6 painting of Robert E. Lee (I know I've told this before, but ...), informing me that slaves loved their masters because the masters were nice enough to provide them with room and board.

An editor deleted that part, because she felt it would make the woman "look foolish." Um, yeah, that's pretty much what's wrong with that attitude but nevertheless a lot of people still hold it.

Anyway! I tried to watch it again a couple of years and now I found it too slow. My tastes have changed over 30 years, I guess. I liked Jazz and Baseball, loved The Roosevelts but felt it contained about 20% more information than I needed (he should do two versions of everything -- one for popular viewing and one as historical record). I also loved Vietnam and don't remember considering that one too informative. In fact, I was amazed at how informative it was, considering it was an era I lived through. Those recordings of Nixon gloating to Kissinger about how well he'd lied!  :o



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 15, 2021, 08:37:13 pm
You weren't interested in the Civil War era? Oh, for some reason I thought you were. Weren't you a reenactor for a while, or am I imagining that? And I guess when I think of reenactors I mainly think of the Civil War.

No, for American history the interest is mainly the Colonial period. I tend to lose interest about 1763.  ;D  The reenacting was SCA, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (for me mostly the Renaissance, or, actually, up to the early 17th Century).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 16, 2021, 06:18:41 pm
The April 19 issue was in my mailbox today. On my way up to my place, I looked at the table of contents, and my eye was immediately caught by the entry "Band of Brothers: A lost monument to doomed lovers," and I kind of went, "Oh. ..."

I wasn't even out of the elevator before I read the short article, and it turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. It's an article about the discovery of the monument and mass grave of the Sacred Band.

The Sacred Band was an elite military unit of the Ancient Greek city-state of Thebes. It was composed of 150 pairs of male lovers. The unit was undefeated until it was wiped out to a man in a battle with the forces of Philip of Macedon and Philip's son Alexander (the future "the Great").

The article first gave me goosebumps, and then it made me momentarily choke up. It happens that I just finished re-reading The Last of the Wine, one of Mary Renault's novels of Ancient Greece. The novel takes place at the time of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and the central characters are two young Athenian men who are lovers and warriors.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 16, 2021, 07:53:13 pm
I went ahead to that article. So poignant, especially the drawing. Some of the skeletons reached out to each other. I'm definitely going to get the book. Thank you for pointing that out.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 16, 2021, 09:21:36 pm
I went ahead to that article. So poignant, especially the drawing. Some of the skeletons reached out to each other. I'm definitely going to get the book. Thank you for pointing that out.

It really got to me that some of the skeletons were holding hands.

It's a really good book. I hope you enjoy it. I hadn't read it in 30 years or more, so reading it again was like reading it for the first time. I've ordered a hardback copy from Betterworld Books to replace my old paperback copy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 17, 2021, 12:32:30 am
Just checking in on my phone so I have more to say about this topic (not especially informed, just interested) but right now I wanted to note that I finally finished the Midnight Cowboy piece and noticed a weird thing. They made a common word — pretty sure it was underway but I don’t have it front of me — into two words. One of TNY’s weird quirks, or faulty editing? The line break came between them with no hyphen.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 22, 2021, 01:42:47 pm
I finished the John McPhee (April 19) over lunch. He must have published something about his experiences aboard the ship Stella Lykes in TNY, because the ship's name sounds familiar.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 23, 2021, 09:17:37 pm
I am enjoying Lauren Collins on French le tacos (looks plural but actually singular) (April 19).

I'm getting the feeling that The New Yorker  has a history of making the French look a little silly. I think we've seen this in other writers, and I think it goes all the way back to James Thurber. The collection My World--and Welcome To It contains an entire section of pieces that Thurber wrote in France in 1937 and 1938. The Acknowledgments at the beginning of the book notes that most of the stories were first published in TNY.

What has TNY got against France?   ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2021, 08:25:09 pm
How odd is this?  ???  There is almost nothing in the April 26 & May 3 issue that interests me. I do, however, recommend Margaret Talbot on home ec. I found that article entertaining.  :)  I will be reading the fiction piece because it's Margaret Atwood.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 26, 2021, 10:59:40 am
How odd is this?  ???  There is almost nothing in the April 26 & May 3 issue that interests me. I do, however, recommend Margaret Talbot on home ec. I found that article entertaining.  :)  I will be reading the fiction piece because it's Margaret Atwood.

I see a handful that might be OK, so I'll give them a chance but possibly not finish them. Same here on the Atwoord story.

Here's some news, if you haven't already heard: The reason Louis Menand has published a couple of 1960s-related things lately ("Midnight Cowboy" and an article about '60s radicals, e.g. Tom Hayden) is that he has a new book out covering those kinds of topics. Sounds like the book covers the Cold War years but is about cultural changes (rather than just geopolitics). I might read that!


[A coupled of minutes later] Uh-oh -- it's 700 pages! I haven't read the reviews thoroughly. If it sounds like something one could skip around in I'd be more likely to read it than a book that has to be read straight through from beginning to end. The arts and culture portions would interest me more than geopolitics of the Cold War itself. ...  Or maybe not, you never know.

Apparently he goes by "Luke," so I'll start calling him that, as if 30 years ago I had actually called him and we met for coffee and have been friends ever since.

I did actually call and talk to Pete Hamill while I was in NYC -- friend of a friend -- he was very nice and gave me some advice for freelancing there. When I called him, he happened to be on the cover of that month's issue of Poets & Writers,. But we didn't get coffee and I haven't talked to him since.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 26, 2021, 11:26:57 am
Here's some news, if you haven't already heard: The reason Louis Menand has published a couple of 1960s-related things lately ("Midnight Cowboy" and an article about '60s radicals, e.g. Tom Hayden) is that he has a new book out covering those kinds of topics. Sounds like the book covers the Cold War years but is about cultural changes (rather than just geopolitics). I might read that!

Reminds me that I've noticed over the years that lots of articles in TNY are drawn from books written by the article's author. Lately I've been playing a game with myself, trying to spot the articles that I think will be a part of somebody's book.  ;D

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[A coupled of minutes later] Uh-oh -- it's 700 pages!

Another reminder of an experience I once had with a book when I was still pretty young--high school age maybe, I'm not sure anymore. Terrible that right now I can't remember the title or the author, but it was a history of the U.S. in the 20th century--or so much of it that had passed by at least the early 1960s. The book was enormous in hardback, something like two inches or more thick. I remember it as well written, and I enjoyed it, and then I got to the Kennedy years, and I stopped stock-still. Somehow I could not get myself push on any further to read the Kennedy portion. I never finished the book.

If I were named Louis, I'd want to go by Luke, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 26, 2021, 08:56:55 pm
Reminds me that I've noticed over the years that lots of articles in TNY are drawn from books written by the article's author. Lately I've been playing a game with myself, trying to spot the articles that I think will be a part of somebody's book.  ;D

Yeah, I actually suspected it about the Menand articles. Why, out of the blue, write about Midnight Cowboy unless it was connected to something larger?


Quote
Another reminder of an experience I once had with a book when I was still pretty young--high school age maybe, I'm not sure anymore. Terrible that right now I can't remember the title or the author, but it was a history of the U.S. in the 20th century--or so much of it that had passed by at least the early 1960s. The book was enormous in hardback, something like two inches or more thick. I remember it as well written, and I enjoyed it, and then I got to the Kennedy years, and I stopped stock-still. Somehow I could not get myself push on any further to read the Kennedy portion. I never finished the book.

If I were named Louis, I'd want to by by Luke, too.

Why couldn't you go through the Kennedy portion? Too depressing because you can remember it?

As for Louis, I would prefer Luke, too. With Louis, I never know how you're supposed to pronounce it. Like, why is Louis prounced Loo-ee when it's Louis CK or Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but then it's Robert Loo-is Stevenson?

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 26, 2021, 10:08:05 pm
Why couldn't you go through the Kennedy portion? Too depressing because you can remember it?

To this day I have no idea. I just couldn't go any further in the book. I wish I could remember the title and the author. It was a good book.

Quote
As for Louis, I would prefer Luke, too. With Louis, I never know how you're supposed to pronounce it. Like, why is Louis prounced Loo-ee when it's Louis CK or Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but then it's Robert Loo-is Stevenson?

I have in my library an old, old, edition of The History of England from the Accession of James II (it's five volumes!), by Thomas Babington Macaulay, who was an important English historian in the 19th century; he's probably mostly forgotten today, maybe even in England. James II became king in 1685. The contemporaneous king of France was Louis XIV. Macaulay calls him "Lewis."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 27, 2021, 09:56:56 am
The contemporaneous king of France was Louis XIV. Macaulay calls him "Lewis."

Interesting, because the French would have a good excuse for pronouncing Louis Lou-EE, as in faits accomplis.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 27, 2021, 01:28:23 pm
I enjoyed Amy Davidson Sorkin on the books about Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan, particularly the section on the book about Nancy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 02, 2021, 08:38:27 pm
That issue was a little strange, almost like the women's tech issue, especially the last part. I enjoyed the home ec article and the one about First Ladies, more than I expected to. Also, the Margaret Atwood piece was good. I expected not to like it but I was drawn in.

I'm intrigued by the movie reviews of "Voyager" and "Monday". I'd like to see them both.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2021, 10:46:36 am
I've been reading Margaret Talbot's article about home-economics education. Really interesting! It started as a way for women to be scientists, and they took the job seriously. Home economists created a lot of things we're familiar with, like (IIRC) the food pyramid. But then it became somewhat discredited, because why shouldn't women get to be scientists in other areas? That's what I've read so far.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2021, 10:55:44 am
They did invent the food pyramid. I did not know that.

I think I'd be better off today, and my home certainly would be, if I'd been able to learn some of the things they taught in home ec.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2021, 01:35:31 pm
They did invent the food pyramid. I did not know that.

I think I'd be better off today, and my home certainly would be, if I'd been able to learn some of the things they taught in home ec.

I think the food pyramid was one of the things -- there was a whole list, many of them surprising.

Here's what you missed in home ec: I learned how to make a dirndl skirt and how to make a root-beer float with ice cream and root beer from scratch. I did do a little sewing for a while until I realized that every time I would make some irreversible mistake that would wreck the garment, so I gave up. I have made ice cream a few other times,  but never root beer.  I can't say either I or my home now shows much benefit.

I could say the same for shop class. I haven't made a shelf since.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2021, 03:42:29 pm
I think the food pyramid was one of the things -- there was a whole list, many of them surprising.

Here's what you missed in home ec: I learned how to make a dirndl skirt and how to make a root-beer float with ice cream and root beer from scratch. I did do a little sewing for a while until I realized that every time I would make some irreversible mistake that would wreck the garment, so I gave up. I have made ice cream a few other times,  but never root beer.  I can't say either I or my home now shows much benefit.

I could say the same for shop class. I haven't made a shelf since.

Well, I wouldn't need to make a dirndl, but I'm sure know some gay men who would benefit from that knowledge.  ;D  I'd probably be better at sewing on buttons if I'd had any sewing instruction.

I made a very nice wooden box in shop class--I mean sort of like a jewelry box. I use it to hold souvenir pins and buttons. When I was in college I made a very sturdy wooden bookrack to fit my dorm desk. That's still in use, too.

Didn't they teach you to cook anything other than a root beer float?

We had a hand-crank ice cream freezer. It made really good ice cream. Then my mother insisted we needed an electric-powered ice cream freezer. My dad and I didn't want it--we were the ones who cranked the freezer, not my mother--but she got her way on this. It didn't make as good ice cream as the hand-crank freezer.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2021, 05:27:32 pm
I'd probably be better at sewing on buttons if I'd had any sewing instruction.

Didn't they teach you to cook anything other than a root beer float?

We had a hand-crank ice cream freezer. It made really good ice cream. Then my mother insisted we needed an electric-powered ice cream freezer. My dad and I didn't want it--we were the ones who cranked the freezer, not my mother--but she got her way on this. It didn't make as good ice cream as the hand-crank freezer.


Buttons are extremely easy to sew on, though kind of a bother and I never seem to get around to it. They're practically the way you'd think from looking at them. There are a couple of other little tricks but a YouTube tutorial or even a 10-step written list would make you an expert in no time.

You'd think we would have made other dishes in food home ec, but for some reason I can't think of any.

As for ice cream, I'm with you on hand-cranked being the best. My family had that when I was a kid. In the years since, I've received as gifts a couple of the kind whose liners you put in the freezer, but never gotten very good results. Once I took my kids to a park-board class where we learned to make ice cream in small tubs set in the snow. I tried it again at one of their birthday parties; it works pretty well.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 03, 2021, 08:38:01 pm
In the article it talks about a hostile cabal of girls who sat in the back and sniggered, led by a girl named Shari. I remember that well. I also remember a kind of pressure, like, "in your other classes, you're learning nice things, but this is your real class, where you'll learn to be in your place and stay there." I hated it, in short.

There was a false sense of science and seriousness, where you had to write down on a worksheet the precise measurements of whatever you were making.

The worst thing that happened was in sewing. We were making a skirt. A straight skirt rather than a dirndl. I had mistakenly sewn the sides of the back together rather than the center seam, so the seam was more curved than it should be. My teacher showed it to another woman who happened to be there and said, "Why, it looks like it's for a dark girl." I was so embarrassed and ashamed for my teacher. I inherently knew that what she said was demeaning and wrong.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 03, 2021, 09:54:17 pm
 :o

Whoa! Whether because of the locale or the year, I never got those vibes in home ec. Students of either gender took home ec and/or shop, although i can't remember what was or wasn't required, but I never felt any gender pressure. At home, my dad always told me I should become a lawyer and my mom had a career in advertising, so it never occurred to me that home ec skills were my destiny. Yes, the classes were somewhat gender-identified but either gender could take either and/or both and I basically thought of them as learning to make root-beer floats and shelves.

"A dark girl"!! Wow. I don't remember a teacher saying anything like that. I would have been pretty shocked.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 03, 2021, 10:55:22 pm
Buttons are extremely easy to sew on, though kind of a bother and I never seem to get around to it. They're practically the way you'd think from looking at them. There are a couple of other little tricks but a YouTube tutorial or even a 10-step written list would make you an expert in no time.

Oh, I manage to sew on buttons. I've done shirts and trousers and even a sport coat. The job just doesn't turn out very nice. You probably wouldn't believe the bird's nest of thread I end up with on the "back side." It holds, but it isn't very neat.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 04, 2021, 09:39:23 am
Oh, I manage to sew on buttons. I've done shirts and trousers and even a sport coat. The job just doesn't turn out very nice. You probably wouldn't believe the bird's nest of thread I end up with on the "back side." It holds, but it isn't very neat.

Well, at least it's on the back. But that's where a YouTube tutorial might help.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 06, 2021, 01:28:57 pm
I managed to push through the article on North Korean hacking (April 26 and May 3), but at least I came across one phrase that made me very happy. The author discusses an event known as the International Collegiate Programming Contest, which he then describes as "a festival of unsurpassed and joyful nerdery."

"Nerdery?"

 :D

(I also recommend the Talk of the Town piece about weed psychics in Maine.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2021, 12:52:30 am
Let's play a little game: Rewrite The New Yorker sentence.

This is from the May 10 article about Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland. Here's the original:

"'Nicola was probably one of the few who was able to,' Shona Robison, a former S.N.P. Cabinet secretary, who has known both politicians for thirty years, said."

I think there are lots of ways this could be done, for example, using a semicolon, or even breaking it into two sentences.

"'Nicola was probably one of the few who was able to,' Shona Robison said. A former S.N.P. Cabinet secretary, Robison has known both politicians for thirty years."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 16, 2021, 10:24:24 am
Yes, that convoluted type of sentence structure where they introduce the speaker, tells why he/she is relevant, and quote them, is tiring, to say the least.

I noticed this in the recent UFO article. It seems to be one quote after another, all structured in the same tortured way.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 16, 2021, 12:15:28 pm
"'Nicola was probably one of the few who was able to,' Shona Robison said. A former S.N.P. Cabinet secretary, Robison has known both politicians for thirty years."

Yours is good, perhaps the best solution so the identity is even clearer. But it could be even simpler.

"'Nicola was probably one of the few who was able to,' said Shona Robison, a former S.N.P. Cabinet secretary, who has known both politicians for thirty years., said.

I don't think putting the verb before the subject is incorrect grammar. Of course, it would sound funny if there weren't further description: "'Nicola was ... able to,'" said she." But widely separating the subject and "said" is one of those weird New Yorkerisms that make the writing more awkward than it would need to be.

Come to think of it, I'd also probably delete the comma after "secretary."



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2021, 05:14:08 pm
Yours is good, perhaps the best solution so the identity is even clearer. But it could be even simpler.

"'Nicola was probably one of the few who was able to,' said Shona Robison, a former S.N.P. Cabinet secretary, who has known both politicians for thirty years., said.

I thought about something like that, but I decided, maybe just a matter of personal taste, that I didn't want to put said before Shona Robison.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 16, 2021, 08:47:02 pm
I thought about something like that, but I decided, maybe just a matter of personal taste, that I didn't want to put said before Shona Robison.

Wow, in 40 years of journalism I’ve probably put “said” before “Shona Robison” (metaphorically speaking) at least 5,000 times (40 x 52 x 2-3 times or more a week).

Also, I’ve never seen any other publication, including highbrowish ones, use that awkward stretched out approach the New Yorker often does. Maybe they use your method more than mine, but I definitely don’t see them doing that.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 16, 2021, 10:14:49 pm
Wow, in 40 years of journalism I’ve probably put “said” before “Shona Robison” (metaphorically speaking) at least 5,000 times (40 x 52 x 2-3 times or more a week).

I don't think my journalism teacher would have approved of that, but that was something like 40 years ago, and he was probably old-fashioned even for then.

Quote
Also, I’ve never seen any other publication, including highbrowish ones, use that awkward stretched out approach the New Yorker often does. Maybe they use your method more than mine, but I definitely don’t see them doing that.

I've never seen it anyplace else, either, but they'll never change.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 17, 2021, 10:06:18 am
Forty years ago -- this September! -- was when I started working in journalism. AFAIK, I used it right away, because I don't remember any restriction involving the "said before name" format.

Curious, I went through a few of my stories from the past couple of weeks, searched "said," and found that among stories that had quotes at all, they had between one and three in the "said" first format. Here are some samples. Just for fun, I'll put them in New Yorkerese.

The first three are from a story about a former golf course being developed into a neighborhood of $1-$2 million houses. Just for fun, I'll put them in New Yorkerese.

Quote
"It was a Joe Sixpack kind of golf course," resident Tim Schneeweis, who plays golf, said. "Now that's being taken away, and who's the property going to? People who can afford a $2 million home."

"This could be a community gathering place — a barn for weddings, a skating oval, winter carnivals, cross-country and golf meets," Paul Hillen, who lives near the property, said. "Just because you can develop this land, should you? Because once it's gone it's gone forever."

"We don't want to pay for their private park — that's what they assumed the golf course was to them," resident Tom Klick said, noting that a larger and denser development was approved near where he lives, on the eastern side of Plymouth.

Uses for which the current zoning allows could be even less welcome, David Haas, who favors the housing plan, said.

Those aren't too bad. In fact, Klick's quote is probably actually better that way.

Here are some from a story about parents in a school district raising money to buy more books with characters and authors of color.

Quote
"Mom, she's just like me — she has dark hair like me and her skin is just like mine!" Esme, whose hair and skin resemble those of her father, who is third-generation Mexican, said.

"She just lit up," Cruz, who is white, said. "Most of the other fairies are white and I think that night she just happened to notice it more."

School librarians generally agree on the need for diverse characters and authors, Lori Peralez, media specialist at Bluff Creek Elementary in Chanhassen, said. The school district has already been working to diversify its collection.

"Making that change can be challenging," Sarah Park Dahlen, an associate professor of library and information science at St. Catherine University who specializes in children's and young adult materials, said.

Those are a little less successful. The last one would be an example of a ridiculous New Yorker format.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 17, 2021, 10:37:47 am
That's the point, isn't it? TNY puts too much between the name of the speaker and "said." "Cruz, who is white, said" seems perfectly fine to me, but there you have it, only three words, and short words at that, between "Cruz" and "said."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 17, 2021, 06:28:46 pm
That's the point, isn't it? TNY puts too much between the name of the speaker and "said." "Cruz, who is white, said" seems perfectly fine to me, but there you have it, only three words, and short words at that, between "Cruz" and "said."

Yes, it's clearly about the number of words. The Cruz sentence above works perfectly well. To me, "said Cruz, who is white" reads more smoothly, but then I'm more used to that structure.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 19, 2021, 10:57:10 pm
Is this a whopper, or what?

The May 17 issue has a Talk of the Town piece about Andrew Lloyd Webber restoring the Theatre Royal Drury Lane along with an architectural historian identified as Simon Thurley. This individual is mentioned as Thurley a number of times in the article, except once, in this sentence: "Among other changes, Lloyd Webber and Hurley have removed some two hundred and fifty seats. ..."

"Hurley"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 20, 2021, 08:59:22 am
Mr. Shawn is spinning!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 20, 2021, 11:00:57 am
Mr. Shawn is spinning!

I thought the same thing.

Seriously, don't they have anybody to proofread the magazine anymore?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 20, 2021, 02:45:44 pm
... identified as Simon Thurley. This individual is mentioned as Thurley a number of times in the article, except once, in this sentence: "Among other changes, Lloyd Webber and Hurley have removed some two hundred and fifty seats. ..."

"Hurley"?[/font][/size]

Oops!! When I was in London last fall I stayed at a flat near the theater district. It was eerie walking around and seeing the huge signs for shows like Frozen, advertising a spring 2020 opening. While the buildings and streets themselves were dark and lonely looking. On the other hand, it was nice to see the town as the locals see it, without all the crowds. Everywhere, people were busy with repairs, maintenance and beautification projects. I rather enjoyed it. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 22, 2021, 05:52:05 pm
I thought "Peripheral Proust", a book review by Adam Gopnik in the May 10 issue, was very well written. It was a delight to my literary nerdery that he identifies six different Prousts: the Period, Philosophical, Psychological, "Perverse", Political, and Poetic Proust, and discusses each one of them at length.

The theory of Relativity is part of his work as the title of his masterwork In Search of Lost Time suggests (why the English decided to name it "Remembrance of Past Time" is not fully explained). Also, his philosophy that how we imagine or perceive reality is more important than reality itself. A third way Proust prefigured scientific knowledge is in electromagnetism, where positive and negative charges oscillate. "The truth of the battery is, for Proust, the truth of humankind; it must have two poles or it can carry no charge," Gopnik writes.

I also enjoyed "The UFO Papers" in the same issue, although it is awfully long. If you want a concise synopsis, the story seeks to authenticate the field of UFOlogy by example after example (after example after example after example) of "credible" sightings. This spring I've been involved in a lot of manual labor and have had to take a one- to two-hour break each day, so I've been able to almost stay on top of my New Yorkers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2021, 08:54:58 pm
I also enjoyed "The UFO Papers" in the same issue, although it is awfully long. If you want a concise synopsis, the story seeks to authenticate the field of UFOlogy by example after example (after example after example after example) of "credible" sightings. This spring I've been involved in a lot of manual labor and have had to take a one- to two-hour break each day, so I've been able to almost stay on top of my New Yorkers.

That one disappointed me. It started out interesting, but then I felt it sorted of petered out.

This much I did note with interest. There was mention of a case in West Virginia in the Fifties when a farm family claimed to have been attacked by aliens. Well, a couple of years ago, I enjoyed the History Channel's scripted drama Project Blue Book, which took its name from the so-called research project, and had as its main character. J. Allen Hynek. One of the episodes in the show was based on that West Virginia incident, and Hynek was portrayed as dismissing the "aliens" as owls--which is exactly what happened. The aliens were dismissed as owls.

I guess this has been mentioned before somewhere, but Hynek had a cameo in Close Encounters. We see him at the landing facility. He has a gray beard and glasses, and he's smoking a pipe.

Another episode in the show had a kind of "flash forward" to show Hynek and his wife being interviewed by a reporter on the set of Close Encounters. I think it was nice of Spielberg to give him the cameo because it was Hynek who created the numerical series to describe encounters with extraterrestials
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 22, 2021, 08:56:37 pm
I'm enjoying the May 17 article about the Disgusting Food Museum.

I read it over dinner. I dare anyone to do the same.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 26, 2021, 01:54:59 pm
I hope Jill Lepore won't be angry with me  ;D but I did not go directly to her article on burnout in the May 24 issue. I just started it over lunch today, and I'm enjoying it, but the first thing I read was Rebecca Mead on the Cerne Giant. I wish Mead had not only gone into the question of when the Giant was made, but also how it was made: How do you go about making such a huge design when the only way you can see it is from across the valley or from the air?

That reminds me of how the "Ancient Alien" enthusiasts see the Nazca lines in South America: you can only see the designs from the air, ergo they must have been laid out by Ancient Aliens in spacecrafts.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 30, 2021, 06:16:30 pm
That story about the Cerne Abbas Giant was fascinating to me. The methods of dating it, the mysteries surrounding it and the ties to Cromwell and Charles I. I have a theory or two about how such a giant thing could be constructed. Maybe since the ancient peoples looked at the night sky and imagined large constellations, they had the ability to think spatially in a way that we have lost. Also, perhaps they put down rocks or sticks first, checking them by going over to the other hill, before they started digging and filling in with limestone chalk.

I've started watching BBC's Farm series on YouTube and it is amazing how many ways the people used the limestone. The episode on the Edwardian Farm has three people living for a year and working a farm of that period using the ways of the times. Creating the quicklime to treat the acidic soil was backbreaking and dangerous work.

A pastoral note in the Cerne article was about Virginia and Vivien Vale, a couple who wrote a book about the parish and a brewery at the foot of a pasture that produces an amber beer infused with watercress grown by monks of the abbey and a darker beer called Mrs. Vale's Ale. I want to go there on my next visit to the isles!

Surprise! In that same issue (May 24) there is a poem called "limestone". I often find themes that repeat in an issue like that.

There was also an interesting article about Francis Bacon, the British painter of grotesque figures and body parts, not the 16th century Lord Chancellor of England and philosopher. Bacon said he wanted his paintings to strike the viewer's nervous system, to "unlock the valves of feeling," to pierce them and make them bleed. Strange that he was so successful with work that you'd never hang on your wall, unless you lived in Transylvania.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 30, 2021, 06:34:46 pm
I've started watching BBC's Farm series on YouTube and it is amazing how many ways the people used the limestone. The episode on the Edwardian Farm has three people living for a year and working a farm of that period using the ways of the times. Creating the quicklime to treat the acidic soil was backbreaking and dangerous work.

Many years ago our own PBS did something similar. They called the series "[Something} House," and I remember they did several different "houses." The only one I watched was "Colonial House." I felt the production values were very high; the staff from Plimoth Plantation, the reproduction Pilgrim settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts, created a small 17th-century community for the series. However, I found it disappointing because it seemed to deal more with the relationships among the people involved and less with them learning to live in a 17th-century colony.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 05, 2021, 07:00:30 pm
I read a funny "Shouts & Murmurs"! It was in the April 19 issue: "The FIrst Chapter of My Proposed Novel" by Jack Handey. In several places, particularly near the end, I laughed out loud!

There were several other good articles in that issue, particularly, as Jeff pointed out, "Band of Brothers." For some reason, the article on emotional intelligence didn't appeal to me. I guess I decided, along with the author Merve Emre, that it was mostly a fad of the late 1990s.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 07, 2021, 11:46:43 am
I read a funny "Shouts & Murmurs"! It was in the April 19 issue: "The FIrst Chapter of My Proposed Novel" by Jack Handey. In several places, particularly near the end, I laughed out loud!

Among their regulars, Jack Handey is one of the few who's reliably funny.

I haven't seen the IE piece yet, but I'll take a look. I didn't realize it was considered a fad. My son was arguing just last week that it wasn't a real thing. Maybe he was right!  :o :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 07, 2021, 01:24:12 pm
I haven't seen the IE piece yet, but I'll take a look. I didn't realize it was considered a fad. My son was arguing just last week that it wasn't a real thing. Maybe he was right!  :o :laugh:

That seems to be the opinion of the author, too.

I'm going through spring New Yorkers and purging them. This was a good article in the March 8 issue on the global fish industry:
The Smell of Money (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/08/fish-farming-is-feeding-the-globe-whats-the-cost-for-locals)
It was shocking to me that thousands of tons of fish in Africa are made into a fish meal that is exported all over to feed farmed fish, including to China where it is fed to tilapia that are exported all over. And the tilapia are herbivores!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 19, 2021, 11:43:08 am
Good grief. The heartbreak I've been going through in permaculture is at The New Yorker too!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210614&instance_id=32954&nl=the-morning&regi_id=91026593&segment_id=60633&te=1&user_id=8b5ad6a133ffcce0b9fda3ccfb15b213 (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210614&instance_id=32954&nl=the-morning&regi_id=91026593&segment_id=60633&te=1&user_id=8b5ad6a133ffcce0b9fda3ccfb15b213)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 20, 2021, 06:38:37 pm
I'm hearing that working people are up in arms and saying "I quit!" a lot. In the past I've been supportive but now the shoe is on the other foot.

In the latest issue (June 21) I was reading about Peter Hessler's time in China watching them get ready for the Winter Olympics. It started out diaristically (spell check, that's a word; I looked it up) with many anecdotes about his inexperience in sports, especially skiing, and his time in Colorado with his family. The piling on of inconsequential details started irritating me and I looked ahead to see that the article went on for three more pages! But then Hessler made an abrupt turn into political matters and the article grew more interesting. You never know what you're going to get. I wish an editor had cut most of the beginning.

"The Coast of New Zealand" interested me because of our friend brian. But the story takes place in New York and Stamford, CT. It was interesting nevertheless, and one of those fiction pieces about the amorphous dissatisfaction women feel. Elizabeth Kolbert's article on ocean floor life was very good.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 23, 2021, 09:18:56 pm
I thought Adam Gopnik's article on New York reopening was a little strange. It started off promising, but then it went a little flat for me (comedy clubs, cabarets--except for noting the performer who treats Phil Collins and Foreigner songs as if they were written by the Gershwins or Jerome Kern). but the whole thing was redeemed for me by the observation that a discarded mask resembles a dead rat.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2021, 11:49:08 am
I skipped that one because I don't really like "New York is the most wonderful special city in the country" fetishizing.

I mean, I can see how people could think it is. And, to be fair, as the biggest and densest city and epicenter of a bunch of industries -- publishing, finance, theater, etc. -- it is exceptional. If this ran in a local publication, even the NYT, I'm sure it would seem charming. But despite the title and entertainment notices, the New Yorker is a national magazine.

Many residents of lots of cities think they live in the most wonderful special city in the country. San Francisco, Seattle, Boston ... I know firsthand that many residents feel that way about Minneapolis, Chicago and New Orleans. Especially New Orleans. I'm sure they do in Denver and Philadelphia. But if you don't live in those places, gets tiresome.

I'm sure there are people who think Omaha is the most wonderful special city in the country (well, maybe!).

Gopnik's article reminded me of the famous Saul Steinberg cartoon.


(http://www.illustrationhistory.org/images/uploads/ny.jpg)

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 24, 2021, 12:36:35 pm
I have that framed and hanging on my wall!

TNY is an international magazine, but really, we have to expect a lot of articles about New York in a magazine called The New Yorker, don't we?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2021, 12:43:03 pm
I skipped that one because I don't really like "New York is the most wonderful special city in the country" fetishizing.

Well, it is The New Yorker. ...

Yes, there is a national (I'm sure international) readership, but it is still The New Yorker.

I mean, I imagine you don't read "Goings on About Town," but that section doesn't cover theater and dance and art events in Omaha. It's New York focused.

(I do look at the section; it's one way I keep up on what's going on in, well, the world of theater and dance, because New York City is important for those things, and they interest me.)


Quote
Gopnik's article reminded me of the famous Saul Steinberg cartoon.

That was a cover, wasn't it? I remember reading that prints of it sold out, like, instantaneously. It's been imitated for other cities.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2021, 05:05:14 pm
I have that framed and hanging on my wall!

TNY is an international magazine, but really, we have to expect a lot of articles about New York in a magazine called The New Yorker, don't we?

I don't even want them in New York magazine!  :laugh:

I don't mind articles about events that happen in New York or profiles of people who live there, of course. Or arts and entertainment listings for New York. And there's a valid argument to be made that the reopening of New York is a bigger deal than in Minneapolis or Denver. I read something about what Manhattan was like in mid-shutdown that made me wonder if the city would be forever changed.

But odes to the specialness of New York (or New Orleans or Minneapolis or anywhere) have always gotten on my nerves for some reason.

Another caveat: Since I only read a paragraph or two before dropping it, it's possible I wouldn't actually find Gopnik's article as irritating as I assume. In general, I like his work. But I wouldn't read his book about living in Paris, either.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 24, 2021, 09:38:59 pm
It might make interesting companion pieces to Gopnik's if they had Lauren Collins do a similar article on Paris and Rebecca Meade on London.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 24, 2021, 11:17:24 pm
And you could do Philadelphia, Lee could do Denver and I’ll take care of Minneapolis! These will be for their CITIES issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2021, 08:36:39 am
Nah. All I can say for Philadelphia is, Blink and the rules change.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 25, 2021, 01:33:59 pm
Well, that would be a short essay, to be sure. It could use another paragraph or two of elaboration.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 25, 2021, 07:30:27 pm
If I were to write about Denver, I might be tempted to make it look like a horrible place, since people are streaming in alarmingly and the city is bursting at the seams.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 27, 2021, 02:55:58 pm
If I were to write about Denver, I might be tempted to make it look like a horrible place, since people are streaming in alarmingly and the city is bursting at the seams.

Does that include Arvada? I always thought I’d consider moving there. But a friend who lives there said a couple of years ago it was going to get a train stop so I suppose prices went up.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 28, 2021, 10:16:08 am
Yes, Arvada is one of the big growth areas. Just to the north of me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 28, 2021, 08:34:48 pm
I know! And not far from my bro’s. And of course, the aforementioned friend. I think when I was there in 2013, it was relatively affordable, just lively enough, and cute.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 28, 2021, 08:51:10 pm
My June 28 issue arrived today. I just finished Ian Frazier's appreciation of Janet Malcolm.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 01, 2021, 07:54:00 pm
That was a lovely tribute. I voraciously read about sleep training but I was indifferent to the article about pets, and I don't know why. I enjoyed Shouts & Murmurs this week about aliens commenting on our culture. I loved the sketchbook of lifeguard Fauci. I tried to read the fiction "Offside Constantly" but was only able to complete 4 pages.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 08, 2021, 12:55:46 pm
I would like to hear what Brokies who are mothers have to say about that article about getting babies to sleep. Y'all have been there, haven't y'all?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 08, 2021, 03:12:17 pm
One thing is true: "You will not escape the cry." What they're describing in the article, "extinguishment", sometimes works, but sometimes does not. Also, what long-term impacts does leaving a child alone to cry at night have on their memories, their well-being, and their relationship with their parents? (I almost said mother, but we have to acknowledge that it is both parents who are leaving the child alone.)

I recall using a different approach with my daughter. I left her alone as she was playing one day for a few minutes when I went round the corner in the kitchen, keeping an ear open for any distress. I also left her alone sometimes when she was playing in the nursery. The door was open and she could hear me puttering around. In the evening her dad or I would read her a story when we put her to bed (awkward as we had to stand by the crib) and then we would be in the room until she fell asleep, reading, folding laundry, etc. We had some kind of noise cancelling thing we would play that made the sound of a heartbeat or ocean.

My daughter stopped taking naps when she was less than a year old which was inconvenient for me, but I adjusted. With my son, he ended up sleeping in my bed until he was about 13 months old. Every time I would try to lower him into the crib after feeding him and rocking him to sleep, it would trigger him to wake up. He also stopped napping at a young age. I was sleep deprived for about six years, LOL!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 08, 2021, 09:28:41 pm
Letting the baby play on her own with the door open while you putter outside the room seems like a good solution!

Most parents these days follow the Ferber Method, which involves responding quickly at first, then letting a child cry for slightly longer every night. I think we did some version of that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 08, 2021, 11:48:31 pm
Thank you, both. My mother once told me that every time she tried to put me down I would cry. She said she thinks I had colic.

While I read that article I kept thinking of Mrs. Merriwether telling Capt. Butler to put quinine on Bonnie Blue's thumb to stop her from sucking it.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 09, 2021, 11:53:12 am
Thank you, both. My mother once told me that every time she tried to put me down I would cry. She said she thinks I had colic.

While I read that article I kept thinking of Mrs. Merriwether telling Capt. Butler to put quinine on Bonnie Blue's thumb to stop her from sucking it.  ;D

I think -- don't know for sure -- that colicky babies cry even when they're being held.

And it worked, she stopped sucking it! Oh wait, it wasn't just the quinine. (Sorry, bad taste -- no pun intended.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 12, 2021, 06:02:10 pm
I got an apologetic email from TNY today saying that my subscription wasn't being automatically renewed and thus I wasn't getting my issues. What terrible timing. Lately I rely on it to keep me sane. I now feel like I'm missing out and may have to go to a newsstand (if they still have them) and buy a copy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 14, 2021, 08:27:50 pm
I've read the July 5 article about Kyle Rittenhouse, the knucklehead who murdered two men in Kenosha.

One thing about that episode has intrigued me: Where did his family come from?

Rittenhouse is an old and honored Philadelphia name. Rittenhouse Square is the nicest park in Center City. In the 18th century, David Rittenhouse (1732-1796) was an amazing individual: astronomer, inventor, mathematician, member of the American Philosophical Society, member of the Royal Society, first superintendent of the U.S. Mint, treasurer of Pennsylvania, and on, and on.

He surveyed the boundary between Pennsylvania and Delaware and did such a good job of it that it was incorporated into the work of Mason and Dixon.

So where did Kyle Rittenhouse's family come from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rittenhouse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rittenhouse) 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 15, 2021, 09:35:15 am
I got an apologetic email from TNY today saying that my subscription wasn't being automatically renewed and thus I wasn't getting my issues. What terrible timing. Lately I rely on it to keep me sane. I now feel like I'm missing out and may have to go to a newsstand (if they still have them) and buy a copy.

I haven?t received  any since I moved ? my subscription didn?t auto renew, either. I called them, reinstated it, and at least two weeks later still haven?t seen one. I think I can access a lot online, though.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 15, 2021, 09:39:15 am
So where did Kyle Rittenhouse's family come from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rittenhouse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rittenhouse)

I don?t know how to do it, but I know someone who, whenever some idiot like Tucker Carson rants about immigrants on TV, traces his family back to the immigrant generation and posts it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 16, 2021, 09:40:16 am
I noticed that you both used the word knucklehead recently, so I looked it up. Apparently, the engine of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is called a knucklehead because it resembles a fist with knuckles. I have always spelled it nucklehead but I guess that's not right.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 16, 2021, 03:25:01 pm
I noticed that you both used the word knucklehead recently, so I looked it up.

The Three Stooges used knucklehead a lot.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 16, 2021, 03:26:44 pm
I don?t know how to do it, but I know someone who, whenever some idiot like Tucker Carson rants about immigrants on TV, traces his family back to the immigrant generation and posts it.

When it's done properly and scholarly, genealogy is long, hard work.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 16, 2021, 03:40:01 pm
Yesterday, a friend used "knucklehead" to describe a stranger on Facebook who left a comment under my profile pic that said "You look like a braindead liberal."  :laugh: I thought "knucklehead" actually wasn't quite a strong enough word, especially because this friend is usually good at colorful verbiage, but I appreciated his and others' defense.

I replied to the guy, "I don't discuss my political leanings on social media so I can tell you only that you're half right."

Because of my job I'm careful not to get too political or partisan on FB. Kelda wondered if the stranger had seen me comment elsewhere. I told her I didn't usually comment politically unless saying things like vaccines are good, which should not be a partisan comment in the first place. (Hardcore Trump-supporting Republicans are going to kill themselves off and be outnumbered by Democrats.)

I also felt OK a few days earlier about replying to a transphobic guy who vociferously argued that a person's gender identity must match their DNA. "Follow the science," he said. I believe human rights should not be politicized either, so I told him that science is never conclusive and why the hell does he care anyway -- someone else's gender identity affects his life in no way.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 16, 2021, 09:21:22 pm
Because of my job I'm careful not to get too political or partisan on FB. Kelda wondered if the stranger had seen me comment elsewhere. I told her I didn't usually comment politically unless saying things like vaccines are good, which should not be a partisan comment in the first place. (Hardcore Trump-supporting Republicans are going to kill themselves off and be outnumbered by Democrats.)

An ace pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies just came off the COVID protocol because he had been exposed to someone who had been exposed. He was quoted on the sports section of local evening news as saying he had no intention of getting vaccinated.

Somebody should take a Louisville Slugger to his head. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 16, 2021, 09:23:33 pm
I read the July 5 article about Sun Ra (and his Arkestra) because I knew his name as a Philadelphia resident. He has a marker on the Philadelphia Music Walk of Fame. I had no idea he was actually a pretty big deal.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 26, 2021, 06:16:05 pm
I believe human rights should not be politicized either, so I told him that science is never conclusive and why the hell does he care anyway -- someone else's gender identity affects his life in no way.

So true! You go, person!!

I heard a radio show that said gender is on a continuum, it is not black and white. There are more gender fluid people than redheads, they said.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 27, 2021, 04:39:15 pm
So true! You go, person!!

I heard a radio show that said gender is on a continuum, it is not black and white. There are more gender fluid people than redheads, they said.

It's hard to say with something nobody even knew existed 20 years ago and now seems common to the point of being fashionable.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 30, 2021, 12:43:43 pm
We all knew it existed. We just didn't talk about it. Remember The Crying Game and Boys Don't Cry?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 30, 2021, 12:57:27 pm
We all knew it existed. We just didn't talk about it. Remember The Crying Game and Boys Don't Cry?

Yeah, we knew transgender people existed. The travel writer Jan Morris wrote a book in 1974 about her own transition. When The Crying Game came out I was working at the paper in New Orleans and I said, I want to write about someone like that. So through connections, I met Terry, a transgender woman who worked as a fashion model, and wrote a long profile. So personally I talked about it pretty frequently. I always say, if all of America had read that story they wouldn't have been so shocked about Caitlin Jenner.

What I think people didn't know about -- at least I didn't -- was how many people identified as neither male nor female. (With the exception of intersex babies, often surgically assigned one or the other.) Remember the SNL skit "Here's Pat"? That was funny because people didn't know there were actually lots of real-life Pats.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 30, 2021, 07:12:24 pm
I said, I want to write about someone like that. So through connections, I met Terry, a transgender woman who worked as a fashion model,

I should add that Terry was Black and looked somewhat like the character in The Crying Game.

But also -- Jan Morris died last year and I don't recall seeing anything about it! But maybe I did and just don't remember, which is always possible.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 30, 2021, 10:21:51 pm
I got the August 2 issue, and of course I had to jump right ahead and read Jill Lepore. Boy, does she hate Facebook.

Am I ever going to get off my duff and write her a fan letter.  >:(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 30, 2021, 10:26:09 pm
I always say, if all of America had read that story they wouldn't have been so shocked about Caitlin Jenner.

I don't know. I think at least some people who are old enough to remember Caitlin as decorated male Olympian Bruce would have been shocked.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 03, 2021, 07:08:05 pm
I don't know. I think at least some people who are old enough to remember Caitlin as decorated male Olympian Bruce would have been shocked.

Well, I know. It's not exactly the same, and Caitlin's previous identity is certainly some of the surprise. But I think a lot of people were, and still are, pretty ignorant and/or confused about transgender people.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 04, 2021, 09:26:49 am
Well, I know. It's not exactly the same, and Caitlin's previous identity is certainly some of the surprise. But I think a lot of people were, and still are, pretty ignorant and/or confused about transgender people.

Sure enough.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 13, 2021, 12:05:56 pm
Have you ever felt like Larry McMurtry did upon reading Brokeback Mountain that you wished you had written it and thought that you could've? I felt that way upon reading about Real Estate, a new book by Deborah Levy. The review is in this week's (August 16) issue of The New Yorker.

One thing that's all good about my crazy life is that I can and am living in my own house, with no one but my cat. Single men often live alone but when you see an older woman living by herself many people think it is a thing to be pitied or concerned about. I could not be happier this way. Of course, my whole family lives nearby and I have a constellation of local friends and neighbors. But I begin and end the day by myself, with my trusty cat. Thus, I've designed the space and rituals to suit my needs exactly.

I love my home's doors, of which there are many. EDelMar once said that my front door looks like Mrs. Twist's. It has six panels of glass in the top half and is finished in a natural wood shade. The closet and bathroom doors are also natural wood and have a lovely wood aroma. Some of the closets are lined in cedar for moth prevention. Their knobs are old-fashioned faceted glass and catch the light. The upstairs front door is heavy but not grand, with a hexagonal porthole window. Some of the doors have locking screen doors, so you can leave the door open to fresh air.

The other book reviewed is Wayward by Dana Spiotta which also sounds uncannily like my biography. So much so that I don't think I'll try to read it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 14, 2021, 11:12:32 am
David Sedaris' essay in the Aug. 9 issue made me laugh out loud (several times) and literally cry -- in less than four pages. His essays have always been funny and readable, but over the past, I don't know, 10 years, he's been going deeper. The essays are still always funny (or at least usually -- I don't know that the one about his mother's alcoholism was very funny). But they also have some larger, subtle but powerful point.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 14, 2021, 11:15:25 am
Have you ever felt like Larry McMurtry did upon reading Brokeback Mountain that you wished you had written it and thought that you could've? I felt that way upon reading about Real Estate, a new book by Deborah Levy. The review is in this week's (August 16) issue of The New Yorker.

I had a book by Deborah Levy that sat around for several years without me ever getting around to reading it. I think I gave it away when I moved. So I'll be looking forward to reading the review of her new one.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 14, 2021, 11:33:27 am
David Sedaris' essay in the Aug. 9 issue made me laugh out loud (several times) and literally cry -- in less than four pages. His essays have always been funny and readable, but over the past, I don't know, 10 years, he's been going deeper. The essays are still always funny (or at least usually -- I don't know that the one about his mother's alcoholism was very funny). But they also have some larger, subtle but powerful point.

I'm looking forward to reading the Sedaris, but right now I'm working my way through Jane Mayer's article, because, as scary as I find it, I think it's very important. (Yes, it's a duty article.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 14, 2021, 11:39:34 am
I read the Sedaris article, which is about his relationship with his father, who recently died. I wasn't sure whether to recommend it to you, Jeff, or not.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 14, 2021, 01:49:49 pm
I'm looking forward to reading the Sedaris, but right now I'm working my way through Jane Mayer's article, because, as scary as I find it, I think it's very important. (Yes, it's a duty article.)

Yes, I'm performing my duty on that one, too. I have about eight New Yorkers sitting around the house, all open to unfinished duty articles. (When I see David Sedaris in the ToC, I always turn to that first.)

Which reminds me, did anyone else read the article about Nero (the Roman emperor) being misrepresented as more evil than he was? I started it, and it's OK, but once you get the point that "Nero has been misrepresented as more evil than he was" I'm not sure how much more you need to know. All I know about Nero is hearing that he fiddled while Rome burned. Apparently he did not.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 15, 2021, 01:51:15 pm
Which reminds me, did anyone else read the article about Nero (the Roman emperor) being misrepresented as more evil than he was? I started it, and it's OK, but once you get the point that "Nero has been misrepresented as more evil than he was" I'm not sure how much more you need to know. All I know about Nero is hearing that he fiddled while Rome burned. Apparently he did not.

Yes, the fiddle hadn't been invented yet.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 15, 2021, 03:15:10 pm
Yes, the fiddle hadn't been invented yet.

See? Seven words. That?s all I needed to know.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 15, 2021, 06:14:30 pm
Apparently Nero was a fan of a harp-like instrument called the cithara and played it in competitions which he organized.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2021, 08:42:46 pm
I'm reading the August 25 article about the volcanic eruption in Iceland. There is a photo of a wedding taking place against the backdrop of the lava flow. The photo is of two guys getting married.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2021, 12:38:08 pm
I think I'm going to tune in to The New Yorker Live this afternoon to see what it's all about. Has anyone gone to this? It will be David Byrne and a few others.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 25, 2021, 11:15:27 am
How was it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 25, 2021, 12:51:15 pm
Apparently you're supposed to sign up in advance. I couldn't get in. I'll try again next week.

