Last Week's New Yorker Review: January 23, 2023

a Committee-Man in the Commonwealth of letters

Last Week’s New Yorker, week of January 23

Must-Read:

“Everyone’s a Critic” - Merve Emre dissects the field of professionalized literary studies, and wonders what’s next. I suppose my task here is to criticize this critical review of a work of literature reviewing criticism of works of literature. Phew! I might feel a bit underprepared for the task, but I’ll take Emre’s word for it that “it is not unusual to stumble upon an essay on… Substack that is just as perceptive as academic or journalistic essays.” This is the kind of thorough and thoughtful book review that not only brings the reader to a deep understanding of the thesis of John Guillory’s “Professing Criticism,” but also of his most famous book “Cultural Capital,” not to mention culminating in an affirmation of the future sites of criticism that has genuine foresight. As Nietzsche puts it, “Every craft makes crooked,” yet Emre sorts it all out so clearly you’ll feel stripped of your blinders.

Window-Shop:

“Jumper” (Talk of the Town) - Adam Iscoe jumps Citi bikes with Jerome Peel and the Citi Bike Boyz. Really funny; great dialogue.

“The Book of Love” - Nikhil Krishnan reads an alternate history of a pioneering, yet deeply ashamed, Victorian queer intellectual. Feints at being a review of Tom Crewe’s “The New Life,” but is really more of a recounting of the real-life histories he fictionalizes within it. That means it lacks any deep formal analysis, which is a shame. Still, the historical figures are compelling, and new to me. The final section is especially poignant, and pulls the rest together.

“The Swamp” - James Lasdun sinks into the Alex Murdaugh murders, and the muck surrounding them.
I’ve followed the “both incredibly Southern and extremely Gothic”¹ Murdaugh story somewhat closely since it was first publicized, reading the Times’ coverage, so I was interested to see how much new information this story would contain. Really, this story isn’t interested in scoops so much as sketching in the emotional and logistical picture, which it does vividly. Lasdun’s voice is strong; Koenigian (of Serial) in both its focus on the author’s empathetic capacity (“…this explanation again hinged on the idea of a man plotting the death of his own son, and I still couldn’t get my head around that”) and its interest in local landscapes (“I’d begun to see how you might get attached to its stubborn plainness.”) An interview with a key figure may not have many new facts, but his willingness to let Lasdun’s wife play with his dog colors how you view him. Your interest in, and ethical stance toward, this kind of detail will vary; but since the Murdaugh story was broken by local press, it makes sense the meat still on the bones would be the hearsay only fit for periodicals. Ultimately, Lasdun’s attempt to “resist any idea of the ongoing saga as a tale of some purely gothic malevolence” doesn’t so much fail as peter out; he implies the trial will show whose story is “more convincing,” but once you’ve read the story-so-far, in which the prosecutorial regime comes out looking savage and corrupt, you’ll have a hard time believing that justice can be done.

"A Raucous Assault" - Calvin Tomkins profiles Tala Madani, who caricatures machismo. At a sprightly 97, Tomkins is still chugging, producing thoughtful biographies of artists that emphasize lifestyle details ("The children are friendly and talkative; they both have blond hair, which Tala says they got from their father,") and the impact of personal history. Here, the latter mostly means time devoted to the news peg of Iranian unrest, which is compelling enough if only ever Madani's subject in an oblique way. Perhaps a bit too mannered to truly encompass the meanings of Madani's giant dicks and shit-people. Tomkins calls one painting of babies playing in a shit-body "not revolting," but isn't revolt the whole point?

Skip Without Guilt:

“The Royal Me” - Rebecca Mead is among the last to review Prince Harry’s “Spare.” Nothing new here if you’ve read virtually any take on the book; this picks the same quotes and has much the same commentary as any of the three separate reviews in The Guardian. Most unique is Mead’s rosy tone; she’s not so much an adherent of Harry as of his ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, whom she credits as “skillful,” even “peerless”; praising the book’s “narrative force, its voice, and its sometimes surprising wit.” Unfortunately, the quotes she presents simply feel like what they are: the cheesy memoir of an isolated celebrity.

