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.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

In Praise of FSG
























A special shout-out to Farrar, Strauss and Giroux (FSG) on its recent publication of Janet Malcolm’s essay collection Nobody’s Looking at You. Over the last ten years, FSG has published a number of books by my favorite New Yorker writers, including three by John McPhee (Silk Parachute, Draft No. 4, and The Patch), two by Ian Frazier (Travels in Siberia and Hogs Wild), two by Janet Malcolm (Forty-one False Starts and Nobody’s Looking at You), and one by James Wood (The Fun Stuff). These books are all beautifully covered, printed, and produced – handsome physical objects that are a pleasure to hold and read. I treasure them. 
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