Last Week's New Yorker Review: ☀️ The Weekend Special (November 11)
The Weekend Special (November 11)
Pieces are given up to three Jacksons (for fiction), Malcolms (for essays), or Rosses (for your picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Jackson, Malcolm, or Ross indicates a generally positive review.
☀️ Fiction
“The Honest Island” by Greg Jackson. No Jacksons, ironically. foreigner, four, forget. A remarkably generic hunk of genre-ish, lit-ish fiction; mostly, it put me in mind of the trend of rich-people-on-islands media (Glass Onion, The Menu, Old, Infinity Pool, Blink Twice, I’m certain there are more) that has been so big of late, but is maybe already past its crest. Here, the mystery just fizzles out; “it was The Odyssey all along” is essentially the twist, which is… not a twist at all. What’s supposed to be compelling about this story, exactly? Jackson’s previous efforts in the magazine had a psychological acuity that this mostly lacks, and his simultaneously long-winded and pretentiously evasive interview doesn’t help matters. This just putters along until it stops; it’s not even especially tonally coherent (the scene with the prefect verges on satire, and Budger has a humorously overdetermined colonialist myopia, but elsewhere the big hunks of theoretically lush description halt any funniness in its tracks). Call it The Island of Dr. Mid Bro.
☀️ Weekend Essay
“The Economic Philosophy of Donald Harris” by John Cassidy. One Malcolm. distance, disputes, distribution. Makes it clear pretty quickly that Harris has had little to nothing to do with Kamala, then proceeds to give what’s essentially a detailed career survey of a random guy. But Harris’ ideas are ultimately pretty interesting, and Cassidy uses them to tell us about the shift in economics as a field, especially around the Cambridge capital controversy. It’s nerdy as hell, and it has nothing at all to do with Kamala directly, but Cassidy does pretty well making the nature of the dispute clear – it’s a battle where the intellectual losers, the blinkered U.S., ended up the political winners, setting the terms of economic policy even as their whole model was based on approximations ad absurdum. Harris took the more “heterodox” U.K. side, but he wasn’t exactly at the center of things; this article could be rewritten to omit him completely, although I suppose then it wouldn’t have a catchy hook. Academics generally aren’t rock stars; they each work on a tiny piece of a big tapestry. The tapestry Harris has spent his life on still isn’t “his”, but his efforts are still worthy.
☀️ Random Pick
“Near Miss” by Winthrop Sargeant. (September 28, 1957). No Rosses. spectacle, scenery, salamander. Another 1950s article, another case study in how the era’s culture was pretty much one hundred percent appropriative (which, I suppose the case could be made, is at least more honest than the usual attempts to disguise appropriation.) Here we have Britten with a gamelan-inspired score – he spent two months in Bali, didja know? – and some “exotic color” in the sets. There are also lots of frogs, for some reason. Sergeant is grumpy as always.
☀️ Something Extra
Here’s another archival Last Week’s, from the couple of months in 2019-20 when I wrote them up on Facebook. Sorry for any egregious prose.
Last Week’s New Yorker Review: The January 20 (2020) issue
Must-Read:
“Indefensible,” Ben Taub uncovers the framing and extradition of an innocent man by the FBI in order to make a political point. Holy shit! A triumph of journalism, unveiling a conspiracy in a way that is so relentless as to be both cinematic and almost too real - too troubling - to imagine as a movie. Trimmed down so that every turn is quick, without sacrificing moments of compelling prose; most memorably, the way that declined requests for comment are used, late in the story. Helpful hint: Keep track of names! They pile up, but they’re important; this is a story that’s worth taking some basic notes on to make sure you don’t get lost.
Window Shop:
“Untrue West,” Adam Gopnik relates the Western tall tales of John and Jessie Fremont, and situates them as historical legends. This swerves twice, first seeming to be a Gopniksplainer of the process of legend-making and the speed at which it happens, then finding the Fremonts as a subject and collecting the highlights of their new biography, and finally pivoting to consider the types of people that become legends. It’s as if Gopnik had two theses for one subject, and opted to include them both. If things seem squeezed as a result, it still doesn’t reduce how surprising and funny the piece is at every turn.
“Home Truths,” Alexandra Schwartz sees the new theatrical adaptation of “My Name Is Lucy Barton.” Solid but unspectacular - something like the show it describes.
“A Long War,” Casey Cep rethinks our understanding of the Carribean slave revolts. A weirdly in medias res opening gives way to a very interesting story that nevertheless seems to be mostly a summary of the book being reviewed. That’d be fine if Cep jumped in with commentary or thoughts now and then, but she’s mostly content to recap, and the few lines of comparison to our forever wars at the end just seem half-assed. Still well worth reading for a story of slavery that’s multifaceted and diverges from the conventional knowledge.
Skip Without Guilt:
“Dream Worlds,” Raffi Khatchadourian talks to the writer N. K. Jemisin, whose work explores race through a sci-fi lens. Some interesting biographical snippets, but ultimately, there is too much focus on Jemisin’s subject matter and too little sense of her prose style here. Jemisin also isn’t an exhilarating character; as groundbreaking as her work might be, she really seems like an average, nerdy introvert. There’s something nice about that - hope for us all - but it doesn’t make for a gripping tale.
“Going for the Cold,” Rebecca Mead takes a plunge in chilly waters. Sorta funny, but so light as to evaporate off the page. Needs one more layer of depth, something deep beneath its surface; right now, it’s a bit of a kiddie pool.
“Big Spenders,” Nathan Heller explains the venture-capital system. The extended casino metaphor takes something I basically understand and makes it totally confusing. Elsewhere, this is a decent dissection, but without a strong structure it’s a collection of only somewhat interesting factoids, many of which I already knew. Oddly devoid of ideological discussion - surprising, since it’s usually Heller’s strong suit in pieces like this.
“Dream On,” Anthony Lane guides us through the films of Fellini. I agree with Lane’s ultimate assessment that Fellini’s earlier work is his most meaningful, but I’d rather he stated that earlier and used it as a thesis. As is, there’s no clear argument to this piece, so it’s a bit scattershot, a collection of sometimes interesting, sometimes trivial things Lane has to say about the great director.
Have a piece from the magazine’s past that you want me to review? Venmo $20 per request to @SamECircle, then write me an email or a note on Venmo letting me know you've done so and what your requested piece is. No limit on the number of requests.
Sunday Song: