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 26, 2019

Peter Schjeldahl's New Collection "Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light"
























I see Peter Schjeldahl has a new book out titled Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light: 100 Art Writings, 1988-2018. Charles Finch reviews it in this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review. Finch says Schjeldahl “writes with remarkable tensile beauty and closeness of observation.” I agree. Schjeldahl is one of my favorite New Yorker writers. I look forward to reading his new collection. 

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