January 24, 2024

Last Week’s New Yorker Review: January 29, 2024

Last Week’s New Yorker, week of January 29

"How handsome you are. You're lovely! And how welcoming! You're kind and full of crickets – I think they're crickets. You're a delight!"

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Must-Reads:

"Cave Woman" - D.T. Max has a hibernation realization with loner par excellence Beatriz Flamini. People going on risky, remote adventures for no practical reason tend to make for good reported journalism. Nick Paumgarten's instant classic on alpinists and survivor's guilt comes to mind, as does David Grann's on a trek across Antarctica. Those sorts of longreads tend to focus on masculine subjects braving impossibly tough conditions. Max's piece shows what happens when you strip away the physical exertion from these narratives and leave only the desolation and solitude. As Flamini's mask of happiness slips away, the yawning horror of true solitute reveals itself – though perhaps horror is wrong, it exists in a space beyond emotion, a purgatory of numbness. Flamini's cave landscape becomes like a synecdoche for an all-encompassing depression verging on hibernation. Max's greatest trick is that all this is revealed in spare, clean, and factual beat-by-beat storytelling; no flowery philosophical musings are needed. The greatest strength of this narrative is how many of its depths echo inside each reader's head; they aren't overexplained or made to feel like mere poetic devices. The richness and inexplicability of truth is presented plainly – and it may go bump in the night.

"Tone Control" - Jackson Arn is sane in the membrane. Arn's ideas-packed style, itself a splattery composition, works best when he's enthusiastic about the work at hand, as is the case here. He's quite funny on Mason's relative lack of fame ("Where's nepotism when you need it?") but the main attractions are his wonderful exegeses of individual paintings, color by color: In one, "the snug carpentry of two central slashes, one yellow and one red, keeps things static and holds the painting steady – if you shook it hard, nothing would fall out." I can vouch for the truth of that, since that painting's reproduced; everything else I'm taking on faith until I go to Chelsea next Saturday to see for myself. But regardless of its veracity, the very idea of a "royal purple" sparking the "same quiet shock as the legs poking out of the sea in the Northern Renaissance masterwork 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus'" is wonderful. Arn gets so much mileage out of simple close observation and the self-reinforcing thrust of prosecraft. He gallops along – whatever color the horse.

Window-Shop:

"Double Vision" - Parul Sehgal has a twin fantasy. Feels cut short, like it's about to spin its own thesis on twins or delve into other literature beyond Helena de Bres' book under review, but instead just ends. As a review, it's deeply engaged, searching for a latent point "motivated more by puzzlement than by prescription" amidst all the hoo-rahing about psychological linkages. Does the twin's "capacity for closeness, trust, and collaboration" extend beyond the sibling bond, a special power sparked by circumstance? In de Bres' case, perhaps not; a Piglet to her sister's Pooh, her cheeriness about twin life seems to mask anxieties about life in general. Sehgal does amazing work excavating this vein, but because the piece is so narrowly focused, it's not totally clear why we should care about de Bres in particular. A bit more extrapolation would help – a view outside the mirror image.

"Stringing Along" (Talk of the Town) - Sophia Hollander goes around in loops with string-figure artisan James Inoli Murphy. What a wonderful ancient ephemeral-art-game. Loved the description of figures "winking in and out like fireflies."

"The Chief" - Jill Lepore reads the book on the Taft court. Really ought to put its final section earlier – the story behind the book is significantly more interesting than the story told in the book. Holmes, a member of the Taft court, gave a massive sum in his will to the government, who eventually used it to fund the writing of official histories of the Supreme Court; the last book, on Taft and Holmes himself, has just been released, a century later. That's a story! Lepore patiently and clearly articulates the various ideological leanings and quarrels of the Taft court itself, and at first, the issues feel resonant – child labor! Democracy versus the accumulation of wealth! But eventually the focus shifts to the arguments themselves, and not their stakes; my eyes glazed over as Lepore litigated "how much responsibility Taft bears for the Court crisis of the thirties." Still, I appreciate the detailed drawing of a corner of political history that was previously fuzzy verging on blank in my mind.

"Skater Love" (Talk of the Town) - Bret Anthony Johnson coasts with Tony Hawk. Charming!

"Briefly Noted" - This is so stupid, but I have to bring it up. Briefly Noted always consists of two nonfiction and two fiction books, but this week there are three novels and one nonfiction book. However, one of the three novels is titled... Nonfiction. What do you think are the chances this was some sort of editorial mix-up, noticed too late?!

