Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1922043 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1340 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.  :(
"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 #1341 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/






Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1342 on: February 18, 2016, 08:06:49 pm »
FINALLY. I've got a New Yorker. The Feb. 22 issue arrived in today's mail.
"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 #1343 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/

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.

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Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1344 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.

 

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1345 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?? 
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1346 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.



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1347 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.
"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 #1348 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.


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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1349 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.
"chewing gum and duct tape"