Best of 2015: Criticism

Here are my favorite critical pieces of 2015 (with a choice quote from each selection in brackets):

1. James Wood, "The Art of Witness," September 28, 2015. (“What sets his writing apart from much Holocaust testimony is his relish for portraiture, the pleasure he takes in the palpability of other people, the human amplitude of his noticing.”)

2. Dan Chiasson, "Out of This World," April 13, 2015. (“His work is replete with the transfigured commonplace, bits of the world reclaimed in his daily imaginative raids: an ‘Atari dragonfly’ on the Connecticut River, a joint smoked on a courthouse lawn, a trip to the gym, a Tyvek windbreaker.”)

3. Peter Schjeldahl, "Shades of White," December 21 & 28, 2015. [“A warm-white painting, ‘Untitled’ (1973), jumps out in the show like a sunflower on fire—if, that is, you have spent enough time for your perception to adjust, like eyes in the dark, to the pitch of excruciating discrimination that Ryman demands.”

4. Kathryn Schulz, "Rapt," March 2, 2015. (“Over and over, her writing takes you by surprise: no sooner have you registered the kitchen than, whoa, there’s the snow leopard, its huge Himalayan paws leaving prints on the tile and half a domestic shorthair hanging from its mouth. I will never again not have pictured that, and, with apologies to my cat, I am glad.”)

5. Charles McGrath, "The People You Meet," April 27, 2015. (“And yet the piece gains immeasurably from being presented as factual, an account of scenes and conversations that really took place. If we read it as fiction, which it is, in part, some of the air goes out.”)

6. Judith Thurman, "Silent Partner," November 16, 2015. (“Through their decades of vicissitudes, he referred to their marriage as ‘cloudless’—even to his mistress.”)

7. Alexandra Schwartz, "The Unforgotten," October 5, 2015. (“Turning to invention to get at deeper realities of experience is fiction’s righteous mission, and Honeymoon performs it beautifully. But truthfulness isn’t the same as the truth.”)

8. Alex Ross, "Eyes and Ears," February 9, 2015. (“Last season, the Dark Horse Consort performed music of the Low Countries under the wide, sad, searching eyes of Rembrandt, who seemed ready if not to sing along then to deliver an approving grunt.”)

9. Leo Robson, "Delusions of Candor," October 26, 2015. (“He didn’t stop to clarify, but rigor was beside the point; the Vidalian bon mot was about the speaker, not about the subject.”)

10. Anthony Lane, "Good Fights," January 5, 2015. (“Dear God, the drinking.”)

Postscript: Compiling the above list, I limited my choice to one selection per writer. If I hadn't, Wood, Chiasson, and Schjeldahl would've predominated.

Credit: The above portrait of Primo Levi, by Jillian Edelstein, is from James Wood’s "The Art of Witness," The New Yorker, September 28, 2015.

Best of 2015: Illustrations

Illustration by Roman Muradov

Here are my favorite New Yorker illustrations of 2015:

1. Conor Langton’s “Meredith Monk,” for Alex Ross’s "Guided By Voices," January 5, 2015.

2. Riccardo Vecchio’s “Matteo Renzi,” for Jane Kramer’s "The Demolition Man," June 29, 2015.

3. Daniel Krall’s “Molly Rankin,” for "Goings On: Spring Preview," March 9, 2015.

4. Chang Park’s “Kazuo Ishiguro,” for James Wood’s "The Uses of Oblivion," March 23, 2015.

5. Roman Muradov’s “Celebrating the Holidays,” for "Goings On About Town," November 30, 2015.

6. Barry Blitt’s “Donald Barthelme, Mavis Gallant, John Updike, J. D. Salinger, Muriel Spark,” for Deborah Treisman’s "Nine Decades of the Magazine: 1965-1975," February 23, 2015.

7. Rebecca Monk’s “Holiday Cocktail Lounge,” for Sarah Larson’s "Bar Tab," May 11, 2015.

8. Matthew Hollister’s “Lazy Point,” for Emma Allen’s "Bar Tab," August 10, 2015.

9. Ping Zhu’s “Cianciolo’s Kit,” for Andrea K. Scott’s "Boxing Days," June 29, 2015.

10. André Carrilho’s “Jeb Bush,” for Ryan Lizza’s "What Would Jeb Do?," October 26, 2015.

Credit: The above illustration, by Roman Muradov, is from Ian Frazier's "Greetings, Friends!," The New Yorker, December 23, 2015.

Best of 2015: Reporting

Here are my favorite fact pieces of 2015 (with a choice quote from each selection in brackets):

1. Ben McGrath, "The Wayfarer," December 14, 2015. (“A few of the bridges over the canal were so low that he had to lean back and retract his chin, sliding underneath, as though into an MRI scanner, while cars rolled overhead.”)

