March 8, 2010 Issue

This is a pretty rich issue. I read it through and then took it to Cuba with me, thinking I'd reread a couple of the articles, this time more slowly in order to absorb the nuances. As it turned out, Judith Thurman's piece "Walking Through Walls" is the only one I looked at, and I made it only about one-third of the way into its sunscreen-stained pages. It's not one of her best, anyway. There aren't any what I'd called inspired sentences, not like in (say) her great "The Absolutist," in which she describes a Balenciaga gown as having one seam, "like the axis of an elm leaf." "Walking Through Walls" is a profile of the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Thurman does a good job describing some of Abramovic's major performances, but the self-infliction of pain at the core of practically every piece is off-putting to say the least. So the problem I had with Thurman's article was really my problem. "Walking Through Walls" contains one memorable detail: the black Citroen van, "which figured in their performance of ideal couplehood." Thurman says the car "miraculously survived the beatings it took, and is part of the MOMA retrospective." If I lived in New York, I'd definitely go see it.

March 1, 2010 Issue

When I turned to Larissa MacFarquhar’s “The Deflationist,” which bears the tagline, “How Paul Krugman found politics,” I thought Oh boy, this is going to be a wearisome slog. Then I read the first paragraph and found myself hooked. But not for long. This is one of the most boring pieces ever to appear in the magazine. Krugman and his wife come across as drone-like careerists. Maybe MacFarqhuar intended that effect. Maybe I’m just tired of politicians and economists and all their empty rhetoric. Maybe I’m feeling some of that Tea Party disaffection that Ben McGrath so ably wrote about in the magazine a couple of weeks ago (“The Movement,” February 1, 2010).

McGrath has a piece in the current issue, which I’m pleased to turn to now. “Strangers on the Mountain” is this week’s Pick Of The Issue. I read it quickly. You might almost say I skimmed it, touching down now and then for a closer read, and when I came to the last part – the section that begins, “Harold Dennison pleaded guilty to weapons charges …” – I slowed down to absorb the writing. Then I turned back and reread the whole piece, taking pleasure in the way it’s structured and in various inspired sentences. (Example: “After more than a mile of steep, winding incline, of the sort that strains an old Honda Civic, I had to slow to let a family of wild turkeys pass.”) If I’m not mistaken, McGrath is forging his own recognizable journalistic style. He throws a lot into his articles, lots of facts, people, and places, churning in a fast-paced narrative. His stories don’t sit still; they’re alive on the page. There’s a fizz in his prose I really enjoy.

February 15 & 22, 2010 Issue

I want to get a mule. I haven’t always had this desire. In fact, before I’d read Susan Orlean’s wonderful “Riding High” in this week’s double issue, I didn’t know mule from donkey. It was the same regarding chickens. After I read, Orlean’s “The It Bird” in the magazine (September 28, 2009), I wanted to get some chickens. This wish was recently reinforced by my trip to Cuba, where it seems every backyard is full of chickens (and roosters). Orlean’s writing style seduces me every time. She’s a master of what I call naturalness. Her opening lines hook me every damn time. For example, here’s how she starts “The It Bird”: “If I had never seen Janet Bonney reenact the mouth-to-beak resuscitation of her hen Number Seven, who had been frozen solid in a nor’easter, then was thawed and nursed back to life – being hand-fed and massaged as she watched doctor shows on TV – I might never have become a chicken person.” I read that opener, and I just kept going. Before I knew it, I’d devoured a whole article about chickens, and enjoyed every word.

Orleans makes writing look easy. The whole piece just seems to pour out, following its own logic. But there are descriptions that only Orelans can pull off. For example, here she is describing some mules at an auction: “a few dozen yearlings, still wide-eyed and whiskery; a score of experienced teams, with high-gloss rumps and bunchy muscles; dozens of riding mules, their ears waggling as they trotted around the stockyard ring.” I love that “high-gloss rumps and bunchy muscles.” Nabokov couldn’t have written it any better. Here’s another example: “Next in the ring was a chestnut mule with a bristling blonde mane and the sleepy, watchful gaze of a bank guard.” Orlean’s piece is endlessly quotable.

Another great thing about Orlean’s work is that it’s true journalism. She goes to interesting places, observes what’s happening, and writes interestingly about it. When, in “Riding High,” she says, “Last year, I went to the Reese Brothers’ November auction, and sat in the auctioneer’s booth with Dickie Reese and J. B. Driver, the auctioneer,” I think to myself, Hey this is cool! What a cool place to go! I find such sentences thrilling. I’m happy to be along with her. The same is true for a line like this: “I wandered around the stalls, the soft sounds of snuffling and chewing and the occasional thump of a hoof as it hit the wood floor filling the air, and then made my way over to the auction ring.” This is reality, “the thing itself,” as Updike would say. And it just goes to show that you don’t have to go to Tehran or Moscow and meet with dictators in order to write an interesting piece. A trip to Dickson, Tennessee, to see a mule auction is just the ticket, thank you very much. Orleans without end, amen!