Best of 2017: Talk

Tom Bachtell, "Michel Houellebecq" (2017)

Here are my favorite “Talk of the Town” stories of 2017:

1. Nick Paumgarten, “Bong Show,” May 15, 2017 (“One object widely admired by the other lampworkers was a pea-green monster truck with big black tires and flames exuding from six tailpipes—every inch of it glass”).

2. Ian Frazier, “Extra Credit,” August 7 & 14, 2017 [“On exhibit were a palm-leaf book the size of a sheaf of paint samples, a big ball of raw rubber from a rubber tree (one of Sri Lanka’s resources), boxes of Ceylon tea (“We have the best, best tea”), a large stone grinder for spices (“Sri Lankan women were strong, back in the day”), her grandmother’s sitar, a replica of a seated Buddha considered to be the fifth-greatest statue in the world, and a statue of the fasting Buddha (“For six years, he ate no food and never opened his eyes”) that was made of welded iron”].

3. Robert Sullivan, “Facing History,” June 19, 2017 (“At Goodfellows, a barbershop on Fourth Avenue, people knew the church but not the tree. ‘In the North? That seems strange,’ a customer said”).

4. Lauren Collins, “Sideline,” June 19, 2017 (“He must have been chewing on his cigarette, because it hung from his mouth like a broken limb”).

5. Tad Friend, “Pulverizer,” June 19, 2017 (“Slugging down the rest of his soda, he continued, ‘I had an acting teacher who told me, “Michael, there are two types of actors: those who act with their ass”—squirmy Richard Dreyfuss types—“and those who act with their balls.” ’ His eyes got moist. ‘On this movie I got down on my knees and prayed before takes, and then just grabbed my balls and tried somehow to be of service’ ”).

6. Elizabeth Kolbert, “Incidents,” June 19, 2017 (“In front of him, a set of stairs led up to a rectangular opening cut into a wall. Beyond the opening was an empty chamber. Lights installed in the walls of the chamber were making it glow different shades—first fuchsia, then baby blue, then electric yellow. Everything outside the chamber also kept changing color, including Turrell”).

7. Nick Paumgarten, “Good Taste,” November 27, 2017 (“His top-of-the-line loudspeaker system, at three hundred and forty thousand dollars (no wonder we settle), is the Imperia: two seven-foot steel towers, each with a couple of huge flared wooden horns, one atop another, along with some smaller aluminum-alloy horns. Between them, on the floor, are the boxed bass horns. The standing horns, fashioned out of Pennsylvania ash, bring to mind an old gramophone, or a morning glory. They make it sound as if the musicians are in the room”).

8. Anna Russell, “Odds and Ends,” November 6, 2017 (“ ‘I like ordinary objects,’ Oldenburg said. ‘If you have one object meet some other object, which claims to be ordinary, then you’d have something even more extraordinary.’ He moved to another shelf. ‘That’s a bottle, that’s a piece of an automobile tire, and this”—he pointed to a brown globule—‘is obviously something coming out of a tube’ ”).