2. Nick Paumgarten, "Life Is Rescues," November 9, 2015. (“I wandered out into the rain and then into the kitchen tent. On a row of plastic hangers someone had hung the team’s bananas. Each hanger held two bunches. I stood looking at this, in admiration and wonder. Iceland.”)

3. Ian Frazier, "Bronx Dreams," December 7, 2015. (“Fifty kids in zombie makeup zombied to ‘Thriller,’ two middle-school actors did the scene in which Othello strangles Desdemona, a girl named Massire Camara recited a poem about the death of her uncle that is now on YouTube, and a stage full of elementary-age students in a step-dance group called the Bengal Tigers, from P.S. 55, did a routine with stomping, clapping, and chanting that bounced the audience out of its seats.”)

4. William Finnegan, "Off Diamond Head," June 1, 2015. (“Hands folded under my chin, I drifted. A bruise-colored cloud hung over Koko Head. A transistor radio twanged on a seawall where a Hawaiian family picnicked on the sand. The sun-warmed shallow water had a strange boiled-vegetable taste. The moment was immense, still, glittering, mundane. I tried to fix each of its parts in memory. I did not consider, even in passing, that I had a choice when it came to surfing. My enchantment would take me where it chose.”)

5. Rebecca Mead, "Sole Cycle," March 23, 2015. (“Haslbeck suggested that I try on the lace-up boot, and I slipped my bare foot into it. With the warmth and softness of the fur, and the cradling comfort of the foot bed, it felt wonderful. I think I may have gasped.”)

6. David Owen, "Where the River Runs Dry," May 25, 2015. (“Our pilot, David Kunkel, asked me to retrieve his oxygen bottle from under my seat, and when I handed it to him he gripped the plastic breathing tube with his teeth and opened the valve.”)

7. Dana Goodyear, "A New Leaf," November 2, 2015. (“We waded into the water and put our flippers and masks on. I ducked my head under and gazed. Two years ago, it was rocks and urchins. Now kelp was everywhere, ochre-colored, thirty feet tall, flailing like tube dancers outside a car wash.”)

8. Ian Parker, "The Shape of Things to Come," February 23 & March 2, 2015. (“Ive’s aesthetic is not austere: one could think of the work done here as a reticent man’s idea of exuberance, with rapture expressed in the magnetic click of a power adapter.”)

9. Jill Lepore, "Joe Gould's Teeth," July 27, 2015. (“ ‘Joe Gould’s Secret’ is a defense of invention. Mitchell took something that wasn’t beautiful, the sorry fate of a broken man, and made it beautiful—a fable about art. ‘Joe Gould’s Secret’ is the best story many people have ever read. Its truth is, in a Keatsian sense, its beauty; its beauty, truth.”)

10. Elif Batuman, "The Big Dig," August 31, 2015. (“In a shed nearby, a noisy filtration machine was chugging its way through approximately two thousand sacks of Byzantine and Neolithic dirt.”)

Credit: The above photo, by Victor Schrager, is from Ben McGrath’s "The Wayfarer," The New Yorker, December 14, 2015.

Best of 2015: Photos

Floyd Mayweather (Photo by Benjamin Lowy)

Here are my favourite New Yorker photos of 2015:

1. Benjamin Lowy’s “The Kitchen Tent,” for Nick Paumgarten’s "Life Is Rescues" (newyorker.com version), November 9, 2015.

2. Pari Dukovic’s “Chaka Khan,” for "Goings On About Town," June 8, 2015.

3. Landon Nordeman’s “Warm Up,” for "Goings On About Town," July 20, 2015.

4. Landon Nordeman’s “DreamYard,” for Ian Frazier’s "Bronx Dreams," December 7, 2015.

5. Ian Allen’s “Chastity Belt,” for "Goings On About Town," May 25, 2015.

6. Benjamin Lowy’s “Landsbjörg,” for Nick Paumgarten’s "Life Is Rescues," November 9, 2015.

7. Dina Litovsky’s “Timna,” for Silvia Killingsworth’s "Tables For Two," October 26, 2015.

8. Will Mebane’s “School of Rock,” for "Goings On About Town," November 30, 2015.

9. Charlie Engman’s “Blood Orange,” for "Goings On About Town," December 14, 2015.

10. Meredith Jenks’s “Brooklyn Bavarian Biergarten,” for Amelia Lester’s "Tables For Two," October 12, 2015.

Credit: The above portrait of Floyd Mayweather, by Benjamin Lowy, is from Kelefa Sannah’s "The Best Defense," The New Yorker, May 25, 2015.