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.

Saturday, May 25, 2019

May 20, 2019 Issue


Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: Lhasa Fresh Food,” in this week’s issue, is deliciously descriptive: 

But my favorite dish might be the karsod, another soup. With a putty-pale sheet of lightly oiled dough stretched over the top of the bowl, it resembles an uncooked potpie, a broadcast of blandness. To pierce the surface and access the piping hot broth inside is to be reminded that mild does not necessarily equate to boring. In a version with lamb, the simple, slightly gummy pastry and the clear, fragrant liquid, dotted sparingly with scallion, cilantro, and translucent coins of potato, provide an optimal canvas for the gently gamy flavor of the simmered meat—as humble yet surprising as the restaurant itself. 

Mmm, love that “clear, fragrant liquid, dotted sparingly with scallion, cilantro, and translucent coins of potato.” 

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