Meanwhile I was browsing around the web site and read about how George Saunders conceived his story in this week's issue. Probably a bad idea to read about the making of the story before you read the actual story.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 26, 2021, 08:28:14 pm
I went out today to a bookstore that is 10 miles away! Not very environmentally correct of me but it's getting so good bookstores are few and far between. At least I didn't order on Amazon.

I found the book Real Estate by Deborah :Levy, which was reviewed in TNY a couple of weeks ago. Started it and like it well. I forgot I don't usually like autobiographies, but this one seems okay so far. Not too self-absorbed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 27, 2021, 11:28:03 am
I forgot to mention that almost everybody in the store, including me, was wearing a mask.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 27, 2021, 12:20:43 pm
I went out today to a bookstore that is 10 miles away! Not very environmentally correct of me but it's getting so good bookstores are few and far between. At least I didn't order on Amazon.

Why is this environmentally incorrect?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 27, 2021, 07:56:16 pm
To get in my car and travel such a long way just to buy a book. I should have taken a bus or a train but public transit is very inadequate where I live.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 01, 2021, 04:00:56 pm
It's an archival issue this week around the theme of food. I don't mind an archival issue but I've read three of the articles already and remember them.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 02, 2021, 12:08:53 pm
I went out today to a bookstore that is 10 miles away! Not very environmentally correct of me but it's getting so good bookstores are few and far between. At least I didn't order on Amazon.

The Tattered Cover is still there, I hope??

I confess to the evil deed of ordering things on Amazon, just because it's so easy. My Kindle hasn't worked with my new wifi, so I haven't ordered anything lately, but I'm getting one of those huge new iPhones in a day or two, which may be big enough to read a book comfortably.

You can also by ebooks from Barnes & Noble. I haven't heard of them doing anything evil.

But another option is to get the digital version from the library. At least a couple of people I know have library memberships in several cities so if a book is popular (as I'm sure that one is, for example, given the good reviews) you can get on numerous waiting lists and borrow it from a library anywhere. As I understand it, at least -- I haven't actually tried it yet.

Quote
I found the book Real Estate by Deborah :Levy, which was reviewed in TNY a couple of weeks ago. Started it and like it well. I forgot I don't usually like autobiographies, but this one seems okay so far. Not too self-absorbed.

I wonder what she considers the difference between autobiography and memoir. Memoirs are among my favorite genres. I don't think of them as self-absorbed; the good ones read like novels that happen to be about real people and their real lives.

I just started reading The Yellow House, a memoir by Sarah M. Broom. It's about her family's house in New Orleans and involves Katrina, so it's especially interesting to me and timely now.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-yellow-house-sarah-broom/1129761250?ean=9780802149039 (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-yellow-house-sarah-broom/1129761250?ean=9780802149039)

One thing Amazon has over B&N is its "look inside the book" and "send a sample" features.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 02, 2021, 12:36:58 pm
The Tattered Cover is still there, I hope??
Yes, that's where I went. It has changed hands recently, so everybody is crossing their fingers that it will continue its tradition of excellence.

I wonder what she considers the difference between autobiography and memoir. Memoirs are among my favorite genres. I don't think of them as self-absorbed; the good ones read like novels that happen to be about real people and their real lives.
I think of memoirs as looking back at a life and having perspective. An autobiography I think of as more of a diary.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 02, 2021, 03:23:03 pm
I think of memoirs as looking back at a life and having perspective. An autobiography I think of as more of a diary.

That makes sense. An autobiography is a full historical account, which best befits a major public figure. I'm trying to think of what ones I've read; I rarely even read biographies. Whereas the subject of a memoir doesn't need to be famous, as it's all about the writing and the particular experience.

Glad the TC is OK for now!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 02, 2021, 10:17:00 pm
Glad the TC is OK for now!

Me, too, though Heaven only knows if I'll ever get there again.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 03, 2021, 01:22:28 pm
Those really famous bookstores are cool. Powell's in Portland, Prairie Lights in Iowa City, Shakespeare & Co. in NYC. Also City Lights in San Francisco (which I haven't been to).

Minneapolis has bookstores but never the equivalent aside from maybe Louise Erdrich's Birchbark Books. Which I've been to only once -- when interviewing Louise.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 03, 2021, 11:05:15 pm
Last year, I went to Shakespeare and Company in Paris, just across the Seine from Notre Dame. It was a fun place but I was slightly disappointed because I was hunting for books in French for my grandchildren. All their books are in English! Why go to Paris and buy books in English? At a different bookstore, I got a book on medieval France for my older grandson, a book on ballet for my granddaughter, and a book called "Ou est Charlie?" (exactly like "Where's Waldo?") for my grandson Charile.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 04, 2021, 01:39:33 pm
Last year, I went to Shakespeare and Company in Paris, just across the Seine from Notre Dame. It was a fun place but I was slightly disappointed because I was hunting for books in French for my grandchildren. All their books are in English! Why go to Paris and buy books in English? At a different bookstore, I got a book on medieval France for my older grandson, a book on ballet for my granddaughter, and a book called "Ou est Charlie?" (exactly like "Where's Waldo?") for my grandson Charile.

Your grandchildren read French? Impressive! They're homeschooled, right?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 04, 2021, 08:29:53 pm
There is a Shakespeare & Co. in Philadelphia, too. It's less than a block from Barnes & Noble. I used to spend a Sunday afternoon just browsing in Barnes & Noble. I bought all my Longmire books at Barnes & Noble.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 04, 2021, 11:06:26 pm
Your grandchildren read French? Impressive! They're homeschooled, right?

They're picture books with just a few words of French on each page.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 06, 2021, 06:33:47 pm
There were quite a few good cartoons in this issue. Here's one that I sent to my grandson.

I just discovered something. You can download NY cartoons to your computer, but after a while they...decompose or something.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 12, 2021, 12:27:19 pm
Making my way slowly through the food archive issue, starting with Anthony Bourdain's entertaining day in the life of a chef. I see a number of others I want to read as well.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 12, 2021, 06:15:38 pm
I read that one half-way through and realized that I had already read it when it first came out.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 12, 2021, 07:48:22 pm
Somehow I got through the M.F.K. Fisher article, but what's the big deal about mashed potatoes?

I don't think I want to bother with anything else in that issue.

It's weird. You'd think I'd remember Kelefa Sanneh's article on scotch. It wasn't from too long ago, yet I had no memory of it at all, even after reading it now. However, it was interesting because since its original publication, I had learned to know what Islay scotch is, and to appreciate its smoky taste. especially Laphroaig.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 13, 2021, 10:59:13 am
I haven't developed a taste for it, and because of the wildfires this year, I'm not even interested in the thought of it. I have very plebian tastes when it comes to Scotch. The best one I've tasted was Dewars and that only on Rabbie Burns' birthday.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 13, 2021, 08:18:23 pm
I read that one half-way through and realized that I had already read it when it first came out.

I believe I did, too, but I often read essays twice (there are several David Foster Wallace essays I've read at least three or four times). I never read Kitchen Confidential and probably won't get around to it, but Anthony Bourdaine was an interesting writer and person.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2021, 10:37:39 pm
I haven't developed a taste for it, and because of the wildfires this year, I'm not even interested in the thought of it. I have very plebian tastes when it comes to Scotch. The best one I've tasted was Dewars and that only on Rabbie Burns' birthday.

I don't follow your connection between scotch and wildfires, but let be. Dewars is a perfectly acceptable/unexceptional blended scotch, very popular in bars--or at least it used to be.

But like the author said, blended scotches are gateway drugs. You start on them, but when you try single-malts, there's no going back.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2021, 10:39:04 pm
I believe I did, too, but I often read essays twice (there are several David Foster Wallace essays I've read at least three or four times). I never read Kitchen Confidential and probably won't get around to it, but Anthony Bourdaine was an interesting writer and person.

I should do a Google search. I'm wondering if any of the restaurants written about in the article still exist.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 15, 2021, 01:27:58 pm
I didn't really get the Nabokov. Was it supposed to be funny, or what? But what a wonderful name: Bodo von Falternfels.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 15, 2021, 07:04:50 pm
I should do a Google search. I'm wondering if any of the restaurants written about in the article still exist.

Well, Brasserie Les Halles, where Bourdaine describes working, is referred to in past tense in Wikipedia.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 16, 2021, 01:28:21 pm
I read Calvin Trillin on the Crawfish Festival. I've always enjoyed reading him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 16, 2021, 09:38:19 pm
I?ve probably mentioned this before but he came to my paper to speak to reporters 6 or 8 years ago. Had some good stories.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 17, 2021, 02:43:36 pm
I read the Anthony Bourdain anyway. I liked the mention of the grill man with a body by Michelangelo and the waiter who's a part-time underwear model.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 26, 2021, 08:48:04 pm
OK, here are two examples of New Yorker capitalization (or not), both from the Kathryn Paige Harden article (Sept. 13).

Quote
... (A]s one population geneticist put it to me, "the train has left the station--even if researchers don't fully understand what they're learning, this is how the genome is used now."

Sorry TNY, the quotation  is a complete sentence. It should start with a capital letter.

Quote
Micah, as it turned out, ... had already described the book to Steffi as "telling the right that they didn't bootstrap and telling the left that interventions are more complicated than they want to believe."

This is correct. The quotation is not a complete sentence, so it correctly begins with a lower case letter.

And here's another New Yorker-ism that's starting to annoy me. How many times a sentence starts with, "As [so-and-so] told me."

I wish I'd kept count of how often that appeared in an article I recently read, but I forget which article.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 27, 2021, 10:14:39 am
I don't follow your connection between scotch and wildfires, but let be. Dewars is a perfectly acceptable/unexceptional blended scotch, very popular in bars--or at least it used to be.

But like the author said, blended scotches are gateway drugs. You start on them, but when you try single-malts, there's no going back.


To clarify, because of the wildfires, the air has smelled, and sometimes tasted, like smoke. So smoky peaty liquids are not to my liking at this time.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 27, 2021, 11:54:34 am
To clarify, because of the wildfires, the air has smelled, and sometimes tasted, like smoke. So smoky peaty liquids are not to my liking at this time.

OK, I see that now. I don't mind the smell of smoke, especially woodsmoke, but I wouldn't like the taste of it.  :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 28, 2021, 10:35:30 pm
Smoke from Canadian wildfires was so heavy here for a few days a couple of months ago that it looked cloudy when it was actually sunny. I don't worry much about air quality, but it's definitely bad for people who have those issues.

I'll have to say, though, the smoky sunsets were a beautiful deep orange-red.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 29, 2021, 12:01:22 pm
Has anyone read "The Limits of Liberalism" in the Sept. 20th issue? I'm debating with myself whether to tackle that one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 29, 2021, 01:25:34 pm
I haven't read it, but I'll probably give it a shot. There's so much conversation about CRT lately -- the term has become a fake boogeyman scare tactic among conservatives. But frankly, I'm not even sure what it is myself. Must have to do with systemic racism, but I don't know what beyond that.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 29, 2021, 01:50:27 pm
Has anyone read "The Limits of Liberalism" in the Sept. 20th issue? I'm debating with myself whether to tackle that one.

I haven't read it, but I'll probably give it a shot. There's so much conversation about CRT lately -- the term has become a fake boogeyman scare tactic among conservatives. But frankly, I'm not even sure what it is myself. Must have to do with systemic racism, but I don't know what beyond that.

I read it. I recognized the name Derek Bell, though I couldn't have said from where. I found it worthwhile for the history of how we got to where we are, and for the demonstration of how every advance in Equality is met with pushback (which we already knew)e--and how an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement came to understand that. I remember a question I've wondered about myself: Are children better off being taken by bus to a distant school to obtain racial diversity, or better off left in a neighborhood school, even if the school is effectively segregated?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 04, 2021, 01:31:42 pm
In the September 27 Annals of Medicine article, it is said of the woman who contracted coronavirus that "her social-media updates went viral."

Can I get a rim shot, please?

Really TNY? You let something like that go through?   

(Yes, I'm perfectly aware of the use of viral in the context of social media posts, but ... really?)

I may actually write to TNY about this. They've probably heard from other people already, but it will make me feel better to write them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 04, 2021, 02:41:37 pm
I'm not sure I understand. Were they in the same sentence or paragraph, so it sounded clumsy and/or insensitive because TNY wasn't acknowledging? I'm not sure there are any synonyms for social-media viral unless it's "read by millions" or something like that. No one-word term, is there?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 04, 2021, 02:50:03 pm
Has everybody read the one from a couple of weeks ago about the woman in rural Afghanistan? It's long and took me forever to read. It seemed a bit like a duty article, but in fact it's extremely compelling and it changed my entire view of Afghanistan -- and, for that matter, the U.S. military.

Women in cities hate the Taliban for the obvious and very valid reasons. But in rural areas, women and men like the Taliban -- men have been joining in droves -- because they're so much less violent than the careless, murderous Americans. The writer shows in many different ways how awful the Americans were, constantly killing or enabling killing of civilians and children.

This is what my son has been talking about all along and why he hates Obama (not that Obama's the only guilty party, of course, but he did send more troops -- my son, leftie though he is, loves puncturing liberal beliefs). I always knew civilians and children sometimes got droned, but this article describes case after case. By talking to people and comparing death records and eyewitness accounts, the writer calculated that every family in the town from which he was reporting had lost 10-12 civilian members.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 04, 2021, 03:45:52 pm
I'm not sure I understand. Were they in the same sentence or paragraph, so it sounded clumsy and/or insensitive because TNY wasn't acknowledging? I'm not sure there are any synonyms for social-media viral unless it's "read by millions" or something like that. No one-word term, is there?

See page 37, Sept. 27 issue, in "The Damage Done," by Dhruv Khullar. The full quotation is this:

Quote
At the time, there were scattered reports of coronavirus cases, but few people admitted to being infected, and her social-media posts went viral.

I think it's kind of unintentionally funny, in a gasp-inducing, OMG, maybe even groan-inducing kind of way (not to say--OK I'll say it--bad editing), to have a sentence that says posts about a virus went viral. It's like an unintentional (I hope unintentional) pun. I love puns as much as the next person, but not in this context. I get it that the use is that posts go viral, but, c'mon, really? Did the writer and the editor (whoever edited the piece) even realize what they were saying? And if they did ...  ::)  I think it's inappropriate.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 04, 2021, 10:23:48 pm
There aren't any good synonyms for "go viral": https://www.powerthesaurus.org/go_viral/synonyms (https://www.powerthesaurus.org/go_viral/synonyms)

But, before the Internet, I used to have several words I would use, like "exploded" or, my favorite, "mushroomed". People I wrote for hated all these and insisted that I substitute the word "increased".


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 05, 2021, 03:57:53 pm
Hmm. I guess it doesn't bother me in either the blundering way or the offensive lame-joke way. Maybe slightly clumsy -- they could have written COVID instead of coronavirus. But you kind of have to use "viral" in that context -- saying "her posts exploded," "mushroomed," or "increased," would be at least slightly unclear, whereas the meaning of viral is instantly recognizable.

As far as clumsy editing at the TNY, I far prefer the virus/viral case to those "'This election was stolen,' Donald Trump, who may have cheated the government out of millions on his taxes, which have been subpoenaed as part of a process that may eventually lead to a conviction, said." (Made-up example.)

But to each his/her own. I'm probably more immersed in internet culture than you, Jeff, so the word doesn't stand out as much to me.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 05, 2021, 04:51:10 pm
THere's another phrase to say in place of "go viral" that I like. It's "go into warp drive."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 05, 2021, 05:06:13 pm
I have found that synonyms for "increase" aren't always satisfying. I mean, mushroom and explode and warp drive and probably a few others work. Escalate, expand. But compared to decrease -- wither, dwindle, shrink, dissipate, subside, contract, decline -- they seem fewer or maybe just less appealing. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 06, 2021, 01:05:22 pm
How about "supercharged"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 06, 2021, 01:46:06 pm
How about "supercharged"?

Good one! Not universally applicable, but then few words are.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 06, 2021, 09:27:12 pm
I kind of like exploded.

"Her coronavirus posts exploded across social media."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 07, 2021, 03:44:55 pm
I kind of like exploded.

"Her coronavirus posts exploded across social media."



Perhaps slightly overstated, but it works! Did you suggest that in your letter to the editors?





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2021, 04:09:47 pm

Perhaps slightly overstated, but it works! Did you suggest that in your letter to the editors?

Actually I forgot I even threatened to write.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 08, 2021, 09:04:09 pm
Here's another New Yorker sentence that bothers me. I can't think of a word to describe how I feel about it, but it annoys me.

"At the breakfast in Mayfair, carefully coiffed women picked at avocado toast and sipped cappuccinos. ..."

(From Rebecca Mead's profile of the designer Harris Reed, Sept. 27, p. 55.)

Maybe condescending is the word I'm trying to think of?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 09, 2021, 05:17:19 pm
Here's another New Yorker sentence that bothers me. I can't think of a word to describe how I feel about it, but it annoys me.

"At the breakfast in Mayfair, carefully coiffed women picked at avocado toast and sipped cappuccinos. ..."

(From Rebecca Mead's profile of the designer Harris Reed, Sept. 27, p. 55.)

Maybe condescending is the word I'm trying to think of?


Hmm. Trying to think if I share that reaction or whether it's simply an accurate description of the surroundings. "Carefully coiffed" does seem a bit contemptuous, and "picked" and "sipped" are a bit more judgmental than "ate" and "drank." And unless at least the majority of women were eating avocado toast, that in itself seems to be saying something below the surface.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 09, 2021, 09:30:37 pm
Hmm. Trying to think if I share that reaction or whether it's simply an accurate description of the surroundings. "Carefully coiffed" does seem a bit contemptuous, and "picked" and "sipped" are a bit more judgmental than "ate" and "drank." And unless at least the majority of women were eating avocado toast, that in itself seems to be saying something below the surface.

Thanks. Contemptuous is the word I wanted but couldn't think of. (That seems to be happening a lot these days.  :(  )

And here's another New Yorker-ism that annoys me: From time to time I see authors use acronyms but don't spell them out. The latest I've seen is in John Seabrook's article on nonalcoholic beer (Sept. 27). In the second paragraph he uses the acronym "I.P.A." He also uses "N.A.," but it's pretty easy to figure that one out as "non-alcoholic," but what is "I.P.A."? Is that something beer drinkers would know, or drinkers of non-alcoholic beer?

At least I learned that O'Doul's is a non-alcoholic beer. I've heard of it didn't know it was non-alcoholic.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 10, 2021, 01:41:26 pm
Thanks. Contemptuous is the word I wanted but couldn't think of. (That seems to be happening a lot these days.  :(  )

And here's another New Yorker-ism that annoys me: From time to time I see authors use acronyms but don't spell them out. The latest I've seen is in John Seabrook's article on nonalcoholic beer (Sept. 27). In the second paragraph he uses the acronym "I.P.A." He also uses "N.A.," but it's pretty easy to figure that one out as "non-alcoholic," but what is "I.P.A."? Is that something beer drinkers would know, or drinkers of non-alcoholic beer?

At least I learned that O'Doul's is a non-alcoholic beer. I've heard of it didn't know it was non-alcoholic.


My neighbors and i forget words and names often. I said I?d heard that if you can think of it within 15 minutes you?re OK. So when we do it ? which is frequently ? someone will pretend to look at their watch, set a timer, etc. We almost always think of it in less than 5. It?s weird that when one person forgets a word, often others do, too.

One time one of us texted the name to the others a couple of hours later. We were trying to think of the presidential candidate who fooled around and for some reason challenged the press to try to find evidence. They immediately uncovered a photo of him on a boat called Monkey Business. Knowing all that does his name come immediately to you?

When I?m sitting alone at a computer I cheat and google.

IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a popular, hoppy beer. Well known among beer drinkers and carried by many or maybe most breweries. Still, I agree he should have spelled it out in first reference. Obviously TNY doesn?t follow AP style, but does it follow another style or just have its own?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 10, 2021, 04:28:04 pm
My neighbors and i forget words and names often. I said I?d heard that if you can think of it within 15 minutes you?re OK. So when we do it ? which is frequently ? someone will pretend to look at their watch, set a timer, etc. We almost always think of it in less than 5. It?s weird that when one person forgets a word, often others do, too.

One time one of us texted the name to the others a couple of hours later. We were trying to think of the presidential candidate who fooled around and for some reason challenged the press to try to find evidence. They immediately uncovered a photo of him on a boat called Monkey Business. Knowing all that does his name come immediately to you?

Sure--Gary Hart. Now, the trick would be to remember the name of the woman he got caught with. I would have to look that up.

How about the name of the woman who shredded documents for Oliver North?  ;D


Quote
When I?m sitting alone at a computer I cheat and google.

Me, too.


Quote
IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a popular, hoppy beer. Well known among beer drinkers and carried by many or maybe most breweries. Still, I agree he should have spelled it out in first reference. Obviously TNY doesn?t follow AP style, but does it follow another style or just have its own?

Thanks. I suspected IPA was something beer drinkers would know.

I don't know about the style guide, but I can't imagine they don't have their own in-house guide.

Word-finding difficulty comes with age, if not from something worse.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 10, 2021, 04:32:25 pm
...One time one of us texted the name to the others a couple of hours later. We were trying to think of the presidential candidate who fooled around and for some reason challenged the press to try to find evidence. They immediately uncovered a photo of him on a boat called Monkey Business. Knowing all that does his name come immediately to you?
Yes, that would be Gary Hart the Colorado senator. He used to live a mountain pass over from me, in a place called Troublesome Gulch. His poor wife was named the same as me.

... Obviously TNY doesn?t follow AP style, but does it follow another style or just have its own?
I'm sure they have their own style guide. Most publications do. I don't think TNY has dropped the Oxford comma as AP style recommends.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 10, 2021, 07:50:53 pm
Sure--Gary Hart. Now, the trick would be to remember the name of the woman he got caught with. I would have to look that up.


Wasn't  her   name Heather something?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 10, 2021, 09:55:32 pm
Wasn't  her   name Heather something?

Her name was Donna Rice--and I want to know how she met Don Henley.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Rice_Hughes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Rice_Hughes)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 10, 2021, 10:03:02 pm

How about the name of the woman who shredded documents for Oliver North?  ;D


That was Fawn Hall. I had to look her up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn_Hall (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fawn_Hall)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 17, 2021, 03:35:19 pm
I don't know about the style guide, but I can't imagine they don't have their own in-house guide.

I'm sure they have their own style guide. Most publications do. I don't think TNY has dropped the Oxford comma as AP style recommends.

Well, that's true. My own employer has an in-house style guide. Most entries are about local things; they rarely try to reinvent the wheel of AP style. They *might* differ on Indian/Native/indigenous terms, I suppose. We used to say Indians at least on first reference, and it's possible we've loosened up on that. But that's the only thing I can think of offhand.

When I worked for St. Jude Medical they had style preferences on a lot of medical/scientific things as well as advertising norms, etc. I was on a three-person team of wordies having fun rewriting the guide when all of a sudden SJM was bought by Abbott and our stylebook was mostly obsolete. But AP was the underlying default.

I think similarly most publications mostly adhere to an established style -- maybe most typically AP or Chicago Manual or MLA. But The New Yorker's in-house style guide seems needlessly quirky and generally not in a good way. The diaeresis aren't (wait, is that plural?) exactly needed but not really a problem. And I can't imagine TNY going for really recent AP additions like using % or allowing "their" for a generic individual, like "If a doctor tells you to exercise, you should obey them."

But spelling out big numbers makes reading harder for no good end.

And other things we've talked about are just weirdly annoying. "So and so, ... blah blah blah blah blrah, ... said.". The use of "got" in past tense where most people would say "gotten."

And I don't know if this is an official style matter or just David Remnick's way, but starting almost every story with a who what where when lede -- including, when possible, an exact date -- is weird, unnecessary and in many stories might be less appealing than various alternatives.

And they'd probably point to their venerable traditions. But they obviously aren't ironclad. I'm sure Mr. Shaw is already spinning in his grade over the allowance of swear words.
 

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 17, 2021, 06:43:56 pm
A compendium of reviews of recent issues. In the August 30 issue, I liked Gawande's "The Costa Rica Model" about public health care in that country, and George Saunders' fiction "The Mom of Bold Action". A review of "The Inseparables", a novel by Simone de Beauvoir that was unpublished until last year, was also good.

September 6 was the food & drink archival issue which was a bit of a disappointment because I still remember reading most of those articles the first time around. But the M.F.K. Fisher one about cravings was good. For some odd reason I was turned off to most of the articles in the September 13th issue except for a review by Ruth Franklin of Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World. It was pretty amazing.

I didn't expect the September 27th fashion issue to interest me but it did. "Desire", the fiction piece by Esther Freud made me wonder if she is a relation of the psychotherapist. Yup, she's his granddaughter and the daughter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Freud) of the painter Lucien Freud. I enjoyed the writing of Rebecca Mead and the photos of the designer Harris Reid in "Height of Glamour". It was jarring to see Murakami's collection of T-shirts that followed. John Seabrook's piece on non-alcoholic drinks was fairly interesting. In the October 4th issue, Jill Lepore's piece on African American burial grounds was just too long. I also wish she would break up her paragraphs a bit and have more variety in her sentences or would she be considered a sell-out in doing that? Vladimir Sorokin's "Red Pyramid" was pretty good for dystopian fiction, of which we have so much of right now. I didn't finish Patricia Highsmith's diaries because I felt voyeuristic. Good review of the new novel by Jonathan Franzen. The Shouts & Murmurs piece was an amusing allegory on the pandemic.

More half-baked dystopian fiction was in the October 11 issue. Gary Shteyngart's piece on his botched adult circumcision was painful to read, but with all these men in my life (3 grandsons so far) I felt I had to. You would think everything that can be has been written about Oscar Wilde, but there's a new book reviewed in this issue that takes a different approach. There's a very insightful passage about  "The Picture of Dorian Gray" calling out the imagery and colors that Wilde evoked. It finishes up discussing "The Importance of Being Ernest" and duplicate lives/reality. Very thought-provoking.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 20, 2021, 10:09:17 am
....

And other things we've talked about are just weirdly annoying. "So and so, ... blah blah blah blah blah, ... said.". The use of "got" in past tense where most people would say "gotten."

Reading how "Eleanor Rigby" came about by Paul McCartney, I noticed the use of the word "got". It seems to lend a populist air to the narrative. Strange.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 20, 2021, 10:49:18 am
Reading how "Eleanor Rigby" came about by Paul McCartney, I noticed the use of the word "got". It seems to lend a populist air to the narrative. Strange.

Webster's shows both got and gotten.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/get (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/get)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 21, 2021, 07:04:05 pm
A must-see for TNY fans: The French Dispatch, quirky new movie by Wes Anderson.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 21, 2021, 11:18:13 pm
Why is Paul McCartney in two successive issues?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 22, 2021, 12:18:30 pm
Reading how "Eleanor Rigby" came about by Paul McCartney, I noticed the use of the word "got". It seems to lend a populist air to the narrative. Strange.

You mean the whole word or that conjugation of it? I vaguely remember in childhood reading a kids' book that said "got is not a word." I may be misremembering, but as far as I'm concerned it's a word.

What I think is strange is that they never say "gotten." So a sentence might read, "By 2021, he was running out of money. He had got fired the year before, and hadn't worked since then." Whereas I would say "gotten" in that sentence.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 26, 2021, 10:41:23 am
Why is Paul McCartney in two successive issues?  ???

Despite my questioning, I really enjoyed David Remnick's article on McCartney in the Oct. 18 issue. Who'da ever thunk it that Paul McCartney is 79 years old?  :-\  I guess he will probably go down in music history as one of the truly great song writers.

I also recommend Rachel Aviv's "Lost Youth" in that issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 26, 2021, 08:19:42 pm
After reading this, I dug around in my piles of magazines and realized that I stopped reading that issue at the Christian zealot article. Thanks to you, I've taken it up again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 26, 2021, 10:42:57 pm
After reading this, I dug around in my piles of magazines and realized that I stopped reading that issue at the Christian zealot article. Thanks to you, I've taken it up again.

I remember hearing that name, Teen Challenge, when I was, well, a teen, but I didn't know anything about it beyond that it was some sort of religious organization for teens. I really knew nothing about it till I read Aviv's article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 27, 2021, 04:02:18 pm
Speaking of 70-something rock stars, I saw a few the other night -- went to a Rolling Stones concert on Sunday. I suspect this might be their last tour, especially since Charlie Watts died. If he ends his musical career, though, Mick Jagger should put out a series of exercise videos. The guy is amazing; dance for most of 2+ hours, while singing.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 27, 2021, 06:00:04 pm
Wow, did we ever think we'd be paying for and going to Rolling Stones concerts in the year 20-flipping-21? Paul McCartney calls the RS a "blues cover band" in the Oct. 18 issue. Old grudges die hard.

On another subject the magazine has just made its Festival online interviews free to subscribers. I will try to carve hatchet out time to watch.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 28, 2021, 11:41:51 am
A reviewer for the New York Times was highly complementary of Gary Shteyngart's new book Our Country Friends about a group of people who stayed at a Hudson Valley estate during the pandemic. The review is here (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/books/review-our-country-friends-gary-shteyngart.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20211028&instance_id=43999&nl=the-morning&regi_id=91026593&segment_id=72873&te=1&user_id=8b5ad6a133ffcce0b9fda3ccfb15b213).

Shteyngart is the one who wrote the painful-to-read article about his adult circumcision in the October 11 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 28, 2021, 12:06:40 pm
A reviewer for the New York Times was highly complementary of Gary Shteyngart's new book Our Country Friends about a group of people who stayed at a Hudson Valley estate during the pandemic.

I wonder if he was inspired by Boccaccio? Sounds like a Decameron for Covid.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 28, 2021, 01:38:07 pm
Yes, in fact, one of the characters is named Dee Cameron!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 28, 2021, 02:21:38 pm
Wow, did we ever think we'd be paying for and going to Rolling Stones concerts in the year 20-flipping-21?

And if we're surprised, imagine how they feel! Mick Jagger's famous quote is that he couldn't see himself singing "Satistaction" in his 40s.  :laugh:

Quote
Paul McCartney calls the RS a "blues cover band" in the Oct. 18 issue. Old grudges die hard.

That's pretty snarky, ignoring their immense catalog of good songs they wrote. However, the Rolling Stones might find it slightly flattering given that the band sprang from Mick and Keith's shared deep interest in American blues, and they have in fact done a number of covers or penned their own blues songs. The two knew each other in kindergarten then reunited on a train when one or the other got on holding a big stack of Chess records and they discovered they were both really into them. In interviews and things, they always speak of old blues players with the deepest respect. In fact, Keith was less concerned about the Stones being "too old" to play their music because look at all the guys like Muddy Waters, BB King, Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, etc., playing well into old age.

I think those were influences on the Beatles, too, though they leaned a bit more Beach Boys. Whom I didn't like back in the day but have since come to respect -- Bill Pohlad's "Love and Mercy" deserves lot of credit. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

BTW, I just did a quick google to see if I was missing a recording studio in Mississippi and found there's something called the Mississippi Blues Trail stretching alongside the Mississippi on Hwy 61 from New Orleans to Minneapolis through the Mississippi Delta. I've taken that route before, since I moved from one city to the other, but not since the official Missippi Blues Trail with interpretive signs was designated. That would be a fun road trip! Many significant locations in addition to the Delta -- Hannibal, MO, Memphis, etc. Good BBQ, too!

Quote
On another subject the magazine has just made its Festival online interviews free to subscribers. I will try to carve hatchet out time to watch.

That sounds intriguing! Do you access on their site?

Shteyngart is the one who wrote the painful-to-read article about his adult circumcision in the October 11 issue.

I like Gary Shteyngart but I couldn't bring myself to read that one.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 28, 2021, 03:38:28 pm
I like Gary Shteyngart but I couldn't bring myself to read that one.

No way for Jack to get it right with his old man when Jack saw he had some extra material that Jack was missin'.  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 29, 2021, 09:53:09 pm
I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Over lunch today I read Paul McCartney on "Eleanor Rigby" (Oct. 25). Then I came to the "Correction of the Week" at the end of the article, on page 24, and read, "Also, the author of 'Dracula' was incorrect. He is Bram Stoker, not Jane Austen."

Now there is a topic for a "Shouts and Murmurs": Dracula as if it had been written by Jane Austen.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 01, 2021, 02:55:57 pm
I nearly fell off my chair laughing.

Now there is a topic for a "Shouts and Murmurs": Dracula as if it had been written by Jane Austen.  ;D


Or, Sense & Sensibility as if it had been written by Bram Stoker!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 01, 2021, 03:58:33 pm

Now there is a topic for a "Shouts and Murmurs": Dracula as if it had been written by Jane Austen.  ;D

A few people were doing that on Facebook. Mine was "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a vampire in possession of sharp fangs must be in want of a neck."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 01, 2021, 09:23:04 pm
A few people were doing that on Facebook. Mine was "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a vampire in possession of sharp fangs must be in want of a neck."

 :D   :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 04, 2021, 11:38:12 am
After reading the two longish letters from the two main people featured in the Sept. 27 article, "The Damage Done" about long COVID, I decided maybe I should go back and read it again. Upon doing so, I had the same reaction as the first time: it is a balanced account of the growth of the patient advocate role in health giving. The letter writers seem to think the author was wrong in including any reference to other opinions. But, maybe the story shouldn't have been assigned to a practicing physician, Dhruv Khullar, to avoid any possible perception of bias. What do you all think?

I'm delving into the book review for The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, which is coming out soon. By David Wengrow and David Graeber, who sadly died last year at the age of 59, it is in the vein of Sapiens, chronicling the decline of civilization from migratory hunting/gathering into agriculture and bureaucracy. I already read a review of it in The Atlantic.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 04, 2021, 08:38:08 pm
After reading the two longish letters from the two main people featured in the Sept. 27 article, "The Damage Done" about long COVID, I decided maybe I should go back and read it again. Upon doing so, I had the same reaction as the first time: it is a balanced account of the growth of the patient advocate role in health giving. The letter writers seem to think the author was wrong in including any reference to other opinions. But, maybe the story shouldn't have been assigned to a practicing physician, Dhruv Khullar, to avoid any possible perception of bias. What do you all think?

Well, I haven't read any of the above but they have practicing physicians write about medical issues all the time. Atul Gawande and that other guy (Jerome?). Most likely in a situation like that, the writer pitched it to them rather than the other way around. But -- again without having seen it -- of course the article should reference other opinions, unless I'm not understanding the particular circumstances of this article.

Quote
I'm delving into the book review for The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, which is coming out soon. By David Wengrow and David Graeber, who sadly died last year at the age of 59, it is in the vein of Sapiens, chronicling the decline of civilization from migratory hunting/gathering into agriculture and bureaucracy. I already read a review of it in The Atlantic.

I read the Atlantic one and the NYT one, both very enticing. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Harari's Sapiens (it's really long and I read slow). I've seen it be presented as discrediting Sapiens but someone on FB says it's more about adding layers than sweeping away the whole perspective. I hope so!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 04, 2021, 10:20:10 pm
Well, I haven't read any of the above but they have practicing physicians write about medical issues all the time. Atul Gawande and that other guy (Jerome?).

Groopman
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 11, 2021, 08:29:17 pm
Groopman

Oh right, belated thanks!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 25, 2021, 09:35:44 pm
I thought this holiday I might catch up on my magazines; I brought two issues along with me to my dad's. Instead all I've read has been the latest Longmire novel.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 27, 2021, 02:25:50 pm
I was reading about the biography of Elizabeth Hardwick in the November 22 issue, where it says she grew up in the South, and later it pinpoints her origin to around Lexington, Kentucky. I don't think of that as the South, do you? It is only 50 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio.

The article also insinuates that she follows the traditions of Southern writers. Well, from the examples mentioned, she does use a style similar to Faulkner, verbose, with many adjectives. What else characterizes Southern writing? Has anyone read her work?

I enjoyed the review and also the one by Jill Lepore of a book about weeks and the history of the calendar. Native Americans had 13 months in a year, corresponding to the phases of the moon. That way each of the months is 28 days, bringing more consistency. I haven't read the review of a new biography of H. G. Wells yet.

The profile of new operatic singer Dav?ne Tines was thrilling, and, with my interest in genealogy, I ate up the article about its use in forensics. The profile of Kristen Stewart, the "Twilight" actress, was surprisngly interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 27, 2021, 10:40:56 pm
I was reading about the biography of Elizabeth Hardwick in the November 22 issue, where it says she grew up in the South, and later it pinpoints her origin to around Lexington, Kentucky. I don't think of that as the South, do you? It is only 50 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio.

I do think of Kentucky as the South. Not the Deep South, though.

Quote
The article also insinuates that she follows the traditions of Southern writers. Well, from the examples mentioned, she does use a style similar to Faulkner, verbose, with many adjectives. What else characterizes Southern writing?

I think of Faulkner as dense, familial and kind of Gothic. When I read The Sound and the Fury I had the Cliff Notes at my elbow. The only other time I've used them is when reading Hamlet.

So there's also Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren ...

Quote
Has anyone read her work?

Not me.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 28, 2021, 07:07:54 pm
I do think of Kentucky as the South. Not the Deep South, though.

I do, too.

Quote
So there's also Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Zora Neale Hurston, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren ...

Margaret Mitchell. ...

Harper Lee and Truman Capote were the answer/question for Final Jeopardy recently.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 02, 2021, 12:13:25 am
I do, too.

Margaret Mitchell. ...

Harper Lee and Truman Capote were the answer/question for Final Jeopardy recently.


I bet I can imagine the answer/question. Something about how they lived near each other, one was the basis for a character in the other's book, they were friends into adulthood and she accompanied him to do the reporting for In Cold Blood.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 02, 2021, 10:49:15 am
I bet I can imagine the answer/question. Something about how they lived near each other, one was the basis for a character in the other's book, they were friends into adulthood and she accompanied him to do the reporting for In Cold Blood.

More or less. I think it had something to do with two Southern authors who were the basis for two characters (Scout and Dill) in an acclaimed novel written by one of them.

The implication (that I've never heard before) is that Harper Lee herself was the basis for Scout. I'd heard that Capote was the basis for Dill.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 03, 2021, 01:50:21 pm
More or less. I think it had something to do with two Southern authors who were the basis for two characters (Scout and Dill) in an acclaimed novel written by one of them.

The implication (that I've never heard before) is that Harper Lee herself was the basis for Scout. I'd heard that Capote was the basis for Dill.

I'd heard both but did they say the names Scout and Dill? In which case I probably would have gotten it (though I might think Dill was the brother's name). Otherwise I'd be thinking about siblings or married couples.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 03, 2021, 10:55:28 pm
I'd heard both but did they say the names Scout and Dill? In which case I probably would have gotten it (though I might think Dill was the brother's name). Otherwise I'd be thinking about siblings or married couples.

They only said the character names after all the contestants' responses had been revealed. The characters' names were not part of the clue.

The brother's name was Jem.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 05, 2021, 07:44:58 pm
I enjoyed the review and also the one by Jill Lepore of a book about weeks and the history of the calendar. Native Americans had 13 months in a year, corresponding to the phases of the moon. That way each of the months is 28 days, bringing more consistency. I haven't read the review of a new biography of H. G. Wells yet.

This was in the November 22 issue. A few more things about the number 13: Native Americans constructed their tipis with 13 poles. Women's cycles are every 28 days, so 13 times per year. As the article points  out, there were 13 states in the original U.S. But, as Lepore writes, the number 13 was awkward mathematically. I disagree.

I'd also like to mention Nick Paumgarten's article on energy in the November 8 issue. It had a boring start for me but it picked up when he talked about wearables like Oura and the Whoop. They work at night too and I've been wondering what I could do to improve my sleep quality. My doctor wants me to take an expensive sleep test that is not covered by insurance. I'd like to use more low-tech ways to improve my sleep.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2021, 09:46:25 am
Women's cycles are every 28 days.

Of course, that's an average.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2021, 12:10:27 am
I read the article in the Nov. 22 issue about CeCe Moore, who uses genetics to solve cold cases. The article mentions her identifying the killer of a schoolteacher, who was raped and murdered in her home in Pennsylvania in 1992. This crime took place in my home town.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 07, 2021, 08:00:55 pm
I'd also like to mention Nick Paumgarten's article on energy in the November 8 issue. It had a boring start for me but it picked up when he talked about wearables like Oura and the Whoop. They work at night too and I've been wondering what I could do to improve my sleep quality. My doctor wants me to take an expensive sleep test that is not covered by insurance. I'd like to use more low-tech ways to improve my sleep.

A neighbor uses Oura and swears by it. I've been tempted myself.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 09, 2021, 07:07:20 pm
...delving into the book review for The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, which is coming out soon. By David Wengrow and David Graeber, who sadly died last year at the age of 59, it is in the vein of Sapiens, chronicling the decline of civilization from migratory hunting/gathering into agriculture and bureaucracy. I already read a review of it in The Atlantic.

I now have a copy! I bought it at a used bookstore but it looks new. I'm starting with the chapter on urban civilizations in the Americas, sort of in the middle of the book. Reading all those book reviews, I don't have to start at the beginning!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 09, 2021, 10:14:37 pm
I now have a copy! I bought it at a used bookstore but it looks new. I'm starting with the chapter on urban civilizations in the Americas, sort of in the middle of the book. Reading all those book reviews, I don't have to start at the beginning!

Wow, keep us posted! I'd join you for a mini-bookclub but for some reason I found myself committing to try reading Infinite Jest.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 09, 2021, 10:16:27 pm
Wow, keep us posted! I'd join you for a mini-bookclub but for some reason I found myself committing to try reading Infinite Jest.

Isn't that like Proust? Goes on forever?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 09, 2021, 10:27:20 pm
So I glanced at the excerpts from Patricia Highsmith's diaries in the Oct. 4 issue (I know, I know). I wasn't particularly interested as I've never read anything by her especially after it said she was a racist and anti-Semite. But I skimmed a few and saw something interesting.

Quote
may 11-30, 1948: What to say of Yaddo? I shall never forget it. A singularly dull bunch, no big names?though Marc Brandel is interesting. Bob White, Clifford Wright, Irene Orgel, Gail Kubik, Chester Himes, and Vivien K[och] MacLeod, W. S. Graham, a Scots poet, Harold Shapero & wife, Stan[ley] Levine, painter, Flannery O?Connor. Great desire to drink, after 3 days. The drunkest evening of my life after ten days. At the Maranese Restaurant btw. here & town, the place we took dinner when the kitchen moved from garage to mansion. None of us ate much. We trooped into the bar & drank as if we had never had cocktails before. Mixing was the order?for a thrill?Marc soon succumbed, with carrot hair in his carrot soup. I exchanged a revealing phrase with C. Wright, the solitary gay person here, which was carried no farther. We both know. So what?

The first blue thing threw me. They were dull? Does she mean it was boring to be around them or they weren't big names? They don't sound exactly dull, but I guess you can go out drinking wildly and still be boring.

The second red thing is even more mysterious. At first I thought she meant gay as in lively and carefree, contrasted to dull. But the rest of the context suggests she means gay in the modern sense. But nobody used that word back in 1948, did they? So is it Bowdlerized? Which suggests to me that she used a term that would be offensive now. If she'd said "homosexual" I don't think they'd have needed to change it. But "gay" draws attention to itself, given the era. Right?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 09, 2021, 10:29:42 pm
Isn't that like Proust? Goes on forever?

Or think of Robert Caro! Outside of scholars, who would read a three-part biography of LBJ at this point? I have a lot of respect for him (and always love that accent -- like Fauci's, I think) but his venture seems kind of Quixotic, doesn't it? At least in Proust's day people actually read long endless books.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 10, 2021, 09:32:27 am
Or think of Robert Caro! Outside of scholars, who would read a three-part biography of LBJ at this point? I have a lot of respect for him (and always love that accent -- like Fauci's, I think) but his venture seems kind of Quixotic, doesn't it? At least in Proust's day people actually read long endless books.

But does anybody do that anymore? Which brings me back to Infinite Jest.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 10, 2021, 09:41:43 am
The second red thing is even more mysterious. At first I thought she meant gay as in lively and carefree, contrasted to dull. But the rest of the context suggests she means gay in the modern sense. But nobody used that word back in 1948, did they? So is it Bowdlerized? Which suggests to me that she used a term that would be offensive now. If she'd said "homosexual" I don't think they'd have needed to change it. But "gay" draws attention to itself, given the era. Right?

There is a very famous--and very funny--"screwball comedy" called Bringing Up Baby, which starred Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. At one point, Grant has a line, delivered to an older woman, "Do you think I've gone gay, or something?" He emphasizes the word gay, and since he's wearing a woman's housecoat at the time, I think the implication is pretty obvious.

Thing is, the movie was made in 1938.

Of course, that doesn't mean the usage was common, but, as I said, I think the line delivered by a man in a frilly woman's housecoat is pretty obvious.

(Incidentally, Baby is a leopard. I highly recommend the movie.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on December 10, 2021, 10:32:03 am
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 10, 2021, 11:20:16 am
  :D Thanks for that!

This source (https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2017/10/gay-come-mean-homosexual/) says that using "gay" to mean homosexual appears in print in the early 1950s and the gay community was probably using it before that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 11, 2021, 01:15:30 am
Interesting! I did not know that. Thanks, y?all!

I love Cary Grant?s little less when he says the word.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 12, 2021, 12:08:59 am
The Dec. 13 issue's book review/essay about Greta Garbo, by longtime staff writer Margaret Talbot, quotes someone saying that when movie closeups came along, "people literally lost themselves in the human image." Wait, what? I mean, she's quoting someone else, but was anyone ever found wandering around a theater, confused about where themselves had gone?



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 12, 2021, 10:18:22 am
 :laugh: :laugh:

Sounds like the premise of a "Shouts & Murmurs" to me!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 12, 2021, 03:11:33 pm
:laugh: :laugh:

Sounds like the premise of a "Shouts & Murmurs" to me!

True, many of those start out with a real media quote. I've never seen one in which the quote was from the New Yorker, though.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 12, 2021, 10:28:45 pm
I was reading about the biography of Elizabeth Hardwick in the November 22 issue, where it says she grew up in the South, and later it pinpoints her origin to around Lexington, Kentucky. I don't think of that as the South, do you? It is only 50 miles south of Cincinnati, Ohio.

But why is it scandalous to compare Edna St. Vincent Millay to Jo March?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 13, 2021, 11:34:32 am
But why is it scandalous to compare Edna St. Vincent Millay to Jo March?  ???

Did I say it was scandalous? I don't remember saying that. I know Jo March was thought to stand in for the author, Louisa May Alcott, and there were several things about Alcott that were scandalous at the time, according to this article (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/little-women-7-surprising-facts-about-louisa-may-alcott/).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 13, 2021, 02:58:05 pm
Did I say it was scandalous? I don't remember saying that.

You didn't. According to the article, if I read the sentence correctly, Elizabeth Hardwick said it was scandalous.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 13, 2021, 06:48:05 pm
The Dec. 13 issue's book review/essay about Greta Garbo, by longtime staff writer Margaret Talbot, quotes someone saying that when movie closeups came along, "people literally lost themselves in the human image." Wait, what? I mean, she's quoting someone else, but was anyone ever found wandering around a theater, confused about where themselves had gone?

 :laugh: Actually I sort of felt that way after seeing Brokeback Mountain for the first time. I was kind of in a daze. My daughter took my arm and said, "Mom, are you all right?"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 13, 2021, 08:18:59 pm
ANother interesting passage from the Garbo review was a description in the scene from "Flesh and the Devil" where "Garbo rolls a cigarette between her lips, then puts it between Gilbert's, her eyes never leaving his, as he strikes a match and illuminates their gorgeous, besotted faces." Doesn't that remind you of a similar scene in "Power of the Dog"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 14, 2021, 02:43:18 pm
I just started Rebecca Mead on Pompeii. I was gratified to see her still refer to that incredibly venerable British institution of higher learning as Cambridge University and not, as I've seen recently, the University of Cambridge.

(I've also seen the University of Oxford. No.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 14, 2021, 10:02:48 pm
I just started Rebecca Mead on Pompeii. I was gratified to see her still refer to that incredibly venerable British institution of higher learning as Cambridge University and not, as I've seen recently, the University of Cambridge.

