Last Week's New Yorker Review: May 12 & 19
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of May 12 & 19
“the demotic tone, the direct address, the sense of a great organ yelling into power’s ear and being overheard everywhere, from Dyckman to Dyker Heights.”
This is a 100th anniversary double edition on the theme of New York – it’s a city, have you heard?! Unlike most of the magazine’s recent themed issues, there is a genuine unity here; every piece relates to NYC, and most share a bemused stance that successfully hearkens back to the magazine as Harold Ross originally envisioned it. It’s about as good as an anniversary issue can get, and while there’s a reason this isn’t the magazine as it exists now (a reason called globalization, long may it rot), it’s a miraculous and stirring one-off. It’s also damn hard to review, because most of the pieces prompt a similar response: How delightful! Individually, they’re not much more than fun; as variations on a theme – noticing the little things in the big city – they’re like a series of fugues; one could practically enter a fugue state. Well, it’s my newsletter, so I shall:
How Delightful!:
“Extra, Extra!” (The Wayward Press) - Vinson Cunningham is a New York Poster child. Wonderful, and makes one think the magazine really ought to have a regular media criticism column! Cunningham, whose current, Pulitzer-finalist beat is, roughly, television-beyond-the-scripted, would be the perfect candidate, as evinced by this funny and surprisingly heartfelt look at the city’s roguish rag. As Cunningham says, the void of metro coverage has largely been filled by the Post, in their heavily biased but essentially competent manner – though mention should be paid to the upstart blog Hell Gate, which is generally less lascivious, but just as enterprising and entertaining. I’m glad Cunningham doesn’t try to make the Post stand in for the city – they share long, strange histories; that doesn’t make them congruent. There is something indelible about the image of a young Cunningham riding the subway and “scrutinizing with a sociological interest my fellow-riders’ reading material”, and while he doesn’t make too much of this, his mother’s talented-tenth-tinged rejection of the Post and his subsequent guilty devotion to it renders the magazine an unexpected and generatively ambiguous synecdoche for Black culture in America. That’s deepened even more when Cunningham points out the magazine’s often blatant racism. If The Post has a message, it’s that the front page really does matter. Amidst the infinite scroll, the print media can feel like a Headlineless Body In Topicless Bar.
“New York, New York” (Comment) - Alexandra Schwartz wants to be a part of it. A gorgeous meditation on the city, an E.B. White-quoting love poem. Galvanizing. Breaks the usual rules of the Comment column in the best way.
“Goliath vs. Goliath” (The Sporting Scene) - Louisa Thomas hails fellow doing-well Mets. Since this article dropped the team is an iffy 5-6 (dropping behind the Phillies in the division) and Thomas’ presupposition that the Mets are going to be good again this year just because they have lots of talent certainly thumbs a nose at fate. But I certainly don’t come to sports writing for sensible takes; I come for vivid prose and a point of view, and Thomas is, as ever, good for both. The Mets’ previous ignominy is dispensed in three quick paragraphs, but Thomas picks the right details to get the point across. (“...a player sprayed bleach at reporters.”) The question of whether the Mets will lose a core part of their identity if they start winning is one about as old as sports, and the only “right” answer is – how much are they winning, and under what conditions? The Bucks stayed themselves; the Bucs did not. The New York Liberty are not still themselves, really, but the city loves them anyway. There might be a fan who wants their team to lose – but I’ve never Met Juan.
“Pigeon Toes” (Our Local Correspondents) - Ian Frazier is just pigeon ideas. Brief and full of personality, starting with that fantastic opening line: “I hate how pigeons get stuff stuck on their feet.” I’m in! The first three sections cover everything; the rest – a trip to a wildlife rehab center where they detangle one bird, a historical anecdote about homing pigeons – isn’t boring, but neither is it essential. What really pops is the occluded portrait of Frazier, whose “non-obsession” with tangled birds reveals his nerdy empathy. It’s likeable, and inevitably it rubs off on you, because all it demands is an act of noticing. I’ll never look at bird feet the same, which is to say, I’ll start looking at them. That’s a coo.
“Circling the Block” (Annals of Transportation) - Zach Helfand parking spaces out. The vivid framing device, in which a parking-spot filler is badly exploited, suggests a labor polemic that this never actually becomes. There is too much gentle bemusement in Helfand’s chronicling of the city’s alternate-side ritual for a reader to feel the weight of injustice. So the piece clunks along, but the view is still excellent, especially in the second half, once Helfand has dispensed with the more obvious riffs. Parking as “the city’s most visible form of corruption” is a hook the whole piece could be built around, and a point Helfand nails. (Believe it or not, the people taking the most blatant advantage of this corruption are the police! Surely that’s not a pattern.) Gersh Kuntzman already got a Talk of the Town from Dan Greene; this covers nearly the same material, but whatever; he rocks, and his fixation is righteous and delightful. The ridealong with street sweepers is wonderful, too; they’re so charismatic one imagines their talk show. Call it Alternate Side.
