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.

Sunday, November 21, 2021

November 8, 2021 Issue

Two Talk stories in this week’s issue I really liked: Sheila Yasmin Marikar’s “Smelling the Roses” and Nick Paumgarten’s “Bear Cash.” 

Marikar’s piece is about L.A. florist Maurice Harris, whose realist takes on life and the flower business made me smile. This one, for example: “Flowers are gross. They stink. It’s a lot of hauling shit around. It’s a lot of logistics. Like, twenty per cent of it is pretty; the rest is just annoying.” And this: We’re in a time when people think that a double tap, a share, and a visit solves the problem, when, No. It’s still pretty systemic.” 

Paumgarten’s piece is the damnedest bit of found surrealism I’ve read in quite some time. It’s not easy to summarize. It comprehends the Grateful Dead, the Rainforest Action Network, weight-lifting, Gold’s Gym, “a circus camp among the California redwoods,” reel-to-reel tapes, the Allman Brothers, Fillmore East, Jimmy Carter, Johnny Cash, a psychedelic dance hall called the Carousel Ballroom, Bob Dylan, Folsom Prison, Jimi Hendrix, and people named Hawk, Bear, Starfinder, and Redbird. You’ll have to read it to appreciate how it all ingeniously coheres. Paumgarten is a master Talk writer. “Bear Cash” is one of his best.

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