Ffortsa reads 2008
Talk Magazines!!!!! New Yorker, Science, Atlantic, Mad......
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1ffortsa
I took a break from old New Yorkers recently, but will collect the old from its boxes soon.
2ffortsa
Well, that wasn't soon. Actually, I did bring the first part of 2008 in house from the storage locker a couple of months ago, but had so much to read for book clubs that I didn't start until this weekend. Oh, dear. Not the way to catch up.
OK, here are tidbits from the first two issues.
January 7: I found only two items of interest:
1. A review of Kalil Gibran's Collected Works by Joan Acocella, which told me much more about Gibran than I ever knew. Oh, what publicity and an adoring following can do to an impressionable young man.
2. An article on Marin Alsop, who had recently taken over the Baltimore Symphony, with much acrimony and fanfare. She seems to have made good in the intervening years.
January 14: Again, not much to interest me, but it might have been my mood. I skipped the Scientology article - I've heard enough of them lately. Other articles I read:
1. American Scrap - John Seabrook - a moderately interesting article on how US scrap metal markets are recycling and exporting the enormous amount of material we ditch each year, mostly to China, of course.
2. A retrospective look at the film of Otto Preminger, written by David Denby, accompanying a festival in town. Very interesting. I hadn't realized Preminger's variety of film types, or jut how many I've seen over the years.
3. I did what is for me unusual and read a short story by E.L. Doctorow, titled 'Wakefield', about a man who on impulse sidesteps his usual arrival home from work in the city and hides out in his own attic and suburban area for a year. Very odd. I can't but think the main character, the narrator, is a jerk.
OK, here are tidbits from the first two issues.
January 7: I found only two items of interest:
1. A review of Kalil Gibran's Collected Works by Joan Acocella, which told me much more about Gibran than I ever knew. Oh, what publicity and an adoring following can do to an impressionable young man.
2. An article on Marin Alsop, who had recently taken over the Baltimore Symphony, with much acrimony and fanfare. She seems to have made good in the intervening years.
January 14: Again, not much to interest me, but it might have been my mood. I skipped the Scientology article - I've heard enough of them lately. Other articles I read:
1. American Scrap - John Seabrook - a moderately interesting article on how US scrap metal markets are recycling and exporting the enormous amount of material we ditch each year, mostly to China, of course.
2. A retrospective look at the film of Otto Preminger, written by David Denby, accompanying a festival in town. Very interesting. I hadn't realized Preminger's variety of film types, or jut how many I've seen over the years.
3. I did what is for me unusual and read a short story by E.L. Doctorow, titled 'Wakefield', about a man who on impulse sidesteps his usual arrival home from work in the city and hides out in his own attic and suburban area for a year. Very odd. I can't but think the main character, the narrator, is a jerk.
3ffortsa
ok, next installment. I've been reading the subsequent issues a little at a time, and will summarize.
January 21:
An article on Mike McConnell and the national security establishment that I don't recall much of now, although it was a long article. It's upsetting to think of how far-ranging the security sector is these days - and then.
An article on Lee Miller, 'artist and muse', bu Judith Thurman. I didn't know much about Miller except for her involvement with Man Ray, but she had a wider experience than that, and was one of the reporters to enter Dachau.
January 28:
An article on John Currin, a painter whose hyper-realistic sexualized paintings made big news in the art scene. The magazine printed some of the pictures, and they are quite subversive in their presentation of women's sexuality, and also rather funny, in a Normal Rockwell sense. But one of the non-sexual paintings, of Currin's wife at three ages, while very Rockwell in its style, was quite interesting. A painting called 'the Bra Shop' could have been out of a peculiar men's magazine, with anatomical exaggeration. He can't seem to stop painting these pictures, at least at the point of the article's publication. I don't follow the art scene much, so I don't know what he's done since.
February 4:
Not much that interested me - lots of politics in this election year, of course, but I wasn't into rehashing the Hillary vs Barak business. There was a review of a revival of Inge's 'Come Back, Little Sheba', with S. Epatha Merkerson and Kevin Anderson. Jim and I had the pleasure of seeing it, so it brought back some memories of marvelous acting. But it's a grim play.
The best thing about the issue is the cover: Humpty Dumpty in a striped suit sitting on the roof of the Stock Exchange, holding on for dear life with one tiny hand and wiping his brow with the other.
February 25:
I wonder where the other two issues went? Hm.
Anyway, this issue has wonderful profile of Louis Auchincloss, a writer we don't read much anymore. I remember his name from my childhood, not for children's books but just in the air. He was a lawyer for most of his career years, coming from the same society as his cousin Gore Vidal and the Roosevelts. He became a novelist of manners, known for his gentle condemnation of the culture of boarding school education in 'The Rector of Justin', considered his best novel. I never read it, nor did I read 'The House of the Prophet', which reflected his growing acceptance of the kinds of things wrong with his level of society, and by extension the power in the country. Maybe I'll look into it.
Elizabeth Kolbert has a short piece in the issue on the study of behavioral economics, how we are sold on buying more than we need. This is, of course, much more commonly discussed and written about now, mainly because of Kahneman and Tvsersky's research which won a Nobel Prize.
March 3:
Jim Holt has an interesting story on how our minds process math, how the brain seems to be inclined in a certain mathematical direction. The story centers on Stanislas Dehaene, a brain researcher who postulated that our brains are hard-wired for certain mathematical concepts, that, for instance, we don't have to count to know recognize small numbers of things because we have a sort of flash pattern for 4 or 5 or 3. I'm not remembering this very well - I might have to reread it before tossing the issue!
March 10:
Well, this was the style issue. Not my thing. out it goes.
January 21:
An article on Mike McConnell and the national security establishment that I don't recall much of now, although it was a long article. It's upsetting to think of how far-ranging the security sector is these days - and then.
An article on Lee Miller, 'artist and muse', bu Judith Thurman. I didn't know much about Miller except for her involvement with Man Ray, but she had a wider experience than that, and was one of the reporters to enter Dachau.
