Last Week's New Yorker Review: 🌱 The Weekend Special (June 23)
The Weekend Special
Pieces are given up to three Boyles (for fiction), Harrimans (for essays), or Parkers (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Boyle, Harriman, or Parker indicates a generally positive review.
The newsletter will continue in spite of the war.
🌱 Fiction
“Any Human Heart” by Yiyun Li. No Boyles. marriage, matter, malevolence. Among the most profoundly depressive things I can recall the magazine publishing of late; curdled and even hateful. Li is allowed a portion of this, and she keeps it compelling, but while Li’s style suggests that any judgement the reader might make is indeterminate and cloudy, I don’t think there’s a reasonable way to read this story in which Maureen is anything other than profoundly cruel, with the narrator comparing her to “the executioners at Dachau”, and suggesting that her mother passed a childhood wound on, transformed, to her. Philosophically, I don’t necessarily have an issue with the view that “real human cruelty” is “articulable” and in some sense ever-present, though I’m more of the view that the human condition is one of falling short and misunderstanding, and that incomprehension is in truth so central to our travails that the hyperfocus on mere evil, which so often soaks up the spotlight, obscures more than it reveals. I’m not sure Li advances any perspective that wasn’t rendered in her very strong memoir-excerpt, and the suggestion that this story will present an outside consciousness proves mostly a red herring; Maureen is more an object of judgement than a true subject, and the plot mainly tracks Lilian, Li’s stand-in – also seen in prior stories. Li’s prose is very strong, in her stark way, but this story is startlingly uninterested in empathy. Who wants a bouquet of flowers from someone who doesn’t like you?
🌱 Weekend Essay
“The Old Man” by Jelani Cobb. Two Harrimans. growing, grappling, graying. A heartfelt personal essay about Cobb’s father. Straightforward and content to leave its broader significance as subtext, probably a wise move; the reader can be trusted to infer the many ways in which the personal is political. Cobb doesn’t try to subvert the form; each beat and pivot arrives on cue, but the genuinely touching material and Cobb’s usual steady, sane intelligence are a good match – they leaven one another, so that the piece is neither sappy nor dry. This doesn’t have the punch or power of, say, Wesley Morris’ landmark mustache essay, which it somewhat resembles. But not everything has to aim for Pulitzers. Cobb does his job with the wisdom of age.
🌱 Random Pick
“Of All Things” by Howard Brubaker. (Oct 12, 1940). One Parker. will, weather, war. These talk-show-ish political quips were apparently a popular feature of the Ross magazine. There’s something fascinating about them, a peek into 1940s Twitter – but the only really funny one is the first, about Hitler and Mussolini “breaking bread and treaties together.”
Alright, that was quite short, here’s another.
🌱 Random Pick 2
“Alive” by Brendan Gill. (May 18, 1963). No Parkers. rave, revelation, ragamuffiny. Gill adores all three pictures under review, but especially the now-largely-forgotten Sparrows Can’t Sing, which he compares to Ulysses with only a hint of abashedness. Gill’s writing is amiable and gossipy, but it doesn’t give a very good sense of what any of these movies are like – especially Bergman’s Winter Light, which he grants only a perfunctory synopsis, a warning against its bleakness, and some generic praise (“beautiful”). Gill had an extraordinarily long tenure at the magazine and wrote for basically every section; his Times obit doesn’t even mention his movie reviews, which ran for the first six years of the sixties. I do now want to see Sparrows Can’t Sing, though I doubt I’d get as much en-Joyce-ment from it.
🌱 Something Extra
Previously I promised a review of Bowl EP, a visceral (in a few ways) slice-of-life show about two skaters engaging in some life-bringing time-wasting. It’s a bumpy ride, but I think it’s the strongest small-ensemble I’ve seen – the leads are each phenomenally lived-in, entirely believable but pivoting to showier moments without a hitch; a surprise supporting performance is brasher and hugely compelling as acting if not always as writing. The set, an empty swimming pool used as a skate rink, is hook enough; it’s the kind of genuinely subversive theater that makes a lot of other stuff look like kiddie shit. And it just closed. Your loss!
I also saw Prince F*ggot, Jordan Tannahill’s meta romance about queerness and power, which is now competing with the other Shayok Misha Chowdhury-directed show for my favorite play of the year. Going in blind does help, but if you aren’t convinced by the cast or my rave, well, you can find a synopsis. A show that carves away at its premise over time, finding deep pockets but never forgetting to deliver the goods – tears in the rain, self-abnegation in the club. I sobbed through the last twenty-some minutes. See it, see it, see it, see it, see it, see it. It just got extended through July 27 and it’s already sold out, but maybe it’ll get extended again; you can also show up to 99 cent Sundays and wait in line. It’s worth it.
John Proctor is the Villain I largely found politically frustrating, setting up a situation in which there is no actual nuance to make sure it doesn’t have to address any nuance in its vision of liberation (which doesn’t actually look that liberating) – but it undeniably achieves its aims, and the cast is just fantastic, especially Amalia Yoo, who earned that Drama Desk.
The Public’s bilingual outdoors traveling Much Ado is imperfect but very fun. If it will be near you, I can hardly imagine a nicer afternoon.
Sunday Song: