The New Yorker & Me: On the Horizon: Ian Frazier's New Book "Paradise Bronx"

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 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.

Friday, March 8, 2024

On the Horizon: Ian Frazier's New Book "Paradise Bronx"

I see that Ian Frazier has a new book coming out. It’s called Paradise Bronx. His publisher, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, promotes it as his magnum opus (“Ian Frazier’s magnum opus: a love song to New York City’s most heterogeneous and alive borough”). Frazier is among the New Yorker greats, right up there with Liebling, Mitchell, Kael, and McPhee. His Great Plains, On the Rez, and Travels in Siberia are among my favorite books. For me, the release of Paradise Bronx, scheduled for August 20, 2024, is one of the major literary events of the year. I avidly look forward to it.