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 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.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

On the Horizon: Tables for Two Tango: Goldfield and Rosner







Hannah Goldfield and Helen Rosner are two of my favorite New Yorker writers. Goldfield used to write “Tables for Two.” Rosner writes it now. I want to compare their work. Over the next twelve months, I’ll pick twelve “Tables for Two” pieces – six by Goldfield, six by Rosner – and review them. I’ll choose one per month, one by Goldfield, then one by Rosner, and so on, alternating back and forth. It’s sort of like a “greatest hits” package of the two writers’ work. A new series then – “Tables for Two Tango: Goldfield and Rosner” – starting November 25.  

Credit: The above portraits of Hannah Goldfield (left) and Helen Rosner (right) are from The New Yorker.

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