“Soft Lights, Big City” (Books) - Molly Fischer glazes walls with Keith McNally. McNally is one of the more fascinating and likeable Weird Boss Boomers; that we have a Weird Boss Boomer running our country into the ground pollutes this only somewhat. The inside scoop is that all the really good Keith McNally restaurants in the city are actually run and owned now by Lynn Wagenknecht (where’s her memoir?); most of McNally’s recent openings have been reproductions of his hits in different cities, like he’s fancy Steve Ells. Still, his odd combination of care and insecurity, which really comes through in the well-selected quotes, can be electric on the page (or the instagram caption) in a very alt lit way. In both cases, style is substance, and if you’re uncomfortable with ambiguity, well, just order the burger.
“My Tour of Tours” (On and Off the Avenue) - Patricia Marx is a sightseer for sore eyes. A very odd choice to list the tours Marx took seemingly in order of annoyingness. Hasidic life and Native history? Fascinating! Boomer rock and colonial folks? Sure! True crime and novelty tourist trappery and Trumpinalia? Absolutely not! If this was a creative decision, I have no idea what purpose it serves; if Marx actually just took the tours in this order, that suggests she may have been looking for softer targets. But I don’t really need the riffs, and the piece doesn’t really culminate in anything; I suggest reading until you start to get annoyed. Still: Some wonderful anecdotes (did you know the Dutch gave up New Amsterdam for nutmeg reasons?) and a less-antic-than-usual Marx makes this a fun time. Lookee there!
Not Exactly ‘Delightful’ But Very Good:
“Tight Quarters” (A Reporter at Large) - Jordan Salama packs Americana. I appreciate that Salama’s approach to this story is neither alarmist nor blasé; the injustice of these migrants’ terrible living conditions is made clear, but it’s also clear that the real worry is the tenuousness of their situations; the “huddled masses” have always found places to huddle, but there may never have been so many obstacles to stability in our country. Salama keeps the piece relatively grounded in the moment and never advocates for any particular policy measure; this is more in the realm of encouraging empathy. The piece can lack momentum – there is no real narrative arc – but perhaps this mirrors the static uncertainty of the situation. If the center cannot hold, things fall apartment.
“Goodbye to All This” (The Weekend Essay) - Lena Dunham would prefer to make it anywhere, if it’s all the same to you. A totally misleading title and subhed – this is not a “why I left the city” article but a “here’s why I hated growing up here” article; a far more compelling topic. (“...the city’s messy scrum was a poor fit for a chronically ill child with obsessive-compulsive tendencies and a preternatural inability to look both ways when crossing the street.”) It’s easy enough to greet this with a shrug – not everyone can hack it! – but Dunham’s fevered prose conveys neuroticism a la Nora Ephron with more raw nerves and less wry sheen. It’s good fun, if you allow yourself to enjoy it. It’s also so lightweight it practically floats away; I want to spin it into some sort of satirical white-femme reversal of Giovanni’s Room, but the material is not actually there. All Dunham has to say is: New York, I hate you, but you brought me up.
“Time Regained” (The Current Cinema) - Justin Chang is a Zhangke, Zhangke, burning lover. Having seen two other Zhangke films, I’ll just say… it’s probably easier to edit a new movie out of your old movies when you make versions of the same movie over and over again. Nothing wrong with that, of course! Just funny how literal the project is, though certainly fascinating. I think it’s pretty silly to say that Cannes juries haven’t liked him due to his “formal complexity and poignant quietude”, given that Cannes juries friggin’ love that shit; maybe it has more to do with the complicated politics of his films, which have fans in the Chinese government – as Chang says, the protagonist’s view of view toward modernity is “lonely and wistful, yet notably unembittered.” Chang’s prose is reliably excellent, and magazine coverage of anything verging on experimental film is a big win in my book. Which is not to Three Gorges Dam this review with faint praise.
Last One Out Turn Off De Light:
Syme on Fraser (Takes) - Spends too long getting going; we don’t need the thousanth exegesis of the dandy cover, and as great as Lois Long is, shouldn’t she have her own column instead of one skimmy paragraph? Syme does make Fraser’s piece sound appealing, though. I would have loved more of Fraser’s present-day voice, which peeps in at the end; these two writers, who’ve both covered perfume, could have assessed that tiny scene more broadly. So-so sillage!
Schulman on Ross (Takes) - Not sure the kicker makes much sense; did teenagers really “start planning their weekends” on “e-mail” (I thought the mag was changing that stylization) and AOL IM? I’m not sure in-person childhood in urban areas is as bereft of social contact as Schulman seems to think – he might be importing a conclusion that’s more relevant in the suburbs and exurbs. Ross’ story is great, it’s also a fairly recognized classic that doesn’t really need the shine.
