January 12, 2015 Issue

Pick of the Issue this week is Julia Ioffe’s "Remote Control," a profile of the exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It isn’t as good as Ioffe’s "The Borscht Belt" (The New Yorker, April 16, 2012), in which she memorably describes, among other things, the use of a pech, a traditional Russian brick oven (“Still, the oven’s three little compartments provided enough room for frequent rotation of pans and traditional cast-iron pots – fat-bellied, with narrow bottoms – and its warm roof, about a foot below the kitchen’s ceiling, became a favorite for the three young chefs in the kitchen”), and the making of samogon (Russian moonshine). But it does contain some interesting observations by Khodorkovsky on life in a Siberian prison. For example:

“The penal colony isn’t scary,” he observed. “It’s full of average people, and your place in that world depends on you, and more on will than on strength. You can’t be scared. The result is a vile and filthy life that is worse than death. And death, well, what is death? The risk is low, just two or three per thousand inmates a year.

It’s going to take this kind of steeliness to overthrow Putin. Maybe Khodorkovsky is the man for the job. Would he be an improvement? His track record as a ruthless exploiter of Russian state capitalism isn’t encouraging. But maybe his prison experiences have humanized him.

Photo by Davide Monteleone

The Davide Monteleone photo of Khodorkovsky that accompanies Ioffe’s piece is transfixing. I can’t make up my mind about it. It crops off about a fifth of Khodorkovsky’s face, including part of his left eye. Why? What aesthetic is in play here? The photo draws attention to Khodorkovsky’s eyes. They are hard, determined-looking eyes. It’s not a blasé shot. It’s not a “no style” portrait, that’s for sure. It’s eye-catching. I guess that’s its point. But it’s incomplete. That’s what bugs me about it.  

April 16, 2012 Issue

There are four items in this week’s issue that I want to briefly comment on: Julia Ioffe’s “The Borscht Belt,” Basharat Peer’s “Modern Mecca,” Lauren Collins’s “The British Invasion,” and David Wagoner’s “On the Road to Damascus.”

Julia Ioffe’s “The Borscht Belt”

It takes a while for new New Yorker writers to impinge on my consciousness. Even though Julia Ioffe has been contributing to the magazine for a couple of years, “The Borscht Belt” is the first piece by her that I’ve read closely from beginning to end. This article attracted me because it’s about one of my favorite subjects – food. I enjoyed it, particularly the closely observed details about the Golden Rus chefs’ use of a pech, a traditional Russian brick oven (“Still, the oven’s three little compartments provided enough room for frequent rotation of pans and traditional cast-iron pots – fat-bellied, with narrow bottoms – and its warm roof, about a foot below the kitchen’s ceiling, became a favorite for the three young chefs in the kitchen”) and the wonderful description of Syrnikov’s troubles making samogon (Russian moonshine) while being filmed by a Russian television crew. I especially like the subjective note on which this passage concludes: “In the end, Syrnikov made around two litres of samogon, and we drank it all that night. They say that unlike vodka, samogon doesn’t give you a headache the next morning. It’s not true.” I wish “The Borscht Belt” contained more subjectivity. I craved some hint of Ioffe’s presence in the Golden Rus kitchen and during the banquet. I was pleased when, near the end of the piece, she briefly appears, commenting, “The vatrushka, thick with sweetened farmer’s cheese, was the best I’d ever eaten.”

Basharat Peer’s “Modern Mecca”

Curiously, I felt very close to the style of this piece. I say “curiously” because the subject matter – Islamic religion, pilgrimage to Mecca, rituals of the hajj, etc. – is not my cup of tea. But I found Peer’s style – his glorious subjectivity (e.g., “After the final lap, I retreated to the taps, where a Pakistani man passed around recyclable cups of Zamzam water to fellow-pilgrims”), his superb details (“Pilgrims raised smart phones above their heads to record the moment”), and his preference for “flat” description (i.e., plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity) – to be immensely attractive. I see Peer has written a book, Curfewed Night. I think I’ll check it out.

Lauren Collins’s “The British Invasion”

I know I’ve just finished extolling the virtues of plain, simple, orderly, sincere writing. But I also have a love for wild, juicy, labyrinthine sentences, too. Lauren Collins’s “The British Invasion” contains a beauty:

They had been cautioned about nudity (“We hope you have an incredible, stupendous, pant-wettingly, unforgettable week,” but “for heaven’s sake KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON MAN!!” read a brochure), and about body paint (“The damage caused by body paint numbers into tens of thousands of euros every year”), but the twenty buses – charabancs for social networkers – disgorged swaying centurions, singing pirates, men wearing drinking helmets, men not wearing shirts, a girl with a blow-up doll slung over her shoulder, and a guy wearing something that looked like a diaper.

That “incredible, stupendous, pant-wettingly, unforgettable week” quote is inspired! So is “charabancs for social networkers.” The whole construction is a miniature masterpiece of combinational and syntactical wizardry.

David Wagoner’s “On the Road to Damascus”

Reading David Wagoner’s “On the Road to Damascus” in this week’s issue was like encountering an old friend. His “The Death of a Cranefly” (The New Yorker, October 13, 1980) is one of my all-time favorite New Yorker poems. “On the Road to Damascus” is a different kind of poem; it has a political feel that doesn’t appeal to me. However, the line about the “windowless, riddled, wind-scarred storage sheds” is very fine and shows the master hasn’t lost his touch.