Last Week's New Yorker Review: September 16, 2024
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of September 16
"traps made out of coffee cans and chicken flesh"
This is allegedly the “Fall Books” issue, a theme which hasn’t had any impact on the content of the magazine that I can see. But it is an exceptionally long issue – like, twenty-something pages longer than usual, with five feature pieces instead of the usual four, and lots of detail density. Bad timing for that on my end, since I was already running behind; I’m sure most of you don’t care too much about a few days’ delay, but I like to try to hold myself accountable to my deadlines so things don’t start piling up. Please excuse. As close readers of the Weekend Special will note, I’m about to start a full-time job teaching ninth-grade English; how this will interfere with my ability to write this newsletter is, of course, to be determined – but I’m going to give it my very best effort and hope to make the grade.
Must-Read:
“The Post-Moral Age” - Manvir Singh does the unconscionable. Very fun and very prickly. I spent most of my sophomore and junior years of college thinking about how “moral codes” were arbitrary and selfish, while also considering the impossibility of replacing them, but while the conundrums discussed in this piece are very dorm-room-ish, Singh wisely starts with his own crisis of conscience, sparked in his case more by science than observation, when the foundations on which he’d built a model of unselfish morality started to crumble under the weight of evidence. That Singh eventually lands on “but isn’t my kid cute?” as a kind of solution is wise enough without surrendering the frustration at the heart of his argument – that he’s still essentially reifying the self. (Is there anything that reifies the self more than reproduction?) I’m interested in the ways in which the acts of philosophizing and writing may inevitably point toward the self – in which the form of Singh’s chosen fields may have defined the content they’ve discovered – since words and language may simply be eternally ego-oriented. It is hard to study the dynamics created between people or animals, for instance, and it’s easier to view them as fictive – but the self, too, is unreal, and perhaps the answer to the question “how does one exist in a post-moral world” is that one doesn’t, but two or three or twenty might.
“People of the Magazine” - Gideon Lewis-Kraus is caught in shifting Jewish Currents. A grim kaleidoscope of rhetoric. This has a theatrical quality to it – I count only five paragraphs which do not contain dialogue, and by setting bits of speech in dialectical counterpoint, the sprawl and pain of the landscape gradually comes into focus. (Itamar Moses’ masterful The Ally comes to mind.) Lewis-Kraus isn’t here to make an argument so much as to moderate and edit a discussion; his light touch serves the piece very well. As a Palestinian voice here points out, Jewish Currents’ attitude can seem “narcissistic” – Jews kibbitzing about their complicity while people die. And Arielle Angel’s “‘medieval mystic’” attitude, which straddles the line between self-possession and self-importance, contributes to this sense. But the press is important, and I’m skeptical that platforming distraught anti-Zionist Jewish voices is somehow drowning out Palestineans – especially when the Zionist Jews have both voice and power. The pro-Israel line on Currents, that it’s committed some grave betrayal by not pivoting to Zionism, is obviously repugnant; the piece focuses more on this line of argument, and while it’s easy enough to refute, Lewis-Kraus does good work showing why it stings these intelligent leftist Jews – there’s an embedded insistance that the only acceptable response to historical trauma is death and fascism, a discomfiting narrative to suddenly find on the lips of family and former comrades. There are a few odd notes in this piece – surely the direct comparison between the unforgiving voice for Israel (a “prominent” writer saying any sympathetic Jew is “my enemy”) and the unforgiving voice for Palestine (a rando being rude on Twitter) is unfair; they do not share “an attitude”. But the end, on the model of David Berman’s “‘prophetic, leftist, literary Jewishness’” and the move toward religious practice amongst these disillusioned tribe members, is a haunting shofar blast.
Window-Shop:
“The Mystery of Pain” - Parul Sehgal gets Greenwell soon. An elegant appreciation of Greenwell’s latest, concise and focused. He’s moved (in keeping with his life) from sex to pain; interestingly, while sex in his hands was mannered and heady, pain seems to bring him to a more fervent and bodily place. (This is thematic but also formal: “The language is softer, mussed, exploratory.”) Sehgal doesn’t drill down into why this might be; she’s content to be impressed by Greenwell’s evolution. Her obvious pleasure in tracing the arc of this autofictional trilogy is itself a gesture of care.
“The Show Must Go On” - Daniel Immerwahr gives Reagan the Boot. As those with any memory of Reagan inch toward their forties and beyond, summaries of his whole deal get more and more useful – he wasn’t just an antidemocratic smarmster, he was the empty suit the conservative movement hoped for in Trump. It’s only natural that Boot finds Reagan’s best trait his malleability – of course an influence-peddler would want powerful people to be easily influenced. Immerwahr does a very good job attacking Reagan’s political philosophy (“vacuity”) while barely touching his policies; Iran Contra didn’t happen because he willed it but because “obliviousness” was his modus operandi – he wasn’t just laissez-faire economically, he was fairly lazy in general. I especially appreciate that Immerwahr doesn’t make this entire review about Trump (as the Times did), an intelligent reader can draw those connections while also understanding that there are plenty of other connections to be drawn. There’s not a word here about Boot’s writing as writing, and given that Boot apparently spends half his book on Reagan’s life before politics, which Immerwahr skims, this barely functions as a book review. I don’t mind at all, though; Immerwahr knows what matters to him: Not the smiling GE shill, the reactionary with the slow reaction time.
