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, August 15, 2023

August 7, 2023 Issue

This week’s issue launches the new “Goings On” section. The magazine calls it “evolution.” I’m not sure about that. It looks more like impoverishment. The loss is substantial. The number of pages is reduced from six to two. The lead photo is shrunk from full-page to quarter-page. “Tables For Two” is cut from three columns to two. Art writers Andrea K. Scott and Johanna Fateman have disappeared. Vince Aletti on photography is gone. So is Steve Futtterman’s weekly jazz note. I looked forward to reading these writers each week. The magazine’s pleasure quotient is considerably reduced. 

I’ve decided it’s time for me to evolve, too. Previously I tried to comment on some aspect of each weekly issue. No more. From now on I’ll blog about The New Yorker only when there’s a piece in it that really grabs me. 

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