January 28:
An article on John Currin, a painter whose hyper-realistic sexualized paintings made big news in the art scene. The magazine printed some of the pictures, and they are quite subversive in their presentation of women's sexuality, and also rather funny, in a Normal Rockwell sense. But one of the non-sexual paintings, of Currin's wife at three ages, while very Rockwell in its style, was quite interesting. A painting called 'the Bra Shop' could have been out of a peculiar men's magazine, with anatomical exaggeration. He can't seem to stop painting these pictures, at least at the point of the article's publication. I don't follow the art scene much, so I don't know what he's done since.
February 4:
Not much that interested me - lots of politics in this election year, of course, but I wasn't into rehashing the Hillary vs Barak business. There was a review of a revival of Inge's 'Come Back, Little Sheba', with S. Epatha Merkerson and Kevin Anderson. Jim and I had the pleasure of seeing it, so it brought back some memories of marvelous acting. But it's a grim play.
The best thing about the issue is the cover: Humpty Dumpty in a striped suit sitting on the roof of the Stock Exchange, holding on for dear life with one tiny hand and wiping his brow with the other.
February 25:
I wonder where the other two issues went? Hm.
Anyway, this issue has wonderful profile of Louis Auchincloss, a writer we don't read much anymore. I remember his name from my childhood, not for children's books but just in the air. He was a lawyer for most of his career years, coming from the same society as his cousin Gore Vidal and the Roosevelts. He became a novelist of manners, known for his gentle condemnation of the culture of boarding school education in 'The Rector of Justin', considered his best novel. I never read it, nor did I read 'The House of the Prophet', which reflected his growing acceptance of the kinds of things wrong with his level of society, and by extension the power in the country. Maybe I'll look into it.
Elizabeth Kolbert has a short piece in the issue on the study of behavioral economics, how we are sold on buying more than we need. This is, of course, much more commonly discussed and written about now, mainly because of Kahneman and Tvsersky's research which won a Nobel Prize.
March 3:
Jim Holt has an interesting story on how our minds process math, how the brain seems to be inclined in a certain mathematical direction. The story centers on Stanislas Dehaene, a brain researcher who postulated that our brains are hard-wired for certain mathematical concepts, that, for instance, we don't have to count to know recognize small numbers of things because we have a sort of flash pattern for 4 or 5 or 3. I'm not remembering this very well - I might have to reread it before tossing the issue!
March 10:
Well, this was the style issue. Not my thing. out it goes.
4ffortsa
This has not been a good year for New Yorker catch-up. I figure if I read 2 issues a day from now until the end of the year, I might get out of 2008. Or I might surreptitiously slip them into the recycle pile. Shhhh. Don't tell me I'm doing that.
5alans
Very funny post. I love the way you continue to read in order. You're only five years behind now. It's great. My own piles just get larger and larger by the week. I have them all over the house..it's terrible.
6ffortsa
Well, that didn't work at ALL. I don't think I read one New Yorker since I posted last. Problem is, there are two issues I really loved that I wanted to post about, but I never got around to it, and I didn't want to go forward until I did, and then things got busy, and.. and... and.... So here I am. Will do that post later today and maybe move ahead. But I'd need Stasia's 100 eyes and Suzanne's phenomenal speed to read all the books and magazines waiting patiently for my attention. sigh.
7ffortsa
Here we go again. Picking up where I left off:
March 17:
Kennedy Fraser writes an interesting profile of the writer Pam Barker, of whom I have never heard. And here she won the Booker Prize in the 1990s. I see she has written a lot set in and around the first World War, so this might fit nicely with some reading planned in the 75 group.
Alice Wilkinson writes about the discovery of some photographs taken by the Germans at Auschwitz. These were not photographs of the inmates; rather, they are photographs of the Germans at play and at celebration, quite extraordinary. In particular, they are the only photographs of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz ever found, and also of a man named Karl Hoecker. In addition, there are pictures of the staff - secretaries, telegraph operators - who were deemed 'pure' and thus worthy of the attention of the officers.
When the experts put this album of pictures together with another one, they realized they were looking at the people responsible for the deaths of over 434,000 people from Hungary. Hoecker, cosidered the one with the greatest skill in keeping the killing machine running during that time, served only 7 years in prison when finally caught, because no one could prove he was at the camp at the time. He died at 89, in 2000.
What a travesty
A quite extraordinary addition to WWII scholarship.
Adan Gopnick writes about magic, the kind of magic involving card tricks and showmanship and roses appearing out of nowhere, and the hold that has on, especially, young boys. I'm not particularly interested in magic, but the article is a good one, with an insider's eye toward who is considered great by the inner community.
John Lahr has an interesting piece on the plays of Sarah Ruhl, who has written incredibly imaginative pieces. The one I remember most fondly is 'Eurydice', which is the story from the point of view of a newly dead girl encountering her father in the underworld, not quite as full of forgetfulness as she should be. Her work is always different and inventive.
This is the issue with a cartoon of Obama and Hillary Clinton in bed together, each reaching for the red phone. Remember, this was March 2008.
March 24th - nothing I'd consider memorable
March 31 was the money issue. It contained:
an article by Eric Alterman on the demise of newspapers (sort of like the endless demise of the theater, don't you think?),
an article by David Owen on the uselessness of the penny (but I've heard interesting things about why it really pays the government to have people keep all those jars of pennies in the den),
an article by Peter Hessler about how boom time in a Chinese village has its downside,
a really interesting article by John Cassidy on E. Stanley O'Neal, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, the first African-American to hold that high a position in the brokerage industry, and a man who seemed to inspire vitriol from the brokerage community, even as people who worked with him said he was just what Merrill needed at the time. Of course, the time was also the time of CDO creation and the seeds that grew into the economic collapse of 2007-2008.
another interesting article about Lynda Resnick, the woman behind PomWonderful.
April 7:
Michael Kinsey writes about the focus these days (thank us baby boomers) of how to live longer. It's a topic that is of course of interest to me as I turn 65 next month, but it's easier to read about it than do anything about it.