(I've also seen the University of Oxford. No.)


Well, she's British, so.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 14, 2021, 10:09:16 pm
Did I say it was scandalous? I don't remember saying that. I know Jo March was thought to stand in for the author, Louisa May Alcott, and there were several things about Alcott that were scandalous at the time, according to this article (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/little-women-7-surprising-facts-about-louisa-may-alcott/).

I haven't read the article yet but I've long assumed LMA was a lesbian. Jo March is very much based on her (as the sisters and parents are based on her own sisters and parents). So that's why Jo March doesn't marry Christian Bale Laurie, her neighbor close friend and presumed love interest. And apparently her publishers made LMA have Jo marry someone, so she picked a not very sexy professor. (Although in the Greta Gerwig version, the guy Jo marries is actually attractive.)

I visited LMA's childhood home some years ago. Very interesting. Among other things, she pounded out Little Women in about a month, at the request of an editor who thought she should write a book for women. Then she wrote a sequel.

Her desk was a fold-out desktop about the size of a desktop in grade school. In LW, the character of her sister Amy is artistic. In their house, "Amy's" drawings are all over some of the walls.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 15, 2021, 09:42:07 am
Jo March is very much based on her (as the sisters and parents are based on her own sisters and parents).

That was just a question/answer on Jeopardy!

Maybe the scandal was that EStVM was apparently bisexual, even though she eventually married (as Jo eventually married). Also, when she was growing up, her father was not part of her family--much like Mr. March isn't much in LW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_St._Vincent_Millay)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 18, 2021, 12:48:20 pm
Remember when somebody wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln suggesting he had a love affair with his (male) friend, but others objected saying that homosexuality wasn't even recognized as a thing back then? That can't be possible, can it? 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 18, 2021, 02:17:15 pm
Remember when somebody wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln suggesting he had a love affair with his (male) friend, but others objected saying that homosexuality wasn't even recognized as a thing back then? That can't be possible, can it?

As a separate sexual orientation, yes. I think credit for "inventing" the term frequently goes to Krafft-Ebbing in the late 19th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Krafft-Ebing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_von_Krafft-Ebing)

But of course there is dispute over that.

I think you could probably say that "homosexuality didn't exist" until the the whole concept of "sexual orientation" was developed--I haven't tried to find out when that was.

This isn't to say that men didn't fall in love with other men or didn't have sex together. Of course they did; there just wasn't a word for it, except sodomy, and I guess that was limited to sex.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 19, 2021, 11:32:22 am
The Greeks recognized homosexuality didn't they? It was called paiderastia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece) (pederasty).

And what about Alexander?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 19, 2021, 03:32:23 pm
Well, sodomy and pederasty have negative connotations (the latter at least partly because of age and gender).

So it's hard to imagine how they could recognize that yes, there are men and women who have sex or fall in love with people of their own gender -- even though doing that was widely seen as sinful or at least scandalous and in many cases was illegal -- without it stemming from some inner inherent drive or longing or whatever. How did they explain that in their own minds, I wonder?

Maybe they thought people were tempted in the way we think of people being tempted by things that aren't good for them -- drugs, excess gambling, etc.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 19, 2021, 03:34:27 pm
By the way, if you haven't already read that Dec. 13 article about Greta Garbo, it considers the possibility that she was trans.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 19, 2021, 07:13:04 pm
Yes, I read it on your recommendation and it was a good article.

There's a link to a Wikipedia article on paiderastia in ancient Greece and it did not have negative connotations. They say it was socially accepted and the many depictions on pottery and in literature back that up. The stigma came later.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 19, 2021, 09:32:39 pm
Yes, I read it on your recommendation and it was a good article.

There's a link to a Wikipedia article on paiderastia in ancient Greece and it did not have negative connotations. They say it was socially accepted and the many depictions on pottery and in literature back that up. The stigma came later.

It's been, like, 30 years since I read it, but Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, by John Boswell, is relevant to the development of the stigma.

Boswell was a cutie. In the picture of him on the back of my paperback copy, he appears blond-haired and blue-eyed, with a sort of enigmatic smile--and the top couple of buttons of his shirt undone.

He was family. We lost him to AIDS in 1994. His tragedy (in my view it's a tragedy) was that he was so devoted to Roman Catholicism that he bent over so far backward to try to prove that the early church was not homophobic that he was practically standing on his head, and that he sort of damaged his own reputation as a scholar. His last book, on same-sex unions, was rushed into print in order for it to be published before he died.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boswell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boswell)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 28, 2021, 03:34:03 pm
I think I am not further behind than I have ever been in my life.

Going all the way back to Nov. 29, I recommend the picture of the beautiful young man in the ad for Madrid on page 19.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 03, 2022, 08:15:10 pm
Came across the word "sombre." A mistake, or more New Yorker style guide weirdness? Sombre isn't incorrect, but the preferred spelling in the United States is "somber."

Now I'm wondering (and this would be an easy mystery to solve), do they say "theatre"?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 03, 2022, 08:48:31 pm
Where did you find that? Maybe the author is British. No, I don't think they write "theatre."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2022, 09:26:52 pm
Now I'm wondering (and this would be an easy mystery to solve), do they say "theatre"?

Where did you find that? Maybe the author is British. No, I don't think they write "theatre."

Check Alexandra Schwartz's review of Company in the Dec. 20 issue: "It is one of the greatest moments in musical theatre," also the phrase, "in music or in theatre." Both appear on page 71.

I'd say check the TOC of any issue with a theatre review.

I would think that spelling is quintessential New Yorker usage.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 08, 2022, 05:53:44 pm
Where did you find that? Maybe the author is British. No, I don't think they write "theatre."

I'll see if I can remember. But the author's nationality shouldn't matter to the copy editors, right? Presumably they don't let writers spell it "colour" and put commas and periods outside quotation marks.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2022, 06:27:33 pm
I believe TNY also uses a diacritical mark (?--not sure if that's what it's called) in coordinate rather than a hyphen or no punctuation at all.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 08, 2022, 06:29:36 pm
Did anyone not get their issue this week? Mine is late by 4 or 5 days. I suppose TNY might be sulking because it learned I was two-timing it with TDoE.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 08, 2022, 09:36:04 pm
Did anyone not get their issue this week? Mine is late by 4 or 5 days. I suppose TNY might be sulking because it learned I was two-timing it with TDoE.

Which issue? The last one I got is a two-week issue, Jan. 3 and 10.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 09, 2022, 11:14:06 am
The latest issue I have is December 27. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 09, 2022, 01:46:56 pm
I believe TNY also uses a diacritical mark (?--not sure if that's what it's called) in coordinate rather than a hyphen or no punctuation at all.

Quote
A diaeresis is a pair of dots that appear over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is pronounced separately from an adjacent vowel. For example, in English oo is generally pronounced as a single vowel sound, usually either the /u/ sound in boot or the /ʊ/ in book. The New Yorker puts a diaeresis over the repeated vowel in words like cooperate to show that those two o?s are pronounced as two distinct vowels. This also applies to other words with repeated vowels like reelect.
https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2020/03/24/umlauts-diaereses-and-the-new-yorker/ (https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2020/03/24/umlauts-diaereses-and-the-new-yorker/)

But that's just fussy punctuation, I think, not the same as letting writers use British English. Which actually wouldn't be a terrible idea, especially if the writer's Britishness is relevant to the piece.

But then what? Would they let Black writers write in an Ebonics voice if that comes naturally? Might not be a bad idea either.

Not expecting it in TNY, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are hipster-y magazines that do that.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 09, 2022, 03:04:17 pm
But that's just fussy punctuation.

I like that characterization.  :D

BTW, did you read the article about that celebrity chef? She was quoted using fuck, shit, and bitch all in one sentence.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 10, 2022, 09:40:38 pm
I highly recommend the article about Dan Bongino in the Jan. 3 & 10 issue. Yes, it's a duty article, and it's hard going, but I think this is a duty everyone should undertake. Evan Osnos makes a very good point: "Spend several months immersed in American talk radio and you'll come away with the sense that the violence of January 6th was not the end of something but the beginning." I also get the impression Osnos thinks it's foolish for liberals to wring their hands over Facebook and TikTok when they should be paying attention to and being be concerned about what's going on in the world of extreme-right-wing talk radio.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 18, 2022, 03:12:15 pm
To my own surprise, I'm actually caught up on my magazines. I'm reading the Jan. 17 issue now.

Partly at least, this is because I simply stopped reading everything, particularly anything that had to do with art, the performing arts, theatre, and movies.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2022, 10:58:36 pm
In an article today I saw the word "focussed." Do they use archaic/non-American spellings just to be obstinate and quirky? Would Mr. Shawn roll in his grave if they spelled it with one S, yet they're OK with "fuck" now?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 21, 2022, 12:01:09 am
On my blog I wrote an entry concerning the Jan. 17 profile of Hanya Yanagihara. Didn't seem appropriate to make the comment here.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 21, 2022, 06:08:52 pm
The first thing I read in the Jan. 24th issue is the review of the original and new translation of the book Bambi: A Life in the Woods and of the Disney movie, by Kathryn Schulz. Yes, I still feel reverberations of the trauma I experienced watching the movie as a child. I didn't really understand it when his mother died because I had never seen a gun before (Except for Elmer Fudd's but he never had a chance against the wascally Bugs). But I did feel terror when the fire raged through the forest. And I wondered at the ending: why was Bambi, like his father, regarding the family from a distance and not going to them? Shulz explains it all.

Walt Disney shaped my and countless baby boomers' entire world. Would life be totally different if he had gone into some other line of work? I wonder...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 22, 2022, 09:38:24 pm
The first thing I read in the Jan. 24th issue is the review of the original and new translation of the book Bambi: A Life in the Woods and of the Disney movie, by Kathryn Schulz. Yes, I still feel reverberations of the trauma I experienced watching the movie as a child. I didn't really understand it when his mother died because I had never seen a gun before (Except for Elmer Fudd's but he never had a chance against the wascally Bugs). But I did feel terror when the fire raged through the forest. And I wondered at the ending: why was Bambi, like his father, regarding the family from a distance and not going to them? Shulz explains it all.

Walt Disney shaped my and countless baby boomers' entire world. Would life be totally different if he had gone into some other line of work? I wonder...

I read that article, too, though it reverberated less for me because I've never seen Bambi. Still, as I read, I kept thinking, Wouldn't it be awfully traumatic for a small child, that part about losing his mother? It would have been for me.

Sounds like bookends to me, the father at the beginning and Bambi at the end.

I wonder how you pronounce the name in German?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 22, 2022, 09:41:40 pm
I haven't yet read the article about Thomas Mann, but I intend to. I was browsing through it and came across a quote from Mann that if Fascism ever came to America, it would be in the name of Freedom.

There's a prophecy for you.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 12, 2022, 03:35:32 pm
I should keep John McPhee's article in the Feb. 7 issue for where he writes about scotches and bourbons.

Distilleries get bought and sold by different companies, even though they keep their names (brand identification). Maker's Mark, however, is still made by Maker's Mark in Loretto, Kentucky--at least, that's what it says on the bottle I have in my liquor cupboard.

Pappy Van Winkle's is Walt Longmire's preferred bourbon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 12, 2022, 04:05:52 pm
Wow, I not only have somehow fallen behind on this thread, but I've fallen way behind on my New Yorkers and missed the article about Bambi. I didn't see it as a kid -- in fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen it start to finish -- so I was not traumatized by the shooting. I'm interested to see what she says about that deadbeat dad, though. Kathryn Schulz is one of the NY writers I really like. I just got the most recent edition of Best American Essays, and she's this year's guest editor.

I just discovered (while arguing with my son, I believe) that Jack Daniels is not bourbon! I always thought it was -- and I toured the JD distillery in Tennessee. (As you've probably heard, since it's somewhat famous lore, the JD distillery is, or at least was, located in a dry county.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on February 12, 2022, 06:19:36 pm

I just discovered (while arguing with my son, I believe) that Jack Daniels is not bourbon! I always thought it was -- and I toured the JD distillery in Tennessee. (As you've probably heard, since it's somewhat famous lore, the JD distillery is, or at least was, located in a dry county.)

Technically, it IS a bourbon; they just choose not to call it so. 

From wiki: 
The product meets the regulatory criteria for classification as a straight bourbon, though the company chooses not to use this classification. It markets the beverage as "Tennessee whiskey" instead of "Tennessee bourbon". As defined in the North American Free Trade Agreement, "Tennessee whiskey" is classified as a straight bourbon authorized to be produced in the state of Tennessee
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 12, 2022, 09:15:18 pm
Technically, it IS a bourbon; they just choose not to call it so. 

From wiki: 
The product meets the regulatory criteria for classification as a straight bourbon, though the company chooses not to use this classification. It markets the beverage as "Tennessee whiskey" instead of "Tennessee bourbon". As defined in the North American Free Trade Agreement, "Tennessee whiskey" is classified as a straight bourbon authorized to be produced in the state of Tennessee

Well, at least I was right before I was wrong. And now I can reboot the argument with my son and maybe win for a change.  :laugh:  I knew it was some special process that wound up tasting like bourbon. Not great bourbon, necessarily -- no Old Rose, for sure.  8)





Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 12, 2022, 09:35:44 pm
BTW, did you read the article about that celebrity chef? She was quoted using fuck, shit, and bitch all in one sentence.  :laugh:

Missed it! I've still got the magazine here in a pile that I will read someday. Possibly after I die if they'll let me bring my New Yorkers with me.

I highly recommend the article about Dan Bongino in the Jan. 3 & 10 issue. Yes, it's a duty article, and it's hard going, but I think this is a duty everyone should undertake. Evan Osnos makes a very good point: "Spend several months immersed in American talk radio and you'll come away with the sense that the violence of January 6th was not the end of something but the beginning." I also get the impression Osnos thinks it's foolish for liberals to wring their hands over Facebook and TikTok when they should be paying attention to and being be concerned about what's going on in the world of extreme-right-wing talk radio.

I've been listening to Ezra Klein podcasts and one episode very much made that point. Not about talk radio specifically, but about a whole nationwide movement that's now pretty mainstream -- its terms and ideology get spouted by Tucker Carlson, for example.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 13, 2022, 04:27:46 pm
I just discovered (while arguing with my son, I believe) that Jack Daniels is not bourbon! I always thought it was -- and I toured the JD distillery in Tennessee. (As you've probably heard, since it's somewhat famous lore, the JD distillery is, or at least was, located in a dry county.)

Technically, it IS a bourbon; they just choose not to call it so. 

I didn't realize it was, either--it's not from Kentucky, after all--until I happened to notice that the liquor store keeps it shelved with ... the bourbons.  :laugh:

I suppose some connoisseurs might argue, if it ain't from Kentucky, it ain't bourbon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 13, 2022, 05:13:25 pm
Not even if it were made in Bourbon-l'Archambault, the origin of the French  House of Bourbon?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 13, 2022, 08:36:12 pm
Not even if it were made in Bourbon-l'Archambault, the origin of the French  House of Bourbon?

That would be a no.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 15, 2022, 10:50:16 pm
OK, who can trace Downton Abbey to King Tut?  ;D  (Feb. 14 & 21)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on February 15, 2022, 11:02:44 pm
OK, who can trace Downton Abbey to King Tut?  ;D  (Feb. 14 & 21)

I'm winging it, but one of the Earls of Carnavan was ?colleagues with Carter in the 20s and the opening of Tut's tomb.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 16, 2022, 10:22:17 am
I'm winging it, but one of the Earls of Carnavan was ?colleagues with Carter in the 20s and the opening of Tut's tomb.

Close enough; I'll give it to you.

The chain of connection I was thinking of begins with Downton Abbey. Downton Abbey is Highclere Castle; Highclere is the estate of the earls of Carnarvon; the fifth earl sponsored Howard Carter's excavation; Carter found King Tut's tomb.

(The article in TNY refers to Highclere as "the estate" of the earls of Carnarvon.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 17, 2022, 02:59:40 pm
I had put down that issue in disgust, after wasting too much of my time, and not finishing, the article on Ms. Barrett. I fished it out and read "Tut-Tut" which was really interesting and reminded me of the two times I admired the Egyptian art in the Louvre. I was surprised by the vibrant color after growing up thinking ancient sculptures were unpainted. Also loved the depictions of romantic love and family closeness.

After seeing those, I went further to the wing where Napoleon III's apartments were located. The regal touches, the heavy black outlining, and the mythical figurines reminded me that Egyptomania took over the arts when Napoleon invaded Egypt. He conquered the tribe that was ruling Egypt at that time, but was defeated at sea by the British under Admiral Nelson. Nevertheless, General Bonaparte was seen as a hero and part of the celebration was the adoption of Egyptian motifs. 150 scholars in all branches of science and the arts accompanied him to Egypt and stayed after to study the country. Included was the director of the Central Museum of the Arts, which became the Louvre (but not until 1989!).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 17, 2022, 04:35:29 pm
The museum at the University of Pennsylvania has lots of stuff filched from Egypt, including mummies and a sphinx.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 20, 2022, 11:31:25 am
Remember how we've bemoaned the fact that humor often falls flat in TNY? Well, maybe it has to do with the printed page. I've been perusing the animated cartoons (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/sketchbook/overheard-in-new-york?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Magazine_Daily_022022&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5be9f4102ddf9c72dc86cb9b&cndid=18632875&hasha=8b5ad6a133ffcce0b9fda3ccfb15b213&hashb=4888ac4203266e18ef8ee198f934da25c525d7a1&hashc=158c80165d71a9b979d740f426b15a651e4497298eae6afb7b7944163dc5ed9a&esrc=auto_auth_de&utm_term=TNY_Magazine&verso=true) in the first digital issue that came out last week. While I didn't LOL, I thought at least half of them were amusing.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 20, 2022, 12:34:17 pm
This looks really good -- thanks, FRiend! I haven't read past the "overheard in NY" quotes but they were good and the other stuff looks good, too.

I'm going to start using "Let's frighten it!" I only wish this included more context. Were they talking about a pigeon in the sidewalk ahead? Or maybe something more colloquial and nuanced -- maybe "frighten" means think deeply about something, or take some startling action that sets things in motion, or whatever.

I'm going to deploy it in some nuanced way.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 26, 2022, 10:09:56 pm
Who has predictions for the next New Yorker cover? I'm thinking blue and yellow for sure. But as simple as that, or a more complex image?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 16, 2022, 09:11:28 pm
I believe I found a mistake in the elk antler article (March 14). One of the sources for the article, discussing the utility of antlers for dogs, is quoted as saying, "There's almost nothing there but calcium and phosphorous."

Phosphorous is an adjective. The context of the sentence calls for phosphorus, the noun, the substance.

That's a common mistake, but I think it's one someone at TNY should have caught.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 17, 2022, 11:14:11 am
I believe I found a mistake in the elk antler article (March 14). One of the sources for the article, discussing the utility of antlers for dogs, is quoted as saying, "There's almost nothing there but calcium and phosphorous."

Phosphorous is an adjective. The context of the sentence calls for phosphorus, the noun, the substance.

That's a common mistake, but I think it's one someone at TNY should have caught.


Sharp eyes! They should hire you.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 17, 2022, 01:13:24 pm
I believe I found a mistake in the elk antler article (March 14). One of the sources for the article, discussing the utility of antlers for dogs, is quoted as saying, "There's almost nothing there but calcium and phosphorous."

Phosphorous is an adjective. The context of the sentence calls for phosphorus, the noun, the substance.

That's a common mistake, but I think it's one someone at TNY should have caught.


Sharp eyes! They should hire you.

Thanks. From your lips to God's ears.  ...   ;D   I've grown accustomed to looking for it. I see it in lab reports in my job.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2022, 10:33:23 pm
I enjoyed Peter Schjeldahl on Marcel Duchamp in the March 14 issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 02, 2022, 10:28:35 am
I was puzzled by this over-the-top video about the "senior word engineer" of Wordle, but then I saw that it was produced by the New Yorker!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1BLsjjAlB4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1BLsjjAlB4)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 04, 2022, 09:55:28 pm
I read Nick Paumgarten on the Latitude Margaritaville retirement communities (March 28). Paumgarten mentions (p. 62) that he had seen hardly any people of color in the community (that was all he mentioned). As I was reading the article, I was thinking of that, also that the population was overwhelmingly white, affluent, heterosexual, and married. There was no talk of widows husband hunting.

I also read Calvin Trillin on tuxedos. As a matter of fact, for a couple of years, I have been doing just what Trillin mentioned: I put the cuff links in the cuffs before I put the shirt on.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 05, 2022, 07:50:28 pm
Yes, that was a fun read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 14, 2022, 06:42:46 pm
I put the March 14 issue down mid-article and it got buried by other reading. Today I took it up again and read the last of the article. I thought it was about people who go around looking for sheds and photographing them. That seems very Monty Python. Then, I looked back to the first page and "Thrill of the Hunt" by Abe Streep is about people who collect antlers that deer and elk have shed. They call them sheds.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 14, 2022, 10:46:04 pm
I put the March 14 issue down mid-article and it got buried by other reading. Today I took it up again and read the last of the article. I thought it was about people who go around looking for sheds and photographing them. That seems very Monty Python. Then, I looked back to the first page and "Thrill of the Hunt" by Abe Streep is about people who collect antlers that deer and elk have shed. They call them sheds.  :laugh:

Weird, I was just thinking about that but not in relation to the New Yorker, I don't think. I came across something about how Jackson, WY, has big deer-antler arches in its town square. I vaguely remember that from when my parents used to take the family on vacations in Jackson.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 24, 2022, 08:44:06 pm
I thought it was pretty funny that one of Lauren Collins's sources for her article on the French serial killer expert (April 11) was Xaviera Hollander, "a former sex worker who now runs a bed-and-breakfast in Amsterdam." Collins quotes Hollander as referring to herself as "the happy hooker," but I remember she gained some notoriety when she published a memoir called The Happy Hooker.

Actually, I think it's pretty funny that a formerly notorious former sex worker now runs a bed-and-breakfast in Amsterdam, or anywhere, for that matter.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 09, 2022, 10:34:07 am
Really enjoyed "London Calling" about the BBC, by Sam Knight in the April 18 issue. He tosses off pithy witticisms, one liners, and hilarities, sometimes all in the same sentence. Here is his take on Norman Tebbit, a minister in the Thatcher administration: "Norman Tebbit, her minister and loyal Rottweiler, once described it as that 'insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, na?ve, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the Sixties.'" Looking him up (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/sam-knight), I found that I've liked other articles by him as well.

In contrast, the preceding article by Elizabeth Kolbert about rights for trees, lakes, and places has such a plodding tone that it was hard to get through it. I know she has a lot of awards and accolades, but I need better writing. And the endangered natural features that she writes about need it too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 15, 2022, 05:22:57 pm
I am reading Luke Mogelson on conditions in Ukraine (May 9). It's chilling, absolutely chilling. Russian atrocities are beyond belief.

And yet, reading part of the article this afternoon, I found myself thinking, Don't fool yourself that it can't happen here.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 16, 2022, 09:39:29 am
Somehow I missed that one so I fished that issue out of the recycling and put it back on my reading table.

In the latest issue (May 16) the fiction "Face in the Mirror" is really good. Not Prouxian, but very chilling and spare.

Finished up the article "Stir Crazy" by Ian Frazier in the April 11 issue. He writes about his own cabin fever experience, historical and literary ones, and the possible Putin cabin fever that may have led to the aggression against Ukraine. Very interesting.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 18, 2022, 01:01:08 pm
Over lunch today I finished the article about Edna St. Vincent Millay (May 16). I'm not into poetry, so all I knew of her was the quatrain everyone knows: "My candle burns at both ends," etc. Apparently, however, she wrote some pretty racy stuff. In one poem she described a man as having a "body of flame and steel."

Wow!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 31, 2022, 01:00:09 pm
I am again two weeks behind in reading my magazines because for a week I was devoting my reading time to a gay Science Fiction novel.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 13, 2022, 09:46:03 pm
June 6:

David Remnick's appreciation of Roger Angell is not to be missed.

Also Thomas Mallon on Barbara Pym. I should try to find some of her novels. It might be diverting to read a novel set in some English village where "there are always altars to be decorated, charitable jumble sales to be organized, and improving lectures to be attended."  :D

And there is Hilton Als on the poet Thom Gunn. I'm not into poetry, but that name rang a vague bell somewhere in the back of my mind. I guess maybe TNY must have run something of his in the 40 years I've been reading the magazine. Possibly I ran across the name somewhere else. It's kind of memorable, with the first name as Thom. But look at the photo on mage 57. Wow, was he hot when he was young, leather jacket, wide leather belt, and all.

I have more to say about him on my blog.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 19, 2022, 11:34:01 am
When reading the piece about Dickens in the March 7 issue (I have a big stack of them from which I indiscriminately grab when looking for reading material), I realized the only Dickens book I've ever read is A Christmas Carol. (Saw Oliver the movie, which probably doesn't count.) Now I'm semi-tempted to read one -- specifically Bleak House, which the article discusses at length.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 19, 2022, 08:49:03 pm
When reading the piece about Dickens in the March 7 issue (I have a big stack of them from which I indiscriminately grab when looking for reading material), I realized the only Dickens book I've ever read is A Christmas Carol. (Saw Oliver the movie, which probably doesn't count.) Now I'm semi-tempted to read one -- specifically Bleak House, which the article discusses at length.

I've never read that one, but I recommend David Copperfield.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 19, 2022, 08:57:51 pm
June 13: Joan Acocella on Pinocchio and Garth Greenwell on Andrew Holleran.

I've read some of Holleran. I find him depressing, but read the article about him and his writing anyway. Greenwell writes, "Even as I value Holleran's candor, and his refusal of triumphalist narratives of queer affirmation--sometimes it doesn't get better, or not for everyone--these moments are painful to read." That reminds me of the ambivalence I felt toward the "It Gets Better" campaign. Grant it, I believe the aim there was to prevent the suicide of gay teens--but sometimes it doesn't get better.

(That said, when it comes time to redo my will, I want to look into the Trevor Project.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on June 19, 2022, 09:31:13 pm
When reading the piece about Dickens in the March 7 issue (I have a big stack of them from which I indiscriminately grab when looking for reading material), I realized the only Dickens book I've ever read is A Christmas Carol. (Saw Oliver the movie, which probably doesn't count.) Now I'm semi-tempted to read one -- specifically Bleak House, which the article discusses at length.

If you find yourself bogged down by Bleak House, you can look for the excellent BBC version with none other than Gillian Anderson. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 02, 2022, 09:14:38 pm
I'm falling very far behind in my magazines again. This weekend when I should be reading TNY, instead I'm using the time to read another gay novel.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 03, 2022, 08:57:22 pm
If you find yourself bogged down by Bleak House, you can look for the excellent BBC version with none other than Gillian Anderson.

Thanks for the tip! I am afraid of getting bogged down in anything Dickens. And sometimes watching a show can help one ease into the reading! I might never have gotten through one of my favorite ever books, Wuthering Heights, in 1970 if I hadn't first seen the movie version with a young Timothy Dalton.  ::)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 04, 2022, 03:03:45 pm
In the cover art of the July 4 issue, the flower bed in front of the right-hand house includes the sort of petunia my mother used to have, with flowers that are sort-of striped.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 10, 2022, 11:38:18 am
I went looking for that issue and couldn't find it! Hopefully, it will pop up. In the June 6 issue, I read "Shipping News" about shipping containers. Very interesting. Do you think Annie Proulx will sue for stealing the title of her book? I then read the piece about Harvey Weinstein, all the while thinking "Why am I reading yet another piece about him?" It was disgusting.

The June 13 issue had some interesting articles. It was a relief that Elizabeth Kolbert's article on animals' senses was well written. So the previous article that was so jumbled must have been a fluke or her editor was on vacation. The best article I've read in a while was "Pinocchio's Many Lives" by Joan Acocella. The review of Andrew Holleran's novels made me want to read one. Can anyone recommend which one?

In the June 20 issue, the bio of Yoko Ono was very interesting, as was the piece about pornography sites.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 10, 2022, 02:49:12 pm
The review of Andrew Holleran's novels made me want to read one. Can anyone recommend which one?

That article notwithstanding, I don't recommend any of them. I've read Dancer from the Dance and Nights in Aruba. I found them lyrically written but ultimately depressing. I wouldn't read him.

If you want to read some serious gay fiction that is not depressing, I cannot recommend highly enough a novel I'm just about to finish, Changing Tides, by Michael Thomas Ford (Kensington Books, 2007).

To share just a little bit: The plot revolves around an unfinished manuscript of a novel that is possibly by John Steinbeck that may demonstrate that Steinbeck and his best friend, the pioneering marine biologist Ed Ricketts, were actually lovers. A PhD candidate from Yale travels to Monterey, California (the setting for Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row), to try to prove that the manuscript is genuine and that Steinbeck and Ricketts were, indeed, lovers. In Monterey he meets his own marine biologist, who happens to have a troubled teen-age daughter. The novel includes some discussion of Steinbeck's writing and also a lot of fascinating information about scuba diving and the sea life around Monterey. Ed Ricketts was a real person with a fascinating career. I advise looking him up.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 10, 2022, 03:04:56 pm
That sounds fascinating, friend! I will look for that book, for sure. Life is too short to read depressing novels.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 13, 2022, 04:30:47 pm
The fiction issue is out and so far I've read two stories that were pretty good. Shirley Jackson seems to be having the same kind of year that Kate Bush is having. Her "Call Me Ishmael" is good writing and, what's more, it's only one page. The other good fiction piece is "Peking Duck" about a Chinese-American mother and daughter. It's not the usual stereotype.

I really liked the memoirs of David Wright Falud?, called "Mixeded". Three of the four one-page Road Trips articles are good too.

I'm reading a lot because I'm kind of bored, have writer's block, and have to rest between stints in the gardens. Maybe I have the summer doldrums.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 17, 2022, 09:40:58 pm
I read the Shirley Jackson, but I don't get it. The Rachel Kushner I found depressing; I'll bet it's taken from a novel that will soon be published. I've seen that sort of thing often enough in TNY.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 17, 2022, 09:59:42 pm

If you want to read some serious gay fiction that is not depressing, I cannot recommend highly enough a novel I'm just about to finish, Changing Tides, by Michael Thomas Ford (Kensington Books, 2007).

Kind of OT, but this novel has really sort-of taken possession of me. The main characters, Ben the marine biologist and Hudson the graduate student, have somehow become as real to me as Ennis and Jack. It's also stirred up memories.

At one point, Ben's daughter mentions Jacques Cousteau (who invented scuba gear), which of course reminded me of the National Geographic specials about Cousteau's work that ran on TV when I was a boy (not to mention the John Denver song). Perhaps more to the point, I remember on at least one occasion, noticing one or more members of Cousteau's crew in the background wearing brief (Speedo-like) swimsuits. Thereafter I watched for glimpses of crewmen dressed like that. (They were, of course, European, so no American male squeamishness about wearing such a swimsuit). The point of this is, I now see this as a very early indication that I'm gay.

The same sort of memory was stirred up when one of the supporting characters mentions that she had to read Of Mice and Men in school and didn't like it, which was exactly my response to it when I had to read it in school. In my case it was in 8th Grade English, and the memory is that the teacher was what I would now call a hottie. I estimate he was in his late 20s or very early 30s. He was tall, with curly dark brown hair and blue eyes. All the girls had crushes on him, and in retrospect I must have, too, otherwise how could I still see him right now in my memory's eye as clearly as if he were standing right next to me as I write this? After all, I had him as a teacher in 1971 or 1972! Dear God, I can still see him in that classroom as plain as day. Anyway, again in retrospect, this would seem to be another early indication that I'm gay.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 23, 2022, 10:20:21 am
The July 25 Shouts & Murmurs is laugh-out-loud funny.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 23, 2022, 04:10:14 pm
You were right! I LOLed three times! And then I read Jill Lepore's piece on the new Volkswagens. Very well written and some amusing, witty asides. The pickleball article was also good. I have several friends who are pickleball fanatics and I couldn't really understand the phenom. I also read about the super- and mega-yachts.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 23, 2022, 04:16:57 pm
I started Lepore's piece, haven't read about pickleball yet. I should, though -- I won a pickleball set at music bingo night in my apartment building. My arm was broken, so I haven't been able to play, but I've lent the set to neighbors and they've played. Can't say I'm too excited about it; I really don't like games (except games like music bingo  :laugh:).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 30, 2022, 02:07:25 pm
Two in a row! The Aug. 1 Shouts & Murmurs is LOL hilarious again! You're on a roll, New Yorker!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2022, 09:26:12 pm
I started Lepore's piece, haven't read about pickleball yet. I should, though -- I won a pickleball set at music bingo night in my apartment building. My arm was broken, so I haven't been able to play, but I've lent the set to neighbors and they've played. Can't say I'm too excited about it; I really don't like games (except games like music bingo  :laugh:).

 :o

Did your horse get lucky? Did you damage your harmonica, too?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 01, 2022, 11:42:28 am
:o

Did your horse get lucky? Did you damage your harmonica, too?

Oh, have I not mentioned that? I was out with my son on Mother's Day when I tripped and fell face-first into a brick wall. Broke my arm at the shoulder and an orbital bone. I was lucky -- didn't break jaw, teeth, nose, skull or even glasses. I've been doing PT at a place which is conveniently located at street level immediately below my apartment. Both bones are pretty close to healed now.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 01, 2022, 12:14:39 pm
Wow, I had no idea! I could have been sending healing thoughts! Was it your dominant arm?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 01, 2022, 06:14:41 pm
Wow, I had no idea! I could have been sending healing thoughts! Was it your dominant arm?

No, thank god. I should have mentioned that another thing I was lucky not to break was my neck. My son, standing behind me, feared that was going to happen because I smashed my face into the corner of this brick wall at an awkward angle. As I plunged face-forward the thought going through my mind was, will I have broken glass in my eyes when my glasses break? But that didn't even happen!

Plus, I was told not to drive for eight weeks so I got out of eight weeks of working Saturday shifts. You need to be able to drive in case you have to go out to some breaking news event. So the first week I missed having to write a story about a woman who killed her son with a shotgun and stuffed him into the trunk of her car. Later, I missed having to do one where a family of five was pulled out of a lake because the suicidal husband had killed the wife and three kids.

Now they've taken me off Saturdays permanently! So I have a M-F schedule again instead of T-S. And yesterday I didn't have to do a story about a guy who stabbed four young people, killing one and seriously injuring others, who were riding innertubes down a river near the Wisconsin border.

And in PT, my therapist said I could get PT for the back pain I've been suffering on and off for 20 years and insurance would cover it.

So it was an unfortunate minor accident but some good came out of it so overall I consider myself fairly lucky.

Get this -- I had just the day before it happened I told someone I hadn't broken a bone since second grade. Uh-oh, I thought, I'll jinx myself, so I knocked on a wooden table. The question is, does my experience prove that knocking on wood does not work? Or can I attribute my could-be-worse experience to the wood knocking?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 01, 2022, 06:24:32 pm
I can answer that by quoting you! "Coincidence does not imply causation." Did I get that right?  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on August 01, 2022, 07:55:13 pm
Oh, Katy, I had no idea what you went through.  What an awful ordeal.  I'm glad you're on the mend. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 01, 2022, 08:40:44 pm
Oh, have I not mentioned that? I was out with my son on Mother's Day when I tripped and fell face-first into a brick wall. Broke my arm at the shoulder and an orbital bone. I was lucky -- didn't break jaw, teeth, nose, skull or even glasses. I've been doing PT at a place which is conveniently located at street level immediately below my apartment. Both bones are pretty close to healed now.

As usual I was clueless. I'm glad to hear you're pretty well mended.

I'll take it the harmonica is OK, too. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 01, 2022, 08:44:06 pm
So the first week I missed having to write a story about a woman who killed her son with a shotgun and stuffed him into the trunk of her car. Later, I missed having to do one where a family of five was pulled out of a lake because the suicidal husband had killed the wife and three kids.

And yesterday I didn't have to do a story about a guy who stabbed four young people, killing one and seriously injuring others, who were riding innertubes down a river near the Wisconsin border.

Both of those stories made national news.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 02, 2022, 10:14:14 am
Is it always this violent in your area??  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2022, 03:52:22 pm
I can answer that by quoting you! "Coincidence does not imply causation." Did I get that right?  :laugh:

Well, my usual saying is "correlation does not mean causation," because I'm usually referring to research that finds a correlation but doesn't control for all the factors that could cause it (e.g. "parenting" studies that don't take genetic relationships into account).

But in this case, coincidence -- or is it?? -- is definitely appropriate!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2022, 03:55:45 pm
Oh, Katy, I had no idea what you went through.  What an awful ordeal.  I'm glad you're on the mend.

Thank you, Paul! I really do feel like I was pretty lucky. For a while there my face was swollen and half looked like it had been brushed with a purple paint. Prince would have approved but most people ran away screaming. It didn't hurt, though, partly because it was completely numb. Now sensation is coming back but it looks pretty close to normal.

As for the arm, that DID hurt for a while, but not much at this point. And I have most of the movement back. My ortho doc was impressed!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 02, 2022, 04:11:55 pm
Is it always this violent in your area??  :o

No, it's weird! Obviously the mom killing her son (following a custody battle) is a crazy one-off, as was the dad committing suicide and killing his family. Those are probably coincidence =/= causation.

But there's also been a wave of shootings as well as carjackings that are sometimes accompanied by physical assaults. And a FB friend just posted that she held a gathering at her house and when the guests left in a group three guys pulled up, pointed guns at their heads and stole purses, wallets, phones.

We're a long way from New Orleans in the early '90s, which peaked at 450 murders one year, in a city only a bit bigger than Minneapolis. In New Orleans, almost everybody I knew (besides me) had been mugged or worse at some point, including my husband carrying our 1-year-old in a backpack at 7 p.m. on a lovely summer evening.

Last year there were 96 murders in Minneapolis. Speaking of coincidences, that's exactly how many Denver had, according to Google. The cities are roughly the same size, although Minneapolis (not counting St. Paul) is slightly bigger.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 12, 2022, 01:54:31 pm
Based on the entry in the TOC, I would not have read Tad Friend's article about salesmen in the Aug. 8 issue. Then in the news feed on my phone this morning, I noticed a reference to an article about door-to-door salesmen, and I figured that must mean Friend's article. I checked out the article, and I'm finding it quite entertaining.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 13, 2022, 10:02:29 am
Based on the entry in the TOC, I would not have read Tad Friend's article about salesmen in the Aug. 8 issue. Then in the news feed on my phone this morning, I noticed a reference to an article about door-to-door salesmen, and I figured that must mean Friend's article. I checked out the article, and I'm finding it quite entertaining.

That was actually featured in the NY Times daily newsletter today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 13, 2022, 10:33:49 am
I started this briefly but didn't get into it. I'll try again!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 13, 2022, 08:28:04 pm
I started this briefly but didn't get into it. I'll try again!

You might not want to bother. It goes kind of downhill at the end.  :(

But I still found it scarcely believable that you can earn the amounts of money the article talks about in door-to-door sales.

Who's going to sign a contract for a new roof with some slick talker who knocks on your door?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 14, 2022, 11:43:08 am
Who's going to sign a contract for a new roof with some slick talker who knocks on your door?  ???

I did! With my insurance company's approval, of course. And it worked out great.

The roofers stopped by my yard, said they could see some hail damage, wrote up an estimate, the insurance claims adjuster approved it, their estimate included a few things like dings on drainpipes that weren't absolutely essential so the roofers didn't do those, which meant I got the money in the check from the insurance company for them but didn't have to pay the roofers for them so that covered my $2,500 deductible.

Voila, nice new roof, including replacement of some areas of the wood underneath the shingles that was starting to rot.

Bonuses: The workers accidentally started doing the detached garage, which wasn't part of the estimate, and the roofing representative didn't bother to stop them so I got the garage for free. This was a year before I sold my house so I could say on the disclosure form that my roof had been replaced the previous year!




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 14, 2022, 08:51:52 pm
You might not want to bother. It goes kind of downhill at the end.  :(
Who's going to sign a contract for a new roof with some slick talker who knocks on your door?  ???


I did! With my insurance company's approval, of course. And it worked out great.

The roofers stopped by my yard, said they could see some hail damage, wrote up an estimate, the insurance claims adjuster approved it, their estimate included a few things like dings on drainpipes that weren't absolutely essential so the roofers didn't do those, which meant I got the money in the check from the insurance company for them but didn't have to pay the roofers for them so that covered my $2,500 deductible.

Voila, nice new roof, including replacement of some areas of the wood underneath the shingles that was starting to rot.

Bonuses: The workers accidentally started doing the detached garage, which wasn't part of the estimate, and the roofing representative didn't bother to stop them so I got the garage for free. This was a year before I sold my house so I could say on the disclosure form that my roof had been replaced the previous year!

Yes, but you got your insurance company's approval. Seems to me that's a big and important difference. That's not the sort of thing talked about in the article. Plus, around here we fairly regularly hear of swindles about things like that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 15, 2022, 10:50:04 am
Yes, but you got your insurance company's approval. Seems to me that's a big and important difference. That's not the sort of thing talked about in the article. Plus, around here we fairly regularly hear of swindles about things like that.

Yes, getting my insurance company's approval was a big and important difference. So the question is not really who would sign a contract with a slick-talking roofing swindler, but who would do so without first calling their insurance company?

Of course, roofs can go bad in ways insurance doesn't cover. But they are extremely expensive to replace, so it seems like it would always be worth a call. And if they wouldn't cover it, I would get a second or third opinion on whether a new roof is needed. And probably also ask for references.

I was nervous myself when I did this because I'd heard of roofing swindlers, too. But I figured I couldn't really lose -- the roofers submitted an estimate and when the insurance company approved it, I wasn't going to get charged. I myself was slightly nervous about the estimate including things like dinged drain spouts that didn't absolutely need to be replaced, thereby covering my deductible. But since the deductible was $2,500 and I was about to sell my house, I figured it would be worth paying if I had to for the increased value of the house. Luckily, I didn't have to.








Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 16, 2022, 10:12:58 pm
I read the article about Biden's family in the latest issue. But I felt kind of dirty about it. Much sadness.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 17, 2022, 04:59:42 pm
In the AUgust 22 issue there is a very good and not-too-long article on Nora Ephron. I miss her! Louis Menaud's article on the many ways our votes get waylaid was also very good. Shouts & Murmurs has gone downhill again. And the cover is divine.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 23, 2022, 03:58:48 pm
In the AUgust 22 issue there is a very good and not-too-long article on Nora Ephron. I miss her! Louis Menaud's article on the many ways our votes get waylaid was also very good. Shouts & Murmurs has gone downhill again. And the cover is divine.

Agreed on all. S&M was dumb. I don't like when they're so fanciful they just seem silly. I like them to be just on the edge of reality. The James Taylor one in a recent issue was OK -- the idea of having James Taylor for a roommate is fanciful but the S&M was a reasonably realistic and funny depiction of how that situation would play out.

I'm just finishing Nora Ephron and will go on to Louis Menand next. Louis is on my list of New Yorker writers who I'll almost always read, or at least check out.

Here's a weird New Yorker experience. My son works in PR and is looking for a job. He interviewed for one at Edelman, the country's biggest PR firm, in which his only client would be Taco Bell. That doesn't sound ideal to me (he has typically worked with a handful of clients simultaneously; personally I'd prefer variety), and he's not going to take the job anyway because it would require him to move to Los Angeles and his girlfriend is a teacher in Chicago.

But his situation reminded me of a S&M I'd read years ago imagining product placement in literature similar to the product placement in movies. One example was a poem that said something like "and then I heard the ringing bell" and the S&M suggested making it "and then I heard the Taco Bell." I LOLed at that and have remembered that line -- and pretty much nothing else -- ever since.

It took me forever to find it but I finally did. It ran on March 7, 1994, almost exactly two years before Jack was born. I've already suggested to Jack that he try that strategy.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2022, 12:04:09 pm
S&M was dumb.

Lots of people think S&M is dumb.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2022, 12:23:49 pm
You'd think with their legendary comics that they could do a comedy column very easily, but no.

On the other hand, maybe I'm losing my sense of humor. The last David Sedaris piece I read I didn't think was funny at all. It was an account of his book tour to the US, and he was very critical of the country and people. Well, I understand why he would be, but still, he styles himself as a comedy writer.

In the Ephron piece, the author quotes the two stars of "You've Got Mail" writing emails to each other before they meet in person and find out they're competitors. And then Syme writes, "Of course, even in the golden age of AOL, few people wrote such emails." Really? I seem to remember emails being almost an art form, people spending hours crafting them. Then came the age of texting and now it's just "K" or an emoji. What happened?

Your Taco Bell story was really funny, Katherine. There's a product placement in the Ephron story too, where she sees a Virginia Slims cigarette butt in her second husband's (Carl Bernstein) ashtray and knows he's been unfaithful.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2022, 02:58:49 pm
Lots of people think S&M is dumb.  ;D

I know, it's dumb more often than not. However, lately there have been a few that made me literally LOL (LLOL). Recently, "Are Mice People?" was one.

You'd think with their legendary comics that they could do a comedy column very easily, but no.

I blame the editor. I submitted a piece a year or two ago, when conservatives were refusing to wear masks. My piece was about how people of the future would view masks. Personally, I thought it was pretty funny, but it was rejected by the New Yorker and McSweeney's and one other humor column I found that was part of The Rumpus. Then I ran out of places to submit it and masks became less of a current-event topic.

Quote
In the Ephron piece, the author quotes the two stars of "You've Got Mail" writing emails to each other before they meet in person and find out they're competitors. And then Syme writes, "Of course, even in the golden age of AOL, few people wrote such emails." Really? I seem to remember emails being almost an art form, people spending hours crafting them. Then came the age of texting and now it's just "K" or an emoji. What happened?

That's right, I remember that, too! Long emails much like the letters of previous centuries. I still send lengthy messages to one or two friends but that's it.

Quote
Your Taco Bell story was really funny, Katherine. There's a product placement in the Ephron story too, where she sees a Virginia Slims cigarette butt in her second husband's (Carl Bernstein) ashtray and knows he's been unfaithful.

I was talking earlier today with my son, Jack, who works in PR, about product placement. We reminisced about how it was satirized on "30 Rock" and "Wayne's World," and wondered about how you sometimes see a product dissed in a product placement and whether it's placed there by the manufacturer or a competitor. For an extreme hypothetical example, if a character were to take a sip of soda and say "Blech, this is terrible!" and the label says Pepsi, would it be placed by Coke, or by Pepsi figuring there's no such thing as bad publicity or possibly to show they had a sense of humor or to make Coke look petty? Jack said filmmakers probably sign contracts restricting how they can present the product, but I could swear I recently saw something about a negative product portrayal in a movie that was apparently approved by the manufacturer without knowing how the product would be presented.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2022, 03:04:40 pm
Here's my masks piece, if anyone's interested. Might as well publish it here. I realize, reading it now, it was a bit too long, dense and complicated. In order to get the humorous nuances you'd have to read fairly carefully and who does that these days? I should have kept each section no longer than 5-6 sentences.

I think you have to have an agent to submit to the actual Shouts & Murmurs, but they have a Daily Shouts feature online that I thought I might have a shot at.

Note: The ?s throughout the piece are supposed to be ' or " or --. I copied and pasted this from a pdf, but I'm not sure why they appeared that way. I'm just going to leave them because I think it's easy enough to read despite them.

The future of face masks

We?re all on edge these days, with our entire future basically a giant question mark. When can we hug our loved ones? When will our formerly thriving industries come back to life? When will we feel safe setting foot outside our homes? And most of all, when can we stop wearing these stupid masks?

For answers, we asked historians from the future, whose 20/20 hindsight produces data more precise than even Dr. Fauci?s. Turns out the answer depends on what point in the future the historians themselves occupy. Here are their replies:

2100: An Era
The masking era?more of a phase, really?began in the ?20s as protection against the Great Pandemic. The earliest iterations were cloth face coverings, often homemade by DIYers who owned ?sewing machines? (antique appliances long since replaced by clothing stores). Soon, nearly 99% of the population wore masks at all times, especially after the anti-masking portion of the population sharply declined. Even after doctors developed a treatment for SARS-CoV-2, many members of the Interrupted Generation continued wearing masks for the rest of their lives. One unfortunate long-term effect seen among those who had lived through the pandemic was a stubborn delusion, resistant to therapy, that a new virus could emerge at any time.

