The New Yorker & Me: September 27, 2021 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.

Saturday, October 2, 2021

September 27, 2021 Issue

Talk about triggers! One paragraph into John Seabrook’s superb “Zero-Proof Therapy,” in this week’s issue, and I found myself craving a cold zero beer. By the time I finished the fourth paragraph –

I swirled the beer and admired the lacery of foam, as the bubbles slid slowly down the side of the glass. I took a deep whiff—the Cascade hops, from the Pacific Northwest, had notes of pineapple and hay. I brought the glass up to my lips, and took a long swallow. A tingle of good cheer seemed to spread through my hand up my right arm and into my chest.

- I was on my way to the fridge to get a can of Libra, my favorite N.A. beer. It’s produced by a craft beer company called Upstreet, located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. And it’s damn tasty – a crisp pale ale with a tropical aroma, and a refreshing amount of citrus hoppiness. I pulled the tab and took a few swigs. Ah, fucking delicious! With my Libra in hand, I went back to Seabrook’s piece and devoured the rest of it. What a great piece of writing – where greatness means clear, vivid, evocative, absorbing, entertaining, perceptive. It’s about two things: Seabrook’s “raging non-alcoholism,” and his discovery of a great zero-alcoholic beer called Run Wild made by the Athletic Brewing Company in Stratford, Connecticut. He says of Run Wild,

Though lacking the depth and complexity of an alcoholic craft beer, Run Wild offers a breadth of flavors that partly makes up for alcohol’s absence, along with the mouthfeel of real beer: frisky, foamy, pillowy. I wanted to know how Athletic had figured this out.

“Zero-Proof Therapy" is a perfect blend of the personal and the reportorial. I enjoyed it immensely.