Best of 2010

From 2010’s rich yield of New Yorker writings, I have chosen ten favorites. I list them below and parenthesize a passage in each that strikes me as particularly inspired.

1. Susan Orlean’s “Riding High,” February 15 & 22, 2010 (“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.”)

2. Elif Batuman’s “The Memory Kitchen,” April 19, 2010 (“The bitter edge of sumac and pomegranate extract, the tang of tomato paste, and the warmth of cumin, which people from the south of Turkey put in everything, recalled to me, with preternatural vividness, the kisir that my aunt used to make.”)

3. Lauren Collins’s “Angle of Vision,” April 19, 2010 (“Their parabolic swells and eskered spines, splitting shadow, reminded me of horseshoe crabs. In the fading light, the sand turned from the color of paprika to a blood-orange shade and then to an iridescent purple, like eyeshadow, eventually deepening to a chocolaty brown.”)

4. Burkhard Bilger’s “Towheads,” April 19, 2010 (“As we pulled out of the harbor on my second morning, wind was rising. It lofted flocks of frigate birds and pelicans high above the tug, then plunged them down again on scything wings.”)

5. Nicholson Baker’s “Painkiller Deathstreak,” August 9, 2010 (“You’ll see an edge-shined, light-bloomed, magic-hour gilded glow on a row of half-wrecked buildings and you’ll want to stop for a few minutes just to take it in.”)

6. Ian Frazier’s “On the Prison Highway,” August 30, 2010 (“Now the place existed only nominally in present time and space; the abandoned camp was a single preserved thought in a dead man’s mind.”)

7. Nick Paumgarten’s “The Merchant,” September 20, 2010 (“Sometimes, little brushfires of conversation erupt, and Drexler snaps his fingers and extinguishes them.”)

8. Ian Frazier’s “Fish Out of Water,” October 25, 2010 (“Crushed blue-and-white Busch beer cans disappeared into the mud, crinkling underfoot.”)

9. Tad Friend’s “Blowback,” October 25, 2010 (“He donned his Echo PB-500T backpack blower and earmuffs and blew off the driveway, corralling the leaves into a mound for his two colleagues to collect.”)

10. Gay Talese’s “Travels with a Diva,” December 6, 2010 (“At one point, she held a note for ten seconds, and it cut like a diamond sabre right through the sounds of a hundred choral singers and a hundred instrumentalists.”)

Honorable Mention: John McPhee’s “The Patch” (February 8, 2010); Jon Lee Anderson's "Neighbor's Keeper" (February 8, 2010); Ben McGrath’s “Strangers on the Mountain” (March 1, 2010); Janet Malcolm’s “Iphigenia in Forest Hills” (May 3, 2010); Calvin Trillin’s “Incident in Dodge City” (May 10, 2010); Alex Ross’s, “The Spooky Fill” (May 17, 2010); Alec Wilkinson’s, “Immigration Blues” (May 24, 2010); Tad Friend’s “First Banana” (July 5, 2010); Kelefa Sanneh’s “Boxed In” (July 26, 2010); Dana Goodyear’s “The Truffle Kid” (August 16 & 23, 2010); John McPhee’s “Linksland and Bottle” (September 6, 2010); Rebecca Mead’s “Adaptation” (September 27, 2010); David Denby’s “Influencing People” (October 4, 2010); Jake Halpern’s, “Pay Up” (October 11, 2010); Alec Wilkinson’s “Long Time Coming” (November 15, 2010); Chang-rae Lee’s “Magical Dinners” (November 22, 2010); James Wood’s “The Fun Stuff” (November 29, 2010); Peter Schjeldahl’s “The Flip Side” (November 29, 2010)

Credit: The illustration I’ve chosen for this “Best of 2010” is Laurie Rosenwald’s great “Picasso’s Guitars” from the December 13, 2010 issue.