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.

Thursday, August 22, 2024

August 12, 2024 Issue

This week’s issue contains a candidate for Best New Yorker Photo of the Year – Dan Winters’ razor-sharp color portrait of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Clare Malone’s “The Inheritor.” Over the years, Winters has produced some of the magazine’s most memorable pictures, e.g., his gleaming photo of Pardis Sabeti and Stephen Gire, for Richard Preston’s brilliant “The Ebola Wars” (October 27, 2014), and his unforgettable portrait of face-transplant recipient Dallas Wiens, for Raffi Katchadourian’s extraordinary “Transfiguration” (February 13 & 20, 2012).

In Winters’ artful hands, Kennedy is a great photography subject. But as a politician, he’s repugnant. His opposition to vaccine mandates and military aid to Ukraine is vile. 

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Photo by Dan Winters)



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