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.

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Acts of Seeing: Tangle of Ropes and Fishing Gear

Photo by John MacDougall










“I don’t know why you bother with that. It’s ugly,” said Lorna, as I laid on the wet sand of Ross Lane Beach and took a picture of a tangled mass of ropes and fishing gear deposited there by the tide. Is she right? Her remark didn’t deter me. I liked the composition, not just the jumble of ropes and netting, etc., but also the foam and the waves, the cloudy blue sky, and the light – most of all the light, illuminating the multi-colored ropes, making their frayed, braided texture more visible, more palpable. 

Light can transform the most banal material. I was reminded of this the other day. I’d loaded two big paper yard bags full of leaves and twigs into the back of our SUV to take to the corner for pick up by the Island’s waste management service, and was about to close the door, when I noticed the way the sun struck the front of the bags, limning the green and yellow “Kent” logo and the crumpled tan surface of the paper. I was tempted to get my camera and take a picture. But I decided not to. Who takes pictures of yard bags? Am I crazy? Now, I wish I had. It would’ve made an interesting still life, I think.  

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