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.

Saturday, March 2, 2019

March 4, 2019 Issue




















The best New Yorker pizza shot is Davide Luciano’s scrumptious illustration for Amelia Lester’s “Tables For Two: Prova” (April 13, 2015):

Davide Luciano, illustration for Amelia Lester's "Tables For Two: Prova"

















But William Mebane’s Rhode Island pizza photo for Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: Violet,” in this week’s issue, is a close second. Mebane captures the pie's grilled “black lines” and the “large shears for custom cutting” that Goldfield describes in her delectable piece.

William Mebane, illustration for Hannah Goldfield's "Tables For Two: Violet"

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