Last Week’s New Yorker Review: March 25, 2024
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of March 25
"Driving through Hollywood, you’d often see marquees advertising 'Live Nude Girls.' She’d say, 'Much better than the alternative.'"
This week is the Spring Style & Design issue, though it's oddly light on both style and design. The Quinta Brunson profile may have pictures of her in dresses, but it's not exactly a fashion feature; the piece on Mike Johnson certainly isn't couture-centered. Nothing in the critics' pages matches the topic. That leaves just two rather short features, one of which is mostly about crime. Better that nothing feels forced, I suppose, but it's still not much of a theme. Plus, as you'll see below, on the whole I found this issue to be mostly unsuccessful. Not a grand design.
Must-Read:
"Hot and Bothered" - Margaret Talbot gets physical with Candida Royalle, who pioneered feminist porn in the '80s. This is a surprisingly common type of book review in the magazine: The first two thirds summarize the history at hand and the last third declares the author's analysis of that history to be bogus. Here that's for good reason; the conclusion that Royalle would've been more productive for the women's movement doing community-organizing instead is breathtakingly stupid, and Talbot is nicer than she needs to be taking it apart. I wanted a broader criticism of Kamensky's project, though, not just of her concluding point. The book's one review on Goodreads provides a deeper critique (I'm shocked too!) of Kamensky's methods. Talbot gives a lot of space to the nature of the confessional diaries which are Kamensky's primary sources, but the piece is most interesting as a straightforward history of Royalle, whose project is fascinating, a sort of feminist détournement of porn – but with perhaps more... practical applications than most culture jamming. (In Three Daughters, "all three get to have plenty of satisfying sex in the course of the movie: with, respectively, a loving fiancé, a handsome, buttoned-up (but not really!) young piano teacher, and a female bestie.") The piece peters out shortly after mentioning Royalle's importance to "the first major academic study of porn's filmic conventions," which is a shame – surely there's meat on that, uh, bone.
Window-Shop:
"Not So Far Away" (Comment) - Benjamin Wallace-Wells wonders if Biden's honesty is the best foreign policy. About as good as horse-race political reporting gets; sure, it brings things back to how they'll affect Biden's chances, but not in a pat or dismissive way; the Gaza crisis holds real weight, it's not just a talking point. Wallace-Wells claims a bigger risk for Biden than not finding the exact center of the Gaza issue "is the perception that he is losing control of a situation overseas." Let's hope Biden can gain perspective, and fast.
"Sister Act" (Talk of the Town) - Michael Schulman breaks a habit with the nuns of Doubt. New York City nuns: How can you not be charmed by these ladies? And I'd never heard of a "path of completion," a fascinating idea.
"Food as Diplomacy" (Talk of the Town) - Hannah Goldfield tries out Palestinian chicken. Provides sustenance and substance.
"The Enablers" - Adam Gopnik does his best impression of a Jack Gladney lecture. It's obvious throughout what Gopnik is doing; painting a picture of the Nazis' rise that highlights, but doesn't underline, the similarities with our present situation. It's pretty remarkable how little he has to stretch to do so, but it's still a conclusion already fairly obvious to anyone who's read the Wikipedia page for "Demagogue." It's not clear whether the book under review, by Timothy Ryback, is also weighted toward that conclusion, or if Gopnik's chosen that frame; if it's the latter, that's a bit disappointing, as it does Ryback's book a disservice for him to not consider its conclusions but to spin up his own instead. Regardless, this history is actually important, and its connections to the present day are chilling. It's just too bad we aren't allowed to find the past compelling on its own merits, but are forced to weigh its resonance with our immediate present.
Skip Without Guilt:
"All That Glitters" - Jackson Arn is verklempt for Klimt. As usual, Arn's success can be measured like a pitcher's: How many theses nail the strike zone? One does, the idea that for the painter "the erogenous zones aren't breasts or buttocks or even hair; mouths and lazily narrowed eyes bring the real heat." A few more fringe the edges; I believe that hair is key, but I'm less convinced it's because Klimt "needed something new" after mastering flesh. I certainly don't buy that Klimt's shaky balance between flatness and depth reflects an "insecurity," that "he's only pretending to paint in a flat manner" – isn't it more that he exploits this dichotomy to productively destabilizing effect? The first and last lines are just weird; Arn seems set on psychoanalyzing Klimt, bringing up his "hunger to please," in ways that add little but a callous edge. (Accusing an artist of not being "raw" is the stuff of bad MFA programs.) Stop the analysis; stick to sight!