2200: A Fad
Generation New Normal had worn masks since infancy and grown up accustomed to seeing them on everyone including characters onscreen (except in historical settings, which relied on CGI to render the lower half of characters? faces). Thus, Normals considered masks an essential element of public presentation, as powdered wigs were in the 18th century. Designers continually introduced fresh styles until one year, at the spring shows, an audacious newcomer sent models down the runway fully unmasked. After a collective gasp, the fashion community embraced the naked-face look. Cosmetic companies brought back lipstick. Soon masking seemed outdated and dowdy. Today masks are rarely seen outside museums. Although recently there have been signs of the style?s resurgence in certain parts of the world.

2500: A Beginning
Few people practiced masking before the early 21st century, but masks became standard apparel around the time of the First Great Pandemic. For many years, masks were simple pieces of fabric with stretchy loops. They covered only the lower part of the face, as it was then widely believed that the nose and mouth were the only orifices through which airborne viruses could enter or exit the body. Over the ensuing waves of pandemics, masks became increasingly sophisticated?more effective, more comfortable and frankly cooler looking?eventually becoming the sleek gear we wear today. Our rugged ancestors managed to endure years of rudimentary masks lacking even the most standard features such as wireless transporters, the TelePathi? app and air conditioning.

3000: A Discovery
In the third millennium, individual homo sapien organisms (HSOs) began wrapping bits of cloth around their own mouthparts, a behavior scientists believe was a response to a series of assaults by lethal viruses. The HSOs? attempt to shield themselves with fabric suggests they may have been better at reasoning, communicating and using tools than previously thought. However, the fabric pieces were not infallible, and viruses continued attacking throughout those years, substantially reducing the HSO population. But eventually HSOs, which some scientists believe were measurably more intelligent than viruses, developed a chemical that eradicated their microscopic adversaries. Without a natural predator, invasive swarms of HSOs spread across the earth?s land masses, upsetting local ecosystems and putting other organisms at risk. Finally scientists developed a new treatment that effectively wiped out HSOs. Today, only a few specimens remain, cryogenically preserved for research purposes in a secret government laboratory in an area once called New Mexico.

40,000 BCII: A Mystery
?Did you see these old papers with pictures of people wearing weird coverings on their faces?? one says. ?What?s up with that??
?No idea,? says the other, sweeping a paint-dipped twig across the wall to depict the curve of a running beast?s haunch.
?Think they were trying to hide their identities??
?Why bother? They?d still recognize each other by smell.?
?Oh, right,? the one nods. ?Some kind of ritual, perhaps??
?Sure, maybe, whatever,? says the other. ?Now, would you please throw those old papers on the fire already? The cave is getting chilly.?
 

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2022, 03:21:39 pm
Here's the other funny recent S&M:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/farewell-global-liberal-cannibalistic-pedophile-conspiracy (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/25/farewell-global-liberal-cannibalistic-pedophile-conspiracy)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2022, 03:55:00 pm
That was so funny, I'm surprised it wasn't snapped up! It starts out in a straightforward expositional manner and keeps getting funnier as you go further into the future. I didn't find it too complicated at all. Sort of on the theme of 'The Blind men and the Elephant'. I think you should keep trying! TNY obviously needs some better material.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2022, 04:03:13 pm
I came up with an idea for an S & M. Most of the emails in my PROMOTIONS tab are titled: "confirmation of your purchase" even though I haven't purchased anything from the company. I know this is just a scam. So I envision a string of emails confirming my purchase, reservation, or subscription to ever more wild and growing items such as cruises, Wild-Animal-of-the-Month plans, and collector's items...maybe Brokeback memorabilia!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2022, 05:04:19 pm
Lots of people think S&M is dumb.  ;D

I know, it's dumb more often than not. However, lately there have been a few that made me literally LOL (LLOL). Recently, "Are Mice People?" was one.

I figured you all would pick up that Shouts & Murmurs was not the S&M I was referring to.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 24, 2022, 06:37:46 pm
I figured you all would pick up that Shouts & Murmurs was not the S&M I was referring to.  ;D

Oops!!  :laugh: :laugh:

I thought it was kind of a weird way to put it -- as if you'd been conducting public polls about opinions of a New Yorker feature. NOW it makes sense.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 24, 2022, 10:11:59 pm
I figured you all would pick up that Shouts & Murmurs was not the S&M I was referring to.  ;D

Oops!!  :laugh: :laugh:

I thought it was kind of a weird way to put it -- as if you'd been conducting public polls about opinions of a New Yorker feature. NOW it makes sense.

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 29, 2022, 01:28:35 pm
I missed getting the latest issue because of some hiccup in my subscription. It seems to happen every year. I get an email saying my subscription has been renewed and I think I'll see a charge on my credit card, but they don't do it that way. You have to physically pay for it, so I don't know what they mean by "renewing my subscription." And it seems like the price has gone up--$180 a year now.  :-\

But this is the archive issue anyway. In last year's archive issue I had already read most of the articles. I do dream about opening up the archive issue and seeing the title "Brokeback Mountain." Let me know if I missed that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 29, 2022, 06:21:21 pm
But this is the archive issue anyway. In last year's archive issue I had already read most of the articles. I do dream about opening up the archive issue and seeing the title "Brokeback Mountain." Let me know if I missed that.

No "Brokeback Mountain," but some pretty good stuff.

When it arrived I looked through the ToC, saw several bylines I hadn't seen in years, thought some of the subjects -- "Bob Dylan on the verge" -- sounded a little odd. But I didn't notice it was the Archival Issue until I started reading a Talk of the Town about hanging out with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

You could always read it online, or call them and have them send you a print copy.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 07, 2022, 01:07:56 pm
Yay! I'm receiving my New Yorker again! There's just something about the whole package of it that's just more rewarding than when it's a bunch of links on a screen. I like the way the cartoons and the little doodles are arranged on the page. I won't talk about the specific articles yet because I know most people haven't received their issue.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 07, 2022, 06:13:52 pm
Yet another good Shouts & Murmurs! And three times the usual length. They must have a new editor.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 29, 2022, 01:02:28 pm
I'm reading the Sept. 19 article about the Minneapolis restaurant that serves Indigenous food. Sounds great--especially the wild rice!

I don't think I'd care for fry bread (which isn't really indigenous, anyway). I've never had a funnel cake because I can't get past the smell of the deep fat they're fried in, so I don't think I could hack fry bread,  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 29, 2022, 01:27:53 pm
That was a good article! I profiled Sean Sherman in my blog four months ago and since then he's appeared in the NY Times and now the New Yorker. It's nice being ahead of the crowd sometimes.

Fry bread can be really awful but it can also just be sort of like a tortilla and if you put the right toppings on it, it can be very delicious.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 29, 2022, 09:01:29 pm
I've liked fry bread when I've had it, though it's been years.

But I've never been to that restaurant! I've got several possible opportunities coming up. Today is my son's birthday, 10 days ago was my ex-husband's birthday and one week from now is my birthday. Per family tradition, we always go out to at least a couple of nice dinners to celebrate. Then my other son is coming up from Chicago on the 15th, so another opportunity for fun restaurant visits.

Unfortunately, I bet Owamni is pretty hard to get into at this point.

Meanwhile, though, my stepmother is taking me to lunch on my birthday at the city's newest fanciest acclaimed restaurant, where the bronzini costs $70 and the servers can make upward (according to the son who's a waiter) of $200,000.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 29, 2022, 09:26:22 pm
But I've never been to that restaurant! I've got several possible opportunities coming up. Today is my son's birthday, 10 days ago was my ex-husband's birthday and one week from now is my birthday. Per family tradition, we always go out to at least a couple of nice dinners to celebrate. Then my other son is coming up from Chicago on the 15th, so another opportunity for fun restaurant visits.

Nice!  :D

Quote
Unfortunately, I bet Owamni is pretty hard to get into at this point.

You're probably right about that.

Quote
Meanwhile, though, my stepmother is taking me to lunch on my birthday at the city's newest fanciest acclaimed restaurant, where the bronzini costs $70 and the servers can make upward (according to the son who's a waiter) of $200,000.

 :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 04, 2022, 01:07:07 pm
Today is October 4. As of yesterday's mail delivery, I have not received the issue that should have the cover date of yesterday, Monday, October 3.

Usually I get my issue ahead of the cover date.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 04, 2022, 04:44:42 pm
Today is October 4. As of yesterday's mail delivery, I have not received the issue that should have the cover date of yesterday, Monday, October 3.

Usually I get my issue ahead of the cover date.  ???


Same situation here. Although I'm always so behind I can't keep track of when they're supposed to come. Usually just as I'm about to settle in with a new issue, there's another one in the mailbox.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 04, 2022, 09:58:43 pm
Today is October 4. As of yesterday's mail delivery, I have not received the issue that should have the cover date of yesterday, Monday, October 3.

Usually I get my issue ahead of the cover date.  ???


Same situation here. Although I'm always so behind I can't keep track of when they're supposed to come. Usually just as I'm about to settle in with a new issue, there's another one in the mailbox.

Got it today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 05, 2022, 11:22:45 am
I don't recall much of anything worth reading in last week's issue, but in this week's, everyone should read "In the Filtration Camps" about Ukrainians detained by the Russians:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/inside-russias-filtration-camps-in-eastern-ukraine (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/inside-russias-filtration-camps-in-eastern-ukraine)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 05, 2022, 11:52:00 am
I don't recall much of anything worth reading in last week's issue, but in this week's, everyone should read "In the Filtration Camps" about Ukrainians detained by the Russians:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/inside-russias-filtration-camps-in-eastern-ukraine (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/inside-russias-filtration-camps-in-eastern-ukraine)

This is interesting to me: the online edition is released a week before the hard copy?

At the top of the article it actually says "October 10, 2022 issue." (There ought to be a comma after "2022."  ;D )

Perhaps I should see how to subscribe to the online edition--except that I have a difficult enough time keeping up with the hard copy.    :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 05, 2022, 10:09:04 pm
This is interesting to me: the online edition is released a week before the hard copy?

At the top of the article it actually says "October 10, 2022 issue." (There ought to be a comma after "2022."  ;D )

Perhaps I should see how to subscribe to the online edition--except that I have a difficult enough time keeping up with the hard copy.    :(

Online editions typically go out before print.

If you subscribe to the print edition, you probably have access to the online edition already. You just have to set up an account.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 06, 2022, 08:45:35 am
Online editions typically go out before print.

If you subscribe to the print edition, you probably have access to the online edition already. You just have to set up an account.

Thanks.

Not really relevant, but this reminds me that occasionally I'm now seeing TV commercials for movies that are being released in theaters before streaming. It only seems to be a day or two difference, but I still think it's interesting that Hollywood is apparently supporting movie theaters, even if only a little bit. I wouldn't think Hollywood would care, unless a studio also owns theaters and has to pay rent, or something.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 06, 2022, 11:19:54 am
I went to the theater to see "Three Thousand Years of Longing" recently and there was a filmed introduction from the director, saying they had made the movie specifically to be shown in theaters and thanking the audience for coming out. Unfortunately there were only three people in the audience, including me.

What's with people these days? Yesterday I was in my front yard for about an hour and didn't see anyone other than a few people driving, biking, or walking their dog. It was a lovely fall evening.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 06, 2022, 04:44:12 pm
I just got so used to streaming because it's more convenient and cheaper and I can put it on pause and I didn't want to sit in a theater wearing a mask for two hours.

But some movies are definitely better on big screens, and the popcorn is better than any you can get or make at home.

I assumed Hollywood would prefer theaters for higher profits but either the profits aren't that much higher or they just acquiesced to modern demands.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 06, 2022, 04:44:55 pm
Just got the new issue. Some of the topics look intriguing.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 06, 2022, 09:55:14 pm
Just got the new issue. Some of the topics look intriguing.

Mine came in the mail today, too.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 30, 2022, 12:48:52 pm
The Shouts & Murmurs are back to being stupid and unfunny. For a brief time in midsummer there were 2 or 3 they were genuinely funny. Maybe the regular editor was on vacation. I can't imagine the New Yorker isn't deluged with submissions that are actually amusing, so I don't know why they don't run more.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 30, 2022, 01:15:41 pm
That said, several other articles in this issue look good. I'm reading the Nicholas Lehman one now. another NYer writer I'm likely to check out for the byline alone. The subject is how Democrats in red states relate to working-class voters.

David Remnick writes about Bob Dylan. I've come to actually dislike David Remnick, I get these vibes from him that he considers himself better and wiser and radiating more gravitas than anyone else. He reported out of Russia for years, so his views on Russian issues are certainly valuable, but he isn't any more equipped than other writers -- far less than some, I would say -- to write about popular culture. Still, I'm not going to completely skip an article about Bob Dylan, so I'll report back later whether Remnick is annoying this time or not.

I reached peak annoyance with DR when I saw an interview in which he and Jonathan Franzen talked about David Foster Wallace. Franzen, not exactly known for humility himself, came off fine, empathetic and appreciative of his deceased friend. At one point he noted that DFW had never published an essay in the New Yorker -- or maybe fiction, either; I seem to remember short stories of his but they could have run in Harper's, which I subscribed to in the 1990s.

"Not for lack of trying!" Remnick hastens to assert, making sure to note that the publication he edits is far too high quality and superior and exclusive to publish the work of one of the most skilled and celebrated writers of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

Remnick, maybe you need to check out the quality of those Shouts & Murmors.  :laugh:

And while I'm ranting, has anyone ever tried their new back-page crossword puzzle? I don't do crossword puzzles (my word games are Wordle and arguing with people on Facebook) so I'm not particularly good at them but I did half of the last issue's in pen, just like 1, 2, 3 in about five minutes. I stopped without finishing not because I was stumped but because it was so easy it was boring.

Here's a sample crossword hint from the latest issue: 5-letter word for "it's liquid and it moves between banks." I don't think it's a trick question. I suppose it could be some kind of investment -- the other kinds of "liquid" and "banks" -- but I think it's exactly what your very first thought would be.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 30, 2022, 05:11:06 pm
...
"Not for lack of trying!" Remnick hastens to assert, making sure to note that the publication he edits is far too high quality and superior and exclusive to publish the work of one of the most skilled and celebrated writers of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.
>:( I missed that. That would annoy me too!
...has anyone ever tried their new back-page crossword puzzle?
As I recall, there's a subhead underneath the title that says something like "a moderately difficult puzzle." I only do the moderate ones. The easy ones are, as you say, boring, and the difficult ones are too hard for me; they can take days.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 02, 2022, 09:33:43 pm
As typical, I've fallen three issues behind. However, I think I need to jump ahead and read the Nov. 7 article about the Pennsylvania election. I won't learn anything I don't already know, but I feel I need to read it anyway.

The Republican candidate for governor has rather gleefully stated that as governor he would have the authority to decertify "any or all" voting machines in Pennsylvania. I'm sure in practice that would mean Philadelphia, which is heavily Democratic, so my personal vote is in danger.

Anyone who reads this will certainly see the danger we are in here if the Republican candidate wins.

(Or course, if he loses, he'll just claim the election was stolen. And I ain't jokin'.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 02, 2022, 11:21:15 pm
As typical, I've fallen three issues behind. However, I think I need to jump ahead and read the Nov. 7 article about the Pennsylvania election. I won't learn anything I don't already know, but I feel I need to read it anyway.

The Republican candidate for governor has rather gleefully stated that as governor he would have the authority to decertify "any or all" voting machines in Pennsylvania. I'm sure in practice that would mean Philadelphia, which is heavily Democratic, so my personal vote is in danger.

Anyone who reads this will certainly see the danger we are in here if the Republican candidate wins.

(Or course, if he loses, he'll just claim the election was stolen. And I ain't jokin'.)



Yes, Pennsylvania seems particularly intense this election cycle! I know you ain't jokin'. And no longer does it seem, like, well that's Pennsylvania's problem, it won't affect me in Minnesota. Minnesota is relatively blue. But because the states can determine who gets into Congress and their legislatures can write laws limiting voting, it all seem intertwined now.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 03, 2022, 08:25:05 am
Yes, Pennsylvania seems particularly intense this election cycle! I know you ain't jokin'. And no longer does it seem, like, well that's Pennsylvania's problem, it won't affect me in Minnesota. Minnesota is relatively blue. But because the states can determine who gets into Congress and their legislatures can write laws limiting voting, it all seem intertwined now.

He also thinks My Body-My Choice is "ridiculous nonsense," gay marriage should "absolutely not" be legal, and Global Warming is "fake science."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 03, 2022, 10:30:45 am
If you had described the current situation to me 10 years ago, I would have thought you were nuts!! How did we get here? I can only think we are witnessing the dying throes of the dinosaurs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 03, 2022, 04:07:18 pm
If you had described the current situation to me 10 years ago, I would have thought you were nuts!! How did we get here? I can only think we are witnessing the dying throes of the dinosaurs.

I know! I thought things were bad enough when the disagreement was over universal health care or something -- to me, an obvious good, but there's certainly room for the opposite opinion. Back in those golden days, most conflicts involved opinions. Now there's conflict over facts, including many for which the truth is easily determined. I say this all the time, I know. But I can't stop being baffled by it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 15, 2022, 10:55:58 am
Whew! The midterms are over, thankfully (except for Georgia).

Have we developed a few personality tics during this chaotic time? Daily Shouts (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/your-personality-explained-by-your-annoying-household-habits?source=Paid_Soc_FB_0_BoostedPosts_0_NYR_US_Prospecting%28Broad%29_CM_PAC_Facebook_Desktop_Feed_&utm_paidredirect=NYR_Paid_Soc_FBIG_CM_BoostedPosts_&utm_boosted-type=_Paid_Soc_FBIG_DR_BAUCM_DPA) addresses this theme. Moderately amusing.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 15, 2022, 11:27:43 am
I'd have to plead guilty to a few of those!  :laugh:

As for the midterms, they went amazingly well. The most despicable candidates lost, with the possible exception of Herschel Walker, but my guess (and it's only a guess) is that voters in GA, not wanting to appear the stupidest voters in the country, will reject him.

On the other hand, maybe they'll feel that at least one Trump-backed candidate has to have a big victory! That's not entirely bad either if, as seems possible, the Republican party gets hopelessly divided between the pro- and anti-Trumps. I think a lot of intelligent politicians are backing away from Trump, but there'll still be a "base" full of people who won't want to admit they've been wrong for the past six years.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 24, 2022, 12:33:58 pm
Funny "Daily Shout" today--the cranberry sauce talks back!

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-cranberry-sauce-has-something-to-say (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/the-cranberry-sauce-has-something-to-say)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 24, 2022, 12:47:35 pm
I'd have to plead guilty to a few of those!  :laugh:

As for the midterms, they went amazingly well. The most despicable candidates lost, with the possible exception of Herschel Walker, but my guess (and it's only a guess) is that voters in GA, not wanting to appear the stupidest voters in the country, will reject him.

On the other hand, maybe they'll feel that at least one Trump-backed candidate has to have a big victory! That's not entirely bad either if, as seems possible, the Republican party gets hopelessly divided between the pro- and anti-Trumps. I think a lot of intelligent politicians are backing away from Trump, but there'll still be a "base" full of people who won't want to admit they've been wrong for the past six years.

Not really from the magazine, but I read yesterday online that so are some of his former conservative Christian backers. Others are reserving judgment. They say they will support him if he's the candidate, but for now they're more or less staying on the sidelines and not backing him to become the candidate. This despite the fact that he did, indeed, give them what they wanted (appointed a huge number of conservative judges--not just to SCOTUS--got Roe overturned, and so forth).

One conservative actually called him an awful person.

Ron DeSantis is an awful person, too, but I'd still love to see him beat Trump for the Republican nomination, just for the satisfaction of the seeing the repudiation of Trump personally.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 03, 2022, 01:26:13 pm
I'm not so sure. DeSantis is certainly less of an idiot and loose cannon, but he's sinister in his own way.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 03, 2022, 01:31:22 pm
Has anyone read the Elizabeth Kolbert's climate change A-Z story in the November 28 issue? Interesting structure and I'm sure well researched and informative. But each letter comes with somewhere around half a page of text and overall the article looks very, uh, dutiful. Maybe it's one you can just get in and get out of, though.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 03, 2022, 02:03:06 pm
Has anyone read the Elizabeth Kolbert's climate change A-Z story in the November 28 issue? Interesting structure and I'm sure well researched and informative. But each letter comes with somewhere around half a page of text and overall the article looks very, uh, dutiful. Maybe it's one you can just get in and get out of, though.

I haven't read that one yet. I skipped ahead to Dec. 5 to read Jill Lepore, only to find myself very disappointed for the first time in anything of hers that I've read. I'm just not interested in a British author of spy novels. I've never heard of him and will no doubt never read his books. She should stick to history.

Take it from a Jill Lepore fan: Skip this one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 03, 2022, 02:42:06 pm
I haven't read that one yet. I skipped ahead to Dec. 5 to read Jill Lepore, only to find myself very disappointed for the first time in anything of hers that I've read. I'm just not interested in a British author of spy novels. I've never heard of him and will no doubt never read his books. She should stick to history.

Take it from a Jill Lepore fan: Skip this one.


That doesn't sound good! I'll skip it. I don't have my Dec. 5 issue yet, but I haven't been to my mailbox for a day or two.
 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 03, 2022, 02:44:54 pm
My first thought was that it beats reading about NFTs or hospice profiteering.

I'm a writer and a fan of British sleuths so I enjoyed it. Maybe one of the reasons she wanted to step outside her history beat was so she could include more quotes and conversation, which are liberally sprinkled through the article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2022, 03:38:32 pm
Has anyone read the Elizabeth Kolbert's climate change A-Z story in the November 28 issue? Interesting structure and I'm sure well researched and informative. But each letter comes with somewhere around half a page of text and overall the article looks very, uh, dutiful. Maybe it's one you can just get in and get out of, though.

I'm working on that one now. I'm only through "J." So far it seems so good, but maybe it will start to peter out. I really liked "F," the section about the electric planes. Cape Air wants to buy 75 of them. I think it would be way cool to fly between Boston and Provincetown in one of those planes.

Section "J," which mentions the number of jobs that would be eliminated from the fossil fuel industry vs. the number of jobs that would be created in construction, in the solar industry, and in upgrading the grid, suddenly made me think of something. Those numbers are fine, but if you get down to the level of individual human beings, if you are a coal miner in West Virginia or an off-shore oil rig worker in Louisiana, and you lose your job because of "high electrification," what good does it do you, or your family, if a new job is created in, say, Oregon? I'm not arguing against anything here, only saying that it suddenly occurred to me that necessary changes will also come at a cost of a lot of disruption, dislocation, and even, I think, suffering at the level of the individual.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 05, 2022, 12:31:08 pm
Well, I just learned something new. I was stumped by this paragraph in a Nov. 28 Talk of the Town piece.

Quote
The Set is the Related Companies? newest Hudson Yards project, a self-contained bubble within a self-contained bubble. The apartments are tiny (four hundred square feet or so for a studio; six hundred for a one-bedroom), but the amenities are lavish: communal desks, Zoom rooms, concierges, housekeeping, I.V. drips, after-work drinks, fridge stocking, dry cleaning. You can rent a unit for as short as six months. Sarage likes to think of the Set as a five-star hotel crossed with a luxury rental crossed with a techy workplace.

I.V. drips?? I thought those were for delivering medicine. But apparently you can also get drips with nutrients as a casual wellness practice, like flotation tanks or reiki or salt rooms. Am I the last to know this? There are a handful in the Minneapolis area.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 05, 2022, 02:08:14 pm
Well, I just learned something new. I was stumped by this paragraph in a Nov. 28 Talk of the Town piece.

I.V. drips?? I thought those were for delivering medicine. But apparently you can also get drips with nutrients as a casual wellness practice, like flotation tanks or reiki or salt rooms. Am I the last to know this? There are a handful in the Minneapolis area.

That's new to me, too, and I really question it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 06, 2022, 12:44:55 pm
I'm working on that one now. I'm only through "J." So far it seems so good, but maybe it will start to peter out. I really liked "F," the section about the electric planes. Cape Air wants to buy 75 of them. I think it would be way cool to fly between Boston and Provincetown in one of those planes.

I'm only at D or so and I see the article isn't just kind of boring factual reporting, but contains more voice and attitude. I hate to say this because I totally understand that climate change is really important, but almost anything on the subject is going to be purely dutiful for me. That said, this piece is engaging so far.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2022, 02:02:12 pm
I'm working on that one now. I'm only through "J." So far it seems so good, but maybe it will start to peter out. I really liked "F," the section about the electric planes. Cape Air wants to buy 75 of them. I think it would be way cool to fly between Boston and Provincetown in one of those planes.

I'm only at D or so and I see the article isn't just kind of boring factual reporting, but contains more voice and attitude. I hate to say this because I totally understand that climate change is really important, but almost anything on the subject is going to be purely dutiful for me. That said, this piece is engaging so far.

Not to spoil it, but in the end the whole thing is depressing--as is the topic. It's like, we've already doomed our own planet, and our descendants (of which I won't have any, so maybe I'm grateful I won't have any and just hope the world doesn't collapse until after I'm dead). Even that bit about the planes ends up depressing--no way will they work in place of large airliners.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 02:04:24 pm
I'm working on that one now. I'm only through "J." ... if you get down to the level of individual human beings, if you are a coal miner in West Virginia or an off-shore oil rig worker in Louisiana, and you lose your job because of "high electrification," what good does it do you, or your family, if a new job is created in, say, Oregon? I'm not arguing against anything here, only saying that it suddenly occurred to me that necessary changes will also come at a cost of a lot of disruption, dislocation, and even, I think, suffering at the level of the individual.

Did you see that Jake Gyllenhaal movie "October Sky" about a boy following in his WV coal-miner dad's footsteps? If so, I hope you would agree with me that it's worth the disruption of having to retrain for a different job where you don't have to spend your workdays underground in a mine breathing coal dust. That kind of career I would define as suffering. I know of programs in PA/WV that train former miners in skills like agroforestry, tourism, and farming. Former oil rig workers could become sea farmers, levee builders, or ecologists. If they wanted to stay in the oil industry, how about working for a company that refines oil from plastic trash, rather than continuing to despoil the Gulf?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 02:52:25 pm
Here's a WSJ article about a former coal mine that has now become a lavender farm:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/west-virginia-creates-jobs-farming-lavender-at-former-coal-mines-11630156974 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/west-virginia-creates-jobs-farming-lavender-at-former-coal-mines-11630156974)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2022, 04:38:59 pm
Did you see that Jake Gyllenhaal movie "October Sky" about a boy following in his WV coal-miner dad's footsteps? If so, I hope you would agree with me that it's worth the disruption of having to retrain for a different job where you don't have to spend your workdays underground in a mine breathing coal dust. That kind of career I would define as suffering. I know of programs in PA/WV that train former miners in skills like agroforestry, tourism, and farming. Former oil rig workers could become sea farmers, levee builders, or ecologists. If they wanted to stay in the oil industry, how about working for a company that refines oil from plastic trash, rather than continuing to despoil the Gulf?

I don't disagree. That's all well and good if the new jobs are created where the people whose jobs no longer exist are located, but what if they aren't?

I simply doubt that enough new jobs will be created in a given region to replace the number of jobs lost in that region. This will cause pain and disruption, and I would bet it will fall mainly on the backs of people who are already in lower paying jobs. I simply doubt that enough new jobs can be created in West Virginia or Kentucky to employ all the people in those regions who will lose their jobs if the coal industry comes to an end.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 07:20:01 pm
... I simply doubt that enough new jobs can be created in West Virginia or Kentucky to employ all the people in those regions who will lose their jobs if the coal industry comes to an end.

I agree that it's a daunting task. Today I read the rest of the issue and there are signs of hope here and there. Kolbert makes the point that even when the coal industry was going strong, there was still a lot of poverty and the industry struggled. Even though a person could make a good living in the unionized workforce, their work lives, bodies, and physical lifespans were stunted. A good job is only part of a good life. More is needed, leisure time, education, being in nature, and opportunities to express yourself and be creative. Being part of a community with friends and family to love and be loved. These were in short supply when the coal barons reigned.

Overall the coal industry workforce is only half of what it was at its peak. Regional economies are being transformed, but can it be done fast enough? Trump promised to put coal workers back to work but the opposite happened. Biden is promising more retraining and putting more money into it. The photo essay in the same issue "Blade Runners" shows workers going not underground but into the sky to maintain wind turbines. Where are they located? West Virginia.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 07:28:25 pm
An author we know well is mentioned in the article "Little Houses on the Prairie". Wanting to get to know the residents of the San Luis Valley, the author Ted Conover rides around in a truck offering free firewood. "In the valley, as in an Annie Proulx story, freezing to death is an ever-present possibility," the reviewer Kathryn Schulz writes.

I drive through that valley at least once a year (3X this year) and I never found it to be so impoverished. It has the reputation of producing some of the most high-quality protein-rich hay imaginable and fetches a price to match. Also, the review, and, I suspect, the book, doesn't mention any Native Americans of which there are many in that area. I don't think I'll read that book.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 07:47:19 pm
... Even that bit about the planes ends up depressing--no way will they work in place of large airliners.

The Alia, which is more like a personal jet or Hovercraft, is not meant to replace large airliners. Think of going to a small suburban airport near you, getting on an Alia with eight other passengers, and flying to Provincetown, 300 miles as the crow flies, in less than an hour. The Alia would use $40 worth of stored electricity as opposed to a conventional plane, which would use $1200 in jet fuel, 30 times more. Even though you'd have what amounts to a chartered flight, you'd pay only a fraction. And you wouldn't have to be herded to a hub somewhere, New York, Philly, or Boston, to be aggregated onto an energy guzzling airliner.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 06, 2022, 08:09:55 pm
I drive through that valley at least once a year (3X this year) and I never found it to be so impoverished. It has the reputation of producing some of the most high-quality protein-rich hay imaginable and fetches a price to match. Also, the review, and, I suspect, the book, doesn't mention any Native Americans of which there are many in that area. I don't think I'll read that book.

Can't vouch for the book, and the review didn't really spark my interest. But I will say that Ted Conover is a highly regarded immersion journalist. "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing," about being a prison guard in Sing Sing, is especially prominent (I haven't read it).

I wish Kathryn Schulz had written more on the topic of immersion journalism. It can be interesting and a great method for getting really inside stories but I have mixed feelings about it. I may be the only person in the world who disliked Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickeled and Dimed." I wasn't impressed by an account of posing as a minimum-wage worker by someone who cooked up the idea over dinner with Harper's editor Lewis Lapham and undoubtedly had a book contract going into it. "Maid," a book by someone who was actually a maid and on welfare, was more valid, IMO.



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2022, 09:19:47 pm
The Alia, which is more like a personal jet or Hovercraft, is not meant to replace large airliners. Think of going to a small suburban airport near you, getting on an Alia with eight other passengers, and flying to Provincetown, 300 miles as the crow flies, in less than an hour. The Alia would use $40 worth of stored electricity as opposed to a conventional plane, which would use $1200 in jet fuel, 30 times more. Even though you'd have what amounts to a chartered flight, you'd pay only a fraction. And you wouldn't have to be herded to a hub somewhere, New York, Philly, or Boston, to be aggregated onto an energy guzzling airliner.

That's all true, but that wasn't my point. The Alia, and similar electric planes, can't replace airliners to move large numbers of people long distances.

You can take a train from here to Boston. The train is already powered by electricity.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 06, 2022, 09:23:01 pm
An author we know well is mentioned in the article "Little Houses on the Prairie".

I laughed when I read that.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 06, 2022, 10:19:23 pm

You can take a train from here to Boston. The train is already powered by electricity.


Yes, but what if you don't want to go to Boston?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 07, 2022, 09:49:58 am
Yes, but what if you don't want to go to Boston?

You're the one who mentioned Boston.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on December 07, 2022, 10:08:58 am
Who wouldn't want to go to Boston?!  8)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 07, 2022, 11:58:11 am
LOL apparently no one, including the future king of Britain!

That reminds me of the time I needed to go from Denver to Montreal where I was in charge of the media room for the Biomass Conference of the Americas (need to get a little climate content in here to keep it on-topic). Flew in to Logan and went to my gate for the connection to Montreal. About 20 minutes later, I noticed people going towards the boarding door. I had my seat already and didn't want to stand in line so I stayed put. I looked up a few minutes later and the attendant was closing the door! Apparently they don't announce those flights...is it another Canadaism, peut-?tre?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 07, 2022, 12:12:17 pm
My point is that less than 100 million people in the US live in core urban places where the existing system of travel is more or less convenient for them, assuming that when they travel, they want to go to another core urban area, rather than to someplace like...Wyoming. 225 million people + or - live in rural, suburban or small metros. When we want to travel, we have to get to the urban center, be herded onto a huge airliner, then do it all in reverse at our destination. And it costs just as much or more.

Here in the Rockies, there is a network of smaller planes and Lear jets that take people to the ski areas. It's getting impossible to go by car anymore, especially when you want to come home on a Sunday afternoon.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 07, 2022, 01:24:30 pm
My point is that less than 100 million people in the US live in core urban places where the existing system of travel is more or less convenient for them, assuming that when they travel, they want to go to another core urban area, rather than to someplace like...Wyoming. 225 million people + or - live in rural, suburban or small metros. When we want to travel, we have to get to the urban center, be herded onto a huge airliner, then do it all in reverse at our destination. And it costs just as much or more.

Not to sound like I'm factchecking your every post  :laugh:  but that urban population sounded low to me. A Census Bureau webpage says 249 million Americans, or more than 80% of the U.S. population, live in urban areas. I assume they're including suburbs, because a different page says most Americans live in suburbs. So that may explain why your number is lower, since you included suburban residents in the other group.

Anyway, many if not most airports are no more convenient for city dwellers than for suburbanites. The Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is closer to some (not all) suburbs than it is to either Minneapolis or St. Paul, and isn't Denver the same? Another site says half the people in the United States live within 17 miles of an airport, and 90 percent live within an hour's drive of one.

Not that any of this is necessarily relevant to the electric plane issue. But it's nice to know so many of us can conveniently fly to Boston!


https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html (https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-26/u-s-urban-population-is-up-but-what-does-urban-really-mean (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-26/u-s-urban-population-is-up-but-what-does-urban-really-mean)

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-frm-asst-sec-080320.html (https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr-edge-frm-asst-sec-080320.html)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 07, 2022, 08:23:15 pm
You can tell when I have a story to write -- I come here and research airport and population figures instead.  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 07, 2022, 09:45:18 pm
Here's my research:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/)
Only 98 million in the US live in the core urban areas which are the airline hubs. Even though I live in the hub of Denver, I am frequently routed through Houston, Toronto, or (gasp) Chicago when I want to go someplace entirely different. I remember when things were different, when you could book a flight from, say, Wichita to San Antonio, whereas now you have to go to Dallas or Houston and then to another place,
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2022, 11:45:43 am
Only 98 million in the US live in the core urban areas which are the airline hubs. Even though I live in the hub of Denver, I am frequently routed through Houston, Toronto, or (gasp) Chicago when I want to go someplace entirely different. I remember when things were different, when you could book a flight from, say, Wichita to San Antonio, whereas now you have to go to Dallas or Houston and then to another place,

Oh I see, airline hubs no doubt have different figures.

Here's where I got the statistics on how many people live how close to an airport. It appears to be the blog of some random dude who got curious because his girlfriend is flying around for job interviews, but his data and methodology seem pretty meticulous.

https://www.mark-pearson.com/airport-distances/#:~:text=Half%20the%20people%20in%20the,close%3A%20less%20than%209%20miles.&text=Distance%20(mi.)

As for layovers, can't you book a direct flight from there? When I buy a plane ticket it gives me a bunch of options of times, prices, etc., including whether it's direct or not. The ones with layovers aren't necessarily cheaper, so I don't get why anyone would pick those, but maybe they just bundle a regular flight from Denver to Chicago and one from Chicago to Miami in case anyone wants to do that.

I once took a flight  from Minneapolis to Atlanta that went through DENVER, which definitely doesn't make sense from a climate-change standpoint.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2022, 11:50:11 am
That's all true, but that wasn't my point. The Alia, and similar electric planes, can't replace airliners to move large numbers of people long distances.

Not at this time. But it wasn't so long ago a cell phone was the size of a shoebox. These days cell phones aren't just small and light but they can do a million other things, with more computing power than my old desktop had. So maybe with planes it's just a matter of time until they can make batteries smaller, lighter and more powerful.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 08, 2022, 12:37:51 pm
When I buy a plane ticket it gives me a bunch of options of times, prices, etc., including whether it's direct or not. The ones with layovers aren't necessarily cheaper, so I don't get why anyone would pick those, but maybe they just bundle a regular flight from Denver to Chicago and one from Chicago to Miami in case anyone wants to do that.

It's been so long now since I've flown anywhere (other than Boston--P'town) that I don't think I even know how to book a ticket anymore unless I know an airline serves Philadelphia and the place I want to go.

Cape Air Boston--P'town is the exception, of course, because there is no other airline serving that route.

I got a Real ID for just that purpose--flying--and now they've pushed the requirement for that back again!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 08, 2022, 01:04:02 pm
...As for layovers, can't you book a direct flight from there?
Depends on where you're going and when you want to travel. For instance, if I wanted to go to western Nebraska, most anyplace in Wyoming, or Northern Arizona, I just couldn't do it by air. If I wanted to fly to Colorado Springs, I would need to drive east to DIA, pay for parking, walk half a mile, and do the same thing in reverse in the Springs. I would probably drive farther than if I just took a car straight there.

I once took a flight  from Minneapolis to Atlanta that went through DENVER, which definitely doesn't make sense from a climate-change standpoint.
So, once I flew from Detroit to San Diego. Had to make two connections to get there. On the way back, my nonstop flight was rerouted to Atlanta! And I had to stay overnight. All this with a 6-month-old baby in tow. Another time, I had to go to Saskatoon. The inbound flight was pretty smooth; only one stop in Calgary (we went over Saskatoon on the way). But on the return, I had to fly first to Toronto to catch a nonstop to Denver! And customs was so backed up that I missed my flight! I had to go to Philly and spend the night in the airport, catching the first flight home the next day.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 08, 2022, 05:19:30 pm
Depends on where you're going and when you want to travel. For instance, if I wanted to go to western Nebraska, most anyplace in Wyoming, or Northern Arizona, I just couldn't do it by air.

You mean you couldn't get somewhere rural in those places by air, right? Because you can fly directly from DEN to Flagstaff or several Wyoming cities. (DEN to Grand Island, NE, on the other hand, would take all day, cost over $1,000 and you'd have a layover at DFW).

Anyway, if this is about the practicality of the electric plane in the article, it might not be a replacement for giant planes for now but for going somewhere that it makes more sense to drive to, an electric plane would save energy and money.

I would bemoan the absence of trains in the United States but I think at this point a switch to electric vehicles, perhaps driverless, makes more sense. I'd like to be like a European and just hop on something spontaneously and be transported to any city in the country.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 11, 2022, 03:13:30 pm
At lunch today, I finished the excerpts from Thomas Mallon's diaries (Dec. 12). I recognize the name, and I should have googled him before writing this, but, oh, well. It was fascinating to read about gay New York City in the mid-1980s in the midst of the AIDS pandemic. On the other hand, I'll admit, no doubt out of pure, unadulterated jealousy, it annoyed the hell out of me.

The man was 33 years old in 1985. He bought an apartment in NYC that year. He was teaching at Vassar. He was, or was becoming, a published author. He knew Elizabeth Hardwick (all I know of her is what I've read in TNY). He was consorting with New York lawyers. He was having (obviously) safe sex with numbers of very attractive men and was himself an attractive man. He knew lots of gay men who were dying of AIDS (all of us who lived through those times knew lots of gay men who died of AIDS). Now his diaries are in the Library of Congress.

The man isn't a real person; he's a character in an Andrew Holleran novel. ...

OK, that's snarky; I admit it, but, really, those diary entries read like the record of a character in an Andrew Holleran novel. They really do.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 11, 2022, 08:08:11 pm
...The man isn't a real person; he's a character in an Andrew Holleran novel. ...


 :o  I confess, I would feel confused and betrayed.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 11, 2022, 08:54:06 pm
:o  I confess, I would feel confused and betrayed.

I have since looked him up. He has led a rather charmed life.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 14, 2022, 11:41:12 pm
Lately the most interesting things I've read in the New Yorker were online. When I tried to find them in the magazine, they weren't there. Here's an example (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/im-thrilled-to-announce-that-nothing-is-going-on-with-me?utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&mbid=social_facebook&utm_brand=tny&utm_medium=social&%3Fsource=Paid_Soc_FBIG_0_BAUCM_Conversion_0_NYR_US_Prospecting%28Broad%29_DR_PAC_Boosted&utm_paidredirect=NYR_Paid_Soc_FB_CM_&utm_boosted-type=_Paid_Soc_FBIG_DR_BAUCM_Conversion&fb_news_token=D3rBYzBt9uyriZdb7muUVg%3D%3D.qpCUNgWC77UpfIaPnLQgKXcMhnSyJJ5F%2FzLaYeT7tiCLlhsbdWMf5ofai6RKqN500xqPIPx6lFk%2FbMt9Nh1rzsilCGJvtzqwmqsiAA9uE5Mo6IhNuHspSg3ocqaZB1QgCRnXIVHAPNTEETlCMiLRl%2BxSYTh%2BRRW6DCHW5mKcTSYg%2BavUYJIbeoFKTs7q2x3Pcv88McwfcAzMbqHXDT0F1P4vPY02PBGT8uhuSjDsT%2F9YbKKAKn8YdJxyS528LSlqBm9VJcVNgD1WxsTPK2u9vdF0%2Bqfuq3t9Jvr6ONm%2BmAlfQXIamAuXQmBDUuaiQGiXJYH5MCLNv44prgO7QF%2BL1mG%2B1pFKospujddC27RWeofSbxO8Un00HLPtSEYtED3iMzOGe2I3CNBZQUC4sgbRDg%3D%3D&fbclid=IwAR3lJAc5qYX-5xDt2KvoZWpMu_Qtepg2f3PbD53y0rAUkxdx1Pk_Q-VJYjY), an actually amusing Shouts and Murmurs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 15, 2022, 09:39:08 am
I have the impression that print version is a week behind the online version. At least, occasionally a NY piece appears to show up in my news feed, and a week later it shows up in my print copy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 15, 2022, 03:03:25 pm
I have the impression that print version is a week behind the online version. At least, occasionally a NY piece appears to show up in my news feed, and a week later it shows up in my print copy.

Seems likely. At my newspaper, the digital version comes out the day before the print.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 20, 2022, 01:59:00 pm
I put off reading Thomas Mallon's diary from the December 12th issue but finally read it and I'm glad I did. He's the same age as I and while I was navigating the typical ordeals of young adulthood, he was in the midst of the AIDS crisis in New York City. If only I had read his diaries as a young woman I would hope I could have offered friendship and help to my gay acquaintances sooner rather than later.

After finishing it I ran to my computer to find out if he succumbed to AIDS like so many of the people he came into contact with. There were several presumably straight Thomas Mallons whose obits were posted but he is well and alive and living with his long-time partner in the DC area. And still publishing.  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 21, 2022, 11:08:23 pm
Seems likely. At my newspaper, the digital version comes out the day before the print.

So by the time the print version comes out it's old news?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 29, 2022, 09:16:07 pm
This week's "Shouts and Murmurs" wasn't funny again but it was engaging, with slivers of wit scattered throughout. I found the idea of God and an angel acting as parents of the human race amusing but the repeated reference to God worrying about money disturbed me. So, when I woke up in the middle of the night, I began ruminating on the nature of God. It was very productive, and I ended up with the conclusion that "pain and bread are the same word."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 05, 2023, 08:42:21 pm
So by the time the print version comes out it's old news?  ???

Kind of, I guess. It rarely makes a difference, except for big breaking news. Tomorrow's paper may contain five fewer "no" votes for Kevin McCarthy than the online version.

Both have their advantages. The digital versions come out earlier and, perhaps more valuably, contain links to related sites that aren't worth spelling out the URL of in the print story. On the other hand, the print editions have more attractive page designs.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 07, 2023, 12:38:58 pm
So, is it true that the New Yorker has published the January 6th Report? Maybe as subscribers, we'll get a discount or can access it online!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 07, 2023, 01:32:03 pm
Appears they did publish it, but no sign (so far) that it's available to subscribers. It's not very expensive (https://www.amazon.com/January-Report-Committee-Investigate-Capitol/dp/1250877520/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=). And of course it's an extremely important historical record. But TBH, I know I'd never read 752 pages, most of which must be pretty dry. I'm content to get a more succinct version from a news outlet or commentator.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 07, 2023, 06:15:12 pm
Appears they did publish it, but no sign (so far) that it's available to subscribers. It's not very expensive (https://www.amazon.com/January-Report-Committee-Investigate-Capitol/dp/1250877520/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=). And of course it's an extremely important historical record. But TBH, I know I'd never read 752 pages, most of which must be pretty dry. I'm content to get a more succinct version from a news outlet or commentator.

I've seen ads for it in the magazine. I didn't know that the magazine published it.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 12, 2023, 09:31:19 am
I'm actually caught up and waiting for another issue to arrive.  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 12, 2023, 12:37:00 pm
I'm actually caught up and waiting for another issue to arrive.  :o

 :o

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 13, 2023, 09:02:40 am
The issue with MLK and his family on the cover arrived in yesterday's mail.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 15, 2023, 05:04:08 pm
Here's an article that's right up our alley: sentence constructions that drive us batty:
. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-objectively-objectionable-grammatical-pet-peeve (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-objectively-objectionable-grammatical-pet-peeve)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 15, 2023, 08:51:06 pm
Jill Lepore's article in the Jan. 16 issue critiquing the January 6 Committee report should be read. Is it a duty article? Yes. It is also very perceptive. It is also very depressing in the end. But it may be the most important criticism she has every written for TNY.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 15, 2023, 09:46:29 pm
Jill Lepore's article in the Jan. 16 issue critiquing the January 6 Committee report should be read. Is it a duty article? Yes. It is also very perceptive. It is also very depressing in the end. But it may be the most important criticism she has every written for TNY.

OK, thanks for that report! It might have ended up with the dozens of other articles I left the magazine open to and never finished. I'll keep going.

And for a refreshing break, I'll read the sentence construction article, thanks Lee!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2023, 12:42:36 pm
Lepore seems to be making the point that the mob's motivations should have been examined more by the Committee rather than just microfocusing on Trump. My theory is that the mob and the whole Trump movement is an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution. At its beginning, 70% of the US population lived in the country and 30% lived in cities. A couple of decades later, that percentage was reversed. The 70% of people who have lived in cities for several generations have grown to be a more homogeneous society, much like people in Europe, Japan, or Sweden.

The 30% of people who live in rural places are more diverse but they do share some characteristics. There is less opportunity for them and they feel disenfranchised and disengaged. They feel left out of the mainstream of communication and cut off. These traits would make them more likely to be attracted to leaders who are mavericks. Leaders who can derail the massive influence of the city people. Most of this theory is cobbled together from things I've read, but I've also had many opportunities to get out of the city and mingle with country people and so part of it is from direct observation.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2023, 02:43:45 pm
Lepore seems to be making the point that the mob's motivations should have been examined more by the Committee rather than just microfocusing on Trump. My theory is that the mob and the whole Trump movement is an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution. At its beginning, 70% of the US population lived in the country and 30% lived in cities. A couple of decades later, that percentage was reversed. The 70% of people who have lived in cities for several generations have grown to be a more homogeneous society, much like people in Europe, Japan, or Sweden.

I don't agree that, to take an example, people living in New York City are more homogenous than people living in Upstate New York. They're certainly not more homogenous ethnically, religiously or economically (although lower-income people are getting priced out of the city). But the city dwellers are also not more homogenous in terms of what they do for a living or their educational background -- since NYC is the capitol or one of the top cities for numerous industries, there's huge diversity there. And other city/rural situations across the country would mirror this in various ways. But maybe you're thinking of diversity of another sort?

