Best of 2018: Talk

João Fazenda, illustration for Michael Schulman's "Grasshopper"

Here are my favorite New Yorker “Talk of the Town” pieces of 2018 (with a choice quote from each in brackets):

1. Michael Schulman, “Grasshopper,” October 15, 2018 [“He took a breath. ‘Moving along: you also serve a beef-tartare tostada?’ (Correct.) ‘And that has some fried grasshopper on it?’ (Actually, the insect is toasted over a wood fire, Bazdarich said. Radcliffe, his pencil trembling, scribbled ‘toasted’ ”)].

2. Anna Russell, “Leafy Greens,” July 9 & 16, 2018 [“Hydroponics are a slippery slope. You might find yourself, one Sunday morning, at a Santa Monica farmers’ market, loitering among the apples, say. You come across a bunch of papalo, a leafy herb native to central Mexico, and toss it in your mouth (your tastes are expansive; a papalo leaf is nothing to you) and wham!: a brand-new flavor. Suddenly, you’re up at all hours, watching vertical-farming videos on YouTube, ordering seed packets from eBay, buying rhizomes—rhizomes!—and worrying about spider mites. You get some fennel crowns and a pouch of parasitic wasps, and you’re on your way”].

3. Anna Russell, “Reunion,” September 17, 2018 (“Once, he arrived to find cello parts scattered around the room, attended to by different experts, like an intensive-care unit”).

4. Anna Russell, “Caffeinated,” March 19, 2018 (“In Think Coffee, a man in a blazer, holding two hot drinks, waited while the pair examined the dimples on the compostable lids. ‘Decaf, cream, and black—that’s all,’ Specht said”).

5. Anna Russell, “Close Shave,” February 5, 2018 (“Ralph applied shaving cream and started to make short, silent strokes with a straight razor. A fan rattled; outside, a bus pulled away from the curb”).

6. Amy Goldwasser, “Wet Ink,” November 12, 2018 [“After finishing uptown, a few hours later, they went to Maffia’s apartment, to make ink. One batch was pure pokeberry juice (vivid magenta). Another included five varieties of acorn boiled with rust from various sources—nuts and bolts, wire, brackets—and a drop of gum arabic. It came out a complicated silver-gray”].

7. Nick Paumgarten, “Angel in Hastings,” April 23, 2018 [“The contrast between the back seat’s spacious, buttery interior and the driver’s livery (T-shirt, worn jeans, jean jacket) is sharp enough to make you wonder if the car is stolen”].

8. Sam Wasson, “Yes, And,” July 23, 2018 (“Levy furrowed his eyebrows and did an impression of a lugubrious rabbi. ‘What a place to lose a cow,’ he said”).

9. Lauren Collins, “Invitation,” July 9 & 16, 2018 (“De Rougé lifted his laptop so that the Inserras could get a better look at the room’s pistachio-colored moldings. Then he turned around so they could see all the way down the gallery—a two-hundred-and-thirty-foot view”).

10. Nicolas Niarchos, “Cartography,” July 9 & 16, 2018 (“He swivelled the antenna, and the music turned into a burst of Creole”).