The New Yorker & Me: September 17, 2018 Issue

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Thursday, September 20, 2018

September 17, 2018 Issue

In this week’s issue, Anna Russell scores another Talk triumph, her third this year. The others are “Caffeinated” (March 19) and “Leafy Greens” (July 9 & 16). In her new piece, “Reunion,” she accompanies virtuoso cellist Matt Haimovitz on his way to a repair shop to pick up his beloved Matteo, a rare, multimillion-dollar cello, which Haimovitz has owned and played for thirty years. Matteo required fixing because fifteen months earlier, Haimovitz accidentally dropped it while teaching a student. Russell writes,

He had played it for thirty years, until, fifteen months earlier, while giving a lesson to a promising Canadian student, he dropped it, and the cello’s neck snapped. Since then, the instrument had been undergoing extensive repairs by a team of five luthiers at Reed Yeboah Fine Violins, near Columbus Circle. Now the shop had called to say that Matteo was ready for release.

The piece builds suspense: Will the rebuilt cello sound the same as the original? At first the answer appears to be no:

Haimovitz sat down and played a few hoarse scales, before launching into a jaunty tune, the prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. He ended on a long note, and then sat in silence. “Hmm,” he said.

But then a new bow is provided and Haimovitz plays the cello again:

He leaned in, listening. “Yeah,” he said. He played a mournful tune, Philip Glass’s “Overture,” and came up smiling: “Very cool!” Everyone applauded.

The ending is inspired:

Afterward, flushed, Haimovitz was more circumspect. While playing, he said, he couldn’t help thinking about the old Matteo. “There were moments where it was, like, I’m missing certain things, where’s that?” But then something changed. “Gradually, the vibration felt the same.” He accepted a glass of prosecco. “It’s a process,” he said.