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.