Quote
The 30% of people who live in rural places are more diverse but they do share some characteristics. There is less opportunity for them and they feel disenfranchised and disengaged. They feel left out of the mainstream of communication and cut off. These traits would make them more likely to be attracted to leaders who are mavericks. Leaders who can derail the massive influence of the city people. Most of this theory is cobbled together from things I've read, but I've also had many opportunities to get out of the city and mingle with country people and so part of it is from direct observation.

So they worship a guy who's from the country's biggest city and is at least nominally hugely wealthy.

I agree they feel those things, with sometimes an added pinch of inferiority complex -- the liberal elite look down on us and think we're stupid. And in fact, members of the liberal elite do often think that, but primarily because of things like their worship of that abovementioned guy.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 16, 2023, 03:50:22 pm
I was going to add another paragraph explaining why I think city dwellers are more homogeneous even though they may be more ethnically diverse and in other aspects such as wealth, sexual preferences, education, and so on. I'll bet I have more in common with Black or Latino people who live in Denver than white people who live in rural Weld County Colorado. My food preferences, political leanings, what music I listen to, groups I belong to, holidays I celebrate, books I read. The way I react to issues that crop up. I don't know why I left this out, but that's what I meant.

Yes, it is ironic that a white rich boy from New York City would become the poster boy for rural America. However, he made his reputation in television shows like "The Apprentice." There was a good New Yorker article that tracked his reinvention on television: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/the-tv-that-created-donald-trump (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/the-tv-that-created-donald-trump) And this, I suspect, is where his popularity with rural audiences was born.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 16, 2023, 08:07:51 pm
I was going to add another paragraph explaining why I think city dwellers are more homogeneous even though they may be more ethnically diverse and in other aspects such as wealth, sexual preferences, education, and so on. I'll bet I have more in common with Black or Latino people who live in Denver than white people who live in rural Weld County Colorado. My food preferences, political leanings, what music I listen to, groups I belong to, holidays I celebrate, books I read. The way I react to issues that crop up. I don't know why I left this out, but that's what I meant.

That's probably true! The question is, do you have more in common with other Denver residents than Weld County residents have with each other? I'm not familiar enough with Denver and not at all with Weld County. But in Minnesota I have lived in a large suburb (Minnetonka, 36,000) a small farm town (Crookston, 8,000), a medium-sized city (Duluth, 90,000) and the Twin Cities metro area (3.7 million). Minneapolis residents don't seem more homogenous than Crookston residents. But definitely if you look at it as one state it's heterogenous.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 17, 2023, 11:31:06 am
I think rural people are pretty heterogeneous today. Some of the institutions that used to glue these populations together have broken down: church attendance, the Grange, farmer's organizations and co-ops have experienced attrition and fracturing. But there are still lightning rod types of people (Trump) and groups/voices (QAnon) that can have a unifying and motivating effect. As rural people have become attached to the Internet, they have been taken advantage of by those who use misinformation to gather believers. Just as televangelists did in prior generations.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 17, 2023, 12:10:01 pm
From the Boston GLobe: WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. ? On the 797th day after the defeat of former President Donald Trump, a rural Pennsylvania county on Monday began a recount of ballots from Election Day 2020.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 17, 2023, 01:50:36 pm
I think rural people are pretty heterogeneous today.

Oh for sure! I just meant I don't think they're necessarily any more heterogeneous than city-dwellers. Personally, I would argue less, but certainly not more -- or are they?

Quote
From the Boston GLobe: WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. ? On the 797th day after the defeat of former President Donald Trump, a rural Pennsylvania county on Monday began a recount of ballots from Election Day 2020.

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 18, 2023, 12:57:12 pm
Oh for sure! I just meant I don't think they're necessarily any more heterogeneous than city-dwellers. Personally, I would argue less, but certainly not more -- or are they?

Let's remember that homogeneous means "similar in nature", not demographics. So I interpret that to mean similar in behavior or actions. City dwellers have many opportunities to influence each other, supposedly, so over time it's logical to assume they would become more homogeneous. Rural people have less opportunity to do that, plus they are more likely to be individualistic to the point of stubbornness. Thirdly, I think rural people more often fall prey to the tactics used to divide people. I'm tempted to mention education as well, but I'll leave that out. I've had the embarrassment of assuming rural people were poorly educated several times only to find out that they had an MBA from Stanford, for example!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2023, 02:26:20 pm
Let's remember that homogeneous means "similar in nature", not demographics. So I interpret that to mean similar in behavior or actions. City dwellers have many opportunities to influence each other, supposedly, so over time it's logical to assume they would become more homogeneous. Rural people have less opportunity to do that, plus they are more likely to be individualistic to the point of stubbornness. Thirdly, I think rural people more often fall prey to the tactics used to divide people. I'm tempted to mention education as well, but I'll leave that out. I've had the embarrassment of assuming rural people were poorly educated several times only to find out that they had an MBA from Stanford, for example!

I know it means similar in nature, with demographics being one possible type of nature, but of course behavior or actions or opinions are other types, so sure we can focus on them if you like but I'd still feel the same way. I actually wasn't thinking about demographics in particular, although they are certainly a powerful influence on behavior, actions and opinions.

I think city dwellers have fewer opportunities to influence each other, not more. For one thing, city residents only ever know -- or even see -- a small percentage of other residents, whereas rural dwellers, particularly if they've lived their whole lives in a place, as many have, are likely to know a much higher proportion of people, so have more opportunity to influence each other. And sure, some rural people have Stanford MBAs and some are high-school dropouts and everything in between, but the same can be said of city dwellers, and in their case there'd be less surprise involved because it's clear city residents represent a wide range of education levels, including many dropouts and many PhDs. They also represent a wide range of professions -- rural residents represent a smaller range of educational and vocational backgrounds because rural places, just by nature of sparse populations, offer a narrower range of jobs. Just to take one example, academics can't live in most rural areas unless they happen to be college towns.

None of my comments are intended as put-downs of rural residents, and homogeneity isn't necessarily a fault. This is just how I assess their natures.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 18, 2023, 05:38:05 pm
... homogeneity isn't necessarily a fault. This is just how I assess their natures.

That was my point. In being a homogeneous society, urban dwellers are more likely to be able to unite to work towards the type of life style and quality that they all want. There is also a critical mass scale that allows more activities such as plays, concerts, study groups, museums, etc. to spring up.

In rural places, you still have the sports teams, the Fourth of July parades, and the county fairs, but these are attended more and more by older people and families. Church attendance has gone way down as well as other civic events and the traditional picnics and barn raisings, etc. Rural Minnesota may be different than here in Colorado. The vast expanses tend to isolate people and we have a lot of different ethnicities that don't mingle, unlike the Minnesotans. To my point, here's an article that appeared today about the county seat of Weld County, Greeley:
https://www.cpr.org/2018/12/17/weve-all-heard-smells-like-greeley-its-gonna-snow-but-do-you-know-why-that-is/?fbclid=IwAR2Ne0_wUz9FoTLeZserR2E2JwmQ2lD2rYaL-MSIyYYBlpxYbhMQFP52zoA (https://www.cpr.org/2018/12/17/weve-all-heard-smells-like-greeley-its-gonna-snow-but-do-you-know-why-that-is/?fbclid=IwAR2Ne0_wUz9FoTLeZserR2E2JwmQ2lD2rYaL-MSIyYYBlpxYbhMQFP52zoA)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 18, 2023, 08:17:35 pm
That was my point. In being a homogeneous society, urban dwellers are more likely to be able to unite to work towards the type of life style and quality that they all want.

Except that we don't unite to work toward a common lifestyle. Poor Black teenagers in North Minneapolis don't have a huge amount in common with wealthy white middle-aged mansion-dwellers in Southwest Minneapolis, to take two groups (there are, of course, plenty of others). I mean, I don't have to list all the differences -- you can imagine what they might be in terms of income, education, jobs, taste in music and food, living conditions, life experiences, etc., etc. I'm not making the distinction entirely based on race. Yes, the whole city tends to vote for progressives and Democrats and apparently we're all willing to put up with miserable winters. Other than that, I don't see many similarities.

Quote
There is also a critical mass scale that allows more activities such as plays, concerts, study groups, museums, etc. to spring up. In rural places, you still have the sports teams, the Fourth of July parades, and the county fairs, but these are attended more and more by older people and families. Church attendance has gone way down as well as other civic events and the traditional picnics and barn raisings, etc.

Plays, concerts, study groups and museums are primarily attended by middle- or upper-middle-class, well-educated people. They don't really unite the populace -- on the contrary, they're accused of being elitist and exclusive (an image their leaders don't necessarily deserve and I realize have fought hard to overturn). I nominally belong to the target audience but rarely do those things unless by concerts you mean rock concerts and clubs (which I don't go to often these days, either).

High-school sports, Fourth of July parades and county fairs are attended, as far as I can tell when I've attended them, by people of all ages. Maybe not as many teenagers go to county fairs, but more do than go to plays and museums in the city.

Quote
Rural Minnesota may be different than here in Colorado. The vast expanses tend to isolate people and we have a lot of different ethnicities that don't mingle, unlike the Minnesotans.

We have lots of ethnicities and most of them live near each other, unless they live on one of the reservations. So yeah, there are differences that way but didn't we establish that ethnicity was not the factor of homogeneity we were going to focus on? Our distances probably aren't as vast except in farming or forested areas.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 19, 2023, 12:00:10 pm
I guess the culture and nature of the city dwellers in Minneapolis are different than in Denver and other cities I've studied. There I go making sweeping generalizations again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 19, 2023, 12:24:20 pm
I guess the culture and nature of the city dwellers in Minneapolis are different than in Denver and other cities I've studied. There I go making sweeping generalizations again.

Maybe, although I've always thought Minneapolis and Denver were pretty similar, culturally. But what I said about Minneapolis contrasts would be true of other cities I'm familiar with: New York (Upper West Side vs. the Bronx), Chicago (South Side vs. the Gold Coast), L.A. (Compton vs. Santa Monica), New Orleans (St. Charles Avenue vs. Desire Housing Project). The differences are racial and socioeconomic of course but they're also different in terms of culture, values, lifestyle, tastes, hopes and dreams, etc.

Sorry, I don't mean to be so argumentative  :), I'm just struck by the dissimilarity of our takes on this.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 19, 2023, 12:47:04 pm
Maybe, although I've always thought Minneapolis and Denver were pretty similar, culturally. But what I said about Minneapolis contrasts would be true of other cities I'm familiar with: New York (Upper West Side vs. the Bronx), Chicago (South Side vs. the Gold Coast), L.A. (Compton vs. Santa Monica), New Orleans (St. Charles Avenue vs. Desire Housing Project). The differences are racial and socioeconomic of course but they're also different in terms of culture, values, lifestyle, tastes, hopes and dreams, etc.

Sorry, I don't mean to be so argumentative  :), I'm just struck by the dissimilarity of our takes on this.

You can certainly say the same for Philadelphia. The people who live around Rittenhouse Square (condos in the millions) are quite different from the people who live in deep South Philadelphia or in some of the neighborhoods north and northeast of Center City. I expect the people who live around Rittenhouse Square have more in common with the Upper West Side of Manhattan than with South Philadelphia.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 19, 2023, 02:24:45 pm
And of course there's economic diversity in small towns and rural areas, too -- the house on the hill vs the other side of the tracks, the bank president vs the factory worker. But the difference is that because they're living in smaller towns or less populated areas, they're more likely to know each other, to have gone to the same schools, to know of the same prominent citizens, to share a local history. Of course, residents of Small Town A don't share all those things with residents of Small Town B 100 miles away. But people in both places typically know what it's like to live in a small town, may have similar recreational activities, probably are familiar with similar businesses and institutions. Small town businesses are pretty basic: grocery stores, banks, thrift shops, clinics and hospitals (sometimes), and so on. They don't as typically have IT startups, major malls, theaters, tourist places, art museums, foodie restaurants, bookstores, daily newspapers ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 19, 2023, 03:38:41 pm
Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities.

--John Mellencamp

 ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 19, 2023, 04:27:46 pm
In speaking about city dwellers, I wasn't thinking about suburbs, exurbs, and gated bastions. People who live there are possibly even more isolated than the other two groups. Places like Fifth Avenue and such are off my radar screen. Those people tend to be older, and I'm really not tuned in to their homogeneity or lack thereof.

But here in Denver we just had more than 20,000 people at our annual MLK "Marade" which is both a march and a parade. We also have big celebrations for the Day of the Dead and Cinco de Mayo. Our governor is gay. Many neighborhoods are becoming more diverse or being gentrified, whichever way you want to look at it. You can easily get gender-affirming treatment or an abortion, for example. More and more places are bi- or trilingual. Our performing arts center, which has won an Emmy for best regional arts, has been a champion of Black playwrights and BIPOC actors and dancers, and the audiences have grown more diverse.

The local media have done series on the problems in rural areas and many of the institutions that brought people together are dying out. Many people, particularly older ones, are isolated and younger people are leaving some of the rural communities.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 24, 2023, 02:46:09 pm
I was wondering if we could come up with a list of the criteria for a good "Shouts & Murmurs". I'll start. 1) It should contain references to weird current happenings the way "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" does. 2) It should not be heavy, hammy, or over-the-top. Well, it can go over the top, but just at the end. 3) It should expose an irony, absurdity, or folly. 4) Setting a current situation in another time or place is okay, but that shouldn't be all the piece does.

Oops, I meant to just lead with one or two examples. It strikes me that this topic might make the basis for a good S&M!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 24, 2023, 05:22:14 pm
In speaking about city dwellers, I wasn't thinking about suburbs, exurbs, and gated bastions. People who live there are possibly even more isolated than the other two groups. Places like Fifth Avenue and such are off my radar screen. Those people tend to be older, and I'm really not tuned in to their homogeneity or lack thereof.

I wasn't speaking of suburbs, etc., either, unless you're referring to my mention of Santa Monica. I'll admit, I don't really understand how Los Angeles works. The other diverse pairings I cited are all in cities. I don't have much in common with Fifth Avenue denizens either, but that's exactly my point -- that city is extremely diverse -- or at least was during the brief period I lived there; I'm sure rising housing costs are eroded some of the diversity. (Although what I mentioned were residents of the Upper West Side, who probably have a fair amount in common with Denver residents, though probably higher median income). Same for other cities with rich and poor neighborhoods, including my own.
 
Quote
But here in Denver we just had more than 20,000 people at our annual MLK "Marade" which is both a march and a parade. We also have big celebrations for the Day of the Dead and Cinco de Mayo. Our governor is gay. Many neighborhoods are becoming more diverse or being gentrified, whichever way you want to look at it. You can easily get gender-affirming treatment or an abortion, for example. More and more places are bi- or trilingual. Our performing arts center, which has won an Emmy for best regional arts, has been a champion of Black playwrights and BIPOC actors and dancers, and the audiences have grown more diverse.

But wait, weren't you arguing that cities are less diverse/more homogenous? I'm not sure of your point here. You mentioned a lot of different marginalized communities, although you said you weren't talking about them, either. Sounds like what you're describing is a nice, progressive, 21st century city.

If we're talking strictly politics, it's possible that people in cities (as you said, not suburbs) are more homogenously blue-voting, whereas although rural people may tend to vote red, it's probably not as universal because there certainly are Democrats/lefties/progressives in rural areas and small towns.

Quote
The local media have done series on the problems in rural areas and many of the institutions that brought people together are dying out. Many people, particularly older ones, are isolated and younger people are leaving some of the rural communities.

Yes, as they have for decades if not forever, leaving the rural dwellers more homogenous, not less -- more similar in age, background, race (if we're talking about that), etc.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 24, 2023, 05:29:58 pm
I was wondering if we could come up with a list of the criteria for a good "Shouts & Murmurs". I'll start. 1) It should contain references to weird current happenings the way "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" does. 2) It should not be heavy, hammy, or over-the-top. Well, it can go over the top, but just at the end. 3) It should expose an irony, absurdity, or folly. 4) Setting a current situation in another time or place is okay, but that shouldn't be all the piece does.

I think it can occasionally take on non-current events, but I agree that most should focus on those. Agreed that they should expose folly and do more than setting a current situation in another time or place. And I really, really agree that they should not be hammy, etc. That's the most common problem I see in them; people seem to feel that, right from the get-go, the jokes have to be way out there crazy. But way out there doesn't work because it's not recognizable as satire.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 24, 2023, 06:00:15 pm
I'm glad you agree with me about hammy. I hesitated about including that but it seems to strike a chord.

About homogeneity, I think we are having problems talking about it because we are defining it differently. I define it as "similar in nature." I know that doesn't help much because, what is nature? For the purposes of this discussion, I define it as behavior and preferences. So, I'm not talking about demographics, such as age, background, race, education level, income, voting record, etc.

Another term I've used that causes problems is diversity. Most of the time, diversity refers to a wide range of demographic characteristics. But in this context, I am using diversity to mean the opposite of homogeneity. As a debater, I know I should keep my day job!

You mention that young people have been leaving rural areas for ages. I agree. I started out this discussion by saying the rural/urban separation began during the Industrial Revolution when the U.S. went from an agrarian society to an industrial society.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 24, 2023, 11:09:47 pm
About homogeneity, I think we are having problems talking about it because we are defining it differently. I define it as "similar in nature." I know that doesn't help much because, what is nature? For the purposes of this discussion, I define it as behavior and preferences. So, I'm not talking about demographics, such as age, background, race, education level, income, voting record, etc.

I know, but then actually, what are we talking about as far as nature goes? We don't really have data on what other traits might be significant in determining homogeneity or diversity in cities vs. rural areas aside from demographics, plus I guess voting records and purchasing patterns and ...? In the absence of that info, we can say that age, background, race, education level, income, voting record, etc., tend to be highly correlated with other traits -- not infallibly, of course, but across populations. People of different demos tend to like different music and food, spend their free time in different ways, have different expectations for the present or hopes for the future, but resemble those within their demographics more than they do other groups. It's not a solid predictor -- not all Black people vote for Democrats, not all high-income people like fancy restaurants, and so on -- it's just a tendency.

But if they're different in those ways, what makes them similar? If you talk about public events that a lot of people went to, it's great because cities can draw big crowds, but I'm assuming not all Denver residents attended. If you say you don't have anything in common with residents of 5th Ave. in NYC because they're old (and rich), doesn't that suggest that NYC is diverse, based on demographics as well as other behaviors? Some live on 5th Avenue, some live in the East Village and on and on, all of them likely to have slightly different traits, behaviors, tastes and whatever else we're talking about.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 26, 2023, 02:17:29 pm
I'll answer you on that topic in my blog since it's getting far away from whatever was in the New Yorker that inspired it.

In the Jan. 30 issue I read "Shouts & Murmurs" first to see if any other criteria became apparent. There were 1 or 2 slightly clever parts but certainly not enough to justify the time reading it. I thought it was weak because it only really applies to restaurants in NYC and also because it attacks the restaurant industry which has suffered enough. I also thought it seemed mean-spirited. I'm inclined not to like mean or snarky writings. Satire and irony are okay with me, but many S&Ms cross the line. What are others' impressions?

I'm also starting to develop a list of topics we think could be good for S&Ms. Add your ideas!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 26, 2023, 04:22:05 pm
Talk about timely. I just finished the article about the Murtaugh murders in South Carolina (Jan. 23). Murtaugh went on trial this week for murdering his wife and son.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 30, 2023, 10:36:01 pm
Okay, this is funny. Why didn't it make it into the magazine?
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/what-i-would-have-done-differently-as-prince-harrys-ghostwriter (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/what-i-would-have-done-differently-as-prince-harrys-ghostwriter)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 31, 2023, 12:23:42 pm
I often find the Daily Shouts funnier than the ones in the magazine. Most recent print one was by Anand Giridharadas, who usually writes about things like wealth inequality, a subject I'm interested in, so I normally like his writing. Not in a S&M, though. I sometimes wonder if they pick the print ones based on the fame of the writer; I don't think I've found Jesse Eisenberg's pieces particularly funny, for instance.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 01, 2023, 11:14:10 am
I was just reading something from the Onion that was funny. Many or even most things from the Onion are funny! It has managed to be funny -- sometimes kind of bitterly so, but still -- about 911, mass shootings and other events you'd think would be too dark to successfully satire. And it comes out every week with a new handful of new pieces, most of them satires of current events, many of them S&M length. Yet the Onion isn't as prestigious a publication as the New Yorker and undoubtedly pays far less. Why can the Onion do it but the New Yorker can't?

I've always wondered the same thing about Saturday Night Live. It's hardly ever funny, despite having what you'd think would be some of the best comedy writers in show business. There are other shows that manage to be funny, even on a daily basis like the Daily Show back in the Jon Stewart days (and maybe now; I haven't watched it for a while). Why does the lower profile place so often outdo the higher profile place?

Another example is McSweeney's, which is similar in style to S&M. I don't know how often they publish new pieces but they're often quite funny. Here's one:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/selected-negative-teaching-evaluations-of-jesus-christ (https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/selected-negative-teaching-evaluations-of-jesus-christ)



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 02, 2023, 12:17:27 pm
That's a really good observation and question. Maybe TNY focuses more on their cartoons, which I hope you agree are often LOL funny, and takes a subtler approach to their satire. Or perhaps it's because humor and satire are The Onion's raison d-etre so the best humor writers would want to write for them.

I just received the February 6 issue and am happy to report that the S&M is funny this week! I LOL'ed twice and chuckled several times. Maybe it's just that I'm a writer...I'd love your opinions!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 02, 2023, 02:42:47 pm
This reminds me of the cartoon caption contest. The submitted captions are often actually funny. But the setups are challenging because they're things like a caveman riding a subway or an alien talking to a cow. Whereas most actual New Yorker cartoons feature mundane scenes of two people walking down the street, or talking at a cocktail party, or sitting in a living room and the humor is all in the words.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 04, 2023, 12:09:30 pm
In the new issue I read the article about the Oscar streaker. Surprised about how long it was but it turns out that the guy, named Robert Opel, had a pretty eventful life. Too bad he and so many of his generation are gone so soon.

Also surprising that the magazine reviewed Spare so favorably. They give a lot of credit to the ghostwriter for making the story almost Shakespearian in scope.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 04, 2023, 10:15:29 pm
In the new issue I read the article about the Oscar streaker. Surprised about how long it was but it turns out that the guy, named Robert Opel, had a pretty eventful life. Too bad he and so many of his generation are gone so soon.

I really enjoyed that one. I hadn't thought of the streaker craze for years on years. I recognized the name Jack Fritscher.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 09, 2023, 01:01:58 pm
I started the article on Salman Rushdie in the latest issue. It is definitely a must-read, written by the editor, David Remnick.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 10, 2023, 11:58:12 am
Maybe I recommended the article a bit too early. It kind of fizzles after the attack.

Back on the "What's funny" topic, this from Garrison Keillor on A.I. is pretty funny although I didn't LOL:
https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/p/a-column-written-by-a-man-pen-on?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email (https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/p/a-column-written-by-a-man-pen-on?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)

I know Keillor wrote for the New Yorker a lot. I think he's funny as a fellow Midwesterner, but I know there are people who revile him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 10, 2023, 12:10:58 pm
Maybe we should try our hands at writing a S&M. Then we might appreciate how hard it is. Here are some ideas for topics and I invite you to contribute others:

A.I.
The Chinese "spy" balloon
Dancing with DeSantis
Gayentine's Day
The Arctic Blast
Bad Technology Day
S&M
The Latest Food Craze
Wordle's Banned Words List
Toxic Bird Pits
She loves pickleball; he loves curling
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 10, 2023, 02:31:59 pm
I was sorting through old New Yorkers and read this one. Can't remember if I read it when it was published, but it's really good. Perfectly, perfectly captures Tucker Carlson in both the regular words and the italicized descriptions. Goes slightly off the rails a few times but never gets any crazier than its subject actually does.

(https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/tucker-carlson-defends-the-aliens-extraterrestrial-ones)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 10, 2023, 02:35:08 pm
Back on the "What's funny" topic, this from Garrison Keillor on A.I. is pretty funny although I didn't LOL:
https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/p/a-column-written-by-a-man-pen-on?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email (https://garrisonkeillor.substack.com/p/a-column-written-by-a-man-pen-on?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email)

I know Keillor wrote for the New Yorker a lot. I think he's funny as a fellow Midwesterner, but I know there are people who revile him.

As a fellow Midwesterner -- even a fellow Minnesotan! -- count me in the revile him camp. I don't like his personality and I think the points he makes in writing are often obvious or trite. That said, I'll admit he is an excellent prose stylist.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 10, 2023, 06:26:14 pm
I don't know much about his irl personality. I just know about the personna he has created in his books and monologues.

The first house I ever owned had three giant English Walnut trees in the back yard. So I spent every Sunday afternoon cracking nuts and listening to A Prairie Home Companion. This was in Central California and I missed the Midwest. I loved the stories about the inhabitants of a small town, the coming-of-age stories, the wacky things that Lutherans do. One anecdote in particular that I loved was about a schoolboy who stepped out the front door of his house and sped down the street, how "impressive to see someone get out of the gate" with so much energy. I also loved the stories of the young women who were determined to get away from the town and break the cycle of poverty and repression. And the stories about ice fishing...I could go on and on.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2023, 03:32:49 pm
I don't know much about his irl personality. I just know about the personna he has created in his books and monologues.

For me it's both, partly because he's so close-up here and people tend to form opinions of their local celebrities, and partly because my state is plenty steeped in that quaint Minnesota culture. So things that take it in new directions are more interesting to me. Fargo, for example, captures the culture (despite the mostly ridiculous accents) but gives it a novel twist.

However, I did have a next-door neighbor for a while who was being considered to replace Keillor when he retired (before the scandal) and would have been good. He's a storyteller who performs onstage all over the country and in Europe, presents one-man shows at the Guthrie Theater, has told a lot of stories on NPR, has published books and put out CDs. Anyway, his material is very recognizably Minnesotan too -- he even uses somewhat of a Fargo accent -- and the suburb he grew up in is only closer to Minneapolis than the suburb Garrison Keillor grew up in. Kevin's take is more original, to me.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2023, 03:44:09 pm
Am I reading this wrong or is this a pretty egregious editing error by New Yorker standards? It's from a March 2022 article that I just happen to be reading now.

Quote
Doctors in the Midlands had developed the custom of recording when a baby had died; doctors in London that a miscarriage had occurred.

Either switch the semicolon for a comma or add a verb to the second part.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 11, 2023, 08:56:38 pm
That is a seriously messed up sentence! The only way it could work is if the "when" and "that" could be coordinated; either use when in both cases or that in both cases.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2023, 10:15:24 pm
Am I reading this wrong or is this a pretty egregious editing error by New Yorker standards? It's from a March 2022 article that I just happen to be reading now.

Either switch the semicolon for a comma or add a verb to the second part.

I'd just switch the semicolon to a comma. That said, I do think it would be a better sentence if it were written as "that a baby had died" and "that a miscarriage had occurred." That would make the two parts parallel. "When" makes me think the doctor was looking at his watch and noting the time. But maybe he was?

But I also don't know the context of the sentence.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 12, 2023, 06:38:06 pm
I'd just switch the semicolon to a comma. That said, I do think it would be a better sentence if it were written as "that a baby had died" and "that a miscarriage had occurred." That would make the two parts parallel. "When" makes me think the doctor was looking at his watch and noting the time. But maybe he was?

But I also don't know the context of the sentence.


The article was about how numbers and statistics can be misleading. Those two places were part of one study and I guess that difference messed up the results.

Agreed about "that"!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 12, 2023, 10:07:27 pm
The article was about how numbers and statistics can be misleading. Those two places were part of one study and I guess that difference messed up the results.

Agreed about "that"!

Numbers and statistics misleading? Imagine that!  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 14, 2023, 07:50:40 pm
...I did have a next-door neighbor for a while who was being considered to replace Keillor when he retired (before the scandal) and would have been good. He's a storyteller who performs onstage all over the country and in Europe, presents one-man shows at the Guthrie Theater, has told a lot of stories on NPR, has published books and put out CDs. Anyway, his material is very recognizably Minnesotan too -- he even uses somewhat of a Fargo accent -- and the suburb he grew up in is only closer to Minneapolis than the suburb Garrison Keillor grew up in. Kevin's take is more original, to me.

How cool to have a neighbor like that! There was a guy who replaced GK for a while after he retired. He could even sing. But I don't think the show is playing now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 15, 2023, 02:16:40 pm
How cool to have a neighbor like that! There was a guy who replaced GK for a while after he retired. He could even sing. But I don't think the show is playing now.

Yeah, I haven't followed it very closely but I get the feeling it/he was never quite accepted as a substitute.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 15, 2023, 09:47:34 pm
I'm kind of disappointed in the anniversary issue. So far I've given up on two articles, the one on impostor syndrome (wasn't what I thought it would be about) and the one on Austin (way too long).

On the other hand, the articles by Rebecca Mead and Joan Acocella were very entertaining.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 16, 2023, 06:55:22 pm
The only article that interested me was the Salman Rushdie one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 21, 2023, 03:58:04 pm
Well, I guess I learned something today. Since I'd burned through the anniversary issue of TNY and had nothing else to read over lunch, I opened the latest issue of the AARP magazine, the one with Lily Tomlin, Sally Field, Jane Fonda, and Rita Moreno on the cover. I've been getting this magazine as part of my membership and never reading it. To my surprise, there are a lot of interesting articles in the magazine, and unlike so many things in TNY these days--they're short! I think I'm going to go back and look at some of the earlier issues, starting with the one with Dame Helen Mirren on the cover, at least until I get another TNY to read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 21, 2023, 06:19:58 pm
I wrote an article for them once, about attention overload. I obviously didn't learn anything from the experience, because in the opening sentences I said I had 45 tabs open my computer. Nowadays I have many, many more than that.  ::)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 22, 2023, 10:36:10 am
I wrote an article for them once, about attention overload. I obviously didn't learn anything from the experience, because in the opening sentences I said I had 45 tabs open my computer. Nowadays I have many, many more than that.  ::)

 :o

How on earth do you manage that many at one time?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 22, 2023, 11:23:17 am
My thoughts too. It would drive me crazy. I have 11 open now, and have cut myself off.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 22, 2023, 11:31:31 am
:o

How on earth do you manage that many at one time?

Depends on what you mean by "manage." If you mean, how do you open a tab to a new article, say you're going to read it later, or maybe read a few paragraphs right away and plan to finish it later, then never look at it again, it's easy!

Many of them, of course, I do read. But unfortunately the internet has far more interesting reading material than I have time.

And I must not be the only one. Here's a post I wrote on Twitter in 2012 that has been retweeted 3,300 times.

"Like many writers, I have rituals. Before writing, I pour coffee, open the window by my desk, and attempt to read the entire internet."

This sounds self serving and I don't mean it that way, but sometimes I wonder if I'm interested in too many things.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 22, 2023, 12:09:19 pm
After you read something you still leave the tab open?

Why do you all have so many? Why do you need that many open at one time?

Right now I'm on my work laptop, and I have three open--including the one where I'm writing this.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 22, 2023, 01:52:44 pm
After you read something you still leave the tab open?

Why do you all have so many? Why do you need that many open at one time?

Right now I'm on my work laptop, and I have three open--including the one where I'm writing this.

No, once I've read them I close the tab. But I see links to articles all the time that look interesting. For example, just on the window I have open now (I have 12 open windows total, some dedicated to recipes or shopping ideas, some I haven't even opened in a long time for fear of the rabbit hole) I have at least 15 websites and articles related to a story I'm working on (which at the moment is about volunteering, so I have a bunch of nonprofit sites open); plus one or more articles to read for fun from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic, New York Magazine, Slate, Vanity Fair, the Star Tribune and various writers' sites; plus a few pages with useful information, like instructions for using the Fitbit I recently started wearing or tutorial videos related to watercolor painting, which I am about to resume doing.

And almost every page I look at contains one or more interesting links, either embedded in the articles or on the right rail in lists of popular stories or editors' picks.

And that's not even including Facebook and Twitter, not open at the moment although posts on those two sites generate a good portion of the open tabs.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 22, 2023, 01:54:12 pm
I'll have to admit that as I write this it sounds like a mental disorder of some kind -- like hoarding but with less mold.  :laugh:

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 22, 2023, 02:12:54 pm
I'll have to admit that as I write this it sounds like a mental disorder of some kind -- like hoarding but with less mold.  :laugh:

 :laugh:

But why would you keep open a tab you haven't looked at in a very long time for fear of falling down the rabbit hole?

I wouldn't call it a mental disorder, but it sounds a little bit like tearing interesting articles out of hard copies of TNY that you never get around to reading, only in a different medium.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 22, 2023, 03:29:59 pm
I wouldn't call it a mental disorder, but it sounds a little bit like tearing interesting articles out of hard copies of TNY that you never get around to reading, only in a different medium.

Funny you should mention that ...  ::) :laugh: I have fewer ripped-out articles than I do tabs, at least ...

I once wrote a newspaper story about people being overwhelmed by too much to read. I found in the process of doing it that not everybody has that problem. But my magazines and books felt like way more than I could keep up with! Punchline is that this was in the early '90s -- before I was on the internet.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 22, 2023, 04:19:38 pm
Funny you should mention that ...  ::) :laugh: I have fewer ripped-out articles than I do tabs, at least ...

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 22, 2023, 08:33:53 pm
Regarding book collections. I've had to cut myself some slack, or, as I call it, Lee-way.  :laugh:

I don't have a huge collection of fiction, and most of it would be called literature more than fiction. That is all contained in a 12-shelf bookcase that folds in on itself. The rest is nonfiction. I have a whole bookcase of gardening and naturalist books and another one devoted to Scotland and its history. There is a reading nook with a comfy sofa and two end tables piled with books, a coffee table (similarly piled) and a nearby crate of books that are in various stages of being read. Then, there are my bedside tables, one that has books piled on top and a turntable with small books on a shelf. The other bedside table holds my New Yorkers. There is a three-shelf bookcase in the hall for genealogy, American history and other overflow books. For coffee table oversize books, I have a dictionary stand which allows me to display two of them.

That's the downstairs. One of the main reasons I stopped renting out my upstairs was because I wanted to use the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the spare bedroom upstairs. There now is a motley collection of children's books, novels, and permaculture books that cause me pain to see. Every so often, I fill up a box with more books. It goes into the garage and after several months, I take it to donate to a housing project or free little library. But I can hardly believe how long I keep books that I doubt I will read.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 23, 2023, 09:34:02 am
Regarding book collections.

I've managed to donate a few, but so far not nearly enough.

And then I go adding more because you can get them for 99 cents (sometimes two for 99 cents) at the thrift store. There are also inexpensive internet sites where you can get books, too.

Right now I've promised myself that I was going to read an entire series of novels by one author featuring the same two characters, and then donate the whole set to the thrift shop.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 23, 2023, 12:58:23 pm
I pared my collection way down when I downsized and moved to this apartment. Too much so, I now think; sometimes I'll go looking for a book I once owned and can't find it.

Almost all of my books are nonfiction. A friend who reads all or mostly fiction and I guess trusts my taste often asks to borrow books and I'm running out of any to lend. When I first moved into the apartment, I for some reason found my old paperback of The Great Gatsby and reread it for the first time in maybe 20-30 years. It holds up!  :laugh: I think if one had to name a Great American Novel, that might be it. I just ran across an essay posing the possibility that Gatsby was Black, and while I doubt F. Scott Fitzgerald was woke enough to think of such a plot and write it in a way that suggested he was Black without coming right out and saying so, it's at least interesting to consider the book so versatile it could work that way.

I have similar stacks of books I'm in the midst of reading or planning to read, along with stacks of New Yorkers and a couple of other magazines to which I have free subscriptions (OK, if you must know, they're Cooking Light and Real Simple and Vanity Fair. That last one I keep meaning to cancel because I don't really read it and I can't stand the perfume smell.) Most of my subscriptions are digital, though -- the Atlantic, NYT, New York, WaPo, Star Tribune and whatever else.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 23, 2023, 03:06:30 pm
Not sure where I heard this NPR story (maybe it was A1?) but just a day or two ago there was a program about how the new AI apps could be used to cheat on essay tests. The educator who was being interviewed talked a lot about whether it was important for students to be able to expound on the meaning of the green light in TGG. I thought, "what green light? I don't remember a green light in TGG." I just remember the enormous eye on a billboard, the ice, the shirts in many colors, etc. I looked it up and apparently it referred to a light on the end of Daisy and Tom Buchanan's boat dock. So, there you have two of your recent interests intersecting.

The educator also talked about AI's ability to write a good 'compare and contrast' essay. They read part of one comparing The Iliad with Dante's Inferno. This made me think about how C&C essays have grown in importance over the years. I hardly ever remember writing even one, while my children wrote several in their English classes. I think these C&C essays do little to develop critical thinking and reflecting skills.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 23, 2023, 04:02:31 pm
Yeah, we never had to do C&Cs as far as I recall but they don't seem particularly useful.

What upset me was that neither of the high schools my kids attended (we lived about halfway between two, so they went to different ones) offered classes in creative writing. I'm pretty sure there were lit classes (although come to think of it I don't remember seeing them reading any literature in high school, at least not that was assigned). And yes, of course they wrote papers in history class or whatever. But they had no opportunity to write fiction or poetry, as I did in HS. Is that because they went to school in a city and I grew up in in a somewhat wealthier suburb, or did those classes fall victim to budget cuts?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 24, 2023, 01:36:22 pm
I don't recall any creative writing courses in my HS either but we had to write papers in our English classes and some were stories and poems, in addition to lots of essays. I took AP (advanced placement) English for two or three years and the papers were required to be typed and to have chapters or subheadings.

Nowadays, I think students do more one-page essays on related topics that are kept in a three-ring binder so at the end of the semester, they have a coherent record of a topic. At least that's the idea. My daughter wants me to work with the grandchildren on writing stories that they put up on Google Drive. Usually Chapter 1 is about 2 pages long, Chapter 2 is a couple of paragraphs and Chapters 3-5 are all shmushed together in a few lines. These stories start out well, but you know that by page 2 or 3 one of the following is going to happen: aliens from outer space appear; zombies appear; superheroes appear; or all three. The illustrations feature guns and knives. Now, my granddaughter has started writing stories. These are a little more diverse and usually contain a dragon, an island, a castle, a fairy princess, or all four.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 24, 2023, 04:22:10 pm
I don't recall any creative writing courses in my HS either but we had to write papers in our English classes and some were stories and poems, in addition to lots of essays. I took AP (advanced placement) English for two or three years and the papers were required to be typed and to have chapters or subheadings.

Well, I think mine were English classes with writing requirements too. I don't think my kids had that kind of classes at all. The main things I remember were getting an A+ for a druggy poem about a Foghat concert  :laugh: and having a teacher save one of my fictional stories to read to subsequent classes. Oh, and in junior high, "The poetry of Bob Dylan."

Quote
Nowadays, I think students do more one-page essays on related topics that are kept in a three-ring binder so at the end of the semester, they have a coherent record of a topic. At least that's the idea.

Many people don't like writing labeled "essays" -- it's hard to sell essay collections, because they associate the term with dry papers that start with "In this paper, I will show that ..." and end with "So in summary, we have seen that ..." rather than, say, Norah Ephron or Joan Didion or David Foster Wallace.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 25, 2023, 01:37:22 pm
Jesse Eisenberg's S&M in the latest issue isn't knee-slappingly funny, by any means. But it's a pretty decent concept and he doesn't get too carried away with it.

I often wonder if people like Jesse Eisenberg and Mindy Kaling are automatic shoo-ins for publication if they submit a half-decent column? They have agents, after all, which makes a huge difference. I think there's very little the New Yorker will accept unagented.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 25, 2023, 02:00:46 pm
Jesse Eisenberg's S&M in the latest issue isn't knee-slappingly funny, by any means. But it's a pretty decent concept and he doesn't get too carried away with it.

Are you damning with faint praise? I didn't so much as twitch a smile muscle. There were a few clever sentences. That's as much as I can say.

However, there were a couple of really funny cartoons that came afterwards and redeemed the issue for me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 26, 2023, 12:00:59 pm
Are you damning with faint praise? I didn't so much as twitch a smile muscle. There were a few clever sentences. That's as much as I can say.

Hmm ... feels more like encouraging a slow learner. "Come on, New Yorker, you can do this! You're on the right track here; the concept has some potential, now all you have to do is make it funny!"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 26, 2023, 04:49:51 pm
Sounds almost like a good topic for an S&M!

Today I was idly wondering how on earth the comedians make the grim news of today funny. I challenged myself to picvk a current event and try to come up with a scenario for it. (I'd love to hear about it if you challenge yourself.) So, the event I chose was t he meeting of the two presidents of the U.S. and Ukraine. In the comments, I'll tell you the funny story!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 27, 2023, 12:49:10 pm
Sounds almost like a good topic for an S&M!

Today I was idly wondering how on earth the comedians make the grim news of today funny. I challenged myself to picvk a current event and try to come up with a scenario for it. (I'd love to hear about it if you challenge yourself.) So, the event I chose was t he meeting of the two presidents of the U.S. and Ukraine. In the comments, I'll tell you the funny story!

Wait, aren't these the comments?

The masters at making genuine humor from grim news are the writers of The Onion. Their 9/11 issue is classic and they repeat the same grimly funny headline every time there's another mass shooting: "No Way to Stop This, Says Only Nation in Which This Regularly Happens."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 27, 2023, 07:38:44 pm
haha, yes, I should have said, "in future comments." So, here's how I thought we could make this a funny story. We could talk about what the journalists did on the train going to Kiev. Remember, their phones were taken away from them and for this generation, that means they would go bonkers, especially not being able to stare at their screens while traveling. They would actually have to look at each other! There would be brutal fights over reading material. When looking out windows, they would begin to hallucinate like in an episode of Twilight Zone. They would invent phone alternatives, such as using semaphore flags and sending signals from the train's smokestack.

The WaPo and NYT reporters would be put in a ring and the others would bet on who emerged victorious. They would pull out the seats and use the hardware to construct instruments to perform, using the train noises as percussion. They would... you get the idea! What other funny things would they resort to? And would they even make it to Kiev in one piece?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 27, 2023, 10:03:15 pm
That definitely has possibilities!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2023, 06:14:19 pm
I'm not sure what thread we discussed it in, but I just had another instance of that syndrome where you unconsciously type a word that onlt sounds like the one you meant. The worst is when it's a your/you're or a their/they're/there thing because people assume you don't know better. But it's weirder when it's like the one I just did, where you spell it properly but it's a whole different word. I meant to write "the organization couldn't stay closed" but I typed "couldn't stay clothes."

Of course, maybe it happened partly because I don't pronounce the "th" in clothes. Does anyone?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 02, 2023, 10:06:06 pm
Of course, maybe it happened partly because I don't pronounce the "th" in clothes. Does anyone?

(Raises hand) I do.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 02, 2023, 10:55:17 pm
(Raises hand) I do.

Every time you say it, even in a casual manner? If you said, "I wish I'd worn different clothes" there'd be an audible "th"?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2023, 09:42:43 am
Every time you say it, even in a casual manner? If you said, "I wish I'd worn different clothes" there'd be an audible "th"?

Yes. I can't imagine pronouncing it "close."

As for audibility, I suppose you might have to be standing "close" (  ;) ) to me, but the "th" is there.

I make it a point to say Feb-RU-ary, too, instead of Feb-YOU-ary.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 03, 2023, 01:44:23 pm
Yes. I can't imagine pronouncing it "close."

As for audibility, I suppose you might have to be standing "close" (  ;) ) to me, but the "th" is there.

I make it a point to say Feb-RU-ary, too, instead of Feb-YOU-ary.

I say Feb-RU-ary and nuCLEar and things like that.

But I also say close, kinda, musta, gonna and even occasionally ima (which rappers just spell "ima"). I figure, that's American vernacular.

Do you say "kind of" and "going to"?

Maybe I've inherited my tendencies from my British ancestors, who pronounce words like Worcester as Wustr. Maybe German pronunciation is more exacting.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2023, 02:30:49 pm
I say Feb-RU-ary and nuCLEar and things like that.

Doncha just hate it when people say "nook-you-lar"?  ;D

Quote
But I also say close, kinda, musta, gonna and even occasionally ima (which rappers just spell "ima"). I figure, that's American vernacular.

Do you say "kind of" and "going to"?

I would never say "ima" (you mean using it as in "ima gonna go"?). Beyond that, I'd say it depends on the situation. When I speak, "kind of" frequently comes out as something like "kindev." (I'm not sure how to spell that to get the sound across.) And then again it sometimes does come out sounding like "kinda." Similarly, "must have" comes out like a contraction: "must'ev." "Going to" does come out like "gonna," or more likely "gunna," with a "u" sound.

Of course, when I want my writing to "sound" like vernacular speech, I use "kinda."

Incidentally, I once worked with a woman from Pittsburgh. Some of her usages just sounded like what I hear in the central part of the state--but then the southwestern corner of the state received lots of settlers from the middle part of the state, so I suppose some speech patterns persisted.


Quote
Maybe I've inherited my tendencies from my British ancestors, who pronounce words like Worcester as Wustr. Maybe German pronunciation is more exacting.

Unless, of course, you're from New England. Then it's Wustah. Ain't that right, Paul?

At least the British say "LAN-cast-er," with the emphasis on the first syllable. I frequently hear the name of my home town pronounced "Lan-CAST-er" by people who don't live there.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 03, 2023, 05:08:14 pm
Doncha just hate it when people say "nook-you-lar"?  ;D

Yes, I could never believe George Bush kept doing that despite undoubtedly being told hundreds of times that it was incorrect.

Quote
I would never say "ima" (you mean using it as in "ima gonna go"?).

 :laugh: No, that's a fake movie Italian accent. The first time I heard of Ima was when Kanye West jumped onstage during Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the Grammys maybe 20 years ago. (I didn't watch the show but heard about it later online -- I think he was arguing that Beyonc? should have won.) When quoting him, people spelled it "Ima" and of course that's how he pronounced it.

Of course that was back when it was respectable to repeat something Kanye said, but I thought Ima was kind of a fun way to say it, so every now and then I do it consciously. Normally I'd say "I'm gonna." Or maybe more like "Mgonna" or even "Ngonna."

Quote
Beyond that, I'd say it depends on the situation. When I speak, "kind of" frequently comes out as something like "kindev." (I'm not sure how to spell that to get the sound across.) And then again it sometimes does come out sounding like "kinda." Similarly, "must have" comes out like a contraction: "must'ev." "Going to" does come out like "gonna," or more likely "gunna," with a "u" sound.

I say "kind'v." If there's a letter in there at all it's ə.

This conversation reminds me of this funny bit by the comedian Gary Gulman (his standup special, "The Great Depresh" is great -- he's from Boston so if you guys don't know him, Paul must). This whole thing is pretty funny, and there's a passage in the middle about contractions specifically. He mentions "we'd've"!






Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2023, 05:49:44 pm
Incidentally, tomorrow (March 4) is National Grammar Day.

https://www.wikidates.org/holiday/national-grammar-day_691.html (https://www.wikidates.org/holiday/national-grammar-day_691.html)

Somebody in my company posted an article about it on our intranet, but, unfortunately, I can't find it.

He listed several books about grammar, but, in my view, he committed the unpardonable sin of omitting Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, by Lynne Trusse.

I must have gotten rid of my copy because I can't find it.  :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on March 03, 2023, 06:08:46 pm


Unless, of course, you're from New England. Then it's Wustah. Ain't that right, Paul?

You bet it is!  The minor league team for the Red Sox used to be in Pawtucket, RI.  They were called the "Paw Sox".  However, Pawtucket lost out to Worcester (cuz they built a better stadium).  So, whadya gonna call 'em?  The "Wo Sox", prounounced "whoah".  Gotta love New England.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 03, 2023, 06:15:13 pm
He listed several books about grammar, but, in my view, he committed the unpardonable sin of omitting Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, by Lynne Trusse.

Although isn't that technically about punctuation? Or do you feel punctuation is a subset of grammar?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on March 03, 2023, 06:16:37 pm
Katy, no, I've never heard of Gary G.  But it was kinda funny.  I liked the conTRACtor/CONtractor thingie. 

Here's a weird New Englandism:  Let's say you said you went skiing in New Hamster.  If I also went there, I'd reply: "so didn't I".  I know it sounds strange, but it comes very naturally.  It simply means "me too".  I think Way with Words radio show did a piece on that; I should look it up. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on March 03, 2023, 06:24:14 pm
I love Eats Shoots and Leaves.  There's another good 'un called Have You Eaten Grandma?: Or, the Life-Saving Importance of Correct Punctuation, Grammar, and Good English by Gyles Brandreth.