“Land of the Flea” - Paige Williams goes the whole nine yard sales. Consistently funny, nailing its dry cocked-eye tone. (The glowing, almost romantic photographs don’t really fit the piece at all, but they’re still good.) The choice to focus so singlemindedly on national electoral politics is one I find both predictable and frustrating; it limits the piece, turning it into a “guy in a diner” story every time it threatens to become something more interesting. Williams never quite persuaded me that the thrift sale is some kind of ideal model of collectivity or bargaining or anticonsumption or whatever – maybe she could drill down on one of these ideas; handwaving toward all of them is far less persuasive. The thrift sale is not a prefigurative political act but a nostalgic, even reactionary one; making consumerism great again is not in any way anticapitalist. It’s easy to get past all this, though, and just enjoy the parade of strangers Williams presents in slivers; the wardrobe Derringer anecdote is particularly delightful, as is the woman selling “creepy babies”. (“I’m the whole country song.”) It’s only natural that homespun wisdom will have a few loose threads.
“Screams from a Marriage” - Justin Chang says it three times fast. This movie obviously has way too much plot; Chang does exceptional work running through its thousand setups without breaking a sweat. Still, not a ton of time is left for his analysis, which mostly amounts to “could be worse for a sequel!” His prose is theremin-infused (the B-plot is “skulking alongside the main action”, a talk show “is not immune to charges of ghoulish exploitation”), but unlike Burton’s set design, Chang lacks an angle.
Skip Without Guilt:
“The Dark Time” - Ben Taub spots a spy – and there’s Norway he’s Russian to conclusions. Is it possible for a story to be too thoroughly researched? Taub’s prose is lovely, but he’s crafted an interminable iceberg. How much convincing do we need to buy Taub’s proposition that Russian spies are using the north of Norway as a testing ground for operations across Europe? Taub had me convinced quickly, then he found seven or eight more ways to make fundamentally the same point. Espionage, despite the cloak-and-dagger of it all, is not hugely dramatic in reality, especially when it’s less “assassination” and more “covert influence operation”. A centerpiece of this story revolves around the moderately ominous removal of a floral display. It’s two hours of standoff without a single shot fired. The theoretical stakes are high (The Russians are coming!), but the practical stakes are quite low. (The Russians are… leading nationalistic sermons in remote churches!) Taub immerses us in the forbidding Finnbar environment; the chill comes through, but I’m left cold.
“Tales from the New World” - Hua Hsu plays the thing with which Richard Powers catches the conscience. The Overstory was so overrated; an overbearing, overwrought overexplanation, overloaded with arboreal overkill. So I’m not that interested in Powers’ act. An appearance from an overawed Ann Patchett is a breath of fresh air, but I think that’s just because I like Patchett’s writing, so I care what she has to say. Powers is a wide-eyed scientist; he sounds basically just like all the characters in his book, minus most of the overacting (alright, I’ll stop now.) That Hsu presents the only criticism of Powers as griping about his intellectualism is misleading; The Overstory felt pre-chewed: Powers had masticated a bunch of ideas and demanded nothing from you but an open mouth. The “earnest zeal” Hsu describes strikes me as a trait that will often lead to bad writing, full of eyebrow wags. This piece is cleanly structured; if you want to spend time with Powers, Hsu will do nothing to upset the party. It was probably never gonna work for me.
“Fly with Me” - Kathryn Schulz is a wild child. It’s probably wise of Schulz to accept that her adult lens won’t grant a proper view of these fantastical British kids’ books. But instead of showcasing humility, she grants Rundell, and the entire field, a great deal of liberty, ending the piece by saying, essentially, that kids are mostly interested in juvenile humor and stakes, and that Rundell’s alleged thematic depth is icing. I’m not sure that’s true, and I’m also not convinced Rundell’s books actually possess much depth; what synopsis and (very limited) quotation we get here seems soaked in cliché. I’m not inherently opposed to reviewing Y.A. in the magazine, but I’d like it to be held to the same standards as everything else. No article on a book of history would end by saying that, since it has lots of dates and events, the book will probably appeal to history buffs regardless of prior criticisms. If we’re meant to take Y.A. seriously, a bit of seriousness would help. Take off the kid gloves!
Letters:
Craig brings up the classic example of the life-flashing-before-your-eyes story, in the model of Ben Lerner’s story “Cafe Loup”: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”, adapted into a French short film that won an Oscar and was purchased and broadcast as a Twilight Zone episode.
What did you think of this week’s issue?
whatever you think about the most