Jon Colapinto writes of the jurisdictional fight over sunken treasure in the Atlantic Ocean, between those who say they've found it and the Spanish government, calling it a challenge to the 'finders, keepers' rule. Of course, this is heated in direct proportion to the financial worth of the treasure in question.
Richard Brody writes about the French New Wave and the fight between Goddard and Truffaut, which I didn't even know about.
April 14: again, not much to write about.
I'm still in the middle of the April 21st issue, which was one of those occasional gems where most of the articles are really, really interesting. I'll write about that next time.
March 17:
Kennedy Fraser writes an interesting profile of the writer Pam Barker, of whom I have never heard. And here she won the Booker Prize in the 1990s. I see she has written a lot set in and around the first World War, so this might fit nicely with some reading planned in the 75 group.
Alice Wilkinson writes about the discovery of some photographs taken by the Germans at Auschwitz. These were not photographs of the inmates; rather, they are photographs of the Germans at play and at celebration, quite extraordinary. In particular, they are the only photographs of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz ever found, and also of a man named Karl Hoecker. In addition, there are pictures of the staff - secretaries, telegraph operators - who were deemed 'pure' and thus worthy of the attention of the officers.
When the experts put this album of pictures together with another one, they realized they were looking at the people responsible for the deaths of over 434,000 people from Hungary. Hoecker, cosidered the one with the greatest skill in keeping the killing machine running during that time, served only 7 years in prison when finally caught, because no one could prove he was at the camp at the time. He died at 89, in 2000.
What a travesty
A quite extraordinary addition to WWII scholarship.
Adan Gopnick writes about magic, the kind of magic involving card tricks and showmanship and roses appearing out of nowhere, and the hold that has on, especially, young boys. I'm not particularly interested in magic, but the article is a good one, with an insider's eye toward who is considered great by the inner community.
John Lahr has an interesting piece on the plays of Sarah Ruhl, who has written incredibly imaginative pieces. The one I remember most fondly is 'Eurydice', which is the story from the point of view of a newly dead girl encountering her father in the underworld, not quite as full of forgetfulness as she should be. Her work is always different and inventive.
This is the issue with a cartoon of Obama and Hillary Clinton in bed together, each reaching for the red phone. Remember, this was March 2008.
March 24th - nothing I'd consider memorable
March 31 was the money issue. It contained:
an article by Eric Alterman on the demise of newspapers (sort of like the endless demise of the theater, don't you think?),
an article by David Owen on the uselessness of the penny (but I've heard interesting things about why it really pays the government to have people keep all those jars of pennies in the den),
an article by Peter Hessler about how boom time in a Chinese village has its downside,
a really interesting article by John Cassidy on E. Stanley O'Neal, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, the first African-American to hold that high a position in the brokerage industry, and a man who seemed to inspire vitriol from the brokerage community, even as people who worked with him said he was just what Merrill needed at the time. Of course, the time was also the time of CDO creation and the seeds that grew into the economic collapse of 2007-2008.
another interesting article about Lynda Resnick, the woman behind PomWonderful.
April 7:
Michael Kinsey writes about the focus these days (thank us baby boomers) of how to live longer. It's a topic that is of course of interest to me as I turn 65 next month, but it's easier to read about it than do anything about it.
Jon Colapinto writes of the jurisdictional fight over sunken treasure in the Atlantic Ocean, between those who say they've found it and the Spanish government, calling it a challenge to the 'finders, keepers' rule. Of course, this is heated in direct proportion to the financial worth of the treasure in question.
Richard Brody writes about the French New Wave and the fight between Goddard and Truffaut, which I didn't even know about.
April 14: again, not much to write about.
I'm still in the middle of the April 21st issue, which was one of those occasional gems where most of the articles are really, really interesting. I'll write about that next time.
8ffortsa
oh, this is bad. I got so busy, or so lazy, or so something that I actually mentioned the April 21st issue and then never recorded it. Oh well.
For anyone still waiting with bated breath, here's what was in it:
1. An article by Lynne Cox, whose passion is swimming. Flying over the Atlantic to swim the Channel when 15, she got a glimpse of what would be her goal - to swim across those parts of the oceans of the world that no one else had tackled before. This article details her swim Roald Amundsen's route through the Northwest Passage. In an ordinary bathing suit. Extraordinary.
2. Caroline Alexander writes about the Sundarabans Tiger Reserve, a mangrove forest in Bengal where the only swimmer of the cat family, the Bengal tiger, is still a man-eater. The human population earns money from fishing, honey gathering, and other forest activities, and the tiger reserve protects the forest they need but the tigers exact their price.
3. Jared Diamond relates how a friend of his in New Guinea upheld the cultural tradition of revenge, at great cost but with great satisfaction. Diamond explains how having laws instead of these traditions is ultimately less costly and allows other civilizations to focus on other goals.
4. JonathanFranzem decides to find out where his puffin golf-club cover comes from (China) and what it might have cost in terms of environmental damage to, among other things, the real ouffins. It's complicated.
5. Nick Palmgarten writes about elevators, and about what happened to one man who was stuck in one for 41 hours when he went for a cigarette break.
All good stuff, but it's taken me so long to record it!
As of now, I think I'll keep my New Yorker activities on my main thread, counting every four I get through as a book, noting only the most interesting articles. You're all welcome to take a look at my threads in the 75 books in 2014 group. See you there!
For anyone still waiting with bated breath, here's what was in it:
1. An article by Lynne Cox, whose passion is swimming. Flying over the Atlantic to swim the Channel when 15, she got a glimpse of what would be her goal - to swim across those parts of the oceans of the world that no one else had tackled before. This article details her swim Roald Amundsen's route through the Northwest Passage. In an ordinary bathing suit. Extraordinary.
2. Caroline Alexander writes about the Sundarabans Tiger Reserve, a mangrove forest in Bengal where the only swimmer of the cat family, the Bengal tiger, is still a man-eater. The human population earns money from fishing, honey gathering, and other forest activities, and the tiger reserve protects the forest they need but the tigers exact their price.
