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.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Francisco Goldman's "The Wave": Fact or Fiction?


Is Francisco Goldman’s “The Wave” (The New Yorker, February 7, 2011) fact or fiction? It appeared in the magazine under the heading “Personal History,” so I took it to be factual. But I see that the recently published book version is titled Say Her Name: A Novel. Perhaps the two versions are different? I hope so. I’m totally against fact pieces that mess with the facts.

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