"Créme De La Créme" - Rachel Syme thinks pink with Sophia Coppola. Fixates almost psychoanalytically on Coppola's parents as the key to understanding her work, which isn't a hugely novel thesis, but is one Syme makes a fairly strong case for, even as Coppola remains evasive. Coppola's mother, Eleanor, was the original trapped woman, Francis the original exuberant but unreachable older man. The former gives especially brutal and revealing quotes here about her stifled creativity; these sections (and those discussing the loss of Coppola's brother) ooze with drama and tragedy, though it can feel a bit uncomfortable to see them juxtaposed with longer sections focusing on chiller aspects of Coppola's pre-directorial life, or delving into, and praising, her filmography. Following the story where it lead, in this case, might have lead it away from Coppola altogether.

Syme's reads on Coppola's movies aren't especially innovative – Marie Antoinette, for instance, is "almost obscenely beautiful," with the "composed lusciousness of a box of petits fours," which isn't as witty when you remember the movie features literal petits fours in droves. It's also odd to wait until the very end to mention Coppola's Gen-Z mantle as queen of "aesthetic," which has been repurposed as a term for dreamlike just-so femininity. [^1] Like TikTok songs, a lot of Coppola's films work better scene-by-scene than they do put together – they tend toward a laid-on-thick redundancy. But the best criticism in Syme's piece, a flaming-hot take served with panache, comes from Angelica Jade Bastién pointing out that Coppola "creates fables about modern white femininity... Coppola is someone studying whiteness, but who doesn’t perhaps understand her own whiteness very well. It is because of that contradiction that her work doesn’t get deeper." That packs more punch than anything else here; it's a shame Syme mostly leaves it dangling. The piece can tend toward a girl-power framework, which actually does Coppola a disservice; I wanted Syme to seek to understand her privilege, not to excuse it with (admittedly fun) quotes like Marc Jacobs' asking, "What do you do, kill yourself because you come from a good family?"

I should also address the accusations of lack of crediting and plagiarism swirling around this piece, prompted by two tweets. Strong provides no concrete evidence in hers, so it's hard to assess, while Roberts' (whose writing I enjoy) is convincing as to the source of the Handyside quote (which isn't anywhere else on Google,) though the surrounding text is certainly not the same phrasing. Is it merely a rewrite of the same idea? Referring to "other writers" certainly makes it look like one. Is it inappropriate to use phrases like that to refer to one writer? I feel torn. The Times certainly features worse crediting on the regular, but that doesn't make it acceptable. As to Strong's tweet, though, I'm disinclined to throw terms like plagiarism around, especially amidst a right-wing disinformation campaign to muddy its definition. Having a nuanced discussion about best practices for drawing on the work of others is hard when the facts are hazy and people feel they're being stolen from, plus it's not as though there's an obvious platform for that discussion – X is practically purpose-built to be a terrible one. But you can write in with your thoughts, and I'll monitor this story as it develops.

Skip Without Guilt:

"Acid Reflux" - Margaret Talbot feels the acid kicking in sooner than she thought. The general idea behind Benjamin Breen's book, that the '50s had an earlier wave of chemical understanding before the '60s' "psychedelic flowering," just never struck me as that novel – I already knew about MK-ULTRA and the pre-hippie promise of LSD. Perhaps he's compensating with the rather bizarre framing narrative that centers around Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, wonderful anthropologists who he uses as "spiritual guides" – but who, honestly, touched on such a vast array of human experiences they could probably be used as guides to any topic; I'm not convinced they have anything particular to add to this one. (Though it is noteworthy that Bateson took Allen Ginsberg on his first trip.) Talbot also focuses redundantly on modern applications of psychedelics, drawing conclusions that are already obvious from the history she outlines – and the ending jab that we ought to be wary so as not to "risk a war-on-drugs backlash" is disturbingly short-sighted as to the nature of that backlash in the first place. This piece is mostly compelling, but not exactly mind-expanding.

"Ruling-Class Rules" - Evan Osnos evaluates the élite. Totally scattered, though still fun. Framing a piece around a word is always tricky, especially one lobbed around so gratuitously. That seems to be what drew Osnos to the concept; he spends a while laboring over its overuse (featuring exactly the Orwell quote you expect to see.) The piece's highlight is its second section, which delves into the history of the term itself and the Italian economist and "wealthy recluse" who coined it, based on his ideas about a "natural law" in which twenty percent of the population took eighty percent of the resources.

