April 13, 2024

Last Week’s New Yorker Review: April 15, 2024

Last Week’s New Yorker, week of April 15

"'Dig like a mole if you don't want to die.'"

Must-Read:

"The Assault" - Luke Mogelson waits for snow with the 1st Separate Assault Battalion. A fantastically gripping narrative of strategy and loss on the frontlines. Mogelson, embedded with the group, waits until the final section to inject any context; before that, this is just a beat-by-beat narrative of a single fight for a couple squares on a map. Yet by remaining so tightly focused, the story reveals far more about the conflict than a higher-level approach could hope to do. Mogelson isn't afraid to focus on tiny details of personality and strategy, but he manages not to let them slow things down, either – the piece doesn't feel long, though it is. It's hard to highlight any single line because the grueling sequential quality is so key to making the piece work – we have to feel like we've been up for two days straight with these soldiers. Mogelson eventually asserts his position, that the "American debate" – and even the debate in cities like Kyiv – is disconnected from the discussion on the ground, where the impossibility of triumph is clear. It's incredibly convincing, because we've seen what he's discussing before we've been told. Even those who don't like war stories should make time for this – its bleak horror soaks into your bones. All's quiet on the eastern front.

Window-Shop:

"Trash, Trash Revolution" - Eric Lach gets down in the dumps with sanitation commish Jessica Tisch. A really funny examination of the head honcho garbage cop who wants to move-fast-and-break-things – and do for NYC trash what the surveillance state did for NYC violence. (Allegedly.) [^1] Lach isn't vicious toward Tisch, and I wish that he got into the details of what her haters say is wrong with her ideas, beyond that she's moving too quickly to make assessments: It's hard to root for red tape when you don't have an explanation for it. But it's certainly easy to root against Tisch, who's a unique combination of child of privilege, wearing thousand dollar dresses to dumps, and thin-blue-line maniac, obviously jockeying for N.Y.P.D. commissioner. I think Lach ultimately includes enough of the opposing viewpoint that the piece isn't exactly propaganda for Tisch, but I also think plenty of liberal readers will be less turned off by her coppy style and thus more willing to root for her maniacal Trash Revolution. Regardless of where you come down, you'll be entertained in the meantime by Lach's visceral descriptions of surreal protocol like the Lost Valuables Search, or the "martial discipline" – complete with "bright-white uniforms and pith helmets" – that first cleaned up the city's streets. It's far from a throwaway.

"Mr. Vengeance" - Jia Tolentino gets wrapped in director Park Chan-Wook's tentacles. A really excellent traditional profile, with few of Tolentino's plugged-in quirks (a reference to a "dudes-rock comedy" is the only one I noticed) but plenty of personality nonetheless. Oddly, it's a bit light on quotes from Park, who is stunningly erudite ("...when Balzac is describing a nineteeth-century pension system, it's also very belabored, but is it a waste?") – maybe he's so thoughtful that too much of his voice could tip the piece into philosophizing. Instead, Tolentino seems very concerned with commercial success, which can be slightly frustrating – do we really need a lengthy discussion of how Hollywood trends might affect a filmmaker who mostly works outside of Hollywood? When Tolentino stays in the moment, discussing the Sympathizer set or Park's previous films, the piece sparkles with vivid description: "A bus, glowing with nauseous light, races toward the plane, carrying evacuees, who then sprint across a runway seen from above, like a chessboard, where they are scattered and maimed by bombs." She expertly unpacks the dense web of themes in Park's work, the impact of Korean politics on his process, the role of his cowriter in shaping his recent films' erotic edge, the intense deliberation that shapes his "sumptuous" style. Interestingly, Tolentino doesn't quite love the new series, and admits this in the piece – yet still, after reading, it's hard not to be excited by the project's riskiness and verve.

"Candyland" - Hilton Als takes a walk on the wild side with Candy Darling. Als' deep appreciation for the trans and gender-nonconforming experience is clear, and quite charming. It's also maybe just a little weird; it's not exactly a revelation that the "alluring" feeling he has looking at a man whose sex he "couldn't determine... right away" is the "same feeling" he gets looking at Darling. "She seemed to share something with that young man," he says – a confidence in their self-expression, basically; but also, it's not as though Darling was a gender outlaw – she was an attractive, fairly binary woman; her daring was practical (the courage to be who you are) more than theoretical (the courage to know who you are). Still, Als does a good job balancing Darling's triumph as a figure with the loneliness and danger of her life – we get both in concert. I wanted more of a review of the excellent-sounding biography by Cynthia Carr; it's odd that Als gives us a very long block quote from a different book by Andy Warhol – and even an appreciation of its prose – but hardly quotes from Carr at all. He calls her book "monumental," but he doesn't make that case; he just makes the case that Darling deserves a monument.

