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 Galchen, 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.
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| Photo by John MacDougall |
I took this May 16, 2025, on the Via Claudia Augusta cycle route between Salerno and Trento. It’s one of the most beautiful trails I’ve ever biked. It takes you through the Adige River valley, filled with acres and acres of apple orchards and green vineyards. The sky was blue; the sun was shining. We came upon this old red wagon piled with dead twigs and branches. What a great subject! ! Unposed, unembellished, unimpeachably real – the Ding an sich, the thing in itself.
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