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.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

Falling Behind


Photo by Justine Kurland, from Peter Schjeldahl's "The Great Outdoors"























I’m falling behind in my New Yorker reading. The mail is slow. I suppose I could read the online versions, but I prefer the print editions. They’re easier on my eyes, and I like to underline notable passages. I’ll just have to be patient. The magazines will eventually get here. Pieces I’m looking forward to are Peter Schjeldahl’s “The Great Outdoors,” Dan Chiasson’s “Suspended Pleasures,” and James Wood’s “Reward System.”
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