"MAGA Mike" - David D. Kirkpatrick evangelizes with doll-faced house speaker Mike Johnson. Long ago, Kirkpatrick pioneered the religious-conservatives beat at the Times, so this is something of a homecoming. I wish this piece included more about how the movement has changed in the last two decades; Johnson is something of a throwback to a supposedly vanishing breed of glad-handing toadies – these days, the toadies are mostly vituperative-handing. Whether that really matters... is left, here, as an exercise for the reader. Johnson is an important figure, and this piece, while overlong, is well-structured and easy to read. But it lacks any qualities that would make it more deeply compelling: Johnson is pretty much who he appears to be, according to Kirkpatrick; he balances the tone and style of the moderate wing (these things are relative, of course – they're still fascists) with the policies of the far-right wing, making both sides happy enough to support him. That single point is hammered into the ground – Johnson is a flat figure, so it's no wonder his portrait is flat, but it's still not much fun to read, especially in such intricate detail. Kirkpatrick's prose, meanwhile, is... Timesian; it does its job, but does not sing.
"You Can't Sit with Us" - Hannah Goldfield is Carbone-neutral. It's absolutely hilarious that Goldfield just happened to interview the clubby-restaurant scammer right before that big exposé (which is pretty fun reading) dropped. Amazingly, the closest thing to an answer the piece gives to its subhed ("Why New York restaurants are going members-only") comes straight from the scammer's mouth: "'You can involve your diners in the conspiracy of it all, at a premium.'" That one retroactively telling paragraph overwhelms the rest of the piece, which is too focused on the perpetually tired narrative that restaurants are suddenly hard to get into. Plus, since that's the hook, Goldfield mostly focuses on ambience over food, which just isn't what I read a food column for.
"Bid for the Stars" - Rachel Monroe sells Slash's Stingray. Both slow-paced and short – and therefore shallow. Not that I need every possible aspect of celeb object sales to be divulged in detail, but a lot of what's here amounts to listing novel objects in a "can you believe they sold that?" voice. One gets the point quickly: Sure, it's vulgar, but vulgarity doesn't exist to hedge-fund managers, and they're the ones with the money. Of course, that pattern also explains every industry these days: "sort of arbitrage but mostly rendering; what can't be sold as meat gets boiled down into a lesser commodity," as David Roth writes. This is just an especially literal manifestation, since these commodities only have value as fetish objects. Monroe could've extended the philosophical point further: How might an Object-Oriented Ontologist view all this item-worship? Instead, we're left with the perpetual sadness of disembodied fame: "Do you need some assistance picking over the tattered remains of my life?"
"A Class of Her Own" - Molly Fischer learns her lesson profiling Quinta Brunson. Assumes very little of its reader; too little for my taste. I didn't need to hear again about how Abbott Elementary had allegedly saved the network sitcom, not through any particular innovation beyond working-class charm, but just by unpretentious hard work. I'm sure the narrative is true enough, but it's so well-worn it smacks of an awards narrative – and Brunson's already won the award as the piece begins. Of course, to save a format you have to inspire imitators, and Abbott hasn't been around long enough to prove influential.
I've seen enough of Abbott to know I don't find it funny; Fischer accurately describes Brunson's hyper-referential, pre-chewed style, but she doesn't give me any reason to rethink my take – Brunson presents a likeable surface, and we don't get to look beneath it. She has her guard up – at one point, she interrupts a comedian friend to point out the reporter's presence. It's up to Fischer to find that deeper story, though, and she doesn't put the work in, instead relying on term-paper defenses of Brunson's self-proclaimed "stupid" style ("After all, 'stupid' physical comedy stretches back to such predecessors as the Three Stooges and Buster Keaton") or her undignified early job making shorts for BuzzFeed (the website "was flush with venture capital and positioning itself as the digital future of media.") The references to Brunson smuggling Black culture into her show feel overawed, and the piece lacks a real perspective on race – which is not necessarily needed, except that Fischer keeps bringing it up. The writing is also oddly restrained, as though Fischer's reluctant to overwhelm Brunson's mellow flavor with any additional humor or spunk at all. Brunson is so resolutely non-jokey you'd think Fischer could highlight her seriousness as an interesting contrast with her devotion to stupidity onscreen – but any disjuncture there is left implicit. Even the photos don't really work; the "leaving equipment in the shot" style is both on-the-nose and contrary to the piece's portrait of Brunson as indefatigable and put-together. Her makeup is flawless, though.
