Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1922203 times)

Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #950 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.



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #951 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.
"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 #952 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
"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 #953 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!
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #954 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.
"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 #955 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?



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #956 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.
"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 #957 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)."


Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #958 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.
"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 #959 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?"
« Last Edit: October 14, 2014, 09:36:16 pm by Jeff Wrangler »
"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.