3. Jared Diamond relates how a friend of his in New Guinea upheld the cultural tradition of revenge, at great cost but with great satisfaction. Diamond explains how having laws instead of these traditions is ultimately less costly and allows other civilizations to focus on other goals.
4. JonathanFranzem decides to find out where his puffin golf-club cover comes from (China) and what it might have cost in terms of environmental damage to, among other things, the real ouffins. It's complicated.
5. Nick Palmgarten writes about elevators, and about what happened to one man who was stuck in one for 41 hours when he went for a cigarette break.
All good stuff, but it's taken me so long to record it!
As of now, I think I'll keep my New Yorker activities on my main thread, counting every four I get through as a book, noting only the most interesting articles. You're all welcome to take a look at my threads in the 75 books in 2014 group. See you there!
9qebo
>8 ffortsa:
1. Might be interesting to read the February 10 (2014) article about Diana Nyad for comparison.
3. Is this the article that became quite controversial?
1. Might be interesting to read the February 10 (2014) article about Diana Nyad for comparison.
3. Is this the article that became quite controversial?
11ffortsa
>9 qebo: Wow. I finally read the article at that link, Katherine. thanks for posting it. It's quite disillusioning, not only regarding Diamond, but also The New Yorker, which is supposedly known for its fact-checking. Was it Diamond's reputation that allowed them to gloss over the disputed narrative? The distance to New Guinea? Or a feeling of voyeuristic satisfaction that the story SHOULD be true, in this foreign-seeming society? Very upsetting. It certainly undermines his conclusions about the function of formal law in society.
>10 sibylline: thanks for reading it, which pushed me to read it too.
>10 sibylline: thanks for reading it, which pushed me to read it too.
12sibylline
The NYer has had problems off and on, certainly. All that fuss over the Jung guy.... Geoffrey Masson a decade or so ago.... I think sometimes these days some authors are incredibly defiant and arrogant about being copy-edited or fact-checked and they can intimidate a younger person..... it happens.
13sibylline
Back to also say it's nice to see some action over here!
I'm on my last 2013 New Yorker - about to start my 2014 thread! I might list all the magazines I do read, although would be very tedious to review them all, there are occasional articles in all of them that are striking. The New Yorker I will continue to plod on with, of course.
I'm on my last 2013 New Yorker - about to start my 2014 thread! I might list all the magazines I do read, although would be very tedious to review them all, there are occasional articles in all of them that are striking. The New Yorker I will continue to plod on with, of course.
14ffortsa
I've almost come to the point of reading 2008 and the current issues concurrently. Time to come up to the real world.
On another topic entirely, I actually read the NYTimes Sunday Magazine section this weekend. There's a brilliant article about stock exchanges and how they were (and probably still are) gamed, and how one trader decided to create a safer platform. Very interesting.
I also read an issue of New Republic, not sure of the date, but the cover story was about Assange and Snowden, outlining their history, postings, and possible true motivations. They are a couple of creepy guys. Worth reading.
On another topic entirely, I actually read the NYTimes Sunday Magazine section this weekend. There's a brilliant article about stock exchanges and how they were (and probably still are) gamed, and how one trader decided to create a safer platform. Very interesting.
I also read an issue of New Republic, not sure of the date, but the cover story was about Assange and Snowden, outlining their history, postings, and possible true motivations. They are a couple of creepy guys. Worth reading.
15rebeccanyc
The NYT magazine article is an excerpt from the new book Flash Boys which apparently is the talk of Wall Street these days.
16ffortsa
>15 rebeccanyc: Yes. Michael Lewis was interviewed on The Daily Show last week (just got to it yesterday). As my company sits a little to one side of the spider web described, it was very interesting. Jim and I will probably get the book.
17Esta1923
Switched to New Yorker on-line but fall behind there too.....I have odds and ends of old ones which I'll read when my subscription ends.
Really sorry about this: when we married in 1945 our New Yorker subscription symbolized being grown-ups.
Perhaps giving up signifies _______ (fill in the blank).
Really sorry about this: when we married in 1945 our New Yorker subscription symbolized being grown-ups.
Perhaps giving up signifies _______ (fill in the blank).
18ffortsa
>17 Esta1923: LOL I thought the NYTimes signified my grown-up status, but I recently cut back to the Weekender (Friday through Sunday) because I never got through the daily paper.
I have an electronic subscription to the Nation, but I never seem to read it online, even on my tablet. Something about magazines seems to work better physically for me.
I have an electronic subscription to the Nation, but I never seem to read it online, even on my tablet. Something about magazines seems to work better physically for me.
19alans
Esta1923, did you stop subscribing because you couldn't keep up anymore? What an accomplishment that you were reading continuously since 1945! I can never keep up with
the issues.
the issues.
20sibylline
I am very impressed also Esta! Wow! I would love to hear your thoughts on how the NYer has evolved.
21ffortsa
Lo and behold. Not only have I been reading New Yorkers, I found the thread! So i'll finish 2008 here, and if i ever get to 2009, start a new topic.
April 28th, 2008:
This is what stops me, sometimes, from recording and tossing issues. A fascinating piece by Daniel Mendelsohn on Herodotus, on the occasion, or excuse, of a new translation, The Landmark Herodotus, which Mendelsohn describes as both 'naked and pedestrian'. Oh woe. I'll have to read an earlier version. But I will save the pages of this 'review', as it digs deep into both the history Herodotus wrote about and the way he wrote it.
May 5th, 2008:
Cynthia Zarin on Mark Rylance, an actor I greatly admire, although I am chagrinned to find that he is one of the flat-earthers who thinks Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written Shakespeare.
David Remnick writes about Benny Morris's 1948: A history of the First Arab-Israeli War as 'commanding, superbly documented and fair-minded', written by a man also born in 1948, in Israel, a leftist and a pessimist.
