Pleasures abound in this week’s issue – Richard Brody on
Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street
(“Fuller’s pugnacious direction and his gutter-up view of city life romanticize
both the criminal code of honor and the jangling paranoia of global plots; his
hard-edged long takes depict underworld cruelty with reportorial wonder as well
as moralistic dread”), Emma Allen on a cocktail called What the Doctor Ordered
(“The rum made it taste like a mind-bending root beer”), Lizzie Widdicombe on Uber
for helicopters (“The helicopter made its shuddering descent. Legs shook; sippy
cups spilled. Marcy said, ‘Wow! I love this part!’ The pilot yelled,
‘Touchdown!’ ”), Nick Paumgarten on the end of Vin Scelsa’s “Idiots Delight”
(“After ‘Goodnight Ladies,’ Scelsa signed off: ‘Thanks for your ears. I love
you all’ ”) – but for me its most piquant delight is Dan Chiasson’s review of
John Ashbery’s Breezeway (“These
poems conjure a massive mental errata slip made up of what they almost say and
nearly mean”). Chiasson is on a roll: four reviews this year, so far – all
brilliant!
It would be perverse to say that I enjoyed Michael Specter’s "Extreme City," an account of a recent visit he made to Luanda. The inequality it describes is appalling. But I do relish it as writing. I like going (vicariously) where Specter goes. He’s always out and about, nosing around, seeing what’s to be seen. He says, “One afternoon, I visited Tako Koning, a Canadian petroleum geologist, who lives on the seventh floor of an older building in the center of Luanda,” and I’m right there with him. He says, “One day, I had lunch at Oon.dah, on the first floor of the Escom Center,” and I’m happy to tag along. Specter’s pieces afford the experience of first-person access. The payoff is readerly bliss.
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