One of the big things that was stressed by ("my name's ...") David Leach ("... and I'm a magaholic") in the magazine-journalism course I did with him back in the '05 was a unified approach--FOB, BOB, columns, feature, cover, all need to be geared not only toward the target audience but toward each other. But sometimes even the bar-setters in the field forget that, I guess. This issue contains:

"The nuclear risk: Lessons from Japan's disaster", by Elizabeth Kolbert. Gives you the clear explanation of what exactly is and has the potential to go on in the reactors that the newspapers and the teevee never do because they're pricks.

"History repeats: The lessons of Hiroshima", by Kenzaburo Ōe. I have a lot of time for Ōe, and I hope he writes his book about the traumas of Japan's 20th century through the stories of survivors of Hiroshima, the Bikini tests, and the Daiichi tragedy. I don't really feel like I'm qualified to quibble with this powerful and sad meditation on the poisoning of the air and earth in the islands of the gods, and how that relates to the suffering and strength of the people, or that it's called for even if I were qualified. So I'll put my suspicions about nuclear being our only way through the climate-change keyhole to one side. I do share his hope that this will help put an end to Japan's late malaise--they're the best people in the world in a lot of ways, and I hope they'll learn to take more pride in that.

"Knife Guy", by Lizzie Widdicombe. A paean to old-time craftsmanship that would easily fill a normal page in a normal New Yorker but that seems a bit out of place in what can't help but feel like a valedictory issue (especially with that cover choice--an ohanami cherry tree with blossoms in the shape of nuclear-hazard signs, which I find tasteless as hell but the illustrator probably didn't get the resonance of. The tree alone would have reminded us that we are doomed to fall like blossom with a lighter hand).

"Final Polish", by Michael Schulman. Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park are writing a musical about the Book of Mormon and this behind-the-scenes look left me pretty cold, to say nothing of confused. Hollywood writers truly are different from you and me.

"King of Walks", by Ben McGrath, about Barry Bonds. Yeah yeah, food is also a drug and Ty Cobb took greenies. I just can't give a shit about baseball either way.

"Aftershocks: Living with catastrophe", by Evan Osnos, a mostly sensitive look at the disaster--the most affecting character was the former diplomat that Osnos talks to, that silver-fox, Brutus-magazine Koizumiesque man of the world who still looks in the mirror and remembers his samurai soul every morning, who sits in his chair, closes his eyes "so long I think he might be asleep", pinches the bridge of his nose, and then delivers a brilliant disquisition on his people and the dangers and the hope. The article occasionally veers into orientalism--dwelling a little too long on the names of top bands, yes we know Mr. Children is a funny name in English, shut up--but mostly this is pretty good.

"UFO in Kushiro", by Haruki Murakami. A strong short story more in the numbness-and-anomie Murakami vein than the through-the-looking-glass postmodern Murakami vein. Against the backdrop of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, a regular sarariiman starts to feel like he may want to learn how to start to feel.

Some Japanese art criticism.

And then there's articles on the Peter Pan capitalist sprites behind Spanx and Louboutin shoes, and a Gladwell review on a book making what sounds like a forced, artificial comparison of the fascists behind L'Oreal and Helen Rubinstein, the Jewish woman whose beauty-products empire was ground up by the bad old twentieth century, and there's obviously a gravity to that but the fashionness of it all jars and again, I think David Remnick or somebody should have exerted some kind of editorial control to make the contrast a little less jarring. I guess I'm saying when you've got a theme issue in practice, especially when the theme is a sombre one, consider what that might entail for your approach. ( )