May 12th, 2008: The Innovators Issue
Another example of why it is so hard to get rid of some issues.
Malcolm Gladwell writes of Nathan Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures, as a sort of think-tank for scientists, engineers, business people, an attempt to replicate by sheer number of brains the extraordinary creativity of some of the great and rare minds of the past. It also touches on dinosaur hunting, inventions created or discovered simultaneously by several people (the calculus, the telephone, etc.). I must check to see if Gladwell expanded this into a book, which I might then acquire permanently.
Margaret Talbot writes in 'Birdbrain' about Alex the grey parrot and the trainer Irene Pepperberg, and the hypothesis of animals that can learn to understand language.
There are also articles by Alex Ross on John Luther Adams, a man who builds worlds of sounds, and by D.T. Max about a chef, Grant Achatz, who developed cancer of the tongue.
The one that really captured me was by Lauren Collins on Pascal Dangin, the premier retoucher of fashion photographs, the man who smooths out hip-bones and extends legs to get those never really real fantastic bodies we see in magazines and on billboards. Two pictures, on pages 96 and 97, show exactly how he can make a beautiful model who is definitely human look like a perfectly lit goddess.
May 19th, 2008:
Peter J. Boyer writes about Dickie Scruggs, the lawyer who brought down Big Tobacco and then was brought down himself in his fight against the insurance industry in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Bee Wilson reviews several books on food, not from a chef's point of view, but from a nutritional and economic angle during which she argues that food, at least here in the first world, is too cheap, and by valuing cheapness we miss the nutrition and proportion that keep us healthy at the expense of the rest of the world.
May 26th, 2008:
I know I enjoyed this issue, but nothing springs to mind to note here except a long article on the Republicans of 2008, and we know what happened to them.
On to June!
April 28th, 2008:
This is what stops me, sometimes, from recording and tossing issues. A fascinating piece by Daniel Mendelsohn on Herodotus, on the occasion, or excuse, of a new translation, The Landmark Herodotus, which Mendelsohn describes as both 'naked and pedestrian'. Oh woe. I'll have to read an earlier version. But I will save the pages of this 'review', as it digs deep into both the history Herodotus wrote about and the way he wrote it.
May 5th, 2008:
Cynthia Zarin on Mark Rylance, an actor I greatly admire, although I am chagrinned to find that he is one of the flat-earthers who thinks Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written Shakespeare.
David Remnick writes about Benny Morris's 1948: A history of the First Arab-Israeli War as 'commanding, superbly documented and fair-minded', written by a man also born in 1948, in Israel, a leftist and a pessimist.
May 12th, 2008: The Innovators Issue
Another example of why it is so hard to get rid of some issues.
Malcolm Gladwell writes of Nathan Myhrvold's company Intellectual Ventures, as a sort of think-tank for scientists, engineers, business people, an attempt to replicate by sheer number of brains the extraordinary creativity of some of the great and rare minds of the past. It also touches on dinosaur hunting, inventions created or discovered simultaneously by several people (the calculus, the telephone, etc.). I must check to see if Gladwell expanded this into a book, which I might then acquire permanently.
Margaret Talbot writes in 'Birdbrain' about Alex the grey parrot and the trainer Irene Pepperberg, and the hypothesis of animals that can learn to understand language.
There are also articles by Alex Ross on John Luther Adams, a man who builds worlds of sounds, and by D.T. Max about a chef, Grant Achatz, who developed cancer of the tongue.
The one that really captured me was by Lauren Collins on Pascal Dangin, the premier retoucher of fashion photographs, the man who smooths out hip-bones and extends legs to get those never really real fantastic bodies we see in magazines and on billboards. Two pictures, on pages 96 and 97, show exactly how he can make a beautiful model who is definitely human look like a perfectly lit goddess.
May 19th, 2008:
Peter J. Boyer writes about Dickie Scruggs, the lawyer who brought down Big Tobacco and then was brought down himself in his fight against the insurance industry in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Bee Wilson reviews several books on food, not from a chef's point of view, but from a nutritional and economic angle during which she argues that food, at least here in the first world, is too cheap, and by valuing cheapness we miss the nutrition and proportion that keep us healthy at the expense of the rest of the world.
May 26th, 2008:
I know I enjoyed this issue, but nothing springs to mind to note here except a long article on the Republicans of 2008, and we know what happened to them.
On to June!
22sibylline
I remember the article about the parrot!
The description of Rylance as a flat-earther is great! It really baffles me -- it's not as if Will was a peasant. He was from solid yeoman stock, very well-educated, and wildly ambitious. Sounds like a perfect recipe for achievement to me.
The description of Rylance as a flat-earther is great! It really baffles me -- it's not as if Will was a peasant. He was from solid yeoman stock, very well-educated, and wildly ambitious. Sounds like a perfect recipe for achievement to me.
23ffortsa
>22 sibylline: exactly. It's been a mystery to me why people are so determined to find him too low-class to carry the genius of his work. I'm convinced class prejudice will be the last to go.
Or we'll find something else to measure others by. Alas.
Or we'll find something else to measure others by. Alas.
24sibylline
Curiously it was Germaine Greer's exhaustive examination of the social status of women equivalent to Anne Shakespeare plus the few records about her that exist -- a thorough analysis of the types of lives people of that station had--including the well-educated husbands going off to London to use their skills to make money, the wife staying on the place and engaging in various entrepreneurial activities--that settled the matter forever for me. By our standards the Shakespeares were teetering on upper middle class of a rural sort, pretty prosperous, VERY ambitious although not entirely sturdy, wayyyyy better off than most. The book was, in some ways, tedious as Greer is meticulous in her sources at every step, but in retrospect, it was brilliant and decisive.
25ffortsa
>24 sibylline: good to know, and also good to know the book is rather tedious. I will use your reference as my own.
26ffortsa
I have read more, just haven't posted. Life, you know.
