2020 in Review

Illustration by Min Heo, from newyorker.com

Let’s begin with a drink. I’ll have one of those Root of All Beers that Hannah Goldfield mentions in her “Tables For Two: The HiHi Room” (January 20, 2020). It “mixes a licorice-and-sarsaparilla witch’s brew with rye, vermouth, and honey.” Take a little sip. Ah, that's fucking wicked! Just what the doctor ordered. 

Okay, down to business. What to make of this year’s run of New Yorkers? Well, there was a hell of lot written about Trump. I skipped most of it. There was a hell of a lot written about the pandemic. I read every word. Best pandemic piece? No contest: “April 15, 2020” (May 4, 2020) – a brilliant mosaic portrait of twenty-four hours in the life of New York City as it struggles to deal with the pandemic, written by twenty-five New Yorker reporters and illustrated (in the online version) by seventeen photographers. Sample: 

As the sun came up, dully brightening the morning, it revealed that the day was ordinary and out of the ordinary at the same time. Figures appeared far apart on the boardwalk, each one alone, each making a different exercise motion. One was using a jump rope, another had two small dumbbells, and another a piece of pipe. Many wore masks. On the horizon to the left lay the narrow sand spit of the Rockaways, a stratum of pale-brown beach below a gray-green line of bushes and trees. To the right loomed the grayish point of Sandy Hook, in New Jersey. In between, a small boat motored slowly by, its wake as white as a bridal train. The ordinary-extraordinary day settled in and locked itself into place. The labyrinthine streets of Brighton Beach were so unbusy you could forget the sidewalks and wander in the middle of them anywhere. The whole city had become a waiting room.

  

But great as it is, “April 15, 2020” is not this year’s most memorable piece. That honour belongs to Ben Taub’s extraordinary “Five Oceans, Five Deeps” (May 18, 2020). An account of an exploration team that builds an amazing one-of-a-kind submersible, named the Limiting Factor, and pilots it to the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean trenches, it brims with superb description and arresting details (e.g., “Now, as snow blew sideways in the darkness and the wind, he threw a grappling hook over the South Sandwich Trench and caught a lander thrashing in the waves”). In my review of it, when it first appeared, I said, 

Reading “Five Oceans, Five Deeps,” I was in awe of the way Taub put me right there with Vescovo inside the Limiting Factor as he explores the bottom of, first, the Puerto Rico Trench, then the South Sandwich Trench, then the Java Trench, then the Mariana Trench, and, finally, Molloy Hole, in the Arctic. It’s an epic journey. I enjoyed it immensely.

Another piece I enjoyed enormously is Curtis Sittenfeld’s short story “A for Alone” (November 2, 2020), about an artist named Irene who’s doing a project on the so-called Billy Graham/Mike Pence rule that if you’re a married man, you don’t spend time alone with another woman. The project involves inviting men to lunch, asking them to fill out a handwritten questionnaire, and taking a Polaroid photo of them. This project flares into an affair with one of Irene’s interview subjects, a geologist named Jack (“Man No. 6”). 

I devoured this story. It intrigued me; it excited me; and I found myself mirroring off the character Jack. Does the story prove the rule's validity? Maybe, but it also shows it to be, as Jack says, “so depressingly heteronormative.” The piece abounds with wonderful lines. I think my favorite is “She wants his questionnaire to impart some central truth, to give her closure, and, while it’s nice, the niceness pales in comparison with what he said moments after filling it out—‘It’s you specifically’—or the many ardent declarations of devotion in the months that followed.” Sittenfeld’s return to Jack’s questionnaire after the affair suddenly ends is inspired. The whole story is inspired – one of the best I’ve read in a long time.

Other highlights: Bill Buford’s “Good Bread” (April 13, 2020); Alex Ross’s “The Bristlecones Speak” (January 20, 2020); Burkhard Bilger’s “Building the Impossible” (November 30, 2020) – all crazy good! But that’s enough for now. Over the next few days, I’ll roll out my “Top Ten” lists - my way of paying tribute to the pieces I relished most. Thank you, New Yorker, for helping me get through this insane year. I propose a toast. Here’s to you, New Yorker, you gorgeous creature. I love you.