Osnos ought to continue this history chronologically past the '60s; instead, he starts jumping around, and things get muddled. He gives a goofy '80s satire on class signifiers too much credit for its depressive "prescience" regarding capitalism – Karl Marx could have told you the same things a bit earlier. Early on, Osnos proposes four distinct types of élite power, but instead of going one-by-one he continually jumps around; in such a short piece, things end up feeling random. There's way too much Trump talk; I guess Osnos thinks it's clever to point out how the Republican party consists mostly of élites while also criticizing them, but that point is desiccated. Osnos also tenuously ropes in Musk and A.I. at the end, which is where the piece goes entirely off the rails. Surely there are more novel references for these sorts of pieces – more moments like bringing up Moby's "courting success... to 'keep being invited to parties.'" (Then again, he's a recovering alcoholic, so there might be some reasons beyond "social rank" that he wanted to be at parties all the time.) [^2]

The final beat lands on Tucker Carlson, who "is being replaced" by other, newer elites; that's probably not the best phrasing, since it mirrors Carlson's obsession with racial replacement theory. In general, it's a bit weird to have a piece which isolates the issue of class standing from gender, race, and mostly even class itself. Osnos is concerned with "signifiers" and perceptions, but he gets away from the reality of élite power: Money doesn't just provide the look of power, it wields the real thing.

"Goodyear" - David Sedaris cruises Colorado with an old friend. Sedaris strikes his usual arch, vaguely dismissive pose throughout; it's true his voice is inimitable, but for me this outing never manages the surprising pathos that makes his best pieces worth reading. As usual, the stabs at humor veer between droll observations and inappropriate metaphors which are meant to be charming mainly because they're coming from Sedaris, who strikes a pose as a harmless eccentric that's worn increasingly thin over the years. (The edgiest one here: "I'm just not confrontational. If someone told me he kept a dozen teen-age girls locked in his basement as sex slaves, I'd likely ask, 'Does it cost a lot to feed them?'") His pose as the sort of mild jerk who talks about surreal strategies for culling the population or his suspicion of his friend's Autism is meant to make the moments of sweetness ring more sincere; the truth is, though, self-knowledge about mild jerkishness doesn't make you less jerkish.

"Not Long for this World" - Anthony Lane has space for a party of two. The first review demonstrates Lane's difficulty conveying the tone of artsy foreign dramas; apparently this one has surprising humor, but whether it's a dark comedy or a light drama, I can't tell. He focuses on the strangest details, which is more charming when a film is more widely reviewed and thus the basic facts don't need to be reiterated. The second review is full of terrible humor; he never pays close attention to B-movies so the jokes are really the only draw, and the extended West Side Story bit here is excruciating.

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As should be obvious, I support the Condé Nast union! It's weird having a newsletter that exists entirely as a commensalist parasite living on the back of another creature, but when that creature's in danger, so am I! The magazine has its own, separate union (because when you're alive for a hundred years as a media entity shit gets weird) which is not walking out, but I still wanted to voice my support.

Letters:

Gabe ably defended David Remnick's piece on Netanyahu's Israel: "...to hear [Netanyahu's] views and how they've influenced his kids, to have all of Bibi's political history laid out (including the excerpts from his autobiography), to recognize that he is the longest-serving PM of Israel... It painted the most fully realized picture that I've heard to date of present-day Israeli society mindset, politics, views, and both short and medium-term political future. Quite a grim picture when you put it all together of a bullying power that has a population that feels scared and aggrieved. ...It would perhaps be better if Remnick could get Jon Lee Anderson-style sourcing of high-powered figures from Hamas but uh... realistically the EIC can't be putting themself in situations like that." Relatedly, I liked this Jack Mirkinson piece on the lack of attention paid to journalists dying in Gaza. "Nobody talking about" a story has become an annoying meme, but sometimes it's accurate.

John writes that he saw Jacqueline Novak's show, chronicled by Carrie Battan: "I was in the audience for the taping of Novak's show at Town Hall and had never seen her do anything before. I left very impressed and am looking forward to experiencing it on tape. That said, at least one of my friends who was also there thought it was garbage. Comedy! Not for everyone!"

This week I got a root canal! Help me pay for it!

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[^1]: Nancy Meyers, meanwhile, is perhaps the original Vanilla Girl.

[^2]: Plus, I mean, you can find a quote from Moby about pretty much anything. (Also he was soft-cancelled for that gross Natalie Portman thing; maybe he's not the best voice to be spotlighting.)