I came across another one that I have yet to read:  Between You and Me:  Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris.  And the sequel: Greek to Me:  Adventures of a Comma Queen.  Fittingly, she writes for The New Yorker.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on March 03, 2023, 06:39:20 pm
I found this on the grammarphobia blog:  (edited to add:  why is it when you copy/paste an article, BM fucks up the punctuation? Quotes and apostrophes turn into ???  I don't have the energy to edit this thing.)

Can ?so don?t I? mean ?so do I??
January 17, 2018

Q: There?s a grammatical quirk in northern New England in which a negative is used affirmatively: Example: ?I love it when the leaves turn in the fall.? ? ?Oh, so don?t I. It?s my favorite time of year.? Any ideas where that might have come from?

A: You?re right that this quirky use of ?so don?t I? is peculiar to New England. A native Bostonian would understand it immediately as meaning ?so do I,? while a Californian would probably hear just the opposite??I don?t.?

The linguist William Labov has said this use of ?so don?t I? represents a ?reversal of polarity,? a kind of construction in which ?negative comes to mean positive or positive negative.? (From his 1974 paper ?Linguistic Change as a Form of Communication.?)

Labov, an expert in the fields of sociolinguistics and regional variation, says the usage is common to eastern New England. It has also been called ?the Massachusetts negative positive,? and research has shown that it extends into Maine.

He and his colleagues conducted a study in which subjects were given this question: ?Somebody said, I like liver and then somebody else said, So don?t I. What do you think he meant??

A majority of those from outside eastern New England interpreted the answer in the negative: ?I do not.? But all the native New Englanders interpreted it as positive: ?I do too.?

As Labov notes, ?So don?t I has risen to the level of an overt stereotype in eastern New England.? However, ?most outsiders are puzzled by the apparent contradiction between the positive so and the negative n?t.?

The usage consists of the adverb ?so,? followed by a negative auxiliary verb (?don?t,? ?didn?t,? ?can?t,? ?couldn?t,? etc.), and a noun or pronoun subject.

It?s always spoken in response to an affirmative statement. And despite the negative ?-n?t,? the speaker is being affirmative too.

Labov notes a similarity with a ?tag question? that?s another form of reverse polarity: ?Don?t I though!?

Another similar usage has been noted by the Yale University linguist Laurence R. Horn. In Smoky Mountain English, someone who responds to a suggestion or invitation by saying, ?I don?t care to? actually means ?I don?t mind if I do? or ?I?m pleased to.?

As Horn writes, this usage is as likely as ?so don?t I? to be ?misinterpreted by outlanders.? (From his paper ?Multiple Negation in English and Other Languages,? 2010.)

Jim Wood, another Yale linguist, argues that there?s a shade of difference between a New Englander?s affirmative ?so don?t I? and a straightforward ?so do I.? A speaker who responds with ?so don?t I,? he says, is correcting an assumption.

In his paper ?Affirmative Semantics with Negative Morphosyntax? (2014), Wood uses the following exchange to illustrate his point. Speaker A: ?I play guitar.? Speaker B: ?Yeah, but so don?t I.?

Here Speaker A seems to imply he?s the only one (that is, in the relevant context) who plays the guitar. Speaker B?s response sets him straight, and can be seen as meaning ?It?s not true that I don?t play the guitar too.?

Wood, as a native of southern New Hampshire, has firsthand experience of the usage. He (along with Horn, Raffaella Zanuttini, and others) collaborated on a broad-ranging language study, the Yale Diversity Project, which researched several dozen usages in addition to ?so don?t I.?

The study found that ?so don?t I? had been recorded as far north as York, ME, as far south as New Haven, CT, and as far west as Erie, PA.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 03, 2023, 07:43:17 pm
IDK, Paul, but that sounds like an excellent subject for a "Shouts & Murmurs" column! Or don't it? I'm confused.

The nearest thing I can think of is a Native American custom described in the film "Little Big Man" about an "opposite person" who walks backward, says yes when he means no, and that he likes something when he hates it, etc. The scene provided a bit of comic relief.

There was also a depiction of a Two Spirit couple in the film that was a bit overdone and comical but also insightful.

I'm also reminded of the story about the English instructor who was declaiming that, in English, two negatives make a positive, but "two positives never make a negative." From the back of the room was heard, "Yeah, right."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on March 03, 2023, 09:34:38 pm
I'm also reminded of the story about the English instructor who was declaiming that, in English, two negatives make a positive, but "two positives never make a negative." From the back of the room was heard, "Yeah, right."

Love it!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2023, 12:24:12 pm
Although isn't that technically about punctuation? Or do you feel punctuation is a subset of grammar?

He listed other books that according to their titles seemed to have more to do with punctuation than with grammar, so I added Eats, Shoots, and Leaves to the list.

If I remember, when I go back on the work laptop next week, I'll make a list of the titles.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2023, 12:27:01 pm
I came across another one that I have yet to read:  Between You and Me:  Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris.  And the sequel: Greek to Me:  Adventures of a Comma Queen.  Fittingly, she writes for The New Yorker.

I believe these were on the list.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 04, 2023, 11:46:04 pm
Katy, no, I've never heard of Gary G.  But it was kinda funny.  I liked the conTRACtor/CONtractor thingie. 

I highly recommend his standup (on HBO or Netflix?) called "The Great Depresh."

As for "so don't I," thanks for the warning for next time I visit New England. Now I won't have to give the person a blank look and say, "You don't what?"


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 06, 2023, 08:45:12 pm
I once wrote a newspaper story about people being overwhelmed by too much to read. I found in the process of doing it that not everybody has that problem. But my magazines and books felt like way more than I could keep up with! Punchline is that this was in the early '90s -- before I was on the internet.

When I lived in Michigan and my children were little, I received a lot of magazines because my husband was brand director of a liquor line. You couldn't advertise on television back then, so he only had magazines and special events to spend his $20 million ad budget on. I had a goal of reading a magazine per day, and I had to raise it to several per day later. I was a magazine reading freak! Those were the days...I guess some of those magazines have stopped publishing. Martha Stewart Living has and many others. So much work for journalists and photographers has come to an end. I wonder how people are getting by.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 07, 2023, 06:02:59 pm
I guess some of those magazines have stopped publishing. Martha Stewart Living has and many others. So much work for journalists and photographers has come to an end. I wonder how people are getting by.

It has gotten a lot harder. Several of the magazines I've written for are RIP. Remember More? Also, Better Homes and Garden's Family Money, not sure about Working Mother, I think Parents is still around but all online now ... There are a lot more places to publish now but the pay is much worse. I once heard (this may be untrue or dated) TNY pays $10,000 for a print story and $150 for online. And the online Shouts & Murders are often better!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 08, 2023, 09:32:00 am
Martha Stewart Living is no longer published? I'm shocked!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: CellarDweller on March 08, 2023, 03:56:44 pm
(https://i0.wp.com/marcellusdrilling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/its-a-good-thing.jpg?fit=240%2C240&ssl=1)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 09, 2023, 01:10:51 pm
Isn't it amazing that she never looks any different?

Meanwhile, although things are hard economically for writers and photographers, my personal expenditures for subscriptions to newspapers and magazines has gone way up. Although I'm spending less on the New York Times because they cut a deal with me, I must spend close to $1K a year, subscribing to the Colorado Sun and various other publications. And my New Yorker subscription has more than doubled. Where's all this money going if not to the content creators?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 09, 2023, 02:47:44 pm
Isn't it amazing that she never looks any different?

Meanwhile, although things are hard economically for writers and photographers, my personal expenditures for subscriptions to newspapers and magazines has gone way up. Although I'm spending less on the New York Times because they cut a deal with me, I must spend close to $1K a year, subscribing to the Colorado Sun and various other publications. And my New Yorker subscription has more than doubled. Where's all this money going if not to the content creators?

Good question. Journalism has never been a road to riches. But the staff of the NYT and the New Yorker must get paid enough to live in New York, at least maybe in Queens or New Jersey. The staff of the Colorado Sun, on the other hand, may not be able to keep up with skyrocketing home prices in Denver.

And thanks, you tipped me off about that NYT discount and now I have it, too!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 09, 2023, 04:36:46 pm
Good question. Journalism has never been a road to riches. But the staff of the NYT and the New Yorker must get paid enough to live in New York, at least maybe in Queens or New Jersey. The staff of the Colorado Sun, on the other hand, may not be able to keep up with skyrocketing home prices in Denver.

By "staff," do you mean people like the fact-checkers (assuming they still have them) and Gottlieb, and so forth, as opposed to the writers?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on March 09, 2023, 05:01:16 pm
And thanks, you tipped me off about that NYT discount and now I have it, too!

Do tell!  Or did I miss it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 09, 2023, 07:32:09 pm
I was paying $4 a month a year ago but I noticed my subscription going up, until it was $22 a month! I went to the online subscription management area and tried to unsubscribe. They asked why and I said I couldn't afford $22/month. This was in a chat box. They asked me if I'd continue at $4/month and I said sure. Hope it works for you too!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 09, 2023, 07:36:24 pm
By "staff," do you mean people like the fact-checkers (assuming they still have them) and Gottlieb, and so forth, as opposed to the writers?

No, I meant writers, too -- people who get a regular paycheck and a w2, as opposed to freelancers (who get a 1099 instead of a w2, FWIW). So you know in the little bios on the page after the ToC, some say so-and-so is a staff writer, or has been a staff writer since 2008 or whatever, and then others just identify the person as a playwright or novelist or name their most recent book and so on. In my most recent edition I count six of each. Or should I say six of one and half a dozen of the other.  :laugh:

You can bet TNY has fact checkers, as many magazines do but perhaps fewer now than in the past. Newspapers, to my knowledge, have never had fact checkers. They have editors and copy editors, which are different. Editors change stories in ways they think will make them read better. They also ostensibly look for unanswered questions or other areas where the stories could use more information, or cut parts they think are unnecessary or will keep them from fitting a particular spot on the page. And to some extent, they do fact checking. But copy editors do more granular fact checking -- they'll make sure names, addresses and things like that are correct and, in digital copy, check links to make sure they go to where they're supposed to. They kind of share headline writing. Reporters suggest headlines but someone else makes the call.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 09, 2023, 07:42:44 pm
Do tell!  Or did I miss it?

I was paying $4 a month a year ago but I noticed my subscription going up, until it was $22 a month! I went to the online subscription management area and tried to unsubscribe. They asked why and I said I couldn't afford $22/month. This was in a chat box. They asked me if I'd continue at $4/month and I said sure. Hope it works for you too!

After Lee mentioned this, I called their subscription department. At first they offered something that was cheaper than what I was paying but not as cheap. I said, "My friend said she's only paying $1 a week." So then they offered that. Apparently the higher rate was for "all access," meaning recipes, games, etc., that I could easily live without, so I took the $1 deal. But lately I've noticed ads saying "all access" is now only 25 cents more, or $1.25/wk. That's for six months, after which I'm sure the price will shoot up again.

nytimes.com/subscription/all-access? (http://nytimes.com/subscription/all-access?)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 09, 2023, 09:51:48 pm
No, I meant writers, too -- people who get a regular paycheck and a w2, as opposed to freelancers (who get a 1099 instead of a w2, FWIW). So you know in the little bios on the page after the ToC, some say so-and-so is a staff writer, or has been a staff writer since 2008 or whatever, and then others just identify the person as a playwright or novelist or name their most recent book and so on. In my most recent edition I count six of each. Or should I say six of one and half a dozen of the other.  :laugh:

Maybe TNY has its own idiosyncratic definition of staff writer. In the little bio section I've seen Jill Lepore identified as a staff writer--I know I saw it because it so surprised me, because of what I would understand a staff writer to be. I would think of a staff writer as a person who gets a regular paycheck and a w2--like a newspaper reporter, maybe--but Jill Lepore holds an endowed chair at Harvard. Yet she's considered a staff writer.

Quote
You can bet TNY has fact checkers, as many magazines do but perhaps fewer now than in the past. Newspapers, to my knowledge, have never had fact checkers. They have editors and copy editors, which are different. Editors change stories in ways they think will make them read better. They also ostensibly look for unanswered questions or other areas where the stories could use more information, or cut parts they think are unnecessary or will keep them from fitting a particular spot on the page. And to some extent, they do fact checking. But copy editors do more granular fact checking -- they'll make sure names, addresses and things like that are correct and, in digital copy, check links to make sure they go to where they're supposed to. They kind of share headline writing. Reporters suggest headlines but someone else makes the call.

I've been an editor and a copy editor in old-fashioned print media.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 10, 2023, 11:05:59 am
I just noticed something on the back cover of the Feb. 27th issue. Apparently you can watch five of the Oscar shorts at newyorker.com/video! I've seen "Night Ride" which is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film. It's very good and humorous too. I'm not familiar with The New Yorker Studios but want to learn more!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 10, 2023, 12:36:36 pm
Maybe TNY has its own idiosyncratic definition of staff writer. In the little bio section I've seen Jill Lepore identified as a staff writer--I know I saw it because it so surprised me, because of what I would understand a staff writer to be. I would think of a staff writer as a person who gets a regular paycheck and a w2--like a newspaper reporter, maybe--but Jill Lepore holds an endowed chair at Harvard. Yet she's considered a staff writer.

I think she does both. Same as Nicholas Lemann, who TNY says has been a staff writer since 1999 and became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in 2003 (thanks, Wikipedia!). Louis Menand has been a staff writer since 2001 and is also an English professor at Harvard. Atul Gawande was a staff writer until 2021 while also being a surgeon. Meanwhile, those people did all kinds of additional things, including writing bestselling books. Obviously they either have superpowers or they really made the most of their summers off!

There must be some kind of a paycheck/w2 situation for staffers or why would TNY distinguish between them, sometimes within the same person? For example, TNY calls Menand a contributor since 1991 and a staff writer since 2001.

If you google their pay, it gets complicated. Salaries.com says salaries range from $1 million to $1.3 million. Perhaps they accidentally added an extra digit. Meanwhile, Glassdoor, potentially somewhat more reliable because it's based on employee reporting, shows a range of salaries for various positions and says a journalist/reporter makes $91,000. That seems pretty low considering the job. Other staff salaries are definitely not enough to live comfortably in NYC; a fact checker, for instance, makes $63,000 according to Glassdoor. Maybe they work remotely from Wyoming or sumpn'. All the Glassdoor listings are based on one person's reporting their own salary, though.

I also happened across this NYT article about a union battle at TNY. Apparently, the magazine's "stars" did not join the union. As a union member and supporter, I'm not sure I want to read it. http://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html)


Quote
I've been an editor and a copy editor in old-fashioned print media.

Oh really, where?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2023, 02:38:18 pm
I think she does both.

I'm sure she does, but I question if she's running back and forth between Cambridge and NYC on a regular basis. I wonder if she even has a desk in TNY office. This is kind of what I mean when I say perhaps TNY has its own definition of what a staff writer is. Conventionally, I would think of a staff writer as somebody who goes into an office every day and perhaps gets assigned stories rather than write about things that interest them--and I presume Jill Lepore et al. aren't getting assigned stories to write--though, of course, they may be.

Quote
Obviously they either have superpowers or they really made the most of their summers off!

No doubt they also have graduate student TAs.  ;D

Quote
Oh really, where?

You want me to go back to high school and college, where I edited the paper?  Checking references Being one half of a staff of two for the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania's magazine (copy editor, editor--and also producer of most of the content). Copy editing most of my colleagues' work for the eight years I wrote a history for a living. In my current job I'm categorized as a proofreader, but the work still involves fact checking and conventional stuff like fixing grammar and punctuation because the editors have too much to do with technical/tech stuff and managing committees of question writers and teaching new writers how to write questions to pay attention to their serial commas and so forth.

Then there's the two summers I spent back in ancient times as a general assignment reporter for my home town morning newspaper, where I had to deal with copy editors and the editor--not to mention snooty reporters who thought they were above the kind of stories I wrote. One assignment was to cover a suburban high school graduation--and you were expected to get every student's name in the article, and it had to be correct. One of the reporters made some sort of smart remark about how of little importance those stories were. I kind of snapped at her that if it was her kid graduating, it would be important to her. She had no comeback to that.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 10, 2023, 03:37:05 pm
I'm sure she does, but I question if she's running back and forth between Cambridge and NYC on a regular basis. I wonder if she even has a desk in TNY office. This is kind of what I mean when I say perhaps TNY has its own definition of what a staff writer is. Conventionally, I would think of a staff writer as somebody who goes into an office every day and perhaps gets assigned stories rather than write about things that interest them--and I presume Jill Lepore et al. aren't getting assigned stories to write--though, of course, they may be.

Right. I don't picture Lepore, Lemann and Menand being required to show up 8 hours a day M-F, or anything like that. They might even be part-time staffers. Or, as you suggest, "staff writer" may be somewhat of a meaningless title granted to skilled writers who contribute to the TNY a lot. Whether there's a w2 involved, no way of knowing.

Quote
You want me to go back to high school and college, where I edited the paper?  Checking references Being one half of a staff of two for the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania's magazine (copy editor, editor--and also producer of most of the content). Copy editing most of my colleagues' work for the eight years I wrote a history for a living. In my current job I'm categorized as a proofreader, but the work still involves fact checking and conventional stuff like fixing grammar and punctuation because the editors have too much to do with technical/tech stuff and managing committees of question writers and teaching new writers how to write questions to pay attention to their serial commas and so forth.

Then there's the two summers I spent back in ancient times as a general assignment reporter for my home town morning newspaper, where I had to deal with copy editors and the editor--not to mention snooty reporters who thought they were above the kind of stories I wrote. One assignment was to cover a suburban high school graduation--and you were expected to get every student's name in the article, and it had to be correct. One of the reporters made some sort of smart remark about how of little importance those stories were. I kind of snapped at her that if it was her kid graduating, it would be important to her. She had no comeback to that.

Nice career! I'm impressed that a city big enough to have a daily paper and suburbs would also list the grads' names in the suburbs.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 10, 2023, 05:09:21 pm
Nice career! I'm impressed that a city big enough to have a daily paper and suburbs would also list the grads' names in the suburbs.

"Suburbs" may be relative.  ;D  Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is what I would call a small city, but back in the day it had three broadsheet newspapers, a daily morning, a daily evening, and a Sunday. The two dailies were not morning and evening editions of the same paper. They were two separate papers with two separate staffs, though they used the same newsroom. One family published all three papers. (They also owned a local radio station and the local TV station.) The morning paper was Democrat, the evening paper Republican; I think the Sunday paper was non-partisan. I don't remember what the staffing was for the Sunday paper, but it was independent of the dailies; my high-school journalism teacher, the man who taught me to write, was a sports writer for the Sunday News.

It's been years now that the dailies have been collapsed into one paper that in terms of size is much smaller than the old papers. They print op-eds that are both liberal and conservative. (When I would go to visit my dad, I would be surprised at the number of anti-Trump letters to the editor.) They do have a presence online, but I've never checked it out. Maybe I should one of these days. The Sunday paper is still pretty big.

And the "paper" is printed on some pretty crappy paper, not the good newsprint like in the old days.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 10, 2023, 05:28:29 pm
....Whether there's a w2 involved, no way of knowing.

Probably a 1099 form instead.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 14, 2023, 09:25:07 pm
The March 6th issue was quite funny, just not the "Shouts & Murmurs." The front cover was so funny and Anthony Lane's review of Cocaine Bear was hilarious.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 20, 2023, 12:56:35 pm
Do read Jill Lepore on seed catalogs (March 20). Apparently she's quite fond of beets.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 20, 2023, 01:44:47 pm
In the new issue I read the article about the Oscar streaker. Surprised about how long it was but it turns out that the guy, named Robert Opel, had a pretty eventful life. Too bad he and so many of his generation are gone so soon.

Also surprising that the magazine reviewed Spare so favorably. They give a lot of credit to the ghostwriter for making the story almost Shakespearian in scope.

Finishing up the February 6 issue, I found another worthy article, "The First Composer" by Alex Ross. It's about Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval abbess in Germany. Her teachings, works of literature and music are surprisingly modern and applicable today. I'm going to rewatch the movie about her, "Vision" which is widely available on YouTube, Amazon Prime and Netflix.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 20, 2023, 04:07:43 pm
Probably a 1099 form instead.

But if so, what's the difference between a staff writer and a contributor? I figured staff writer must come with a steady paycheck and benefits.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 20, 2023, 04:18:43 pm
"Suburbs" may be relative.  ;D  Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is what I would call a small city, but back in the day it had three broadsheet newspapers, a daily morning, a daily evening, and a Sunday. The two dailies were not morning and evening editions of the same paper. They were two separate papers with two separate staffs, though they used the same newsroom. One family published all three papers. (They also owned a local radio station and the local TV station.) The morning paper was Democrat, the evening paper Republican; I think the Sunday paper was non-partisan. I don't remember what the staffing was for the Sunday paper, but it was independent of the dailies; my high-school journalism teacher, the man who taught me to write, was a sports writer for the Sunday News.

It's been years now that the dailies have been collapsed into one paper that in terms of size is much smaller than the old papers. They print op-eds that are both liberal and conservative.

Wow, three papers for a city of less than 60,000! Similar situation here, though the city is bigger. Papers were owned by the same family and in the same building (though the Sunday paper was part of the morning paper). I think they merged in 1981. Similar thing with the New Orleans Times-Picayune, though I'm not sure what year they merged. Early to mid-'80s, I think.

Don't all papers run both liberal and conservative op-eds, but go one way or another in their editorials? Both of the papers I've worked for lean liberal in their editorials, but I remember the Times-Picayune scandalized everybody by endorsing George H.W. Bush. Ha -- little did we know how great George H. W. Bush would look someday!




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 20, 2023, 04:32:34 pm
But if so, what's the difference between a staff writer and a contributor? I figured staff writer must come with a steady paycheck and benefits.

This from Quora might shed a little light on the subject:
"What would the salary for a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine be?

In the early-to-mid-aughts, Dan Baum received an offer of $75K/year for 30,000 published words. He was able to get this bumped to $90K/year in return for exclusivity[1]
. I?m not sure this sheds much light on what the average salary would be for a New Yorker staff writer, but it?s a data point, anyway."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 20, 2023, 06:17:28 pm
This from Quora might shed a little light on the subject:
"What would the salary for a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine be?

In the early-to-mid-aughts, Dan Baum received an offer of $75K/year for 30,000 published words. He was able to get this bumped to $90K/year in return for exclusivity[1]
. I?m not sure this sheds much light on what the average salary would be for a New Yorker staff writer, but it?s a data point, anyway."

Right, I saw the salaries listed somewhere and they were similarly unimpressive, considering the prestige of the position. Anyway, if they get a regular salary they'd be a w-2 employee, unless they're working under an independent-operator contract of some kind. The freelance contributors paid by the piece would get 1099s.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2023, 08:29:41 am
Don't all papers run both liberal and conservative op-eds, but go one way or another in their editorials? Both of the papers I've worked for lean liberal in their editorials, but I remember the Times-Picayune scandalized everybody by endorsing George H.W. Bush. Ha -- little did we know how great George H. W. Bush would look someday!

That I wouldn't know. My point is, back in the day, the Lancaster papers didn't.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2023, 08:31:56 am
Right, I saw the salaries listed somewhere and they were similarly unimpressive, considering the prestige of the position. Anyway, if they get a regular salary they'd be a w-2 employee, unless they're working under an independent-operator contract of some kind. The freelance contributors paid by the piece would get 1099s.

Isn't that part of the pay package? "We're not going to pay you a whole lot, but, hey, you're working for The New Yorker!"  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2023, 08:36:58 am
I always read Ben Taub, but I gave up on his piece in the March 6 issue. I thought it might be an interesting "procedural," but it wasn't. It was just too long and too complicated.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 21, 2023, 10:23:55 am
That I wouldn't know. My point is, back in the day, the Lancaster papers didn't.

Oh sorry, I didn't get that. You said the combined paper printed both. I thought that was your first mention of op-eds, but I see that you said that when there were multiple papers, one was Democrat and another Republican. Often those labels apply to the stance of the editorials as opposed to the op-eds. For example, my paper and the NYT and the Washington Post all lean left in their editorials (though they probably tried to mix it up now and then by endorsing an occasional Republican back when Republicans were relatively normal). But the op-eds they publish are a mix.

Isn't that part of the pay package? "We're not going to pay you a whole lot, but, hey, you're working for The New Yorker!"  ;D

I suppose, but you can't buy your groceries with prestige. And you couldn't live in NYC for $75,000 a year -- unless, of course, you were also a surgeon or a dean at an Ivy League school.

   
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 21, 2023, 12:24:17 pm
Do read Jill Lepore on seed catalogs (March 20). Apparently she's quite fond of beets.  :)

So she is! But beets are minor players in the eating world, perhaps grown mostly for curiosity's sake. They're ugly in and out of the ground but when you go to the effort to clean, pare, and cut them up, they're really beautiful. They taste really good as long as you don't subject them to the "Harvard" treatment. People used to can and pickle them and now most people don't know them any other way.

One of the reasons I don't read seed catalogues is that I get bedazzled by illustrations and copy and order seeds I shouldn't have for plants I shouldn't grow. The only catalogue I receive nowadays is J. L. Hudson's of La Honda, CA, "The Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds." It is a no-nonsense black-and-white printed booklet that has been published for more than 100 years. 

I thought of you, Kathryn, when Lepore followed up a verbose quote with "Wait, what?" Did she steal from you or is that kind of a journalist thing?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2023, 01:18:31 pm
With each paper "speaking" to its own constituents without attempting to be "fair and balanced," it was kind of like an antediluvian social network.  ;D

Or maybe I should say prelapsarian. ...  8)

I suppose, but you can't buy your groceries with prestige. And you couldn't live in NYC for $75,000 a year -- unless, of course, you were also a surgeon or a dean at an Ivy League school.

Yeah, I know, I was just jokin'.

Poor ink-stained wretches. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 21, 2023, 01:26:30 pm
So she is! But beets are minor players in the eating world, perhaps grown mostly for curiosity's sake. They're ugly in and out of the ground but when you go to the effort to clean, pare, and cut them up, they're really beautiful. They taste really good as long as you don't subject them to the "Harvard" treatment. People used to can and pickle them and now most people don't know them any other way.

I've had Harvard beets. They are abominable. I like pickled beets, but I understand they are very bad for you--an awful lot of salt, like just about anything pickled.

Lepore mentions roasting them (I think it's roasting), and that might be interesting to try.

Quote
One of the reasons I don't read seed catalogues is that I get bedazzled by illustrations and copy and order seeds I shouldn't have for plants I shouldn't grow. The only catalogue I receive nowadays is J. L. Hudson's of La Honda, CA, "The Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds." It is a no-nonsense black-and-white printed booklet that has been published for more than 100 years. 

I think she addresses the bedazzlement, too, or sort of.

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I thought of you, Kathryn, when Lepore followed up a verbose quote with "Wait, what?" Did she steal from you or is that kind of a journalist thing?

I've heard characters on TV shows use that expression.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 21, 2023, 08:31:22 pm
With each paper "speaking" to its own constituents without attempting to be "fair and balanced," it was kind of like an antediluvian social network.  ;D

Or maybe I should say prelapsarian. ...  8)

Wait, what?  :laugh: I'm not following. But to clarify my post, the newspaper political leanings I mentioned were all on the editorial page, not on the news pages. That is, if the newspaper's editorial board endorses a candidate or takes a side in some local partisan issue, they say so in an editorial, not in the news pages. The news reporters make every effort to be fair and balanced, consciously doing their best not to let their reporting favor one candidate or the other, for example. Hence we have situations like Hillary Clinton's dreaded emails in 2016. That was also the DOJ attempting to be fair and balanced (or sumpn') but newspaper reporters, in an effort to be fair to both sides, sometimes go overboard with false equivalencies.

To take one example, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is famously extremely conservative. But their news coverage is considered balanced and very good.

So it's OK for the editorial page to not be fair and balanced. It's the equivalent of Tucker Carlson -- he can be as unfair and unbalanced as he likes, as can Rachel Maddow, because they're pundits/commentators, not reporters. Of course, regardless they should tell the truth and Tucker clearly does not.

Fox's straight news department was semi-well regarded but it was always teetering on the brink, especially with what the network would let it cover. That has pissed off at least a couple of normal reporters -- Shepard Smith quit right while he was on the air. Chris Wallace recently switched networks; he's a respectable journalist and I've long wondered how he lasted so long.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 21, 2023, 08:34:29 pm
I thought of you, Kathryn, when Lepore followed up a verbose quote with "Wait, what?" Did she steal from you or is that kind of a journalist thing?

I saw her, or somebody, say that recently and thought of me, too. No, I've been using it for years on years because I like my writing to be conversational. I mean, I typically wouldn't use it in a news story except a really feature-y fun one. But I use it on Facebook, I use it in essays. I'm pretty sure I've used it here.

I don't mean to sound like I'm constantly saying it (I hope).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 22, 2023, 08:57:17 am
Wait, what?  :laugh: I'm not following. But to clarify my post, the newspaper political leanings I mentioned were all on the editorial page, not on the news pages.

Sorry. I thought we were talking about the op-ed page or pages, not the news. Back in the day, the Republican (evening) paper did not run op-eds that supported a Democratic position, and vice versa for the morning (Democrat) paper. Today in the single paper I typically see op-eds that support either position.

But then I probably shouldn't have said op-ed either, because what they're really doing is running syndicated columns from both positions, Republican vs. Democrat, Conservative vs. Liberal. That didn't happen in the distant past. So if you read the morning paper, you got the Democratic position, and if you read the evening paper, you got the Republican position. It was like reading things that supported views that you already held. Sort of like some people do on the internet today. ...

Quote
Fox's straight news department was semi-well regarded but it was always teetering on the brink, especially with what the network would let it cover. That has pissed off at least a couple of normal reporters -- Shepard Smith quit right while he was on the air. Chris Wallace recently switched networks; he's a respectable journalist and I've long wondered how he lasted so long.

I've had the impression that our local Fox news is perfectly fine in its reporting, with no real difference among the local Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC affiliates. I used to wonder what Chris Wallace's father thought of him as a journalist.

There is a line in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy (one of my favorite films) where James Cagney, as George M. Cohan, tells the actor playing FDR that a certain newspaper would never print anything good about the President because it's a Republican paper.  ;D

I've always felt that Times-Picayune was a funny name for a newspaper (what's Picayune anyway?), sort of like the Hooterville World Guardian.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 22, 2023, 11:16:25 am
Sorry. I thought we were talking about the op-ed page or pages, not the news. Back in the day, the Republican (evening) paper did not run op-eds that supported a Democratic position, and vice versa for the morning (Democrat) paper. Today in the single paper I typically see op-eds that support either position.

Oh, I guess I was confused because I've never seen a paper whose op-eds were all one side or the other, so I was confused by the "fair and balanced." All the papers I'm familiar with run a mix.

I used to think there were far more far-right syndicated columnists than far-left, which I still believe used to be the case. But now, I'm not sure. There are still no far-left syndicated columnists in mainstream papers, I don't think. But far right? MAGA types certainly wouldn't think any are far right enough -- none of the NYT conservative columnists supports Donald Trump, for example. And MAGAs would probably find, I don't know, Russell Baker to be part of the media's-liberal-agenda-woke-mob-out-to-destroy-America.

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But then I probably shouldn't have said op-ed either, because what they're really doing is running syndicated columns from both positions, Republican vs. Democrat, Conservative vs. Liberal. That didn't happen in the distant past. So if you read the morning paper, you got the Democratic position, and if you read the evening paper, you got the Republican position. It was like reading things that supported views that you already held. Sort of like some people do on the internet today.

Well, since op-ed just means opposite the editorial page (I used to always think of it as "opinions and editorials" but I guess it doesn't), I don't think its partisanship or lack thereof is dictated. That said, as long as I've been paying attention (maybe since college), larger city newspapers have run a mix.

People do seem to read all one or the other on the internet. Me included; aside from mainstream newspapers most of my online reading is left-leaning: TNY, the Atlantic, Slate. I do, however, read Ross Douthat, David Brooks and Bret Stephens from time to time.

Today on Twitter, I was just marveling about how the way far-right-wingers think of left-wingers is just cartoonish. Like, it's not enough to just say they favor affirmative action or something; they want to destroy America with their woke (whatever they think that means) agenda. Joe Biden does [fill in the blank with ridiculous things of which there's no evidence, including stuff Trump actually did do, with evidence].

Of course, they might say the same of me but I read mainstream (i.e., not partisan) news and I get data from places like the CDC, which they also distrust. The only sources they apparently trust are right-wing media, and apparently still do even after Tucker et. al. were found to be disavowing their on-air opinions behind the scenes. The fervid Fox fans probably didn't even see that, or didn't believe it.

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I've had the impression that our local Fox news is perfectly fine in its reporting, with no real difference among the local Fox, CBS, ABC, and NBC affiliates. I used to wonder what Chris Wallace's father thought of him as a journalist.

Same with our local Fox. I don't watch any of them but I've heard no complaints. The husband of a former boss worked there and was an outspoken liberal. AFAIK, it only applies to the national network.

I've wondered that about Chris Wallace, too, but I think he's a pretty good one. At no time when he was on Fox did he seem in the same group as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, etc. In interviews with conservatives he asked challenging questions. Whether Mike, as more of an investigative journalist, would be proud of Chris, more of an interviewer/debate moderator, probably depends on how picky Mike was.

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There is a line in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy (one of my favorite films) where James Cagney, as George M. Cohan, tells the actor playing FDR that a certain newspaper would never print anything good about the President because it's a Republican paper.  ;D

Well, there again he may have been referring to the editorials as opposed to the news or maybe even the op-eds. (This concept of op-eds that all go one way or the other is new to me.)

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I've always felt that Times-Picayune was a funny name for a newspaper (what's Picayune anyway?), sort of like the Hooterville World Guardian.  ;D

It's the name of a Spanish coin. And since it was something like a penny, it referred to the cost of the paper and also means petty or trivial.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 22, 2023, 12:03:05 pm
Oh, I guess I was confused because I've never seen a paper whose op-eds were all one side or the other, so I was confused by the "fair and balanced." All the papers I'm familiar with run a mix.

I was just trying to be snarky. If I remember correctly, at one time Fox News tried to sell itself as "fair and balanced." Of course these days it's nothing of the kind, if it ever really was.

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It's the name of a Spanish coin. And since it was something like a penny, it referred to the cost of the paper and also means petty or trivial.

Who would want their paper to be perceived as petty or trivial?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 22, 2023, 05:11:43 pm
I was just trying to be snarky. If I remember correctly, at one time Fox News tried to sell itself as "fair and balanced." Of course these days it's nothing of the kind, if it ever really was.

I think that was their slogan from the start -- and from the start it was patently false. But their brainwashing/gaslighting campaign means getting their audience to think they're the only news source that *is* fair and balanced. And it worked! Now they all think NBC, CBS, ABC, the New York Times etc. are fake news.

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Who would want their paper to be perceived as petty or trivial?  ;D

I know, it's kind of ironic, isn't it? (I realize that's not the true meaning of ironic but I think we need a word for "weirdly coincidental or seemingly contradictory situation" without having to search in German.) I'm not sure which came first, the paper (in about 1850) or that meaning, but AFAIK the word wasn't a judgement on the paper. And when the paper went out of business a few years ago and was bought by the Advocate, they kept the paper's name.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 23, 2023, 10:12:22 am
Could it be used in the sense of "all things great and small"?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 23, 2023, 10:20:22 am
Could it be used in the sense of "all things great and small"?

Not that I know of. In the case of the paper, it was named after the coin because that's how much it cost.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 26, 2023, 12:23:45 pm
Had to get the March 6 issue out of the recycling to read two articles I missed the first time around: Elizabeth Kolbert's "Control of Nature" about peecycling in Vermont, and "The End of the English Major" by Nathan Heller. It seemed quite ironic to be reading about English literature dying in a magazine that is one of the highest examples of English and is read by 1.2 million people. But the main point of the overlong article is that English literature is evolving and morphing into adjacent studies such as culture, history, and television programs.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 26, 2023, 01:00:16 pm
Those adjacent studies are all good, too. As for the New Yorker's audience and the death of literature, that's a little over one in 300 Americans. That doesn't seem like a lot, but I don't know how that rate compares to earlier days.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on March 26, 2023, 01:14:33 pm
I should have said "circulation" instead of "people". Would that include library readers, and those in the retirement homes I take my old issues to?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 26, 2023, 06:30:25 pm
I should have said "circulation" instead of "people". Would that include library readers, and those in the retirement homes I take my old issues to?

I think some magazines keep track of both copies sold and estimated actual audience.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 01, 2023, 08:46:19 pm
If you didn't read it, I recommend going back to March 20 and reading Elizabeth Kolbert on caterpillars. I'm enjoying it now. It's a fun read so far.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2023, 09:00:36 am
If you didn't read it, I recommend going back to March 20 and reading Elizabeth Kolbert on caterpillars. I'm enjoying it now. It's a fun read so far.  :)

OK, I kind of take that back. The early part is fun, but the closer you get to the end, the darker and gloomier it gets.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 03, 2023, 01:45:37 pm
She has one in the new issue that I haven't started yet but looks interesting, called "How animals use deception."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 03, 2023, 02:02:18 pm
March 20 was quite the issue. We've already discussed Jill Lepore's "Pay Dirt" and the reviews are interesting. A very long article that I nevertheless enjoyed was "Magic Realism" by D. T. Max about a novelist named H. G. Carillo who was African-American from Detroit but created a new identity for himself as a Cuban. The fiction was good: "False Star" by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain. There was even a funny passage in the S&M "How to Tell If You're in a TV Show" by Emma Rathbone. Everyone and everything seemed to be represented: women, seeds, Gay authors, Indigenous people, Climate Change, caterpillars. Oh I forgot "Abolish the Poor" by Margaret Talbot. Also good. I didn't realize that perks of home ownership play a big role in keeping the well-off rich and the poor poor. Homeowners got $193 billion in 2020. I think I'm going to get at least one of the books she reviews.

Jeff, I wondered what you thought of the ad for Philadelphia that said "Betsy was the real badass."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 03, 2023, 02:06:10 pm
Jeff, I wondered what you thought of the ad for Philadelphia that said "Betsy was the real badass."

I didn't even notice it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 03, 2023, 02:59:16 pm
I'd never thought about the homeowners' tax credit, either. I'll bring it up next time somebody complains about Biden's student loan forgiveness proposal.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 09, 2023, 07:13:39 pm
Recently I've been reading the Critics section with a thought in the back of my mind, along the lines of "there's only one true story that applies to us all." I find many parallels whether I read a book review, a movie review, or a television one (I tend to skip most of the theater reviews, unfortunately).

The review of the book about Preston Sturges is a case in point. First off, it's a book (Crooked, but Never Common: The FIlms of Preston Sturges, Stuart Klawans) about a movie director/writer so it covers two of the bases. One of the facets of this one true story that I've identified is that people want to be or are something that they are not. The review author, Rachel Syme, tells about one of Sturges' films, "The Lady Eve" that capitalizes on the deceptions of a woman and a man.

Another enduring theme is the trade-off of comedy and tragedy. More on that late.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 10, 2023, 12:44:14 pm
Looking forward to hearing more about this interesting idea!

(I skip the theater reviews, too, or at least will until I schedule my next trip to NYC.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 10, 2023, 03:38:35 pm
(I skip the theater reviews, too, or at least will until I schedule my next trip to NYC.)

I still miss years ago when they used to list what was playing, what theater, and so forth. I guess they stopped it because people can find that on the internet if they're so inclined, but it seems to me that even so, they actually have fewer reviews of shows and movies than in the past. Actually, review is probably not the correct word here; what I mean is in the front section where there are short pieces about plays and movies, not articles by Anthony Lane, et al. The March 27 issue had only three shows and four movies.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 10, 2023, 04:11:09 pm
...A very long article that I nevertheless enjoyed was "Magic Realism" by D. T. Max about a novelist named H. G. Carillo who was African-American from Detroit but created a new identity for himself as a Cuban.

More on deception, this from the March 20 issue, and then there's "Fooled Again", yet another good article on animal deceptions by Elizabeth Kolbert, who seems to be in a neck-and-neck race with Jill Lepore to have the greatest word count in the magazine. That one is in the April 3 issue. Is it possible that editors' interests are shaping the subjects selected for inclusion? Or is it the audience's reactions? Or simply the general Zeitgeist?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 10, 2023, 04:34:58 pm
More on deception, this from the March 20 issue, and then there's "Fooled Again", yet another good article on animal deceptions by Elizabeth Kolbert, who seems to be in a neck-and-neck race to have the greatest word count in the magazine. That one is in the April 3 issue. Is it possible that editors' interests are shaping the subjects selected for inclusion? Or is it the audience's reactions? Or simply the general Zeitgeist?

Guessing, but I would think the editors place a lot of faith in longtime writers, at least, to pitch stories they're interested in and determine an appropriate length. I still remember when Tina Brown took over and the stories got shorter, punchier and more zeitgeisty. I, for one, did not complain; before she started I'd been slogging through a seemingly 50-page article about the day-to-day operations of a small grocery store.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2023, 08:35:10 am
In the immediate future I think I may begin skipping Elizabeth Kolbert. I have no doubt of the truth of the things she writes about, but her articles have begun to be way too depressing. She makes it sound like it's way too late to save the planet (and ourselves), and I think she may well be correct, but I just can't deal with her negativity right now.

Now it seems that it's way too late to save the caterpillars.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 11, 2023, 08:41:25 pm
If you have not read the article about the Irish author Sebastian Barry (March 27), at least go back and look at page 74 for the wonderful column filler "How's That Again? Dept."  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 14, 2023, 03:14:37 pm
The latest issue has come, and we're going back to the Trump covers. I thought I had removed all New Yorkers with Trump covers and was gone with them for good. But no. It's like the yeast at Passover. No matter how you try to get rid of it, there's always some lurking somewhere.

So, the theme of deception continues in "Shouts & Murmurs" with Steve Martin's "My Husband's Secret Life." Unfortunately, it's not funny. (S&M is satire, and perhaps satire is not supposed to be funny, or at least not overtly funny.) But it does make a clever point: deception is practiced by both the con person and the person duped.

A vague theory that has occurred to me is that all this talk about AI has led to people being leery of interactions with others, particularly when not on an in-person basis. We wonder if we are dealing with the real thing; another human being. But another theory also occurs to me. Perhaps I'm seeing all these works about deception because I'm looking for them. You know how you never see an orange car until someone brings it up and then you see an orange car everywhere.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 14, 2023, 03:46:30 pm
So, the theme of deception continues in "Shouts & Murmurs" with Steve Martin's "My Husband's Secret Life." Unfortunately, it's not funny. (S&M is satire, and perhaps satire is not supposed to be funny, or at least not overtly funny.) But it does make a clever point: deception is practiced by both the con person and the person duped.

Elizabeth Kolbert reviewed a book on animal deceptions in the April 3 issue. At least that article by her wasn't doom-and-gloom depressing. It introduced me to a fish with the wonderful name bluestriped fangblenny.  :)

I wonder if that fish only comes out when it's brillig?  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 16, 2023, 10:35:46 am
If you have not read the article about the Irish author Sebastian Barry (March 27), at least go back and look at page 74 for the wonderful column filler "How's That Again? Dept."  ;D

That was funny! And the article on Barry was too. Gotta love the Irish! Also in that issue, the article on diet pills and fat shaming cited research that "implicit bias against fat people actually grew from 2007 to 2016 with 81% of people exhibiting it by the end of the study. Every other implicit bias in the study--regarding race, gender, sexual orientation, age, and disability--waned during that period." Which tends to support your theory, Katherine, that LGBTQ+ people are treated better and given more support these days. Among school-aged children though, I'm skeptical. Children can be cruel, even today.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 16, 2023, 04:04:13 pm
Children can be cruel, even today.

I guess that's one thing that never changes.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 16, 2023, 05:41:13 pm
Children, being humans, can be cruel. But different kinds of cruelty go in and out of fashion. It?s not cool to be homophobic these days. In fact, it?s now cool to be non-binary (whether you actually are or not, I often suspect).

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 16, 2023, 05:50:43 pm
So, the theme of deception continues in "Shouts & Murmurs" with Steve Martin's "My Husband's Secret Life." Unfortunately, it's not funny. (S&M is satire, and perhaps satire is not supposed to be funny, or at least not overtly funny.) But it does make a clever point: deception is practiced by both the con person and the person duped.

I didn?t get that point myself. I thought it was dumb and that the celebrity byline as usual overrides the need to be funny. To see proof that satire can actually often be very funny, look at The Onion. And that publication has my enduring respect for putting out a 9/11 issue that managed to be funny without being offensive or ?too soon.?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 18, 2023, 11:15:05 am
Guess what? S&M reenvisions Brokeback Mountain as a conversation between two urban hipsters of today in the next issue. I didn't find it funny but there were a couple of clever references. I even thought it was a bit patronizing but I suppose that is another thing that satire is allowed to do. Your thoughts would be welcome: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/brokeback-mountain-in-manhattan (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/brokeback-mountain-in-manhattan)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 18, 2023, 12:41:40 pm
Thanks for the tip, FRiend. I didn't find it funny or even interesting -- kind of bland satirizing of gay NYC hipsters sprinkled with cowboy references but aside from that and the characters' names really having nothing to do with Brokeback Mountain.That sort of stereotypical satire seems worn out and, since it's not actually funny, pretty pointless.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 19, 2023, 08:48:14 pm
Of course if you have not already done so, you should read Kathryn Schulz on Jeanne Manford in the April 17 issue. I'm surprised they didn't hold that for June.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 21, 2023, 08:09:26 pm
I'm just settling down to read that one. I didn't finish "The History of Fatigue" in that issue. Not one of Adam Gopnik's finest.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 25, 2023, 10:48:39 am
Of course if you have not already done so, you should read Kathryn Schulz on Jeanne Manford in the April 17 issue. I'm surprised they didn't hold that for June.

The article on Manford, "Family Values" was good. She is the person who started PFLAG. And after reading it, I noticed there were a few things I still hadn't read. I mentioned the review of the TV series "Beef" elsewhere and there were also good reviews of the movies "Air" and "Paint" and the musical "Shucked." TNY has some of the best reviews around, IMO. They include lots of context and history and, frequently, after reading the review, I'm so satisfied that I understand the topic of the book that I don't feel the need to buy the book! That's helpful, especially when the review is of a Broadway play that I'll be unlikely to see.

But the highlight of the reviews section is an unassuming piece, "Oddballs and Odysseys" by Casey Cep about the little-known author Charles Portis. After reading it, I truly feel that he's a worthy member of the firmament of road trip authors, including Kerouac, Twain, Wolfe, and even Nabokov and Proulx. There's something about the monotony of being on the road that brings out the amazing language, the fleshed out characters, and the elaborate plots and locations that make for a riveting story. I'm searching for an audiobook copy ot True Grit, perhaps his most famous work.

It was also bittersweet to read the fiction "Evensong" by Laurie Colwin, the food and fiction author who died in 1992. Her writing was always fresh and intimate. I still have her piece on gingerbread which was published in one of the food magazines back in the '80s. I received nearly all those mags, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Martha Stewart Living, etc. How many are left in printed form? I have boxes and notebooks full of the recipes. Once I tried looking up some of my favorites on the Internet to see if I could throw out the paper copies. Very few were online. Those that were were dumbed down. Jacques Cagna's Chocolate Mousse Cake, for instance, directed one to put egg whites in a blender with vinegar to whip them. That never works!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2023, 11:25:49 am
The article on Manford, "Family Values" was good. She is the person who started PFLAG.

The publisher of the Philadelphia Gay News was at Stonewall, and was one of the founders of the Gay Activists' Alliance. It's been on my mind to write to him to ask if he knew the Manfords.


Quote
But the highlight of the reviews section is an unassuming piece, "Oddballs and Odysseys" by Casey Cep about the little-known author Charles Portis.

That's next up on my TNY reading list.


Quote
It was also bittersweet to read the fiction "Evensong" by Laurie Colwin, the food and fiction author who died in 1992.

There was something about her in TNY some time ago.

