January 24, 2011 Issue

Did you see the lineup of heavy hitters in this week’s The Talk Of The Town? Wow! Nick Paumgarten, Ian Frazier, Tad Friend, and Mimi Sheraton. First up is Paumgarten. His “Swarm” is about a “handmade analog synthesizer” called the Swarmatron. The surreal reality of the Swarmatron calls out for description; it has the potential to generate some of those surprising collage-like sentences that Paumgarten, a describer par excellence, is able to assemble, and has assembled so memorably in previous Talk stories, e.g., his classic “Little Helper” (June 16 & 23, 2003), which begins: “Where would we be without Valium? Certainly not in Nutley, New Jersey, savoring the soft Klonopin light of a warm spring day.” “Swarm” has a great beginning, too. The first paragraph describes the formation of the word “bassoon” (“The word ‘bassoon’ comes from Pleury de Basseau, a vice-admiral in the French Royal Navy,” etc.). But then, in the second paragraph, Paumgarten says, “Actually, no. ‘Bassoon’ is merely ‘basso’ (Italian for ‘bass’) with an augmentative suffix.” I marveled at the audacity of Paumgarten’s move – the way he undermines the seriousness of his first paragraph. A less confident writer (me, for example) would likely delete the first paragraph and use the second one to form the lead. So “Swarm” begins with an interesting structural twist – one that I hadn’t seen before, one that takes a writer writing with authority to pull off. Not many would do it. Liebling would do it. I can’t think of anyone else. But “Swarm,” interesting though it is, doesn’t produce the transfixing kind of surreal sentence that I was hoping for. Nevertheless, there are some dandy lines, e.g. “the dissonance stretching like taffy,” and this beauty:

A visitor inserted a quarter, twirled some knobs, and had the sensation, partly real, of producing, with his ignorant hands, a marvelously unholy barrage of noise.

Next up in this week’s all-star Talk lineup is Ian Frazier. Frazier is the Talk story master. Last year alone, he produced three pieces that went straight into my personal anthology of Talk favorites: “The Big Shoe” (February 1, 2010), “Lovefest” (March 1, 2010), and “Parade of the Night” (September 20, 2010). And then there’s his great “Dial-A-Tree” (“A man eating a West Indian meat pie comes up to the museumgoer at at 188th Street and asks, ‘Hey, papi, can you help me out? I just got out of jail?’”) in the July 20th, 2009 issue, and, of course, his classic “Bags In Trees” trilogy (collected in his great 2005 Gone To New York). Whoops, I just discovered in the magazine’s online archives that none of the “Bags In Trees” articles are actually Talk stories. “Bags In Trees” and “Bags In Trees II” are “Shouts & Murmurs” pieces and “Bags In Trees: A Retrospective” is an “Our Local Correspondents” item. Nevertheless, I mention them here because they could work as Talk stories and they exemplify the magic that Frazier performs in his Talk stories – in all his writings, for that matter – his ability to notice commonplace things and write about them in such an empathetic way that he converts them into amazing stories. Those bags in trees are a perfect example.

Regarding Frazier’s Talk story “Shower” in the current issue, one sentence into it, I found myself smiling as I read this delightful construction:

On a fortuitously clear night, in the far reaches of the borough, beyond where the Q-16 bus makes its turnaround, on the grounds of old Fort Totten, atop a small hill that once held a mortar battery, two urban park rangers and twenty-five or so shivering visitors scoped the sky.

It’s cool the way that sentence adjusts its focus as it goes, starting wide “in the far reaches of the borough,” then tightening on “the grounds of old Fort Totten,” then tightening even more on “a small hill that once held a mortar battery,” and finally zeroing in on the “two urban park rangers and twenty-five or so shivering visitors.” I also like the way Frazier delays the verb “scoped” until almost the end of the sentence. “Shower” is a terrific little Talk piece. The fact that there are no meteors to see doesn’t crimp Frazier’s style at all. He reports what the rangers say about meteors and what some of the people in the group say. And his descriptions, such as this one, bring the night scene atop that Fort Totten hill vividly to life:

Meanwhile, Ranger Eric Handy gave an impromptu lecture, his blue-white face beneath the broad brim of his ranger’s hat popping into startled visibility when those with flash cameras took pictures of him.

Batting third in Talk’s super lineup is Tad Friend. His “Lenny Again” hooked me immediately with this nifty opener:

Time pares the flesh and nerve from an artist’s reputation, leaving only the barest of bones. Lenny Bruce’s skeletal remains are those of a hipster satirist who got arrested for saying “cocksucker” in a night club so that modern comedians could say it on HBO. Was he funny? Was he even supposed to be?

“Lenny Again” is a mini-profile of Steve Cuiffo, an “actor and magician,” who’s going to re-create Bruce’s infamous 1961 “midnight gig at Carnegie Hall” that, in Friend’s words, “marked Bruce’s free-associative peak.” Cuiffo’s gig will be held at a place called Ann’e Warehouse in Brooklyn. Of the many pleasures of Friend’s piece – the comparison of Cuiffo with Bruce (“he has the same black quiff and confiding eyes”), the names of places where Bruce once played that no longer exist (Village Gate, Café Au Go Go) – the most piquant is Friend’s description of Bruce’s delivery:

Bruce muttered his segues and asides in the ha-ha-ha! Manner of someone that you edge away from on the bus, so Cuiffo had made a phonetic transcription of the concert to get every verbal tic. Often the words didn’t parse: “And conductors, the same idea as, very bourgeois to even fly now, yeah, fifteen years ago, real status symbol, you know. Flying. But, now, any szlubbo, like, can make any fff.” In performance, though, it mostly made sense, as if Cuiffo were simultaneously translating from and annotating the original Synapsese.

Friend is a genius at describing “verbal tics,” which is why he’s so great at profiling comedians, e.g., Steve Carell (see “First Banana,” The New Yorker, July 5, 2010).

Batting clean-up in this all-star Talk line-up is Mimi Sheraton. She delivers a grand slam with “Opera Buffet” – thirteen sharp, tight paragraphs that tell the story of the Peking duck dinners that bass opera singer, Hao Jiang Tian, and his wife, Dr. Martha Liao, serve up after every performance. It’s a light piece, brimming with interesting detail – the metal cones that Liao packs for a concert tour, the green parrot named Luke that likes sunflower seeds and Peking duck, the steamed yeast buns stuffed with “crackling skin, moist duck meat, slivers of cucumbers and scallions, and dabs of fruity hoisin sauce.” It’s a pleasure to read along Sheraton’s lines, watching her craft the piece, joining facts and quotes, to create a concise, swift-moving story. I like how “Opera Buffet” ends in song. It’s perfection! If you want more of Sheraton’s great writing, check out her “Spit Cake” (The New Yorker, November 23, 2009). It’s one of my all-time favorite New Yorker articles.

So there you have it – Swarmatron, Quadrantid meteor shower, Lenny Bruce, Peking duck. Welcome to The New Yorker’s cabinet of wonders, the one and only The Talk Of The Town.