The New Yorker & Me: On the Horizon: My "Best of 2020" Lists

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.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

On the Horizon: My "Best of 2020" Lists

Illustration by Min Heo, from Hua Hsu's "My Year of Making Lists"

It’s time to start making my “Best of 2020” lists. Each year at this juncture, I like to pause, look back, and take stock of my New Yorker reading experience. I find listing is a good way to do it.

I’m not going to reveal my pick for best reporting piece just yet. But I’ll give you a hint. It has nothing to do with COVID-19. It has nothing to do with Trump. It’s about an object in the “the shape of a bulging briefcase, with a protruding bulb at the bottom.” That’s all I’m going to say for now. As it is, I’ve probably given it away. Besides, the year isn’t over. There are still three more New Yorkers to come. Who knows what delightful surprises they might contain?

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READINGS

Adam Shoalts, "Beyond the Trees" (2019)
Adam Weymouth, "Kings of the Yukon" (2018)
Aleksandar Hemon, "The Book of My Lives" (2013)
August Kleinzahler, "Sallies, Romps, Portraits and Send-Offs" (2017)
Ben McGrath, "Riverman" (2022)
Bill Buford, "Dirt" (2020)
Burkhard Bilger, "Fatherland" (2023)
C. K. Williams, "On Whitman" (2010)
Charles Simic, "The Life of Images" (2015)
Colm Tóibín, "On Elizabeth Bishop" (2015)
Curtis Sittenfeld, "You Think It, I'll Say It" (2018)
Eleanor Cook, "Elizabeth Bishop at Work" (2016)
Geoff Dyer, "Otherwise Known as the Human Condition" (2011)
Geoff Dyer, "See/Saw" (2021)
Geoff Dyer, "The Last Days of Roger Federer" (2022)
Geoff Dyer, "The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand" (2018)
Geoff Dyer, "White Sands" (2016)
Gideon Lewis-Krauss, "A Sense of Direction" (2012)
Helen Vendler, "Last Looks, Last Books" (2010)
Helen Vendler, "The Ocean, the Bird and the Scholar" (2015)
Ian Frazier, "Hogs Wild" (2016)
Ian Frazier, "Travels in Siberia" (2010)
Ian Penman, "It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track" (2019)
James Wolcott, "Critical Mass" (2013)
James Wood, "Serious Noticing" (2019)
James Wood, "The Fun Stuff" (2012)
James Wood, "The Nearest Thing to Life" (2015)
Janet Malcolm, "Forty-one False Starts" (2013)
Janet Malcolm, "Iphigenia in Forest Hills" (2011)
Janet Malcolm, "Nobody's Looking at You" (2019)
Janet Malcolm, "Still Pictures" (2023)
Jill Lepore, "Joe Gould's Teeth" (2015)
Jill Lepore, "The Deadline" (2023)
Joanna Biggs, "A Life of One's Own" (2023)
John Lahr, "Joy Ride" (2015)
John McPhee, "Draft No. 4" (2017)
John McPhee, "Silk Parachute" (2010)
John McPhee, "Tabula Rasa" (2023)
John McPhee, "The Patch" (2018)
John Updike, "Always Looking" (2012)
John Updike, "Higher Gossip" (2011)
Jonathan Franzen, "The End of the End of the Earth" (2018)
Jonathan Kramnick, "Criticism & Truth" (2023)
Jonathan Raban, "Driving Home" (2010)
Joyce Carol Oates, "In Rough Country" (2010)
Judith Thurman, "A Left-Handed Woman" (2022)
Julian Bell, "Van Gogh" (2015)
Keith Gessen, "A Terrible Country" (2018)
Lawrence Osborne, "The Wet and the Dry" (2013)
Martin Amis, "The Rub of Time" (2018)
Michael Hofmann, "Where Have You Been?" (2014)
Morten Strøksnes, "Shark Drunk" (2018)
Nicholson Baker, "Finding a Likeness" (2024)
Nicholson Baker, "The Way the World Works" (2012)
Per Petterson, "I Curse the River of Time" (2010)
Peter Hessler, "Strange Stones" (2013)
Peter Schjeldahl, "Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light" (2019)
Peter Schjeldahl, "The Art of Dying" (2024)
Robert Hass, "What Light Can Do" (2012)
Robert Macfarlane, "The Old Ways" (2012)
Robert Sullivan, "Double Exposure" (2024)
Roger Angell, "This Old Man" (2015)
Samanth Subramanian, "Following Fish" (2010)
Svetlana Alpers, "Walker Evans" (2020)
T. J. Clark, "Heaven on Earth" (2018)
T. J. Clark, "If These Apples Should Fall" (2022)
T. J. Clark, "Picasso and Truth" (2013)
Timothy Hampton, "Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work" (2019)
Verlyn Klinkenborg, "More Scenes from the Rural Life" (2013)
Wayne Koestenbaum, "My 1980s & Other Essays" (2013)
William Atkins, "The Moor" (2014)
Zadie Smith, "Feel Free" (2018)