But taking the Manford article as an example, have you ever noticed there is a distinct pattern to these TNY articles about people? I would say almost invariably, they start out with something about why the subject is notable, then they go into the person's background (family background, where they grew up, education, and so forth), and then they come back to the activity for which the subject is notable.

I'm not criticizing here. It's just something I've noticed. Sort of like what we've discussed about how articles will quote someone, then in the same sentence describe who the person is (sometimes at length), and then on the end of the sentence tack on "said."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on April 25, 2023, 03:45:24 pm
But taking the Manford article as an example, have you ever noticed there is a distinct pattern to these TNY articles about people? I would say almost invariably, they start out with something about why the subject is notable, then they go into the person's background (family background, where they grew up, education, and so forth), and then they come back to the activity for which the subject is notable.
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That is a fairly conventional structure in journalism. It was developed by the Wall Street Journal (although TNY and others would probably claim ownership). The first sentence or two grabs your attention, followed by the "nut graph" that gives the context. For instance, in the article about Portis, the author starts out by referring to his wish that Shakespeare had written about Arkansas. You don't often find those two names together.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 25, 2023, 04:43:31 pm
That is a fairly conventional structure in journalism. It was developed by the Wall Street Journal (although TNY and others would probably claim ownership). The first sentence or two grabs your attention, followed by the "nut graph" that gives the context. For instance, in the article about Portis, the author starts out by referring to his wish that Shakespeare had written about Arkansas. You don't often find those two names together.

Yes, but following the nut graph immediately with the person's background is not ideal, IMO, unless their background really determined whatever they do that's the story's subject (hypothetical e.g., Joe Blow grew up homeless and now he helps homeless people). Personally, I'd do another section on the present day and then go into their past.

I hadn't noticed TNY doing this excessively, but if they do that's another irritating thing. And yes, add that to "Joe Blow, who grew up homeless and now helps homeless people, said." And starting almost all articles with a particular date and place. So instead of something more general or quirky -- "Joe Blow weeps whenever he thinks about homeless people" -- it's "On July 14, 2022, Joe Blow entered a homeless shelter on the north side of Milwaukee."

And throw in their use of diareses and -- the worst -- spelling out large numbers.

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2023, 05:41:43 pm
I hadn't noticed TNY doing this excessively, but if they do that's another irritating thing.

(You want irritating? I'll give you irritating. I just wrote a response to this, and when I clicked on Preview, I got that "Only Registered Members" B.S. again, and had to log in again.  >:( )

Anyway, I guess I don't really find that TNY pattern irritating, really. I just noticed that there seems to be a form that everybody follows--maybe has to follow.

OK, well, maybe it does irritate me--at least a little.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 27, 2023, 12:56:55 pm
I'm just settling down to read that one. I didn't finish "The History of Fatigue" in that issue. Not one of Adam Gopnik's finest.

Yeah, that was kind of ... eh.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 29, 2023, 03:00:44 pm
Guess what? S&M reenvisions Brokeback Mountain as a conversation between two urban hipsters of today in the next issue. I didn't find it funny but there were a couple of clever references. I even thought it was a bit patronizing but I suppose that is another thing that satire is allowed to do. Your thoughts would be welcome: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/brokeback-mountain-in-manhattan (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/brokeback-mountain-in-manhattan)

Quote
Thanks for the tip, FRiend. I didn't find it funny or even interesting -- kind of bland satirizing of gay NYC hipsters sprinkled with cowboy references but aside from that and the characters' names really having nothing to do with Brokeback Mountain.That sort of stereotypical satire seems worn out and, since it's not actually funny, pretty pointless.

Well, I guess we'll all have to agree to disagree on this one. I just read it now, and I found it quite funny. Maybe you need to be a gay man of a certain age. ...



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on April 30, 2023, 03:58:29 pm
Maybe you need to be a gay man of a certain age. ...

Maybe so.


Meanwhile, imagine the commotion from Mr. Shawn's grave about this line in an April 25 review of the TV series Dead Ringers:

Quote
"The physicians, who are stars in their field (and British expatriates in America), also chase after a multimillion-dollar investment from a Sackler-esque heiress, Rebecca Parker (an exhilaratingly cunty Jennifer Ehle), to launch their own birthing center?a shining institution on a hill that they hope will change ?the way women birth forever.?


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on April 30, 2023, 04:11:42 pm
Is that even a word?  ;D

Shouldn't it at least be c _  n _ -like?  ;D

From the review of Beef. I need to look up the meanings of woo-woo and bougie.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 04, 2023, 07:42:56 pm
The May 8 issue is kind of the coronation issue. I'm surprised they came up with so much to write about King Charles III but I guess Rebecca Mead had quite a lot of time to come up with the material. Comparing that article with "Behind the Lens" about Jackie Kennedy is like the mirror bookends in BBM. Charles was born a somebody who now wants to be a nobody. Jackie was a nobody who grew up to become a somebody. A review of the new biography Camera Girl by Carl Anthony, it includes the following quote about her junior year at Paris's Sorbonne: "Jackie perfected a knowledge of 'how to be "on," to make an intentional impression, to invent herself into a character.'"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 09, 2023, 05:29:06 pm
Today I read for the second time Rebecca Mead's review of "Spare" by Prince Harry and J. R. Moehringer, the ghostwriter. She was struck by the many parallels to the play Hamlet in the book and has admiration for Moehringer.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 09, 2023, 05:45:50 pm
I have to admit I'm reading and enjoying the article about the Dubai princesses (May 8 ). That is, their story is horrifying, but I'm enjoying reading it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 11, 2023, 01:08:33 pm
Aaauuuggghhh! On your recommendation I started the article last night. I going to continue reading it and hope to be able to finish it. I'm usually open to horrifying stories of misogyny but this one is particularly brutal. Whenever I hear about stuff like this I'm chilled thinking not of just the main narrative but of all the many thousands of years and millions or maybe billions of women enduring horrible treatment, and although nowadays it's more common in Middle Eastern cultures, it has certainly historically been an element, and still is to some extent, of Western societies as well.

P.S. Curious about my "millions or maybe billions" above, I guess it should have been obvious, but I asked Google how many humans had ever lived on the earth. Google said 117 billion, so somewhere around 58.5 billion women. Not all brutalized, of course, and it's probably impossible to get even a rough count based on modern tendencies. But "billions" was obviously correct.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 11, 2023, 01:18:58 pm
I hope I'll have some time later today to write some more about what I consider TNY's curious use of capitalization with direct quotations, with examples from the Dubai princesses article.  ;D

There is so much more in that issue that I want to read, such as the articles about Paul Schrader, Jackie Kennedy, and Waco.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 11, 2023, 06:50:47 pm
Today I read for the second time Rebecca Mead's review of "Spare" by Prince Harry and J. R. Moehringer, the ghostwriter. She was struck by the many parallels to the play Hamlet in the book and has admiration for Moehringer.

Speak of the devil. There is an article "The Ghostwriter" by Moehringer in the latest issue that arrived today. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 12, 2023, 12:03:45 pm
Speak of the devil. There is an article "The Ghostwriter" by Moehringer in the latest issue that arrived today.

Can't wait to read it! Most of the articles in the ToC looked worth checking into.

Meanwhile, I was going through old TNYs and came across a funny Shouts & Murmurs. I'd read it before, but it was worth rereading: it's in the voice of a kid in school writing a profile of his great-grandfather, back in his youth on earth, before the earth was destroyed by the Climate Apocalypse (and some humans escaped to a different planet). It's genuinely funny and also makes a good point, and not the scoldy one about climate change you might imagine. Writer was Simon Rich who, according to TNY's bio, is a comedian, an author and has written a handful of other things for TNY, including that S&M in which God talked like a regular parent. (But not, as I was hoping, the one about the guy planning to leave MAGAland; wish I could remember enough about that one to google it.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/05/when-i-was-a-boy-back-before-earth-got-too-hot-to-live-on (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/05/when-i-was-a-boy-back-before-earth-got-too-hot-to-live-on)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/and-the-lord-said-youve-got-a-time-out-mister (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/02/and-the-lord-said-youve-got-a-time-out-mister)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 12, 2023, 01:17:18 pm

From the review of Beef. I need to look up the meanings of woo-woo and bougie.  ;D

Forgot to do that.

I hope I'll have some time later today to write some more about what I consider TNY's curious use of capitalization with direct quotations, with examples from the Dubai princesses article.  ;D


Forgot to do that.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 12, 2023, 01:21:27 pm
Re: "Shouts and Murmurs":

I need to remember to go through my desk. Decades ago, there was something that I'm sure must have been in "Shouts and Murmurs," and I'm sure it must have been by Rudnick, about "the gay mafia." Some fool made a crack about there being a "gay mafia," and Rudnick ran with it for a whole page. It was very funny--again, at least to a gay man. I'm sure I saved it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 12, 2023, 02:14:31 pm
Re: "Shouts and Murmurs":

I need to remember to go through my desk. Decades ago, there was something that I'm sure must have been in "Shouts and Murmurs," and I'm sure it must have been by Rudnick, about "the gay mafia." Some fool made a crack about there being a "gay mafia," and Rudnick ran with it for a whole page. It was very funny--again, at least to a gay man. I'm sure I saved it.

That's probably the way I've been amused by things that make fun of liberals. One time a crazy radio personality tried to spread a rumor that progressives were going to march in downtown New York the next day. The responses on Twitter were hilarious. Stuff like, "Could we reroute it so it goes past the Midtown Starbucks? I've got a meeting there at noon." "I'll join you right after my yoga class." But the funniest was "Until that check from Soros hits my mailbox, I don't go anywhere."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 12, 2023, 03:31:14 pm
That's probably the way I've been amused by things that make fun of liberals. One time a crazy radio personality tried to spread a rumor that progressives were going to march in downtown New York the next day. The responses on Twitter were hilarious. Stuff like, "Could we reroute it so it goes past the Midtown Starbucks? I've got a meeting there at noon." "I'll join you right after my yoga class." But the funniest was "Until that check from Soros hits my mailbox, I don't go anywhere."

 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on May 13, 2023, 10:53:53 am
That reminds me of the time I listened to a funny satire of a woman buzzing around town in her Prius listening to NPR, on NPR while I was driving in my Prius.

The ghostwriter article was good but it was missing information about who came up with the Hamlet references, Harry or Moehringer. But based on the other literary references in it, I would guess it was the ghostwriter.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 31, 2023, 11:29:35 am
So Elizabeth Holmes is now in jail. I remember some years ago she was profiled in TNY when she first came out with her Theranos fraud.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 31, 2023, 01:06:58 pm
Profiled without the writer knowing it was fraud? Bummer.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on May 31, 2023, 03:44:05 pm
So Elizabeth Holmes is now in jail. I remember some years ago she was profiled in TNY when she first came out with her Theranos fraud.

Profiled without the writer knowing it was fraud? Bummer.

She had everyone bamboozled. I've been wondering if TNY would be doing some sort of follow-up. So far, no. Maybe after she's been in jail for a while. Or not.

One of the "procedurals"--it may have been the reboot of Law & Order--had an episode that was clearly inspired by the Holmes case. Everything was there: A woman running a huge company that was a scam, then trying to claim she was an abused woman. Being L&O, they added a murder into the mix, but everything else just screamed Elizabeth Holmes.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on May 31, 2023, 06:07:56 pm
I liked the May 29 Shouts and Murmurs by Simon Rich. It's not hilarious, but it's poignant -- told from the perspective of a Participation Trophy, which has a metaphorical meaning as well.

I looked up Simon Rich and he looks shockingly young -- like, 17 -- but is actually 38. He has written a bunch of books. He has an older brother who has ALSO written a bunch of books. And their father is the longtime NYT columnist Frank Rich, who has ALSO written a bunch of books as well as produced some award-winning TV series, including the recent Succession.

But then it got even weirder, at least to me. The wife of Frank Rich is a NYT columnist who has ALSO written some books. He is 73; she is 33.

My former governor and his wife, married a few years ago, are about those same ages. However, the ex-governor is one of the richest people in the state; heir to a department-store fortune.

Of course, Frank Rich is also Rich.  :laugh:

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 05, 2023, 03:51:55 pm

There is so much more in that issue that I want to read, such as the articles about Paul Schrader, Jackie Kennedy, and Waco.

I went back to read the Waco article in the May 8 (Coronation) issue. The author, Daniel Immerwahr, places the roots of the violent 1990s in the fallout from the Vietnam War, and cites the debut of "Cops" in 1989 and "Law & Order" in 1990, for feeding into that strain of violence. Also in that timeframe was an act of Congress allowing unlicensed hobbyists to sell weapons at gun shows, and firearm sales nearly doubled between 1987 and 1993.

Excited to see our Dave Cullen quoted in the article about bombs the Columbine killers planted. Luckily they didn't go off, or 500 people might have died.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 05, 2023, 06:21:47 pm
I also want to say something about the Paul Schrader article and quote  from it, but I don't want to if you haven't read it yet and don't want spoilers.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 09, 2023, 09:14:31 pm
In the article about Stephen Satterfield in the May 29 issue, I was tickled to learn that Thomas Jefferson ate macaroni and cheese. Of course and unfortunately, it was prepared for him by an enslaved man who was his cook, but who knew that macaroni and cheese as a thing went as far back as Jefferson's day?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 13, 2023, 01:08:07 pm
Anybody read the article about women writers in the June 5 issue?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 13, 2023, 02:38:00 pm
Anybody read the article about women writers in the June 5 issue?

Skimmed it. Tell you what, June 5 is one of the few issues ever that I've managed to throw out while it was still current. And I've got issues going back to July 2022, at least.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 13, 2023, 03:20:02 pm
Skimmed it. Tell you what, June 5 is one of the few issues ever that I've managed to throw out while it was still current. And I've got issues going back to July 2022, at least.

I skipped more of that issue than I read. Most of those musicians I'd never heard of. I pushed through the Ed Sheeran article, although it got into stuff about music that was totally beyond my comprehension.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 14, 2023, 09:57:33 pm
I read the new George Saunders story in the June 12 issue and found it haunting as his work usually is.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 19, 2023, 11:31:40 am
Our Chuck would probably find the June 12 article about the Marvel Universe interesting.

Superheroes are all the same to me: Marvel, D.C., it's all one.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 25, 2023, 04:33:32 pm
A rare New Yorker typo?! This from a story in the May 29 issue about the host of a Netflix series showcasing Black cuisine.

"After a semester at the University of Oregon, Satterfield dropped out and enrolled in culinary school in Portland; Burch?s parents co-signed his student loan. Living in a cheap apartment building that turned out to be full of heroin addicts, he supplemented his classes with ?self-guided studies? in food and wine. He read every good book that he could find at Powell?s, took classes at the International Sommelier Guild, and talked his way into simultaneous jobs at exclusive venues. At the four-star Benson Hotel, he started as a room-service co?rdinator in a basement workspace, then rose to sommelier, holding daily tastings in the foyer."

Even on its own, the sentence doesn't make much sense. It doesn't define what constitutes "good" books, most people read books they consider good and Powell's probably carries far more good books than any individual could read (especially in the timeframe described here). It's also among examples of how he made "self-guided studies" of food and wine.

But G is next to F on the keyboard, and a sentence saying the guy "read every food book he could find at Powell's" makes much more sense.

This was about halfway through the story, which I wasn't finding all that fascinating, so I guess I will use my outrage over the typo as an excuse to stop reading the article and possibly recycle the whole magazine.

I do, however, recommend Rachel Aviv's story un that issue about author Alice Sebold mistaking the identity of her rapist, thus sending an innocent man to prison and including him in her memoir about the rape. I'd read about this when the mistake was first revealed, but the article went into much more detail that takes some of the blame off Sebold.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 25, 2023, 07:28:46 pm
But G is next to F on the keyboard, and a sentence saying the guy "read every food book he could find at Powell's" makes much more sense.

It does make more sense. I remember something struck me as odd about that sentence, but I didn't stop to try to figure it out.

Quote
I do, however, recommend Rachel Aviv's story un that issue about author Alice Sebold mistaking the identity of her rapist, thus sending an innocent man to prison and including him in her memoir about the rape. I'd read about this when the mistake was first revealed, but the article went into much more detail that takes some of the blame off Sebold.

U and I are next to each other on the keyboard, too. ...

Sorry. ...

But that was a good article.

And I'm still annoyed by TNY's use of capitalization in direct quotations.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on June 26, 2023, 12:37:45 pm
The June 26th issue was kind of blah until I got to the critics' section. I found the Kathryn Schultz article about heist stories interesting and it fed my theory about the growing interest in people being someone they're not. The bio of Sarah Jessica Parker just kept going on and on and on until I had to just stop reading it.

Oh, I take it back. The article about the tactical bra by Patricia Marx was entertaining and well-written. It would have made a good S & M!!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 26, 2023, 12:48:19 pm
Oh, I take it back. The article about the tactical bra by Patricia Marx was entertaining and well-written. It would have made a good S & M!!

I'm looking forward to that one. Patricia Marx is always entertaining. I remember her article on mattresses quite fondly.

I also remember reading (maybe in a Talk of the Town?) that she's good buddies with Roz Chast, whose cartoons I always enjoy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 26, 2023, 01:09:55 pm
U and I are next to each other on the keyboard, too. ...

 :laugh:

Good point. The difference, though, is that I make typos all the time, whereas TNY is famous for its proofreading. It really is unusual to find errors. Even this one could pass as correct.

Quote
And I'm still annoyed by TNY's use of capitalization in direct quotations.

What do they do? I don't remember discussing this before. I grabbed a random magazine off my stack of unfinished issues, flipped through it and didn't see anything weird.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 26, 2023, 01:25:15 pm
The bio of Sarah Jessica Parker just kept going on and on and on until I had to just stop reading it.

There've been a lot of those lately. But having never watched SatC and not really caring much about SJP I've let myself off the hook for most.

Quote
Oh, I take it back. The article about the tactical bra by Patricia Marx was entertaining and well-written. It would have made a good S & M!!

Patricia Marx's stories are among the few amusing things in TNY. Maybe because they aren't necessarily required to be funny; they could just be straightforward consumer articles. Not only are S&Ms not usually funny, I don't even like most of the cartoons (Roz Chast a notable exception, of course). Andy Borowitz is not as funny as The Onion doing approximately the same thing. The cartoon on the last page with the reader submissions are sometimes amusing, but the premises are usually dumb -- the humor has to come from some absurd pairing of characters, objects and settings, whereas many or most of the regular cartoons are just ordinary people sitting in a living room, chatting at a cocktail party or walking on the street.

They're good friends and I feel like they play music together or something like that, as revealed by one of their husbands, who is also a writer for TNY, in an essay a while back.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 26, 2023, 02:30:20 pm
Good point. The difference, though, is that I make typos all the time, whereas TNY is famous for its proofreading. It really is unusual to find errors. Even this one could pass as correct.

I once found a typo in a Bible (I think it was a running head).

Quote
What do they do? I don't remember discussing this before. I grabbed a random magazine off my stack of unfinished issues, flipped through it and didn't see anything weird.

Sometimes they begin a direct quote that is a complete sentence with a lower case letter--and sometimes they don't. I disagree with the practice--wasn't what I was taught--but the inconsistency also annoys me.

I may be able to make some time later to hunt down some examples. Meanwhile, here's an example of the "correct" way to do it, a "rule" from a wonderful old grammar book called Warriner's English Grammar and Composition (apparently first published in 1951):

Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation:

Mr. Jackson said, "Your sister is her own worst enemy."

Do not capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence fragment:

I agree with Mr. Jackson's remark that my sister is "her own worst enemy."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 26, 2023, 03:24:05 pm
Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation:

Mr. Jackson said, "Your sister is her own worst enemy."

Do not capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence fragment:

I agree with Mr. Jackson's remark that my sister is "her own worst enemy."

Thanks! This issue has always been a bit grayish for me. Glad to know there's a specific answer and I've (at least usually) been doing it correctly.

But the New Yorker is never grayish! Any publication that can't write re-election without a diaeresis and spells out large numbers should certainly have a rigid rule about this, too!

Speaking of funny misuse, just today I came across an article (not in TNY) that used "eponymous" to mean publishing a book, not named after its author, after the author's death.


 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 26, 2023, 09:21:00 pm
Thanks! This issue has always been a bit grayish for me. Glad to know there's a specific answer and I've (at least usually) been doing it correctly.

But the New Yorker is never grayish! Any publication that can't write re-election without a diaeresis and spells out large numbers should certainly have a rigid rule about this, too!

Speaking of funny misuse, just today I came across an article (not in TNY) that used "eponymous" to mean publishing a book, not named after its author, after the author's death.

 :laugh:

Re-elect? Webster doesn't even use a hyphen.

Some time ago I can across an article written by somebody who thought Timbaland was a brand of boots instead a rapper.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on June 27, 2023, 10:24:44 pm
Re-elect? Webster doesn't even use a hyphen.

Oh, true!

Quote
Some time ago I can across an article written by somebody who thought Timbaland was a brand of boots instead a rapper.

Wait, do you mean "instead OF a rapper"? And was this an article in TNY? That's pretty bad.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 28, 2023, 08:15:34 am
Wait, do you mean "instead OF a rapper"? And was this an article in TNY? That's pretty bad.

Yeah, that was my brain moving faster than I can type. It should have read "instead of a rapper."

It wasn't in TNY either. I don't remember for sure where I saw it. I think it was in a newspaper article.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on June 29, 2023, 09:24:30 pm
I got the July 3 issue in today's mail.

I cannot wait to read the article on the penis enlargement industry.  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 02, 2023, 09:17:47 pm
I got the July 3 issue in today's mail.

I cannot wait to read the article on the penis enlargement industry.  :laugh:

That one didn?t especially grab me yet but the plastics one is informative and horrifying. A duty article that reads pretty engagingly.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 02, 2023, 09:20:38 pm
That one didn?t especially grab me yet but the plastics one is informative and horrifying. A duty article that reads pretty engagingly.

I might actually skip that one. I already know that plastics are a menace. I don't think I need to read about it again.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 03, 2023, 03:01:10 pm
I might actually skip that one. I already know that plastics are a menace. I don't think I need to read about it again.

I already knew it, too. I've stopped drinking sparkling mineral water bottled in plastic (now I drink La Croix in cans). I also now use a laundry detergent that comes like sheets of paper in an envelope. I take out a sheet, rip it into a few pieces and put it in the machine's detergent container. Seems to work fine.

But of course those efforts don't count for much in a world where babies are born with plastic particles in their poop.

I already knew most of the basic information but she's good at describing the enormity of the problem.

I interviewed a woman last fall who picks up plastic garbage from the ground, carries around her own metal silverware and straw for use in fast-food and fast-casual restaurants, buys only natural-fiber (second-hand) clothing. She said she called the manufacturer of her favorite chips and asked if they could stop packaging them in plastic. The company said it needs to be plastic for shipment purposes. (I guess this would be one argument in favor of Pringles, which come in a cardboard tube.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 03, 2023, 06:06:25 pm
I thought the S&M in this issue was particularly dumb. It's all silly jokes about a hypothetical TV show. The jokes aren't funny, don't really make sense and are so out-there they don't serve as satire of real-life TV.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 03, 2023, 09:03:08 pm
I already knew it, too. I've stopped drinking sparkling mineral water bottled in plastic (now I drink La Croix in cans). I also now use a laundry detergent that comes like sheets of paper in an envelope. I take out a sheet, rip it into a few pieces and put it in the machine's detergent container. Seems to work fine.

I've never heard of that. Is there a brand name?

I should take a look the next time I need laundry detergent. I still use powder, which at least comes in a cardboard box.

Elizabeth Kolbert is an engaging writer. It's just that her articles have become too depressing for me. I don't expect to read much of her articles anymore.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 04, 2023, 01:21:09 pm
I've never heard of that. Is there a brand name?

They're called Earth Breeze Laundry Detergent Eco Sheets. I haven't noticed them in stores but I bought them online.

Quote
I should take a look the next time I need laundry detergent. I still use powder, which at least comes in a cardboard box.

Well, that's not so bad then.

One thing I wish EK had touched on is the stuff that looks just like clear plastic but is made out of cornstarch. They had cups made out of that in the cafe of the Arboretum where I worked for a while. They're so much like the plastic kind you'd get in a convenience store I was throwing them into the recycling bin, but apparently they belonged in the compost bin! Knowing Elizabeth Kolbert, though, she'd find some evidence the cups aren't as eco-friendly as they might seem -- the processing method or transporting the cornstarch uses too much energy or something. The way cloth diapers are supposedly as bad as disposable.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 06, 2023, 01:00:29 pm
One thing I wish EK had touched on is the stuff that looks just like clear plastic but is made out of cornstarch. They had cups made out of that in the cafe of the Arboretum where I worked for a while. They're so much like the plastic kind you'd get in a convenience store I was throwing them into the recycling bin, but apparently they belonged in the compost bin! Knowing Elizabeth Kolbert, though, she'd find some evidence the cups aren't as eco-friendly as they might seem -- the processing method or transporting the cornstarch uses too much energy or something. The way cloth diapers are supposedly as bad as disposable.

Or maybe more generally she'd have something negative to say about all the corn that gets grown in the U.S.

Why are cloth diapers as bad as disposable? They're reusable. They don't get thrown in the trash. What are we supposed to use for babies?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 06, 2023, 01:02:08 pm
I'm looking forward to reading the fiction issue. That probably seems strange--maybe it is--since I almost never read the fiction, but I always enjoy the little pieces from individual authors that are usually included.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 06, 2023, 03:49:53 pm
Why are cloth diapers as bad as disposable? They're reusable. They don't get thrown in the trash. What are we supposed to use for babies?  ???

Well, I oversimplified. When it comes right down to it, cloth are still probably a bit better, but you have to be careful how you wash them. Here's the New York Times on the subject:

Quote
There?s no question that disposable diapers create more landfill waste: a baby is likely to go through between 5,000 and 6,000 disposable diapers before becoming potty trained. A 2014 Environmental Protection Agency report found that disposable diapers account for 7 percent of nondurable household waste in landfills. Except in very limited cases, disposable diapers (regardless of what they claim) won?t compost or biodegrade in a landfill.

But disposable diaper advocates have countered that the energy and water costs of laundering cloth diapers, as well as the environmental impact of cotton production, make them less environmentally friendly than they appear, particularly in terms of the carbon emissions traceable to their care. The best life-cycle analysis we?ve found is a 2008 report (PDF) from the Environment Agency in the UK that compared the manufacturing, disposal, and energy costs of both diaper types. ?The environmental impacts of using shaped reusable nappies [cloth diapers] can be higher or lower than using disposables, depending on how they are laundered,? the report concludes. The agency?s analysis found that based on average laundry habits and appliance efficiency, when washing with 60 ?C (140 ?F) water and mostly line-drying, the overall carbon emissions created by cloth diapering were roughly the same as those of using disposables. But using cloth diapers for a second child or getting them secondhand, exclusively line-drying them, and washing them in fuller loads could reduce that amount by up to 40 percent.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/cloth-vs-disposable-diapers/ (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/cloth-vs-disposable-diapers/)


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 06, 2023, 09:24:27 pm
Thanks. I never gave a thought to the "peripherals"--manufacturing, and so forth, for example. I was just thinking of all those stinky diapers piling up in landfills.

I suppose it might also help the situation if you laundered diapers the way Alma would have.  (Cue Alma with the washboard.)  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 07, 2023, 11:15:17 am
I cannot wait to read the article on the penis enlargement industry.  :laugh:

That was OK, even somewhat horrifying, though I think perhaps the best part was mention of people who apparently are really named Run Wang, Dick Glass, and Semen Brodsky.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 07, 2023, 12:35:31 pm
Thanks. I never gave a thought to the "peripherals"--manufacturing, and so forth, for example. I was just thinking of all those stinky diapers piling up in landfills.

I suppose it might also help the situation if you laundered diapers the way Alma would have.  (Cue Alma with the washboard.)  ;D

When my kids were babies I had a disposal container called a Diaper Genie. You could shove a disposable diaper inside it, turn something, and it would encase the used diaper in plastic, twisting the end. Repeat for next diaper, each one becoming a link in a sausage-like chain of plastic wrapped diapers. When the container was filled, you'd cut the chain, put it in the regular garbage and start over. The diapers didn't stink much (though smell wasn't completely obliterated). But of course that's even more environmentally unfriendly.  :-\

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 07, 2023, 01:04:49 pm
When my kids were babies I had a disposal container called a Diaper Genie. You could shove a disposable diaper inside it, turn something, and it would encase the used diaper in plastic, twisting the end. Repeat for next diaper, each one becoming a link in a sausage-like chain of plastic wrapped diapers. When the container was filled, you'd cut the chain, put it in the regular garbage and start over. The diapers didn't stink much (though smell wasn't completely obliterated). But of course that's even more environmentally unfriendly.  :-\

Oh, dear. ...  :(

Diaper Genie?  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 08, 2023, 01:50:49 pm
I always read Peter Hessler. I just finished his piece about his twin daughters attending a Chinese primary school (July 3).

I think maybe what interested me most was reading at the end of the article that he and his family are now living in Ridgway, Colorado. That's on highway 550, which among other sections runs north through Durango and Silverton. I'm sure OCD and I drove right through Ridgway on that highway when we went to Durango to ride the railroad from Durango to Silverton--12 years ago. ...  :(

I wonder what Hessler and his wife are doing now? And how did they end up settling in Ridgway? It seems so out-of-the-way.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 08, 2023, 03:31:47 pm
I always read Peter Hessler. I just finished his piece about his twin daughters attending a Chinese primary school (July 3).

I think maybe what interested me most was reading at the end of the article that he and his family are now living in Ridgway, Colorado. That's on highway 550, which among other sections runs north through Durango and Silverton. I'm sure OCD and I drove right through Ridgway on that highwaybwhen we went to Durango to ride the railroad from Durango to Silverton--12 years ago. ...  :(

I wonder what Hessler and his wife are doing now? And how did they end up settling in Ridgway? It seems so out-of-the-way.


It's weird by someone who's written four books about China and one about Egypt, whose wife has also written books about China. Lived in exotic locales and then they moved ... to Omaha.

kidding -- I just looked up Ridgway and although it's kind of out there it looks like a potentially cool place to live. (Not as big-cityish as Omaha, though, which is actually said to be cooler than its reputation would suggest.)

I only know anything about Peter Hessler because I just now looked him up. I don't know if I've read anything by him. I know I'm a narrow-minded parochial American but I'd probably consider articles about China kind of duty-ish. I'll look at this latest one, though.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 09, 2023, 12:43:52 am
I only know anything about Peter Hessler because I just now looked him up. I don't know if I've read anything by him. I know I'm a narrow-minded parochial American but I'd probably consider articles about China kind of duty-ish. I'll look at this latest one, though.

I don't know how I started reading him years ago. I remember that he was in Egypt during the Arab Spring. My interest in daily life in China is pretty much limited to his TNY articles.

One of the most useful things I've learned from reading him is that some factories in China sell things on eBay under several different user names--yet they're all the same company.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2023, 01:06:17 pm
TNY is using some words and phrases that are utterly new to me.

The author of the article about the Barbie movie and other Mattel toys being made into movies (July 10 and 17) uses the word ouroboros. I'd never heard of that word, but it's meaning is quite interesting (thanks to Webster online):

: a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth
2
usually ouroboros or less commonly uroboros : something (such as a never-ending cycle) that is likened to or suggestive of the Ouroboros symbol


In another article, a review in an issue a while ago (which I didn't keep), a character is described as someone's "woo-woo husband."

"Woo-woo?"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 12, 2023, 02:10:44 pm
I think I might faintly remember that woo-woo. Was it a review of the TV series "Beef"?

My son and I watched the entire 10-episode series (each episode 30 minutes) when I visited him in Chicago in May. The day was cold and rainy and we couldn't think of anything to do that seemed worth venturing into that weather. (I mean, sure, Chicago has a few other attractions, but I guess we weren't in the mood.) Anyway, it was pretty good. I've never done that -- never watched more than two episodes of a show back to back, and even that just a handful of times. Sometimes I have to divide a 60-minute episode over two nights! But it was fun and I have fond memories of that day.

So back to woo-woo, the husband was, I guess, a slightly New Agey, spiritual, therapy-speak, laid back, positive thinking kind of guy. The wife was intense, ambitious, more of a realist and, in the plot of "Beef," extremely angry at the person with whom she had a beef.

Here are a couple of definitions of woo-woo, per Google: "A person readily accepting supernatural, paranormal, occult, or pseudoscientific phenomena, or emotion-based beliefs and explanations." "Relating to or holding unconventional beliefs regarded as having little or no scientific basis, especially those relating to spirituality, mysticism, or alternative medicine."

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 12, 2023, 03:26:07 pm
I think I might faintly remember that woo-woo. Was it a review of the TV series "Beef"?

That sounds familiar. I think it might have been.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on July 12, 2023, 10:35:13 pm
Hello, I rarely post here. However, some kind friend gifted me a year subscription to the New Yorker.  I doubt I'll post much, as I have precious little time to actually read the damned thing.  They seem to come every week!  Who has the time!  I mean, really!

To me, it's like the medical literature:  it quickly becomes furniture, all piled up and all. 

Any whoo, as for the fiction edition:  I have to say I was disappointed by the japanese one.  Also, as much as I like Jumpa Lahiri, I was totally underwhelmed by her rather boring and long-short story about P's parties.  Yawn.

I did like the Barbie article, but it seemed like the whole thing was like a bad shouts and murmurs fake thingie.  An UNO movie?  Really????  Oy. 

Anywhoo, the best thing is reading the New Yorker whilst sunning oneself by the bay in Provincetown!  Cheers, darlings!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2023, 08:12:56 am
Hello, I rarely post here. However, some kind friend gifted me a year subscription to the New Yorker.  I doubt I'll post much, as I have precious little time to actually read the damned thing.  They seem to come every week!  Who has the time!  I mean, really!

Most of us have precious little time to read the damn thing. I multitask; I read the damn thing while I'm eating lunch or dinner.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 13, 2023, 11:56:00 am
I mostly agree with you about "P's Parties" Paul. If you were the P, those parties would go better! Also agree about "The Kitchen God." There was no ending and no climax or epiphany either! The best of the three long fiction works was "Colorin Colorado". BTW, it has nothing to do with the state of Colorado. I haven't read the short fiction yet. I did like Parul Sehgal's "Do We Need to Hear Another Story?" which contained E. M. Forster's quote "a veritable 'tape-worm' with its dankly primordial 'and then. . .and then'"
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 13, 2023, 12:05:31 pm
They seem to come every week!  Who has the time!  I mean, really!

Sadly true. I'll think, hooray, tonight I'll have time to sit down with the latest New Yorker. Only to find another one in my mailbox.

I'm gradually going through a huge pile of them and chucking as many as possible into recycling. I still can't help ripping out articles that sound mildly interesting. Just as I tend to open a new tab for links on webpages that look interesting, so I constantly have windows full of tabs with stories from the Atlantic, Slate, the NYT and even the New Yorker. Would everyone please stop writing interesting things?! (I'm doing my part by writing uninteresting things.)

Anyway, then the ripped-out articles pile up. I do occasionally grab a few when the occasion demands. I recent read one from 2021, but that's by no means a record.

Quote
To me, it's like the medical literature:  it quickly becomes furniture, all piled up and all. 

That's how I am with the newspaper I actually work for, and which also is my main source for local news.

Quote
Also, as much as I like Jumpa Lahiri, I was totally underwhelmed by her rather boring and long-short story about P's parties.  Yawn.

Thank you! I'll skip it. I had the magazine open to it and was going to trudge through because I like Jumpa Lahiri, too. And I really like Zadie Smith, but found her piece underwhelming. I wonder if TNY reaches out to writers like that and asks them to submit something, so they whip up whatever they can on the spot. (More likely in Zadie's case than Jumpa's -- a short/long story generally requires more time and forethought.) But those little Fiction Issue nonfiction (?) pieces tend to be like that.

Quote
I did like the Barbie article, but it seemed like the whole thing was like a bad shouts and murmurs fake thingie.  An UNO movie?  Really????  Oy.

I didn't get through the whole thing. I got a page or two in, figured I'd learned as much as I needed to on that subject. I'm trying to do that more often.

Quote
Anywhoo, the best thing is reading the New Yorker whilst sunning oneself by the bay in Provincetown!  Cheers, darlings!

Have fun!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 13, 2023, 12:11:13 pm
Most of us have precious little time to read the damn thing. I multitask; I read the damn thing while I'm eating lunch or dinner.

I usually read my computer at lunch. And I time dinner around my daily hour of TV. (Last night's feature: the first half of "Marathon Man." I'm testing my theory that the '70s were the peak era for movies. I know some would disagree, citing Ted Turner's movies, but maybe we can agree that there aren't as many good ones since the '70s.)

I read TNY when I'm sitting on my balcony watching the sun set. (When do I read it when it's too cold to sit on the balcony? I don't remember. That's probably why they're piled up.)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2023, 01:20:52 pm
I rather liked Zadie Smith. I found the idea of being unable to escape Charles Dickens quite amusing and entertaining. (It also wasn't that long.)

The Barbie article sort of petered out in the middle.

I really liked the Samuel R. Delany profile. I've never read him (and probably won't), but I already knew some things about him: gay, work considered "pioneering," and lives right here in Philadelphia. Unfortunately I've never met him, but I was interested to learn more about him.

The "story" article was blech--but I pushed through it anway.

I haven't read the long-short fictions yet, but I always read the little one-page things that are included in this issue (I'm sure partly because they are only one page).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 13, 2023, 04:56:42 pm
I rather liked Zadie Smith. I found the idea of being unable to escape Charles Dickens quite amusing and entertaining. (It also wasn't that long.)

You're right. Maybe I was too hard on it. It's just that she's the author of an extremely powerful short story, the ominous "Two Men Arrive in a Village."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/06/two-men-arrive-in-a-village-by-zadie-smith (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/06/two-men-arrive-in-a-village-by-zadie-smith)

Also a really good upbeat essay, "Joy."


http://gel.sites.uiowa.edu/sites/gel.sites.uiowa.edu/files/wysiwyg_uploads/zadie_smith_-_joy.pdf (http://gel.sites.uiowa.edu/sites/gel.sites.uiowa.edu/files/wysiwyg_uploads/zadie_smith_-_joy.pdf)

Quote
The Barbie article sort of petered out in the middle.

That's about when I petered out on it. I can see why they thought it would be a good idea, but there's only so much to say about it.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 13, 2023, 09:31:49 pm
I haven't read the long-short fictions yet, but I always read the little one-page things that are included in this issue (I'm sure partly because they are only one page).

I've started to read "The Kitchen God." I don't believe I will finish it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 17, 2023, 01:01:36 pm
I've started to read "The Kitchen God." I don't believe I will finish it.

I didn't finish it.

Over lunch today I started "Colorin Colorado," and I'm not going to finish it, either.

 :P
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 17, 2023, 01:59:13 pm
I didn't finish it. ... I'm not going to finish it, either.

It's funny -- in my stack of old New Yorkers, almost all are open to a page with an article that I started but didn't finish.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on July 17, 2023, 02:02:09 pm
"Kitchen God" was meh.

"Colorin Colorado" was much better.  In fact, I liked the writer's style; it flowed well. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 18, 2023, 09:24:34 am
I got the feeling that the main character in "The Kitchen God" was married but her husband was never mentioned?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 18, 2023, 11:21:45 am
I got the feeling that the main character in "The Kitchen God" was married but her husband was never mentioned?

I think maybe it was mentioned early on, but then we never heard anything more about him.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 19, 2023, 01:01:09 pm
I can hardly believe it, but since I gave up on the fiction issue, at the moment I've actually outrun my New Yorkers.  :laugh:

So at lunch today I read (wait for it) ... the July-August issue of the AARP Bulletin. And I think I should start reading them. There is interesting stuff in them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 19, 2023, 02:46:20 pm
I can hardly believe it, but since I gave up on the fiction issue, at the moment I've actually outrun my New Yorkers.  :laugh:

So at lunch today I read (wait for it) ... the July-August issue of the AARP Bulletin. And I think I should start reading them. There is interesting stuff in them.

I wrote an article for the AARP some years back. It was about attention overload, which I myself suffer from.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 21, 2023, 12:41:27 pm
Although I hardly ever read political stories anymore, I found "The New Blue Wall" about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer interesting. I didn't realize the extent that Michigan works with the automotive industry and how that affects the whole Midwest. It should have been shorter though.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 21, 2023, 01:19:19 pm
Although I hardly ever read political stories anymore, I found "The New Blue Wall" about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer interesting. I didn't realize the extent that Michigan works with the automotive industry and how that affects the whole Midwest. It should have been shorter though.

I intend to read that, but, of course, I had to go first to Jill Lepore on bears.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 24, 2023, 10:53:21 pm
I'm reading the Louis Menand one about neoliberalism. Like all his articles, it's good if a little more dense than I would need it to be. But I came upon what I'd forgotten is the weirdest New Yorker verbal eccentricity of all: writing percent as "per cent." For Pete's sake, New Yorker, the AP finally lets us start using a % sign like normal people and you're still not just writing it out but writing two words so we can all contemplate that percent means "per one 100th" which we already know?!

When I was a copywriter, I followed AP style in general but broke it for % because the symbol is just much easier to read and easier to fit in headlines.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 25, 2023, 08:52:29 am
That one was a little dense.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on July 26, 2023, 02:23:51 pm
Thought you might enjoy this:  The Curse of the Diaeresis. 

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 26, 2023, 03:24:16 pm
Haha, that was entertaining, especially the end.

I used to work for a co?perative and this issue loomed time and time again.  :-\
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 26, 2023, 09:24:38 pm
Emily Nussbaum's article about Nashville (July 24) is interesting.

At one point, she visits a nightclub called the Lipstick Lounge. I like this little self-deprecating self-reference:

"Call me basic, but I had a good time: in Manhattan, a slovenly middle-aged woman in jeans can't walk into a nightclub, order a Diet Coke, and go dancing for free."

I never imagined a writer for TNY would be slovenly.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on July 31, 2023, 01:02:21 pm
This amused me. In Tessa Hadley's story (July 24) the main character's son had a telly in his room "with a twisted coat hanger for an aerial."

Maybe aerial is a Britishism, but when I was a little boy, we used that word interchangeably with antenna to mean the same thing.

I will also admit to learning high jinks from Jill Lepore's article on bears (July 24) and a theater entry in "Goings On About Town" (July 31). Seriously, I thought it was one word, highjinks,  with high jinks perhaps an antiquated TNY-ism, perhaps because I've seen it instead as hijinx, but online Webster confirms that high jinks is correct. (Webster shows  hijinx as a less-common variant.)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on July 31, 2023, 03:02:04 pm
(Webster shows  hijinx as a less-common variant.)

I think of it as the more common variant. Makes me wonder what jinx even are, and how high ones compare to lojinx (not a word, AFAIK).

Well, OK, I guess I could consult a dictionary on jink. Still doesn't really explain the word hijinx but maybe gives it a little context.

Quote
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages ? Learn more
jink
verb
change direction suddenly and nimbly, as when dodging a pursuer.
"she was too quick for him and jinked away every time"
noun
a sudden quick change of direction.
"people remember him for his runs on the wing, his jinks"

I've been going through the articles I ripped out and stapled together last time I sorted through my old TNYs. Just read one from 2019 about a woman working in the tech industry, Anna Wiener, that I liked. She published a whole memoir about that and it's supposed to be pretty good, but now I don't have to read it!  :laugh:




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on July 31, 2023, 03:07:02 pm
Reminds me of Ennis's "high time entertainment".  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 16, 2023, 09:50:51 pm
Giovanni's Room is just across the street from my barber shop, so after I got my hair cut today, I had to go over and check out the used book tables on the sidewalk outside the shop. I was surprised and delighted to find a book titled Through The Children's Gate: A Home in New York--by Adam Gopnik!  :D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 20, 2023, 08:42:49 am
I skipped more of that issue than I read. Most of those musicians I'd never heard of. I pushed through the Ed Sheeran article, although it got into stuff about music that was totally beyond my comprehension.

It seems Ed Sheeran played to a sold-out Empower (Mile-High) Stadium last night here. I can't understand the appeal. What rock star has the name Ed anyway? Now if it were Hauser...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 20, 2023, 12:26:10 pm
I was surprised and delighted to find a book titled Through The Children's Gate: A Home in New York--by Adam Gopnik!  :D

I think he wrote about his family's time living in Paris too, right? Maybe this is about their returning to North America?




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 20, 2023, 12:29:21 pm
What rock star has the name Ed anyway?

Well, would you count Eddie Vedder, one of rock's most popular and enduring stars? I've seen people call him Ed.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 20, 2023, 01:58:36 pm
Well, would you count Eddie Vedder, one of rock's most popular and enduring stars? I've seen people call him Ed.

I'm only dimly aware of him. I thought he was in the band Van Halen but, looking it up, I see he's in the band Pearl Jam, or was, and now he's on his own.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 20, 2023, 09:12:57 pm
I think he wrote about his family's time living in Paris too, right? Maybe this is about their returning to North America?

That would be a yes and a yes.

This is by now a very old book--copyright 2006. They moved back to NYC just in time for 9/11.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 21, 2023, 08:59:16 am
It seems Ed Sheeran played to a sold-out Empower (Mile-High) Stadium last night here. I can't understand the appeal. What rock star has the name Ed anyway? Now if it were Hauser...

So apparently 12,000 more people attended the Ed concert than came to the Taylor concert last month! I don't really see the appeal of either of them. I haven't heard a song by either of them either.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2023, 12:07:19 pm
So apparently 12,000 more people attended the Ed concert than came to the Taylor concert last month! I don't really see the appeal of either of them. I haven't heard a song by either of them either.

But you're not a teenager. ...

Taylor Swift ain't done too bad for a girl from Berks County, Pennsylvania.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 21, 2023, 01:40:59 pm
I'm only dimly aware of him. I thought he was in the band Van Halen but, looking it up, I see he's in the band Pearl Jam, or was, and now he's on his own.

So apparently 12,000 more people attended the Ed concert than came to the Taylor concert last month! I don't really see the appeal of either of them. I haven't heard a song by either of them either.

No offense, but I'm starting to suspect that your awareness and appreciation of a rock- or pop-music star is not the best measure of their success.

Amanda and I were going to go to Pearl Jam when they played near her current home. We couldn't get tickets, but that's just as well because the concert was scheduled for March 24, 2020.

Here's IMDb:
To date, the band has sold nearly 32 million records in the United States and an estimated 60 million worldwide. Pearl Jam has outlasted and outsold many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of that decade.

And here's Wikipedia:
Pearl Jam outsold many of their contemporaries from the early 1990s, and are considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, being dubbed as "the most popular American rock and roll band of the '90s".

But I'm not making fun of you, because I'm in the same boat. I have heard OF many big famous musical artists but I haven't always heard their music. I couldn't name a song by either Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift. I don't think Ed outsold Taylor here but came closer than I would have thought. I have a FB friend who's, I think, 53, who's always posting about how much she loves some band or other that I've never heard of.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 21, 2023, 03:20:13 pm
I have a FB friend who's, I think, 53, who's always posting about how much she loves some band or other that I've never heard of.

When the Today show does its Summer Concert Series on the Plaza, so often these days the performers are bands or individuals I've never heard of, yet the Plaza always seems to be filled with screaming fans.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 22, 2023, 11:24:20 am
I must cite two things in my defense: (1) I did read the New Yorker article on plagiarism, which prominently features Ed, all the way through and (2) I see that David Harbour is in the news (https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-david-harbour-stepdaughter-note-eras-tour-1235396402/?fbclid=IwAR2Fab4ApMrcjPUiCG-mfzrb5HKF-JZG6PG5jg2mlShf259RvwoMApojvww) talking about attending the Swift concert in Minneapolis. So don't count me completely out!!

I may not know Swift or Sheerhan, but I do know a few Strausses, Schumann, Schubert and even Satie, pretty well!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 22, 2023, 06:13:37 pm
So, interestingly, Ed is a ginger!

https://1883magazine.com/how-ed-sheeran-became-famous/ (https://1883magazine.com/how-ed-sheeran-became-famous/)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 23, 2023, 08:25:20 am
So, interestingly, Ed is a ginger!

https://1883magazine.com/how-ed-sheeran-became-famous/ (https://1883magazine.com/how-ed-sheeran-became-famous/)

Oh! You didn't know that?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 23, 2023, 01:28:35 pm
Here's an example of that TNY usage that drives me crazy.

