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.
Photo by John MacDougall
Yesterday I biked to Tracadie Beach. It’s about five kilometres from our place. There’s an old wharf there I like to visit. Not much left of it now – just the pilings. They endure a tremendous pounding from the waves. Yet there they are, still standing. The light was perfect, gilding the eroded surface of the wood. Water surged around them. Spray flew up. Reflections shone in the wet sand.
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