June 2, 2008:
There was a lot to read in this issue - an article on an Islamic rebel rethinking violence, an article about a political fixer - but I couldn't get into them. What caught me was an article by Jonathan Rosen on John Milton, not just about Paradise Lost but about his life and the turmoil of his time. For instance, he defended the regicide of Charles I as part of the Protestant Reformation, as part of the unmediated relationship between man and God. Rosen also relates the revolutionary ferver and activity of the time to Lucifer's fall, which was fueled by jealousy. The review definitely makes me want to read Paradise Lost again - i don't think I've read a line of it since college.
June 9 and 16, 2008:
It's the fiction issue, which, perversely, i generally ignore, but there are two non-fiction pieces I did read;
Dymaxion Man by Elizabeth Kolbert reviews the life and influence of Buckminster Fuller. She takes him from his early failures to his conviction that the tetrahedron is the real building block of the universe (she notes it eliminates the need for Pi, a number he 'found deeply distasteful). And that, of course, led him to the geodesic dome and fame.
Haruki Murakami contributed a piece of autobiography,how he started writing for a living,and how that lead to his devotion to running at 33.
James Wood has an essay based on a review of Bart. D. Ehrman's book God's Problem which he find adolescent. He surrounds it with a contemplation of suffering and theology that is one of the reasons I can't throw out New Yorkers.
June 23, 2008:
Peter J. Boyer has an article on Keith Olbermann, and since I never watched the man, it was somewhat enlightening.
Judith Thurman has a piece on the pictures in the Chauvet cave in southern France.
Two book reviews, one on Canin's America, America, and Rivka Galchen's novel 'Atmospheric Disturbances', caught my eye, along with references to Buchner's Lenz,knut Hamson's Hunger and Thomas Bernhard's novel The Loser, all built on completely untrustworthy narrators.
June 30:
A great cover, showing the subway 'arteries' as real arteries in a cartoon man, by Roz Chast.
Atul Gawande presents the science and research on itching, which is somewhat mysterious and often intensely damaging. The woman he starts the article with has uncontrollable itching that eventually leads her to scratch all the way through her skull. Hard to imagine.
July 7 and14,2008:
This holiday issue has a terrific article on G.K. Chesterton by Adam Gopnik, which shows both his prodigious output and popularity, and also his intense prejudice against both Jews and Christians. One of the famous English converts to Catholocism, his post- conversion writing is filled with what Gopnik sees as self-justification, preaching to the choir, but Gopnik also praises his non-religious essays on the new inventions of the world and their effect on society. But he couldn't follow the new style after World War I, and while he kept writing, he became more and more dated.
Jim and I watch the Father Brown mysteries on cable, and last year I read them all on my kindle. There's sometimes a real bite to them, but they hold up. I haven't read anything else of his.
Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the people of the Danish island of Samso, who have transformed the entire island to wind power. It's the kind of communal effort I've read about in some futuristic essays, and it can work on a small island, where all the people are close to the means of production. Scale is always the problem, I believe.
Adam Kirsch presents an essay on Keats, his obsession with death and fame, on the occasion of Stanley Plumly's study of the poet, Posthumous Keats. The book sounds interesting for anyone who is interested in Keats' poetry.
July 21, 2008:
This is the one with the famous (or infamous) cover of Obama in Muslim clerica garb fist-bumping a Kalishnikov-wrapped Michelle, which the cartoonist Barry Blitt named 'the politics of fear'. Created quite a stir.
For anyone who appreciates the story Stuart Little, Jill Lepore's recounting of how White came to write it, and what others thought of it, is quite a hoot. Anne Carroll Moore, the founder of the Children's Library at the Pratt Institute and later the superintendent of the Department of Work for Children, and she initially pressed, nay, nagged White for a children's book. When it arrived, she was enraged, tried to stop its publication, and attempted to get it banned. Imagine.
July 30th - missing
August 4, 2008
An article about a gay military man, Major Alan Rogers, killed in Iraq.
A painful article about the devadasi women, who have been 'dedicated' at a young age to prostitution under the guise of dedication to the Indian goddes Yellamma. In more ancient times, it seems the temple devadasis were more like geishas, educated, honored, not always sex workers, coming from high castes. Now it is a practice of the lowest caste, where daughters are essentially sold into the practice, and HIV is rampant among the population. So sad.
August 11 and 18, 2008:
Jerome Groopman writes on superbugs, and how scared doctors actually are by these resistant strains. Me too.
it's not August 2015 yet, but I'm getting close. sigh.
June 2, 2008:
There was a lot to read in this issue - an article on an Islamic rebel rethinking violence, an article about a political fixer - but I couldn't get into them. What caught me was an article by Jonathan Rosen on John Milton, not just about Paradise Lost but about his life and the turmoil of his time. For instance, he defended the regicide of Charles I as part of the Protestant Reformation, as part of the unmediated relationship between man and God. Rosen also relates the revolutionary ferver and activity of the time to Lucifer's fall, which was fueled by jealousy. The review definitely makes me want to read Paradise Lost again - i don't think I've read a line of it since college.
June 9 and 16, 2008:
It's the fiction issue, which, perversely, i generally ignore, but there are two non-fiction pieces I did read;
Dymaxion Man by Elizabeth Kolbert reviews the life and influence of Buckminster Fuller. She takes him from his early failures to his conviction that the tetrahedron is the real building block of the universe (she notes it eliminates the need for Pi, a number he 'found deeply distasteful). And that, of course, led him to the geodesic dome and fame.
Haruki Murakami contributed a piece of autobiography,how he started writing for a living,and how that lead to his devotion to running at 33.
James Wood has an essay based on a review of Bart. D. Ehrman's book God's Problem which he find adolescent. He surrounds it with a contemplation of suffering and theology that is one of the reasons I can't throw out New Yorkers.
June 23, 2008:
Peter J. Boyer has an article on Keith Olbermann, and since I never watched the man, it was somewhat enlightening.
Judith Thurman has a piece on the pictures in the Chauvet cave in southern France.
