The New Yorker & Me: Best of the Decade: Introduction

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.

Monday, January 6, 2020

Best of the Decade: Introduction

The New Yorker & Me is ten years old this year. My first post, a review of The New Yorker’s February 8, 2010 issue, appeared February 20, 2010 (see here). Since then, I’ve posted nearly a thousand articles, amounting to almost a million words, on scores of subjects – all New Yorker-related. During this period, over four hundred and seventy issues of the magazine appeared, each of which was the subject of at least one post here. That’s a lot of blogging. Why do it? The answer is easy: I enjoy it. I enjoy reading The New Yorker, and I enjoy writing about it.

To celebrate The New Yorker & Me’s tenth anniversary, I’m starting a monthly series called “Best of the Decade,” in which I’ll look back over the last ten years’ worth of New Yorkers, pick twelve favorite pieces (one per month), and try to express why I’m drawn to them. The series begins next week.