"Wild Things" - Richard Brody is in a hairy situation. Reads a bit like a parody-review, as Brody claims this film with actors in thick makeup playing grunting Sasquatches who fling shit and fuck in the woods is a serious drama, even as every scene Brody describes sounds like slapstick highjinks – culminating in his description of a character who "holds a hand in front of himself and, like a ventriloquist, has it talk to him in inchoate squeaks, to which he responds" as a "breathtaking dramatic metaphor for the birth of thought." Maybe, but it also sounds like a gag. Still, I appreciate Brody's gutsy willingness to take such a bizarre project completely at face value, and to find so much depth and beauty in it – even if I do also think he might be missing at least part of the point. Tara Booth's illustration is fantastic.

"Balabusta" - Hannah Goldfield bakes challah with Jewish-food doyenne Joan Nathan. A charming mini-profile – or maybe a maxi-Talk of the Town. It has a beat-by-beat structure that seems shaped mainly by the progression of Goldfield's interview, though she pulls out some fun descriptions (Nathan's "a major-league gabber, the savviest of yentas"; when it comes to matzo balls, they "both prefer al-dente sinkers to fluffy floaters – a texture that bites back a bit, like gnocci"[^2]) that keep things from feeling too much like a glorified Q&A.

"The Modern Pulpit" - Amanda Petrusich preaches to the choir with Maggie Rogers. Feels of a piece with Petrusich on The National – both are profiles more interested in deeply delving into a recent period of creative crisis than in the usual artistic analysis. Rogers' journey isn't as dramatic as Berninger's, but it's still a good hook – an accidental celebrity who feels unequipped for the quasi-religious role she's thrust into attends divinity school to learn how to occupy that role with grace. It's certainly a smarter and more healthy approach than most celebrities take, but Petrusich can't quite find the drama in it – a chill vibe saturates this story that seems at odds with its description of Rogers' driven, "headstrong" style. Petrusich could've spared a bit more time for the new material – only three songs from the album are even mentioned, which means any relationship between Rogers' journey and her art is, at best, thinly drawn. (That connection was much of what made the piece on The National work so well.) But Petrusich is wise enough to let Rogers' self-possessed voice carry the story; quotes are plentiful and full of personality (if also rather therapized – "...I learned that there had to be boundaries, because I'd walk away feeling like I'd betrayed myself.") No one will forget her anytime soon.

Skip Without Guilt:

"Scared Straight" - Rebecca Mead is no-slouch. Why this brief piece on the morality of posture ends with not one but two lengthy anecdotes about the tragedy of destroying photographic records... is beyond me. If there's a logical connection there, Mead doesn't make it clear (surely scoliosis, which colleges invasively monitored with nudes, is a bit different from the usual slouchy posture.) Before that point this is a fine, not overly goofy trek – the third section, on race and posture, is easily the most interesting bit, and works perfectly well on its own as a two-paragraph info nugget.

"Soul Man" - Louis Menand gets stuck in the Stephen Breyer patch. After a look at Breyer's personality (basically: He's a boring centrist technocrat!) there's a long string of court cases expounded on at random and connected only by lines like: "There was another case with far-reaching effects that was decided during Breyer's clerkship." It's not clear until near the end what Menand's thesis is, so all his discussion of textualism versus originalism versus pragmatism blends together. (I also knew most of it already, and I'm far from a law fiend.) And that discussion actually makes less sense in retrospect, when Menand lands at the important point that everything the court does is actually just motivated by politics and ideology, despite what Breyer wants you to think. Okay, fine – so then why does the difference between textualism and originalism matter to us? This feels very under-edited.

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Letters:

Michael liked last week's issue: "Three of the four features highlighted the advantage of having great writers going deep on topics outside of the US, one of my favorite types of stories. I'll keep reading about Peter Hessler's students or Lauren Collins' dispatches about French food culture (remember her piece on French tacos?) for as long as they want to keep writing about them." I couldn't agree more – and that French tacos piece is so good.

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Thanks for bearing with the late edition. Things should get back on track soon.

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[^1] Read that piece if you haven't; one of Gopnik's very best.

[^2] a description which makes me think I may never have had a really good matso ball