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.
I enjoyed doing “3 for the Road” so much that I’ve decided to pick three more of my favorite travelogues – John McPhee’s Looking for a Ship (1990), Jonathan Raban’s Passage to Juneau (1999), Redmond O’Hanlon’s Trawler (2003) – and revisit them, blogging about it as I go. So a new series then – “3 for the Sea,” starting January 1, 2022.
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Great! Can not wait!
ReplyDeleteThanks! I appreciate your interest.
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