Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1924103 times)

Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #40 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

(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.


Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #41 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!
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #42 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.


Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #43 on: March 18, 2009, 10:52:38 pm »
Hopefully it should be a good research resource!!
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #44 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.
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #45 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
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #46 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!
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #47 on: May 16, 2009, 03:53:28 pm »
That article was a hoot!

Wasn't it, though?  ;D
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #48 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.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #49 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.