Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1921548 times)

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1150 on: May 13, 2015, 09:33:53 am »
Oh no, Jeff, don't do that! The carbs would be bad for you.

 ;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 serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1151 on: May 14, 2015, 09:42:10 am »
Finally finished a long Samantha Power profile from December. (Not that I've been reading it since December -- I ripped it out of an issue before recycling and added it to my stack of single articles and have been reading it off and on for at least a week -- it's pretty long.)

Anyway, I would say the interest level of the article is pretty closely correlated with a reader's preliminary interest in Samantha Power. In other words, if you don't start with some, this piece will not change that. I was somewhat interested in her (how can you not be interested in a woman who writes a Pulitzer-winning book about genocide, critiquing the U.S. response -- at age 32?) so the article was somewhat interesting.

Unlike, say, the profile of Brian Grazer from a few years back, which turned someone I had absolutely no interest in into probably my favorite film producer. (Before that, I didn't even have a favorite film producer. I barely could have could have named any film producers! Louis B. Mayer? Irving Thalberg? Actually, Irving Thalberg was my favorite until then -- glamorous wunderkind, roman-a-clef hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumously published "The Last Tycoon" -- but he died 79 years ago, at age 37.)




Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1152 on: May 14, 2015, 10:43:34 am »
I'm reading one of my favorites, Atul Gawande, in the May 11 issue. He describes himself (still) as a "general surgeon," though he does have a specialty, but somehow I can't imagine going to him for something general, like a hernia repair. ...  ;D

I don't even remember the Samantha Power profile. Now that you mention it, I remember Brian Grazer profile, but I don't remember anything about it.  :(
"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 #1153 on: May 14, 2015, 11:47:17 am »
The latest issue has a lot going for it.

A three-panel cover by Bruce McCall highlights innovators since caveman times.

I just finished reading World Without End by Raffi Khatchadourian, about Sean Murray, who is creating a space exploration video game with 18 quatrillion planets to explore. Mind-blowing.
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1154 on: May 19, 2015, 01:42:54 pm »
The latest issue has a lot going for it.

A three-panel cover by Bruce McCall highlights innovators since caveman times.

I love it that one of the innovations is the hula-hoop!  ;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 #1155 on: May 20, 2015, 01:42:01 pm »
Today I finished the piece on the memoir by Henry Marsh, a British neurosurgeon (May 18). Marsh reminds me of myself--we both tend to remember the bad things when we look back over our lives.

I also started the article on the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. I've never seen a James Bond movie, but he looks like what I imagine the villain in a James Bond movie looks like. The only thing missing is the cat.
"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 #1156 on: May 20, 2015, 01:45:01 pm »
I'm reading the article "Meaning Machines" about Charles Ray, the sculptor, in the latest issue. It's kind of a long article focusing on the problems getting Ray's work shown in museums. There's a piece he's been working on for a long time called "Huck and Jim". It's been placed at several museums but there have been problems. First, it was going to be at the Whitney Museum but it didn't work out. Then at another prominent museum, but the same problem because he wanted it shown in a public area where random people pass by. The problem is that, since male genitals are shown, it can't be in a public area. It has to be in the museum itself where only attendees of the museum would see it. But this was not acceptable to Ray, so the sculpture is not on view.

The problem that I have with it is that the photo of the sculpture shows two men. But the 9-ft-tall "Jim" is not a black man at all. The hair is all wrong and he just doesn't look like a black man. And then "Huck" is bent over so you don't see his face or torso. "Jim" has his hand hovering over Huck's back but not touching it. The sculpture is just very unsatisfying. I'd like to see more of Ray's work before judging it but this is not a promising beginning.

Apparently I gave that issue away and forgot to read this article. I noticed the photo of the sculpture and wondered whether he was trying to make some point by having Jim not be a black man while clearly referencing Jim and Huckleberry Finn.
"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 #1157 on: May 26, 2015, 01:41:37 pm »
It is interesting the things you learn from The New Yorker. E.g., from Briefly Noted (May 18, p. 97), I knew the name Oliver Sacks, the neurologist. I did not know that Oliver Sacks is gay, originally British, a power lifter, and a biker. Also that he now has terminal cancer.  :(
"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 #1158 on: May 29, 2015, 10:24:02 pm »
It is interesting the things you learn from The New Yorker. E.g., from Briefly Noted (May 18, p. 97), I knew the name Oliver Sacks, the neurologist. I did not know that Oliver Sacks is gay, originally British, a power lifter, and a biker. Also that he now has terminal cancer.  :(

Me neither! And I've read a lot of his work over the years. I did know he had terminal cancer, but not any of the other things -- gay, British, etc. -- that he discusses in his new memoir. The memoir he wrote before this one was about his intense experimentation with drugs, particularly hallucinogens, which I didn't know about until THAT book came out. Apparently he was really into them, though as I recall he was in school at the time.

What a multi-faceted guy.



Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #1159 on: June 02, 2015, 11:02:17 pm »
Yay! The summer fiction issue has arrived!
"chewing gum and duct tape"