Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1922724 times)

Offline southendmd

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #150 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

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #151 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.
"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 Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #152 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
"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 serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #153 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.



Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #154 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.
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #155 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.
"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 serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #156 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.






Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #157 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.
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #158 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.


Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #159 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
"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.