Two book reviews, one on Canin's America, America, and Rivka Galchen's novel 'Atmospheric Disturbances', caught my eye, along with references to Buchner's Lenz,knut Hamson's Hunger and Thomas Bernhard's novel The Loser, all built on completely untrustworthy narrators.
June 30:
A great cover, showing the subway 'arteries' as real arteries in a cartoon man, by Roz Chast.
Atul Gawande presents the science and research on itching, which is somewhat mysterious and often intensely damaging. The woman he starts the article with has uncontrollable itching that eventually leads her to scratch all the way through her skull. Hard to imagine.
July 7 and14,2008:
This holiday issue has a terrific article on G.K. Chesterton by Adam Gopnik, which shows both his prodigious output and popularity, and also his intense prejudice against both Jews and Christians. One of the famous English converts to Catholocism, his post- conversion writing is filled with what Gopnik sees as self-justification, preaching to the choir, but Gopnik also praises his non-religious essays on the new inventions of the world and their effect on society. But he couldn't follow the new style after World War I, and while he kept writing, he became more and more dated.
Jim and I watch the Father Brown mysteries on cable, and last year I read them all on my kindle. There's sometimes a real bite to them, but they hold up. I haven't read anything else of his.
Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the people of the Danish island of Samso, who have transformed the entire island to wind power. It's the kind of communal effort I've read about in some futuristic essays, and it can work on a small island, where all the people are close to the means of production. Scale is always the problem, I believe.
Adam Kirsch presents an essay on Keats, his obsession with death and fame, on the occasion of Stanley Plumly's study of the poet, Posthumous Keats. The book sounds interesting for anyone who is interested in Keats' poetry.
July 21, 2008:
This is the one with the famous (or infamous) cover of Obama in Muslim clerica garb fist-bumping a Kalishnikov-wrapped Michelle, which the cartoonist Barry Blitt named 'the politics of fear'. Created quite a stir.
For anyone who appreciates the story Stuart Little, Jill Lepore's recounting of how White came to write it, and what others thought of it, is quite a hoot. Anne Carroll Moore, the founder of the Children's Library at the Pratt Institute and later the superintendent of the Department of Work for Children, and she initially pressed, nay, nagged White for a children's book. When it arrived, she was enraged, tried to stop its publication, and attempted to get it banned. Imagine.
July 30th - missing
August 4, 2008
An article about a gay military man, Major Alan Rogers, killed in Iraq.
A painful article about the devadasi women, who have been 'dedicated' at a young age to prostitution under the guise of dedication to the Indian goddes Yellamma. In more ancient times, it seems the temple devadasis were more like geishas, educated, honored, not always sex workers, coming from high castes. Now it is a practice of the lowest caste, where daughters are essentially sold into the practice, and HIV is rampant among the population. So sad.
August 11 and 18, 2008:
Jerome Groopman writes on superbugs, and how scared doctors actually are by these resistant strains. Me too.
it's not August 2015 yet, but I'm getting close. sigh.
27ffortsa
This will be a brief catch-up run, on noted articles.
August 25, 2008:
Joan Acocella writes a review of Ingrid Rowland's "Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/heretic", and I learn something about this 16th century philosopher who, among other things, proposed an infinite as well as a heliocentric universe, and a theory of atoms. As the reviewer says, "In all thse ideas, there seems to have been a single preoccupation: immensity -- things incalculably large and incalculably tiny, and all joined together in a kind of choral exultation." Sweet. Of course, Bruno was burned at the stake for such radical thinking.
September 1, 2008:
It's the fashion issue, which rarely interests me. But there is an article by Rebecca mean on the architect Santiago Calatrava, whose soaring, wing-like structures have tremendous exuberance. The accompanying pictures are enthralling.
September 8, 2008:
I'll skip the politics and a profile of Alec Baldwin. Among the critics, Updike writes a piece on William Maxwell, whom I've never read - I'll have to correct that. James Wood writes reviews Marilynne Robinson's Home, which I haven't gotten to yet (although I loved Housekeeping).
And Alex Ross wonders why classical concerts are so formal. Now that the audience is so worshipfully quiet, can anyone rock us anymore? Recently, I've been listening to music far newer than my normal fare - John Douglas Adams, for instance. It's hard to imaging his stuff fitting into a concert hall full of overfed, well-dressed people. But it's exhiliarating.
September 15, 2008:
Again skipping the politics.
Burkhard Bilger writes about 'The Long Dig', the effort to tunnel under the Alps. It's the kind of story I love in the New Yorker, detailing the incredible ingenuity and effort involved in an almost unimaginable undertaking, all to cut an hour off the trip between Zurich and Milan, with concommitant improvements in traffic, pollution, etc. What will be lost, however, when the train doesn't need to go over the Alps?
Claudia Roth Pierpont discusses Machiavvelli, another landmark writer I haven't read. The life sounds more interesting than the work, but the moral problem is still true - at what point does the end no longer justify the means. We are still in the midst of that discussion.
September 22, 2008:
I never read the Babar books, although I had plenty of books as a child. Sometimes I think I went straight from Dr. Seuss to Erle Stanley Gardner. Adam Gopnik writes of the colonial message at the heart of the Babar stories, and now I need to sample the work.
September 29, 2008:
William Finnegan writes a heartbreaking report on Travis Twiggs, who, with his brother William, became a casualty of post-traumatic stress disorder, after FIVE deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. What loss.
October 6, 2008:
Calvin Tomkins writes a curious profile of Elizabeth Peyton, an artist who made her bones with portraits of people she could never have seen in the flesh - Napoleon, for instance, Kurt Cobain. She's gone on to paint many contemporaries, bringing a sort of realistic yet idealized portraiture back to the art world. I'll look out for her work.
And there I am, hardly up to date (!) but soldiering on. I don't know how long I will keep looking back.
August 25, 2008:
Joan Acocella writes a review of Ingrid Rowland's "Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/heretic", and I learn something about this 16th century philosopher who, among other things, proposed an infinite as well as a heliocentric universe, and a theory of atoms. As the reviewer says, "In all thse ideas, there seems to have been a single preoccupation: immensity -- things incalculably large and incalculably tiny, and all joined together in a kind of choral exultation." Sweet. Of course, Bruno was burned at the stake for such radical thinking.
