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.

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

The New Yorker's Extraordinary "April 15, 2020"


Joan Wong's illustration for "April 15, 2020"


















I see on newyorker.com that the digital edition of the May 4, 2020, issue is out, and that it contains an extraordinary reporting piece called “April 15, 2020: A Coronavirus Chronicle,” written by twenty-five New Yorker writers and illustrated by the work of at least seventeen photographers. This is an epic, unprecedented piece that fills the entirety of the magazine. As soon as the print edition arrives, I’ll plunge in. I can hardly wait.

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