"Chaos Theory" - Inkoo Kang says good things come in 3 Body Problem. I don't envy the task of making this show's convoluted sci-fi plotline comprehensible in a few paragraphs. That said... yeah, I still have absolutely no idea what this show is about, what it's like tonally (are there jokes?) or even which characters are the main characters. Maybe Kang nails her analysis, maybe she whiffs it – I was still squinting in confusion, so I missed most of her points.
"West Side Story" - Kelefa Sanneh gets twang for his buck with Ian Munsick. All I can think about when I hear Munsick sing is how much he reminds me of this incredibly obnoxious TikToker who puts various candies in various hard alcohols. (Munsick's from 600 miles due south of him, and they share a sandpaper tenor and a propensity for ugly cowboy hats.) Does Sanneh have a kink for praising extraordinarily terrible pop music? I'm still not over his credulously positive review of the latest HARDY album, which has become something of a meme in so-bad-it's-good online music circles. Munsick's music might be even worse, and his bona-fides as a cowboy type are troublesome too; no matter how many Native Americans you're pals with, the white cowboy troubadour who's in love with his culture is an obviously troublesome figure. The review itself is repetitive; Munsick's brand is one-note so there's not much to reflect on.
"City of Thieves" - Paige Williams hides out at Home Depot with the L.A. cops who stop retail theft. A useful case study in how a talented reporter who feels she's following the story where it leads can accidentally produce unconscionable copaganda. The entire framing device for the story relies on a supposed substantial difference between "survival shoplifters" and "organized-retail-crime suspects," and Williams makes much out of the idea that the latter are who the cops really want to fight, while the former are merely bycatch. But this idea is coming from the cops and retailers! Williams even cites a retracted survey that falsely claimed nearly half of theft was from crime rings ("estimates now indicate that it was significantly less") and quotes the "Center for Just Journalism" saying that "'cops are salivating' at the chance to 'get real money to fight a fake crime wave.'" Williams adds: "Many mainstream news outlets echoed this view." A line like that is clearly meant to make the reader think that they were wrong to do so, and it's clear Williams has seen cops' big piles of recovered goods and feels that their battle is just. But she never actually reckons with the counterargument – she never takes seriously the idea that she might be getting spun.
The piece cozies up to the cops Williams embeds with; they get charming asides about mispronouncing words ("his colleagues immediately gave him the appropriate amount of shit") that personalize them. The thieves we see are identified only physically; Williams never quotes any. The L.A. County public defender gets one measly paragraph to give part of the counterargument, that a "'mistaken return to a tough-on-crime era undoes decades' worth of work.'" Again, we're lead to the cops' counterargument – that these are hardened criminal rings, not individual poor people – but again, Williams' own reporting accidentally pokes holes in that thesis; as she writes of one string of robberies, "The presence of an accomplice qualified the thefts as organized retail crime, as did the possibility that the jewelry was going to a fence." In other words, the conditions under which a "survival shoplifter" is no longer officially shoplifting to survive include if there are two shoplifters, or if the goods might be turned into money – which, apparently, is not necessary to survive.
Williams ends with an appeal to our humanity: One time, a shoplifter killed a very old clerk; one time, a shoplifter shot a guard. Of course, any loss of life Home Depot may have caused with their extremist, illegal union busting, or their hundreds of millions of dollars of environmental, wage, and privacy violations, doesn't merit reporting.
Letters:
Susan has a possible explanation for Alex Ross' interest in Schoenberg in L.A.: "I think he, like a lot of people, just can’t get their minds around the glut of European musicians who fled and ended up in LA - just the mental image of Stravinsky playing tennis with George Gershwin is enough to send a person over the edge. So it comes up over and over again, and it seems that there are still plenty of people who have never heard about it." I buy that!
She also mentioned the joy she "felt emanating" from Anthony Lane in his excellent piece on Lord Byron. "Maybe Mr. Lane really needed this change in his life."
What did you think of this week's issue? I hope my negativity this week isn't too harsh, but I have to be honest with my takes or there's no point in this scrappy enterprise!
I've got that orange-link, classic thing that you like...