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, March 9, 2023

McPhee's Mustaches

Norton Townshend Dodge (Photo from andrewsolomon.com)











I’m collecting John McPhee mustaches. So far I have six:

1. Scott Parker: “Tall, with a dark and gyroscopic mustache” (“The Ships of Port Revel”);

2. Norton Townshend Dodge: “With his grand odobene mustache, he had everything but the tusks” (The Ransom of Russian Art);

3. Vernon McLaughlin: “A man built strong and square-shouldered, with a large head, a regal paunch, an equitable mustache, and eyes that gleam with fun and anger” (Looking for a Ship);

4. Mel Adams: “Mel is tall and lanky, fed in the middle but lithe in the legs. He has a sincere mustache, a trig goatee, and a slow, clear, frank, and friendly Ozark voice” (“Tight-Assed River”);

5. Tom Armstrong: “Of medium height and strongly built, he has a precise, navigational mustache” (“Tight-Assed River”);

6. Dick Eisfeller: “Bald, bluejeaned, wearing white running shoes, he had a round face, an amiable mustache, a significant corporation" (“Coal Train”);

And these: 

"The district’s conductors were all men. There were not a few speckled beards, and mustaches large enough to resemble the lower halves of crossing signs" (“Coal Train”);

"There was a lot of Mephistophelian facial hair – the caterpillar sideburns, the full beard, the mustache as bilateral semaphore" (“Coal Train”).

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