Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1924861 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1100 on: February 25, 2015, 10:35:56 am »
At home I've started to read the article in the anniversary issue by the copy editor. Her examples of why the serial comma is still useful are hysterically funny.  ;D

This article is very good. I think I should share it with my coworkers.

In passing the author mentions Annie Proulx, whose style, no doubt, is a copy editor's nightmare.  ;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 Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1101 on: February 26, 2015, 03:07:33 pm »
Ian Frazier's account of Ellin Mackay (Mrs. Irving) Berlin, and her article that explained why 1920s New York debutantes went to cabarets, is lovely.  :)  Frazier makes it sound as if the article saved the magazine, and perhaps it did.
"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 #1102 on: February 26, 2015, 03:45:43 pm »
In passing the author mentions Annie Proulx, whose style, no doubt, is a copy editor's nightmare.  ;D

I seem to remember AP mentioning that there were a lot of edits before the story was finally published, and then they accidentally left out the prologue altogether!

I'm enjoying this issue and the articles you mention as well.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1103 on: February 27, 2015, 10:41:41 am »
I never read the poetry in The New Yorker. Or, rather, there is one exception: I always read the Greetings, Friends at the end of each year.

And the world, or, at least, the American educational system, really is going to Hell when some people have never heard of Jabberwocky.  :(
"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 #1104 on: February 28, 2015, 12:46:49 am »
And the world, or, at least, the American educational system, really is going to Hell when some people have never heard of Jabberwocky.  :(

Wait, who hasn't?  ???



Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1105 on: March 03, 2015, 01:50:06 pm »
"The Cabaret Beat" WAS a good read, I agree. But I wondered as it meandered into a history of the author, Ian Frazier, his father, the New Yorker editor and founder Harold Ross, the MacKay family founder (John), Mark Twain, MacKay's wife Louise, their youngest son Clarence, his wife Katherine Duer, and a great granddaughter Katherine Barrett Swett before coming back to the subject of the story, Ellin MacKay Berlin, and her husband Irving Berlin. I settled down to read the rest of their story, but wait! The article then veered off into Irving (ne Israel) Berlin's family history starting in Siberia. Then back to John and Clarence MacKay with cameos from Leopold Stokowski and the Prince of Wales, back to Ross and TNY, and finally winding up with Ellin and her 2 articles, finishing with an interview with her aged daughter. Whew!!
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1106 on: March 03, 2015, 02:22:55 pm »
I've just started the article on Apple's designer and wonder whether I really need to read it.

Hilton Als on Langston Hughes was 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 #1107 on: March 09, 2015, 06:10:54 pm »
I've just started the article on Apple's designer and wonder whether I really need to read it.

Well, I forced myself through to the bitter end of this article. I suppose it's timely because of the current hoo-hah over the Apple watch.

Tell you what, by the time I finished the article, I had the creepy feeling that Apple isn't a company or a line of products: It's a cult.
"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 #1108 on: March 10, 2015, 01:36:40 pm »
Good God! GOOD GOD! I CANNOT believe this!

I just started John McPhee's latest piece on writing (March 9 issue), and I am shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that as late as the year 2000, John McPhee--JOHN McPHEE--did not know the word sprezzatura.

This shocks me because I've known that word since, oh, roughly 1978, when Dr. William Leigh Taylor, the very sexy Virginian who was my college Shakespeare professor as well the teacher of various other undergraduate English courses that I took, used the word in a class on some Renaissance subject or other and defined it for us students more or less the way McPhee defines it: "Doing something cool without apparent effort."

(My academic advisor in the History Department had such a high regard for Dr. Taylor that he told me it didn't matter what course Dr. Taylor taught, I was to take it.  ;D )

I still can't believe that John McPhee, published author and teacher at Princeton, did not know the meaning of sprezzatura until 2000. To think that I knew a word like sprezzatura at least two decades before John McPhee!  :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 #1109 on: March 10, 2015, 02:02:15 pm »
Well, I bet that made your day! Guess it's time for you to start writing 25,000-word articles on the most arcane of subjects!
"chewing gum and duct tape"