“Power Houses” (Portfolio) - Gillian Laub and Naomi Fry want to be in the living rooms where it happens. So vastly less interesting than the wonderful Dominique Nabokov series it’s riffing on, because instead of occluded portraiture, in which a person’s living room is a synecdoche for their private life, it’s just… literal portraiture, in which a person’s living room is the place they’re sitting while they get their photo taken. The subjects have been selected fairly well, and the in-print layout is solid (most of the online extras are throwaways), but this is essentially a game of “who has the best couch” (easily Colson Whitehead.) There are a few moments of joy – it’s fun that the Cardinal is a Cardinals fan; Scorsese and daughter residing in what appears to be a medieval castle is genuinely unexpected – but mostly, all of these people seem to live as exactly who they claim to be. Where’s the fun in that?
“Three Guys from Queens” (Around City Hall) - Eric Lach says the city Mayor may not make a good decision. It’s incredibly frustrating to read a piece about how terrible the choices for mayor are, that focuses all its attention on the two terrible choices for mayor – who are only the frontrunners because of name recognition! – while sparing a single scant paragraph for Zohran and up to one sentence each for everybody else. Lach does a fine job presenting as hypocritical two of the most obvious hypocrites ever to walk the earth; it’s still a pointless task. Beating Cuomo’s transparently cynical campaign is not really a matter of shining more light on its cynicism; presenting an alternative is the solution, and coverage like this, no matter how negative, is more like the issue. The paragraph that went viral, in which Bill DeBlasio orders “‘mi sandwich especial’” and laughs a little too hard at the Onion joke mocking him, is, admittedly, fantastic – though pretty far off-topic. It’s also followed up by consecutive soundbites from the political world’s most diabolical blunt rotation: Lis Smith, Eliot Spitzer, and Anthony Weiner, three people that could have found a way to crash the Brooklyn Bridge into the sailboat. Lach wraps up by nailing Cuomo down as the Democrats’ Trump, a “‘superhero-strongman-asshole’”, an apparent attempt at assassination that, like so many articles presenting Trump as dangerous and powerful, end up reifying the ability and importance of subjects who gain a lot of their influence from a false perception of canniness. He’s not a superhero – he’s a schmuck with a big-ass cape.
“Now You See Her” (Profiles) - Julian Lucas knows Lorna Simpson like the back of her head. A frustratingly oomph-less, disengaged, even generic view of Simpson, one that feels far more like it was written to accompany (or advertise for) the upcoming Met retrospective than that it was born out of any real urgency. I admire Simpson’s art more than I adore it, and I’ve found her recent work pretty muddled – icebergs and asteroids are an awfully literal way of demonstrating reserve and chill. It’s strange when Lucas says that Simpson was “alienated” by the “cliquish, overwhelmingly white” Happening artists and their “antics”, then quotes her simply saying she was “‘too introverted for that… but I was interested in the performative aspect of work.’” It feels like Lucas is getting in jabs that Simpson is wise enough to avoid, because as problematic as that group could be, Simpson is indebted to them; it’s clear she wasn’t reacting against them but inspired by them. Lucas falls into the same trap as the writers he criticizes for not including Simpson with the Pictures Generation, and for viewing all her work as simply about race and not also about so much besides it. And Lucas is never able to reconcile the Simpson who digs through the archives for material and the one with a wide circle of art-world-famous friends who throws huge parties. It’s hard to get a sense of who Simpson is at all, and most of Lucas’ analysis of her work is tenuous, too – a long series of possible rhetorical approaches toward a glacier painting is deflated by a quote from Simpson about how she just thought the painting was “really cool.” (Is that a deliberately terrible pun or an inadvertent one? We don’t know enough about Simpson to say.) Some of the prose is also undeniably clunky, as when Simpson deflates an obnoxious curator (“‘Art is a lifelong activity. People make choices. You get to switch it up!’”), then Lucas feels the need to explain that her “vehemence reflected her own quest to outrun legibility, which propelled her beyond photo-text and into other orbits.” Uh, or maybe she was just annoyed by some dickhead. Not every aside is a thesis statement.
“This Old House” (A Critic at Large) - Anthony Lane wants to get you on his side and office politics. So distractable and soggy with gags it forgets to have any point at all, which is a shame – just a review of these memoirs would be plenty, but the topic demands an insider, and Lane, despite his long tenure at the magazine, comes across, strangely, as someone who has only read about the place. Lane describes the memoirs as vicious, but never shows us even a drop of this viciousness; one could probably randomly generate a sequence of pages from these books and come up with more cutting anecdotes than Lane does here. He seems determined to launder the magazine’s reputation into simplicity – it’s fussy but kind, I swear! – and he’s put off by, even unwilling to consider, any evidence that it may have been a harsher, crueller place, some or even much of the time. Even printing the legend would be far better than what Lane does here: gesturing vaguely toward the legend, then shoving it out of the way in favor of unfunny bits.
Letters:
Nada! Get out, stay out!!
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