September 1, 2008:
It's the fashion issue, which rarely interests me. But there is an article by Rebecca mean on the architect Santiago Calatrava, whose soaring, wing-like structures have tremendous exuberance. The accompanying pictures are enthralling.
September 8, 2008:
I'll skip the politics and a profile of Alec Baldwin. Among the critics, Updike writes a piece on William Maxwell, whom I've never read - I'll have to correct that. James Wood writes reviews Marilynne Robinson's Home, which I haven't gotten to yet (although I loved Housekeeping).
And Alex Ross wonders why classical concerts are so formal. Now that the audience is so worshipfully quiet, can anyone rock us anymore? Recently, I've been listening to music far newer than my normal fare - John Douglas Adams, for instance. It's hard to imaging his stuff fitting into a concert hall full of overfed, well-dressed people. But it's exhiliarating.
September 15, 2008:
Again skipping the politics.
Burkhard Bilger writes about 'The Long Dig', the effort to tunnel under the Alps. It's the kind of story I love in the New Yorker, detailing the incredible ingenuity and effort involved in an almost unimaginable undertaking, all to cut an hour off the trip between Zurich and Milan, with concommitant improvements in traffic, pollution, etc. What will be lost, however, when the train doesn't need to go over the Alps?
Claudia Roth Pierpont discusses Machiavvelli, another landmark writer I haven't read. The life sounds more interesting than the work, but the moral problem is still true - at what point does the end no longer justify the means. We are still in the midst of that discussion.
September 22, 2008:
I never read the Babar books, although I had plenty of books as a child. Sometimes I think I went straight from Dr. Seuss to Erle Stanley Gardner. Adam Gopnik writes of the colonial message at the heart of the Babar stories, and now I need to sample the work.
September 29, 2008:
William Finnegan writes a heartbreaking report on Travis Twiggs, who, with his brother William, became a casualty of post-traumatic stress disorder, after FIVE deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. What loss.
October 6, 2008:
Calvin Tomkins writes a curious profile of Elizabeth Peyton, an artist who made her bones with portraits of people she could never have seen in the flesh - Napoleon, for instance, Kurt Cobain. She's gone on to paint many contemporaries, bringing a sort of realistic yet idealized portraiture back to the art world. I'll look out for her work.
And there I am, hardly up to date (!) but soldiering on. I don't know how long I will keep looking back.
28sibylline
I remember a smattering of these! The Bruno piece coincided with a project my daughter --then in 7th or 8th grade did --choosing him as a key Renaissance figure!
29ffortsa
I'm piling up the next five or six issues, which strangely enough have lots of interesting articles after the preceding thin pickings. I'll probably update over the weekend.
30ffortsa
Time to get rid of the rest of 2008, which I have read here and there. They have so much coverage of the election, of course, and in the midst of another one, I don't need to look back that far.
October 13:
A memorable cover of a red elephant head and a blue donkey, eye to eye, by Bob Staake.
Lauren Collins provides a profile of Ariana Huffington.
October 20:
On the cover, the Red Death of the falling market. Just like today.
Dana Goodyear profiles poet Gary Snyder.
October 27:
On the cover, an election scrum of the four candidates
John Lee Anderson on Robert Mugabe as he destroys Zimbabwe
Claudia Roth Pierpont in a memorable critical evaluation of Marlon Brando, very simpathetic.d
November 3:
On the cover, Republican candidate masks terrorize the Halloween regulars
Margaret Talbot on evangelicals and sex, which is now really old news about the hypocrisy of abstinence education.
November 10:
Whew, politics in hiatus.
John Seabrook reporting on the debate of psychopathy, and one man's search for physical evidence of brain differences.
November 17:
Political post-mortems, of course. And a great cover of the Lincoln Memorial at night.
November 24:
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the food issue. If I ever cook again, it might be interesting.
December 1:
A skinny issue with a turkey on the ledge amongst the pigeons.
John Cassidy on the financial meltdown and Ben Bernanke.
December 8:
Larissa MacFarquhar profiles Naomi Klein
December 15:
Wendel Steavenson profiles Mikheil Saakashvili and the Republic of Georgia (you know, the one near Russia). Now that the election is over, we can look up.
December 22&29:
The winter fiction issue. No comment.
And that is the way I must leave 2008. 2009 is in the storage locker. Should I or shouldn't I?
October 13:
A memorable cover of a red elephant head and a blue donkey, eye to eye, by Bob Staake.
Lauren Collins provides a profile of Ariana Huffington.
October 20:
On the cover, the Red Death of the falling market. Just like today.
Dana Goodyear profiles poet Gary Snyder.
October 27:
On the cover, an election scrum of the four candidates
John Lee Anderson on Robert Mugabe as he destroys Zimbabwe
Claudia Roth Pierpont in a memorable critical evaluation of Marlon Brando, very simpathetic.d
November 3:
On the cover, Republican candidate masks terrorize the Halloween regulars
Margaret Talbot on evangelicals and sex, which is now really old news about the hypocrisy of abstinence education.
November 10:
Whew, politics in hiatus.
John Seabrook reporting on the debate of psychopathy, and one man's search for physical evidence of brain differences.
November 17:
Political post-mortems, of course. And a great cover of the Lincoln Memorial at night.
November 24:
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the food issue. If I ever cook again, it might be interesting.
December 1:
A skinny issue with a turkey on the ledge amongst the pigeons.
John Cassidy on the financial meltdown and Ben Bernanke.
December 8:
Larissa MacFarquhar profiles Naomi Klein
December 15:
Wendel Steavenson profiles Mikheil Saakashvili and the Republic of Georgia (you know, the one near Russia). Now that the election is over, we can look up.
December 22&29:
The winter fiction issue. No comment.
And that is the way I must leave 2008. 2009 is in the storage locker. Should I or shouldn't I?
