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.

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Scott Frank's Wonderful "The Queen's Gambit"















Rachel Syme, in her recent newyorker.com post, calls The Queen's Gambit “the most satisfying show on television.” I agree. Set in the 1960s, the series tells the story of Beth Harmon (played superbly by Anya Taylor-Joy), a child prodigy who discovers how to play chess in a Kentucky orphanage. Despite addictions to alcohol and tranquilizers, Beth plays and trains obsessively, rising through the ranks until she faces the world’s best in Moscow.

The show has a ravishing look. The chess tournaments are set in gorgeous locales and Beth’s clothes are spectacularly chic. Syme says,

In life and on screen, chess is considered the domain of hoary men in moth-eaten cardigans, playing in smoky gymnasia that reek of stale coffee. “The Queen’s Gambit,” instead, finds an unlikely synergy between the heady interiority of chess and the sensual realm of style.

An unlikely synergy between the heady interiority of chess and the sensual realm of style – this sums up The Queen’s Gambit beautifully.

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