Quote
Instead, as Hunt-Hendrix later put it, "we are born into traditions, and it becomes our task to keep making sense of the world through those traditions, improving them as we go."

Sorry, TNY, that quotation is a complete sentence. I think it should be:

Quote
Instead, as Hunt-Hendrix later put it, "We are born into traditions. ...:

You would use a lower-case w if the sentence was written:

Quote
Instead, Hunt-Hendrix later put it that "we are born into traditions. ..."

That is a relative pronoun, but then I don't know what to call the clause that begins "we are born. ..."

My go-to source, a good old-fashioned grammar book called Warriner's English Grammar and Composition, by John E. Warriner (I think I have the 1957 edition  ;D ), simply says,

Quote
A direct quotation begins with a capital letter.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on August 23, 2023, 03:35:13 pm
Oh! You didn't know that?

My reaction exactly!




I see that David Harbour is in the news (https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-david-harbour-stepdaughter-note-eras-tour-1235396402/?fbclid=IwAR2Fab4ApMrcjPUiCG-mfzrb5HKF-JZG6PG5jg2mlShf259RvwoMApojvww) talking about attending the Swift concert in Minneapolis. So don't count me completely out!!

 :laugh: :laugh:

Interesting that he chose to see it here. It was a BIG DEAL, dominating the news for several days. I of course did not see it, and in fact if someone mixed Taylor Swift with Beyonc? songs and held a gun to my head, I could not tell them which is which.

Quote
I may not know Swift or Sheerhan, but I do know a few Strausses, Schumann, Schubert and even Satie, pretty well!

You're way ahead of me on those S's. Almost all my knowledge of classical composers comes from piano lessons in elementary school.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on August 24, 2023, 04:41:56 pm
Received the new issue and I've read the memoir by Werner Herog and the book review by Adam Gopnik already. He reviews a book analyzing the Old Testament. I've been trying to get more understanding about the persecution and enslavement of the Jews and the conflicting accounts of the early kings and their antics. This gives much clarity.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on August 28, 2023, 09:47:52 pm
I enjoyed the article on monster trucks in the August 21 issue.  ;D
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 03, 2023, 04:17:05 pm
Received the new issue and I've read the memoir by Werner Herog and the book review by Adam Gopnik already. He reviews a book analyzing the Old Testament. I've been trying to get more understanding about the persecution and enslavement of the Jews and the conflicting accounts of the early kings and their antics. This gives much clarity.

I liked the beekeeping article. Who would have thought there could be so much controversy in beekeeping? Beekeeping has always struck me as something, I don' t know, genteel? Something done by someone with a cottage in the Cotswolds who doesn't have to work for a living (or for retired consulting detectives). The idea that apparently some beekeepers have actually come to blows strikes me as sort of Monty Python-esque.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 07, 2023, 10:36:37 am
A (real life) friend on Twitter/X posted the image below of a New Yorker headline and said, "There are few things that signal elitism more than putting an accent on '?litist.'" He's joking -- he graduated from Yale, wrote a book and is fairly ?lite himself. I saw it too late to respond so I'll share my response with you: Could have been worse if the headline had included  "co?perate or "re?lect."

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3sx-vOXUAAK_XX?format=jpg&name=medium)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 07, 2023, 01:01:30 pm
A (real life) friend on Twitter/X posted the image below of a New Yorker headline and said, "There are few things that signal elitism more than putting an accent on '?litist.'" He's joking -- he graduated from Yale, wrote a book and is fairly ?lite himself. I saw it too late to respond so I'll share my response with you: Could have been worse if the headline had included  "co?perate or "re?lect."

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3sx-vOXUAAK_XX?format=jpg&name=medium)

Notice how all your accented letters showed up as question marks?  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 07, 2023, 02:57:38 pm
Notice how all your accented letters showed up as question marks?  ???

Now I do! Weird. Yet if I write "naive" even my spellcheck underlines it and suggests "na?ve." (I imagine this, too, will show up as a question mark.)

The other weird thing is the "preview" function shows them with the correct accents and even diareses.

ETA after checking back: Yup.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: southendmd on September 07, 2023, 03:02:27 pm
I believe the "?" thingie has been going on ever since Phillip/John moved us to whatever this format is called. All the old posts are loaded with "?"s. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 07, 2023, 04:12:42 pm
I believe the "?" thingie has been going on ever since Phillip/John moved us to whatever this format is called. All the old posts are loaded with "?"s.

Could be. I haven't looked back at old posts, but I'm certain this just started happening to my posts. I've been seeing it in Katherine's posts for some time.

Of course, for some time now I've had the occasional problem of going to post a comment and getting thrown off and having to log back into the site. That's why I wrote that post in Word and copied it in.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 12, 2023, 01:03:56 pm
Well, this I have to say was a profound shock: To learn from the Sept. 11 issue that New Jersey--New Jersey!--didn't outlaw slavery until 1866!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 13, 2023, 12:08:33 pm
I thought the beekeeping article was in the animals issue (September 4) but didn't see it. I read the issue to and from my trip to Switzerland and was delighted to hear Vladimir Nabokov's account of his fascination with butterflies, complete with a photo of him in Switzerland with a butterfly net. A good place to see butterflies and crows is at Jungfraujoch and the Sphinx observatory high on a ridge between the Eiger and Jungfrau peaks. It's so incongruous to see them happily fluttering around in the thin air with the glacier in the background. He also mentions enjoying the blue skies of Colorado, so I felt he was speaking directly to me, even though the article was published in 1948, before my birth. 

The fiction was charming, an early Murakami story called "The Elephant Vanishes." Paul, did you enjoy it?

Edmund Wilson's review of "Animal Farm" was so disappointing. Edmund Wilson thought it was top-rate, but didn't say why or give details or examples, but spent most of his short review dissing Kipling.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 13, 2023, 01:01:08 pm
The beekeeping article was in the August 28 issue, the same as the Herzog and Gopnik pieces. Did you ever go back and find it?

I didn't care for Nabokov and his butterflies. I wonder if I should go back and read Wilson on Animal Farm (which I've never read, BTW)?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 13, 2023, 03:44:19 pm
I wonder if I should go back and read Wilson on Animal Farm (which I've never read, BTW)?

I don't think I have, either. In fact, I don't think I've read any George Orwell books! Maybe an essay or two.

A couple of years ago, I was surprised to see someone at an anti-COVID-shutdown protest holding a sign with an Orwell quote on it. Didn't seem like Orwell would be a big favorite of that right-wing crowd. I approached the person holding the sign and he turned out to be a libertarian. I interviewed him for a while, libertarians being less press-shy than radical Republicans. I interviewed more libertarians at those protests than I had cumulatively in my career up until then.

When I approached Republicans, they'd often snarl, "No, you'll just twist my words." I wanted to tell them I didn't have to -- their words sounded stupid enough without me having to change a thing.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 14, 2023, 09:17:11 am
You've read 1984 surely? I had to read both it and Animal Farm in high school. A Libertarian would quote Orwell because 1984 was about the control of people by government. Wilson thought Animal Farm was a thinly veiled allegory of the Russian revolution.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2023, 01:05:18 pm
You've read 1984 surely? I had to read both it and Animal Farm in high school. A Libertarian would quote Orwell because 1984 was about the control of people by government. Wilson thought Animal Farm was a thinly veiled account of the Russian revolution.

Not I. Didn't have to read it in high school or in college.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 14, 2023, 01:21:52 pm
Not I. Didn't have to read it in high school or in college.

Nor I. Was never required, and never chose, to read either.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 14, 2023, 02:23:36 pm
I read the beekeeping article again. It is so similar to the squid, rats, and homing pigeons articles in the September 4th issue. The theme is that we are messing up the balance of nature by trying to manage it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2023, 02:26:47 pm
I read the beekeeping article again. It is so similar to the squid, rats, and homing pigeons articles in the September 4th issue. The theme is that we are messing up the balance of nature by trying to manage it.

I liked the rat and giant squid articles. The homing pigeon article bored me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 14, 2023, 02:28:28 pm
Nor I. Was never required, and never chose, to read either.

To me, what I know of Animal Farm doesn't make it really sound like something you'd read for fun.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 15, 2023, 11:58:47 am
I liked the rat and giant squid articles. The homing pigeon article bored me.

And don't forget the sperm whale article! It's more upbeat than some of Kolbert's recent ones so you should give it a try. She describes the birth of a baby sperm whale!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 15, 2023, 01:01:08 pm
I've barely gotten into "You've Been Served" (Sept. 11), and already I highly recommend it.

The author and the subject attorney name names.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 15, 2023, 01:25:50 pm
To me, what I know of Animal Farm doesn't make it really sound like something you'd read for fun.

Why not? I mean, I only vaguely know the premise but as I understand it, the characters are all farm animals and it's a political allegory. Neither of those in and of itself seems a deal-breaker; after all I liked Charlotte's Web and The Handmaid's Tale (the latter of which probably isn't quite an allegory per se, but it's the only book that I've read that came to mind in the moment; maybe also A Clockwork Orange?).


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 15, 2023, 03:13:46 pm
Why not? I mean, I only vaguely know the premise but as I understand it, the characters are all farm animals and it's a political allegory. Neither of those in and of itself seems a deal-breaker.

That's it for me. I'm not interested in reading a political allegory for fun. Maybe it would be different if I didn't know it was a political allegory, but that bell was rung a long time ago.

Never read Charlotte's Web, either. Never even heard of it until I wasn't a kid anymore.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 15, 2023, 04:31:39 pm
Never read Charlotte's Web, either. Never even heard of it until I wasn't a kid anymore.

Wow, I highly recommend that! It might not even be too late -- here we are on this thread celebrating the magazine E.B. White wrote for, after all!

I realize some beloved books are less appealing as you get older. I was kind of meh about To Kill a Mockingbird when I finally read it in my 40s. And I threw On the Road across the room in my 20s. But Charlotte's Web, though a children's book, might still work. It's fanciful and heartbreaking but not sappy.

Or maybe you could settle for E.B.'s essay "Death of a Pig." I've never read it, but I keep meaning to, and here's a link!

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/01/death-pig/309203/ (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1948/01/death-pig/309203/)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 15, 2023, 09:00:57 pm
I was kind of meh about To Kill a Mockingbird when I finally read it in my 40s.

Oh, not me. I was older than that when I finally read it. Maybe it had something to do with having seen the movie--and loving it--several times--as I read it I could hear the voice of the narrator in the film--but still.

I keep my copy near my collection of Bibles and prayer books. Not with them, but close by. It's sort of part of the decoration of my living room.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 16, 2023, 01:16:31 pm
Oh, not me. I was older than that when I finally read it. Maybe it had something to do with having seen the movie--and loving it--several times--as I read it I could hear the voice of the narrator in the film--but still.

I keep my copy near my collection of Bibles and prayer books. Not with them, but close by. It's sort of part of the decoration of my living room.

Interesting! I should add that when I read it, I don't think I had (or have!) ever seen the movie, either, start to finish.

I have been somewhat interested in reading Go Tell a Watchman, considered essentially the first draft of TKAM. It's about a college girl visiting her small hometown from NYC and being shocked at the racism she finds, including Atticus'. I see some critics on Wikipedia say it's not very well written (plodding, bad dialogue), but it does sound like a more honest depiction of a small Southern town of that era. Apparently the publishers didn't think the reading public would go for that. [Ron DeSantis would approve of their decision, I can't resist adding, although TKAM is among the most widely banned books, which is crazy since it's also among the most widely taught in schools.]

I tend to think both resemble Lee's actual life and perspective, that TKAM is told through her eyes back when she was a child and revered her father, and GTAW is through her eyes as an adult facing unpleasant reality in her roots.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 16, 2023, 08:38:27 pm
Interesting! I should add that when I read it, I don't think I had (or have!) ever seen the movie, either, start to finish.

I need to add it to my video library. I don't know why I've never done that.  ???

Quote
I have been somewhat interested in reading Go Tell a Watchman, considered essentially the first draft of TKAM. It's about a college girl visiting her small hometown from NYC and being shocked at the racism she finds, including Atticus'. I see some critics on Wikipedia say it's not very well written (plodding, bad dialogue), but it does sound like a more honest depiction of a small Southern town of that era. Apparently the publishers didn't think the reading public would go for that. [Ron DeSantis would approve of their decision, I can't resist adding, although TKAM is among the most widely banned books, which is crazy since it's also among the most widely taught in schools.

I remember reading those criticisms when the book came out. I didn't know about the banning.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 18, 2023, 10:27:10 am
I visited an old friend from high school on my trip to Switzerland and we had the chance to talk about the books we had studied together in AP English. After all these years, we have not changed our position that it was stupid to spend so much time on The Scarlet Letter. Back then, administrators felt obligated to teach us American literature but I wish they'd chosen Whitman instead of Hawthorne. I suppose Whitman was considered too ecstatic and nature-loving...quite the opposite of Hawthorne. Or perhaps did the authorities want to tamp down our teen-aged desires and warn that we might be figuratively branded with a scarlet A if we indulged in them? If so, it didn't work.

We also talked a bit about Moby-Dick. I see that Elizabeth Kolbert refers to the novel several times in her article about sperm whales. Interesting tidbit about why they got the name "sperm" whale. I was shocked when she actually ended the article with a ChatGPT quote. Didn't Jill LePore do that too recently? Are the days gone when authors will reference actual quotes by actual authors in their writing?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 20, 2023, 09:41:09 am
We were talking about Eddie Van Halen recently. I was delighted to learn that his son Wolfgang plays on "I'm Just Ken": https://ew.com/movies/wolfgang-van-halen-josh-freese-barbie-soundtrack-ken-ryan-gosling/ (https://ew.com/movies/wolfgang-van-halen-josh-freese-barbie-soundtrack-ken-ryan-gosling/)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 20, 2023, 12:14:48 pm
I visited an old friend from high school on my trip to Switzerland and we had the chance to talk about the books we had studied together in AP English. After all these years, we have not changed our position that it was stupid to spend so much time on The Scarlet Letter. Back then, administrators felt obligated to teach us American literature but I wish they'd chosen Whitman instead of Hawthorne. I suppose Whitman was considered too ecstatic and nature-loving...quite the opposite of Hawthorne. Or perhaps did the authorities want to tamp down our teen-aged desires and warn that we might be figuratively branded with a scarlet A if we indulged in them? If so, it didn't work.

I was going to come to the defense of The Scarlett Letter, but as I began to think about it I couldn't remember when I'd read it, and then I realized I haven't! I don't think. I just read the Wikipedia description of the plot and beyond the most famous aspects the plot is not particularly familiar. I liked Young Goodman Brown possibly better because it's more ambiguous.

I also love Whitman, of course! Not that I've got a vast knowledge of his entire oeuvre. But the friend who officiated at my wedding, who'd just been ordained as a Unitarian minister, quoted Whitman in the ceremony. I joke that Unitarians mention Whitman as often as they do Jesus.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 20, 2023, 12:39:09 pm
I was going to come to the defense of The Scarlett Letter, but as I began to think about it I couldn't remember when I'd read it, and then I realized I haven't! I don't think. I just read the Wikipedia description of the plot and beyond the most famous aspects the plot is not particularly familiar. I liked Young Goodman Brown possibly better because it's more ambiguous.

I liked Young Goodman Brown, too. I've never read TSL either, but when I was a teenager I read The House of the Seven Gables. I pushed through the whole book, but about the only thing I remember about it was that Hawthorne's style seem down right sing-songy, and that nearly drove me crazy.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 22, 2023, 12:58:54 pm
Over lunch today I finished Jill Lepore's article on Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk (Sept. 18).

I am still laughing over what Mr. Shawn would say about this sentence (from Lepore, not Isaacson or Musk):

"The book upholds a core conviction of many executives: sometimes to get shit done you have to be a dick."

 :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 22, 2023, 06:24:28 pm
Over lunch today I finished Jill Lepore's article on Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk (Sept. 18).

I am still laughing over what Mr. Shawn would say about this sentence (from Lepore, not Isaacson or Musk):

"The book upholds a core conviction of many executives: sometimes to get shit done you have to be a dick."

 :laugh:

Even I'm a little shocked by that. Not disapproving exactly, because I don't really care if people swear. Maybe in context the wording sort of characterizes the gruff, let's-get-er-done attitude of people who think along those lines. But as a writer I usually try to stay away from profanity except in a direct quote (and even then, in the newspaper, we'd have to substitute [expletive]).

Did I already mention (yes, I think I already did) that a few years ago I wrote a story in which I used the phrase "flipping cold" (about people's facial hair getting covered with frost in Minnesota in January)? The editor emails me, "I don't think we can get away with 'flipping.'" And I responded "So shall we just go with fucking, then?" Later I heard from another coworker that this editor doesn't let his teenage kids say "flipping."  :o I feel like even Mr. Shawn might have been OK with "flipping."

 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on September 25, 2023, 11:19:39 am
I say effing. Would that fly?

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 25, 2023, 01:35:38 pm
I say effing. Would that fly?

In a newspaper, I don't think so. That's an even more direct reference to the taboo word than "flipping." When I wrote that story, I also ruled out "fricking." But "flipping" is an actual word that could have developed to mean "extremely, in a bad way," independent of its quasi-homonym.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on September 25, 2023, 03:39:41 pm
Sometimes in articles that quote dialog from Irish plays, for example, speakers say "fecking." I've wondered if that's dialect, or if it's a word Irish people actually use instead of the word it obviously replaces.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on September 25, 2023, 05:47:28 pm
Sometimes in articles that quote dialog from Irish plays, for example, speakers say "fecking." I've wondered if that's dialect, or if it's a word Irish people actually use instead of the word it obviously replaces.

Good question. I've always assumed it was dialect, because it's even more explicit than fricking.

I had a British editor for a couple of years who'd indicate large quantities by saying "a shed load." I wondered if that's what he meant to say, perhaps an actual expression in England, or if he'd just misheard the American term.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 07, 2023, 10:16:12 pm
So, Bettermost moms, did you read the article about Mom rage (Sept. 25)? What did you think of it?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 08, 2023, 08:36:26 pm
I haven't been getting the latest issues because of a subscription glitch but I just went online and read it. I think it may be a helpful article for some people. "Mom Rage" has been around probably as long as there have been moms. It is really only in the past couple of generations that moms have been able to have the expectation that they could actually have some leisure or discretionary time. Before modern times, "mom rage" would more typically be related to feelings of having your children taken away from you, or killed or abused, or having to neglect your children in order to be in service for other wealthier families. Or any kind of injustice or twist of fate.

I don't recall experiencing "mom rage" myself, primarily because I almost didn't have the chance to be a mom at all. My first child was born when I was 36 and my second when I was 40. I was just grateful to be able to have the experience. I experienced disappointment with my husband because he dragged us away from our beloved Denver to Detroit so he could take a high-paying job with lots of power, travel, staff, and budget and wouldn't show up after work until late in the evening and then got himself fired for double dipping on his expense account. But my reaction showed up as, what my therapist described as despondency rather than rage.

Being a mom is very complicated and I admire the book author for tackling it. I'm sure it would be helpful to some people. I could comment on almost every paragraph in the article, but I think this is enough for now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 09, 2023, 08:07:47 am
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, FRiend!

(I hope your subscription glitch gets taken care of soon. That's a GDB of a situation.  >:( )

(It's been so long I don't remember the exact quotation.  :( )
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 09, 2023, 12:35:16 pm
(I hope your subscription glitch gets taken care of soon. That's a GDB of a situation.  >:( )

(It's been so long I don't remember the exact quotation.  :( )

I think it's GDBoaUS ...an unsatisfactory situation.

This happens to me every year at this time. They automatically renew my subscription but I still have to pay for it before they send me an issue.

See attached for what I think is a very good description of motherhood.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 09, 2023, 01:41:10 pm
So, Bettermost moms, did you read the article about Mom rage (Sept. 25)? What did you think of it?

Ambivalent. It sounds like the book is a bit overwritten, too quick to trot out words like white supremacist patriarchy, perhaps its points aren't well-enough supported and the fact that her son has conditions she hadn't mentioned earlier -- that would make her experience different from that of other moms -- is a bit problematic. Plus, I remember reading an article in The New York Times in 2000 or 2001 in which the writer announced it had now become OK for moms to complain about motherhood. And I've seen many many books on the subject since then, including the one I was writing.

Mine was more about the demands of "motherhood culture" than the actual performance of "parenting." That's why I think the writer of the article is nevertheless wrong. She's totally dismissive of almost every point the book author makes -- yet I agreed with everything she quoted the author saying (if not always her ways of saying it).

I had two unusually rambunctious sons, including one diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, which probably isn't as big a deal as what the author's son had but still makes things harder. But the common expectation that it's mothers' role to do almost everything childcare related, pretty much letting fathers off the hook but not valuing the caregiving work with anything but phony pedestal-placing, scolding them if they don't live up to some imaginary image, and not really letting them complain much despite the New York Times' announcement that it was now OK.

So I actually really relate to the book author. The article writer, on the other hand, I kept thinking must not have any kids -- her response echoed what I've heard from people without kids. But at one point she briefly mentions her own, so I decided she must just have had a really different experience.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 09, 2023, 01:52:55 pm
It is really only in the past couple of generations that moms have been able to have the expectation that they could actually have some leisure or discretionary time.

Dads have way more, though. If you look at the BLS American Time Use Survey stats, mothers spend about 50% more hours than fathers doing unpaid labor, and the reverse is true for dads doing paid work. So they work the same amount, but one of them gets paid. I seem to remember dads having more leisure, too, but I'm not sure what mothers did to balance that out.

Quote
Before modern times, "mom rage" would more typically be related to feelings of having your children taken away from you, or killed or abused, or having to neglect your children in order to be in service for other wealthier families. Or any kind of injustice or twist of fate.

True, but it might be both. Louisa May Alcott lived in relatively modern times, and in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women, the mother says, "I'm angry every day of my life." Of course, she seemed to have a no-good husband who ditched the family while he went off to do whatever it was he did.

Quote
My first child was born when I was 36 and my second when I was 40.

I was one week short of 37 with my first and 38 1/2 with my second.

Quote
I'm sure it would be helpful to some people. I could comment on almost every paragraph in the article, but I think this is enough for now.

I think the book could be helpful to people, too. I found books like that helpful, such as Rachel Cusk's A Life's Work or Ayelet Waldman's Bad Mother.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 09, 2023, 03:57:35 pm
Louisa May Alcott lived in relatively modern times, and in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Little Women, the mother says, "I'm angry every day of my life." Of course, she seemed to have a no-good husband who ditched the family while he went off to do whatever it was he did.

As I recall, he was a chaplain on the front lines of the Civil War and the only way he got to come home was because he was wounded. Marmie had to drop everything and go tend to him in the hospital because there were no nurses available. So I can understand why she was angry. And those lectures about the dangers of wearing corsets!

Thanks for telling us about how the NYT announced that it was all right to complain about motherhood. I missed that...too busy parenting to read the NYT! I admire anyone who can write about parenting when they're in the throes of it. I think I had "mommy brain fog" for years!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 09, 2023, 04:07:58 pm
So I actually really relate to the book author. The article writer, on the other hand, I kept thinking must not have any kids -- her response echoed what I've heard from people without kids. But at one point she briefly mentions her own, so I decided she must just have had a really different experience.

To use a phrase that's overused, in my opinion (to the point I'm sick of it) ... "Thanks for sharing."

No, I do appreciate the input.

Re: oppositional defiant disorder: Everything is a disorder today. No one has alcoholism anymore; they have alcohol use disorder. Smoke too much weed? You're not a pothead, you have cannabis use disorder. New mothers are no longer subject to postpartum depression; now they may suffer from major depressive disorder with peripartum onset. The list goes on--this from the organization that once characterized homosexuality as a ... disorder.

The word woke comes to mind. ...
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 09, 2023, 07:35:39 pm
What a coincidence--today Claudia Goldin won the Nobel Prize (https://www.npr.org/2023/10/09/1204620268/nobel-prize-economics-claudia-goldin-women-gender-gap?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20231009&utm_term=9007058&utm_campaign=breaking-news&utm_id=58413326&orgid=33&utm_att1=) in economics for her work on women in the workplace.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on October 09, 2023, 09:54:50 pm
Re: oppositional defiant disorder: Everything is a disorder today. No one has alcoholism anymore; they have alcohol use disorder. Smoke too much weed? You're not a pothead, you have cannabis use disorder. New mothers are no longer subject to postpartum depression; now they may suffer from major depressive disorder with peripartum onset. The list goes on--this from the organization that once characterized homosexuality as a ... disorder.

I never called it that when my son was young. I just thought that was a fancy label for difficult. Not so much woke, but a way to turn it into a disorder that benefits from "therapy." So that much more $ for the psychologists who come up with those classifications in the DSM.

Years later, though, when I've looked into this on more websites and Facebook groups, I've begun to think there's more to it. ODD is said to have some weird little traits like kids speaking gibberish, which my son did a lot (he could speak perfectly fine English, he just liked to slip into gibberish now and then), that it's related to OCD, which my son had a touch of and is elsewhere in the family, which is related to Tourette's, which nobody in the family has to my knowledge but ever so slightly resembles speaking gibberish.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 19, 2023, 01:15:13 pm
I finally am back to receiving my print issues and I see I missed an article about pockets. One person wrote in about how she strips the pockets off her clothes and replaces them with good deep ones.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 19, 2023, 03:29:07 pm
Glad to hear you are again receiving your print issues, FRiend.

I have allowed myself to fall so far behind. I brought two issues with me to my dad's, and I just haven't felt like reading them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 19, 2023, 07:23:01 pm
One should take a New Yorker vacation periodically.

Since I was driving around a lot I picked up two audiobooks from the library. One was a Tony Hillerman mystery set in New Mexico where I was going. Another was a #1 Ladies Detective Agency book by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana. I love the dialect.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 19, 2023, 10:12:14 pm
Since I was driving around a lot I picked up two audiobooks from the library. One was a Tony Hillerman mystery set in New Mexico where I was going. Another was a #1 Ladies Detective Agency book by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Botswana. I love the dialect.

Which Hillerman? I think I've read them all in paperback. Earlier this year I donated them to the book room in my building because I didn't anticipate reading them again.

Hillerman himself was as interesting a character as Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 20, 2023, 11:23:04 am
Dark Winds was the name of it. I've also read Talking God which was good, but not much of it was set in the Southwest. I got introduced to Tony Hillerman by way of his daughter. She has a new novel The Way of the Bear which is set in the Bear's Ears area.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on October 20, 2023, 11:51:08 pm
Dark Winds was the name of it. I've also read Talking God which was good, but not much of it was set in the Southwest. I got introduced to Tony Hillerman by way of his daughter. She has a new novel The Way of the Bear which is set in the Bear's Ears area.

Talking God was the first Hillerman I read. I've read two of his daughter's novels, but their titles escape me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on October 23, 2023, 11:47:57 am
Was there a full-page ad in your issues about microdosing with psylosibin?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 05, 2023, 10:20:01 pm
So, I'm watching the movie Nyad, and there's a scene where her friend scoops up a pile of magazines from the kitchen counter and says, "New Yorkers? Look at this. From 2006."  :laugh: :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 06, 2023, 09:11:23 am
So, I'm watching the movie Nyad, and there's a scene where her friend scoops up a pile of magazines from the kitchen counter and says, "New Yorkers? Look at this. From 2006."  :laugh: :laugh:

 :laugh:  :laugh:

The pile on my dining room table will soon be like that. I've never been so far behind before.  :(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 06, 2023, 05:12:03 pm
A Facebook friend said he has vowed during his staycation to go through his pile dating back to 2021.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 10, 2023, 12:49:47 am
I've managed to whittle down my pile by getting rid of any from the Trump era. A few are tucked away in a bedside table. The rest go in the little free libraries that are in the neighborhood. 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 10, 2023, 09:05:57 am
I've never been this far (four issues) behind. I've become a lot more selective in the articles that I'm reading--fewer "duty articles." If an article doesn't grab me right from the start, I stop reading it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 10, 2023, 12:24:00 pm
I do something similar. I was reading the article about free will yesterday and I decided to prove that free will exists by stopping. Take that, you compatibilist philosophers!!  :laugh:
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on November 10, 2023, 04:40:38 pm
I also try to eliminate any from the previous presidential administration. Unfortunately with New Yorkers, though, that still requires steely self-control because obviously most stories are not related to national politics. But maybe you just don't want any reminders of those bleak years?
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 13, 2023, 09:41:19 pm
...maybe you just don't want any reminders of those bleak years?

That's definitely it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 16, 2023, 02:07:15 pm
The things you learn when you read TNY over lunch:

Barry Manilow wrote the jingles for State Farm ("Like a good neighbor ...") and Band-Aids ("I am stuck on Band-Aids ...").

Who knew? Not me, that's for sure!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 16, 2023, 04:37:37 pm
I like the way you wrote it better than the way they wrote it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 16, 2023, 05:50:59 pm
I like the way you wrote it better than the way they wrote it.

Thanks, FRiend.  :)
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 19, 2023, 04:29:04 pm
It's the middle of November and I'm still reading and eating my lunch outside!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on November 27, 2023, 09:30:05 am
Tell you what, my subscription expires in February, and I have yet to hear anything about renewing it.  ???
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on November 27, 2023, 01:01:52 pm
I have auto-renew but it doesn't seem to help much since my credit card is not automatically charged.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 01, 2023, 12:53:28 am
My renewal form came in yesterday's mail. I will send in the renewal tomorrow.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 07, 2023, 03:02:45 pm
In the latest issue, Jill Lepore draws parallels between the trial of Jefferson Davis and the Donald Trump situation. She and others have predicted that next year will be the most chaotic and drama-soaked since the Civil War.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 13, 2023, 10:07:06 pm
I am actually caught up because I did not read anything that did not "grab" me in the TOC, and if I started something and didn't like it or got bored by it, I stopped reading it.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 16, 2023, 09:11:48 pm
Heard a rumor today that the holiday issue is 1,000 pages long!  :o
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 16, 2023, 11:55:39 pm
Heard a rumor today that the holiday issue is 1,000 pages long!  :o

Then I wish I'd get it Monday. I'm going to need lots of reading matter when I'm up at my dad's.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 17, 2023, 04:04:17 pm
 >:(
Heard a rumor today that the holiday issue is 1,000 pages long!  :o

Is that possible? That's approximately the length of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, which is several inches thick!

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on December 17, 2023, 04:41:20 pm
Oh, and of course a hardcover Gone With the Wind is 1,037 pages.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 19, 2023, 12:30:41 pm
I've decided this must be a kind of  a joke or some way to show how urban legends spread.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 20, 2023, 10:10:31 am
The latest issue arrived yesterday and was the usual length. Very colorful. I'm not a big fan of graphic novels so the piece on Patricia Highsmith merely hurt my eyes.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on December 31, 2023, 11:59:44 am
The January 1&8 issue has several good articles. Two of them, "The Ventriloquist" and "Genghis the Good" are not about what their titles are.

"The Ventriloquist" is about the screenwriter turned director Scott Frank. Not a household name but I guarantee you've seen his work. He is most famous as a script doctor, adding depth and assuring that the audience will engage with the characters. I love his approach of putting characters before plot and making the plot work in service of the characters. He is very adept at imparting the knowledge audiences need without narratives such as can be included in novels.

Now he's teamed up with Anya Taylor-Joy on the brilliant Netflix series "The Queen's Gambit." And, yes, Heath Ledger is mentioned.

"Genghis the Good" Starts out being about Pope Francis's trip to Mongolia. But it's really about the growing field of global history, a discipline that looks at history as a whole and how populations moved and affected others throughout the world, ignoring political borders. I've read several new books on the subject and find it very eye-opening.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on December 31, 2023, 05:14:14 pm
I haven't yet had the opportunity to read the Scott Frank article. I enjoyed the Genghis Khan article.

In the "Goings On" section, I also enjoyed the short piece on Leonard Nimoy's widow. I'd never heard of her, but she's described as an actress, a writer, a director and a philanthropist.

It's funny, I guess. I've never been a Star Trek fan, but it's become such a pervasive part of popular culture that I think it's possible to learn a lot about the show, particularly the people involved in it, without ever having watched an episode.

I enjoy spotting Leonard Nimoy in roles from before he became famous through Star Trek. Twice I've spotted him playing a Native American.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 01, 2024, 03:25:27 pm
I am reading but have not yet finished Jonathan Franzen on outdoor cats (Jan. 1 and 8 ). I would be very interested in hearing what others may think of it.

While I have not yet finished the article, in the interest of full disclosure I will say that I came to the article unalterably opposed to outdoor cats/cats allowed outdoors (unsupervised) since I saw one kill a robin in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the spring of 1981.

I am presently concerned about a cat without a collar that seems to be skulking around my father's neighborhood. I worry about the birds that gather on the ground underneath my father's bird feeder, and I guess a skulking cat means we will no longer have rabbits in the neighborhood.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 02, 2024, 02:05:53 pm
Well, for one thing, the illustration is amazing. The more you look at it, the more cats you see.

The article is terribly long but this is a complex problem. Franzen starts by describing the trap/neuter/release method that is used in LA but this is obviously not going to make a big enough dent in the outdoor cat population. There needs to be a multifaceted approach that includes not interfering with the natural order. Instead, people in Pasadena actually considered an eradication program for coyotes because they were killing the outdoor cats! Fortunately, they voted it down. I lived in Los Angeles for almost a decade and there is much wildlife there, including not only coyotes but birds of prey such as the California condor.

There should be a place where unhomed cats can live relatively safely. When I was in Rome, I loved the cats that lived among the ruins such as the Pantheon. These cats are fed and protected. I don't know what all the people do to manage the populations but they should be consulted. As always, we could learn much from Europe but we don't bother to.

Midway through, Franzen starts talking about his real love, birds. It's true that the bird population has fallen alarmingly. My upstairs renter always has a full bird feeder or two on the raised deck, and I've started seeing more birds. But bird lovers unfairly demonize cats. The decrease in birds is also a complex problem and pollution is a bigger threat than domestic cats. My cat has never caught or killed a bird or anything bigger than a spider. As you know, she did bring in a chipmunk one time, but she didn't harm it. She was carrying it like she would a kitten.

I was at a workshop last fall when we heard a lot of cheeping around a tree. The baby birds had gotten too big for the nest and the mother bird was pushing them out. There were about eight small birds hopping around on the ground. They weren't able to fly yet. We asked our teacher/owner what to do and he said, "Let nature take its course." I knew there were many natural predators around. One of the babies hopped into my hand and I took it over and let it loose under some sunflower plants that were enclosed in a fence. Birds are the descendants of dinosaurs so you would expect them to be more resilient.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 02, 2024, 05:02:39 pm
The article is terribly long but this is a complex problem. Franzen starts by describing the trap/neuter/release method that is used in LA but this is obviously not going to make a big enough dent in the outdoor cat population. There needs to be a multifaceted approach that includes not interfering with the natural order. Instead, people in Pasadena actually considered an eradication program for coyotes because they were killing the outdoor cats! Fortunately, they voted it down. I lived in Los Angeles for almost a decade and there is much wildlife there, including not only coyotes but birds of prey such as the California condor.

Whenever anyone in my area reports a missing cat on Nextdoor, the neighbors pile on the scorn for the person having let the cat go outside and exposing it to coyotes. I've never heard anyone here propose eradicating coyotes, luckily.

Quote
There should be a place where unhomed cats can live relatively safely. When I was in Rome, I loved the cats that lived among the ruins such as the Pantheon. These cats are fed and protected. I don't know what all the people do to manage the populations but they should be consulted. As always, we could learn much from Europe but we don't bother to.

Actually I think European stray cats are more problematic than that. I wrote a story in 2022 about them. I'm not sure about the Parthenon cats but in general the stray cats are fed haphazardly, often have health problems and rarely get sterilized. My story was about a program that rounds up cats in Greece and keeps them in a big comfortable country home while they get health care from American veterinary student volunteers, including spaying and neutering. Then the ones that are young enough to adjust to human company are adopted and the others released.




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 02, 2024, 05:52:44 pm
This article (https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2019/11/25/imagine-a-world-with-no-stray-dogs-holland-did-it-heres-how/) tells about how Holland is taking care of its stray dog problem. IMO dogs are even more of a problem than cats but are hardly even mentioned in Franzen's article. Most every municipality has an animal control department that you can call when there's a stray dog or cat. When I lived in a semi-rural area, they wouldn't come out for nuisance animals. When a skunk family moved in under my deck, they wouldn't come out. Also, when there was a dead deer by the side of the road, I called but they said to leave it and mountain lions or coyotes would take care of it.

But we have domesticated dogs and cats to work for us and be our companions so we are obligated to manage and care for them. And that includes managing the population growth. Wild animals can do this. I read in the book Watership Down that when the rabbit warren gets too crowded, the female rabbits don't have as many babies. The embryos start to form but then are dissolved back into the mothers' bodies. Perhaps humans and all animals used to know how to do this but lost the ability over time. Also, many plants are natural abortifacients.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 02, 2024, 06:15:37 pm
In Minnesota, apparently when a deer is lying dead in the highway they call people who go pick them up, butcher and eat them. Frankly, I'd rather eat boxed mac 'n' cheese, watch a Hallmark movie AND drop hot sauce into an eye. I saw a movie years ago whose name I can't remember -- in fact, all I remember was a character (maybe played by Tim Robbins?) who was such a loser his job was picking roadkill off the pavement in the South in summer, so ever since then I've considered that the worst possible job. But I guess if the animal's injuries are in the right places and it hasn't been sitting out too long it's a valid use.

Ready for another gross story? OK then! (I may have already told this.) I went to a county fair where in one of the games, the prize for winning was a live bunny. I was standing nearby and saw someone from the game rush over and tell a small crowd of children near the fence to go away. Apparently a rabbit with new babies was so nervous about the crowd she was eating them.

Good thing human mothers can't reabsorb their babies or they'd probably be arrested in Texas.




 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 03, 2024, 12:08:05 am
People shouldn't feed these cats and then decide the cats are a problem. If they don't want the cats to become a problem, then they shouldn't feed the cats.

This is not rocket science.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 03, 2024, 10:03:15 am
People shouldn't feed these cats and then decide the cats are a problem. If they don't want the cats to become a problem, then they shouldn't feed the cats.

I agree, however Franzen addresses this. He said there was something of a biochemical reaction when people, especially women, feed the stray cats. A nurturing instinct. Also they rationalize that the cats only need food, that being unsheltered outdoors is okay. But in truth it's not. Even for wildlife Nature can be brutal.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 13, 2024, 02:56:18 pm
I enjoyed Jon Lee Anderson's piece in the Jan. 15 issue. However, as I read my way through it, I couldn't help wondering if in fact he'd sold himself a couple of times just to survive. Cute blond boy that he was at 17? I doubt he would have had to look far for business.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 13, 2024, 04:30:29 pm
Looking forward to reading that, especially because he's exactly my age.

I forgot to mention that the "storytelling group" at work interviewed Jia Tolentino via Zoom (well, Teams equivalent) a couple of weeks ago. The group talks about how to write engaging feature stories, usually narrative style, and in most meetings we interview either magazine writers or longform newspaper writers, about particular articles someone admires and how they approached them.

This one with Jia Tolentino was on her article about Millennials' anxiety about climate change. Some in the group were really impressed by her wisdom (younger women, primarily). I wasn't particularly impressed in the interview, but I do often like her pieces. Anyway, of course what I really wanted to ask her was whether New Yorker staffers get paid by the article or receive a steady paycheck, but that seemed a bit gauche.



 
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 14, 2024, 05:53:59 pm
This NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html) from 2021 has some information on that. Apparently fact checkers and such earn about $55,000 or more and are employees but it appears that most writers are considered contractors or freelancers and don't get benefits like health insurance. Another source says those who write short stories get about $7,500 for them.

Another place says the median salary is $90,010 and that even some of the star writers are considered contractors. George Packer, for instance, was just recently able to receive health coverage.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 14, 2024, 08:54:27 pm
This NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html) from 2021 has some information on that. Apparently fact checkers and such earn about $55,000 or more and are employees but it appears that most writers are considered contractors or freelancers and don't get benefits like health insurance. Another source says those who write short stories get about $7,500 for them.

Another place says the median salary is $90,010 and that even some of the star writers are considered contractors. George Packer, for instance, was just recently able to receive health coverage.

Wow, and it's not like those are big salaries even in Minneapolis, let alone NYC.

Even $7,500 for a short story could amount less than $2 a word, which is what I was making when freelancing for mainstream magazines like Real Simple, Working Mother and More in the 1990s and early 2000s.



Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 26, 2024, 11:16:32 am
I guess TNY thinks the visibility and prestige makes up for the reduced payments.  :-\

This week's issue has a "beginner friendly" crossword that I dispatched in under 10 minutes!
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 26, 2024, 07:11:09 pm
I guess TNY thinks the visibility and prestige makes up for the reduced payments.  :-\

Yeah. Unfortunately, the grocery store doesn't accept visibility and prestige as payment. Many publications have tried getting writers to work for free, saying they get "visibility." The writing community in general rejects that. I've worked for very low pay or free a few times but only for publications on a shoestring budget, not a Conde Nast magazine.

Quote
This week's issue has a "beginner friendly" crossword that I dispatched in under 10 minutes!

I rarely do crosswords, but based on the ToC, this week's issue has a lot of other good stuff!


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 27, 2024, 03:38:19 pm
I hear the Cond? Nast writers are on strike now.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on January 27, 2024, 05:32:39 pm
Just for one day, I guess.

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-daily-news-journalism-layoffs-strikes-28bc63a66fe90f3edb2426a790103c74 (https://apnews.com/article/new-york-daily-news-journalism-layoffs-strikes-28bc63a66fe90f3edb2426a790103c74)

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on January 30, 2024, 11:25:54 am
This (January 29)  should have been called the "trapped woman" issue. On page 25 starts 25 pages of articles and fiction about trapped women. From reading the profile of Sophia Coppola, it seems clear that many of her films are influenced by the predicament of her mother, Eleanor, who is a creative woman trapped in the role of helping her super-famous and prolific husband. Then we have "Cave Woman", the tale of a Spanish woman who likes solitude so much that she voluntarily spent 500 days in a cave. I skipped over it at first, thinking "how can that be interesting?" but when I finally read it, it was engrossing. "Poor Houdini" by Anne Carson winds up the series. In case we haven't gotten the point yet, the illustration for the fiction piece shows a crow on a padlock. It must be somewhat autobiographical, because the protagonist is always thinking about words that rhyme with whatever was just said so she can create a sonnet. The story is full of similies and metaphors which seem outlandish at first until you think about them and then they ring true. For example, "The day is large and sharp, like the edges of tin cans."
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on January 30, 2024, 02:36:38 pm
I wouldn't say she was trapped--at least she didn't strike me as trapped--but David Sedaris' article is also about a woman, his friend Donna.

I guess maybe there is a theme here, even if they didn't give the issue a title.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 02, 2024, 01:23:51 pm
I saved the Sedaris article for last. I loved and related to Dawn, for obvious reasons.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 02, 2024, 06:21:25 pm
Oh, I've got much to catch up on! Read the Sedaris piece already -- I always go to those first. Now I'm on the one about the ruling class. Looking forward to psychedelics and twins.

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 04, 2024, 08:22:08 pm
Speaking of Bjorn Ulvaeus, he is interviewed in the article "The Next Scene" by John Seabrook in this week's issue. If you want to get a sweeping idea of what the music industry has been through in the last 30 years or so, it's worth spending your time on this longish article about Lucian Grange, head of Universal Music Group. What a plum assignment! Seabrook gets to interview everyone from Bono to Edgar Bronfman.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 08, 2024, 08:29:48 pm
I'm still not finished with the February 5 issue, it was so meaty. Today I read about the shenanigans in upper Vermont where a misguided developer was used by a con-man to funnel hundreds of millions from foreign investors into factories, ski areas, boutique hotels, and residential developments. Today it's a hot destination, but the developer and con-man have served time.

Now, I'm starting the wildfire article by Elizabeth Kolbert. Mind-boggling how much territory has been lost to fire in Canada.  :'(
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 08, 2024, 08:50:14 pm
I've fallen way behind again. I'm still working through the woman in the cave. I may not finish it. It's really not engaging me.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2024, 04:57:26 pm
I didn't finish the article about the cave woman.

I had two issues with me when I was just at my dad's for a week, and I just wasn't motivated to read either of them.  :(

I've read Elizabeth Colbert.

Friends, I believe we are living in the End Times.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 11, 2024, 05:35:20 pm
I didn't finish the article about the cave woman.

Good call. It's tough to abandon an article you've spent time on, but if it's not engaging you there are all kinds of other things you could read that would.

Quote
Friends, I believe we are living in the End Times.

If this extends beyond the religious sense, I fear you might be right. According to my phone, high temperature in the next 10 days will only once dip below 30 and only three times dip below freezing. In Minneapolis. In February. There's no snow on the ground, and only 7" have fallen all winter. I've heard of Christmases here that weren't white, but never whole winters that weren't.

Last winter it was 90", but that's weird, too. Recent years have broken all kinds of weather records.


Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2024, 10:47:07 pm
If this extends beyond the religious sense, I fear you might be right. According to my phone, high temperature in the next 10 days will only once dip below 30 and only three times dip below freezing. In Minneapolis. In February. There's no snow on the ground, and only 7" have fallen all winter. I've heard of Christmases here that weren't white, but never whole winters that weren't.

Yes, I did mean it beyond the religious sense. What would you call my use of the terminology? Allusion? I was using the religious terminology to mean something else? Does it qualify as a metaphor?  ???

In any case, it came to me after I finished Elizabeth Kolbert on wildfires (Feb. 5).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Front-Ranger on February 17, 2024, 12:42:46 pm
In any case, it came to me after I finished Elizabeth Kolbert on wildfires (Feb. 5).

In that article, I liked the part about how the Native Americans controlled the ecosystem through fires. They proved it's possible to manage large-scale agriculture and animal husbandry without major technology and large groups of people.

"The Oligarch's Son" in the Feb. 12/19th issue is another in the magazine's long-running series about people masquerading as someone they're not. I kept reading the 15-page article even though there was a lot of repetition. The poor parents whose son leapt to his death in the Thames doggedly tried to move the investigation forward and hold people accountable. The description of London as the world's (money) laundromat was very interesting. I wonder why the magazine finds these stories so compelling and emblematic of our times.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on February 17, 2024, 03:06:53 pm
Yes, I did mean it beyond the religious sense. What would you call my use of the terminology? Allusion? I was using the religious terminology to mean something else? Does it qualify as a metaphor?  ???

I haven't read the Bible's description of End Times, so maybe Jeff can share knowledgeable insight, but I've always assumed that even there was even meant to be a rough sketch that could happen under various circumstances. So the book and TV show "The Leftovers," a huge percentage of people (maybe 10%? 30% can't remember but not half) suddenly simultaneously have disappeared for no apparent reason. That of course sparks all kinds of weird responses, grieving, religious and otherwise. It's never explained as the Rapture, but clearly it sort of is, or at least a secular version thereof. But in every other way it's 21st-century America. (Do the Rapture and End Times refer to the same events?)




Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on February 17, 2024, 11:59:13 pm
(Do the Rapture and End Times refer to the same events?)

I think the Rapture is supposed to happen in the End Times, when the True Faithful Believers (or some such) get taken bodily and alive up into the clouds and to Heaven (or something like that).

I guess you could say I was really just applying the Christian religious terminology to the sense I got from Kolbert that the world as we know it is coming to an end, and there's nothing we can now do to stop it. It's too late. We're past the tipping point (to steal a phrase from Malcolm McDowell).
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 03, 2024, 07:53:06 pm
I am even more behind than usual. I had two issues with me up at the house, and I just didn't feel like reading either of them.
Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: serious crayons on March 03, 2024, 08:55:59 pm
I am even more behind than usual. I had two issues with me up at the house, and I just didn't feel like reading either of them.

Understandable. Hope you're doing all right, Jeff.  :-*

Title: Re: In the New Yorker...
Post by: Jeff Wrangler on March 04, 2024, 01:18:29 pm
Understandable. Hope you're doing all right, Jeff.  :-*

Thanks. I'm doing OK.