“Two for the Road” - Inkoo Kang looks at The Last of Us. Kang still can't land a joke ("one can imagine a second season of the show that contends with the characters' bafflement at the widespread mistrust of a lifesaving jab"... woof) and misuses words like "pixelated" (not a synonym for "videogame!") and "unpestered" (how can solitude be unpestered, exactly?) 

“Build Better” - Rachel Monroe prints houses with entrepreneur Jason Ballard. This is a charming and cleanly structured piece, but the only skepticism it expresses about Ballard’s plans are that they might be overly ambitious, and I take issue with that. Mainly, the piece absolutely needs to talk about the environmental impact of all this printed concrete. Frankly, it’s a wildly unsustainable material, releasing half a ton of CO2 for every ton produced, and releasing around eight percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Timber is significantly better in this regard; suddenly switching a massive amount of construction to concrete sounds like a potential disaster. I’m no expert; maybe Ballard has an answer to the environmental question, but Monroe doesn’t print it. In any case, don’t we have enough fake-cowboy, Elon-Musk-y, “founder vibes” in this world? When Ballard started talking about a moon base, I zoned out. He doesn’t want to do good, he wants to do big.

"Trust Issues" - Evan Osnos searches the tale of the Gettys, old and young, for clues about American taxation and wealth. A deeply annoying bait-and-switch: What seems at first to be a gossipy tale of the Getty inheritors' wealth manager suing them turns out to be a mostly juiceless framing device for cutting back and forth between the Wikipedia pages for "Getty family and "Tax avoidance." Feels like it's stalling for time to avoid how little story it has to tell: There are tangents about Ice Age beading and chimp biology, neither one noteworthy or especially relevant. Lots of nuggets like this: "Greed is not always about money for money's sake. For some, it's power." You don't say. 

Letters

Sophie Lucido-Johnson, a cartoonist for the magazine and a writer and artist elsewhere, was kind enough to highlight LWNY in their newsletter "You Are Doing A Good Enough Job,” writing "This scratches a certain itch for me, and if you get it, you get it." They also wrote in to give a bit of their history: "...as I read the cartoons, I realized that actually, it would be hard to write that kind of joke. I was doing standup at the time, and one-liners were difficult for me. I started reading the magazine backward, which is still how I read it. Eventually, long story short, I decided to try submitting cartoons, which I did for a year before they bought one and it became one of my primary sources of income... (I also have a memory of a professor explaining how he would skim the issue and tear out articles he wanted to read, staple them, and throw them in his bag, like little books to consume individually. I tried that for a while. It was overwhelming.)" Reading the magazine "backward" fascinates me. It makes a certain kind of sense (assuming I understand what you mean, and that you're not, like, reading each paragraph in reverse), in that you'd start with reviews, which are often somewhat time-sensitive, then move to the weightier material like fiction and features, and finally finish with the lighter "talk of the town" stuff. But of course you'd have to read the Goings On pretty much immediately for them to be of any use. Maybe those don't count in the front-to-back progression.

Mike says, "While I do... read [the magazine] often, I haven't touched a print issue in many years." I go back and forth myself, Mike, but for reading on the PATH train or subway, the print magazine can't be beat.

Xami says, “I’ll always have a sweet spot for Anthony Lane's movie reviews. No matter if the jokes don't land—I'm either laughing with him or at him.”

Zack says, "Your take on Jill Lepore's "The American Beast" was one of the more useful, interesting things I've read this week," comparing it to the Times' columnist Jamelle Bouie. Thanks!

Bentley in the Today in Tabs Discord felt Gonnerman's UPS piece was last weeks' best, citing "details like the 10 am Sunday Teamsters meeting." 

This week’s prompt: Inspired by the Emre piece, what’s a little-known work of criticism, scholarly or otherwise, that’s important to you? There’s nothing unique about this random Philip Kennicott art review in the Washington Post, but I remember, as a teenager, the mind-opening day in which I spent a very long time devouring the show and read this review afterward, thinking what I wouldn’t give to be able to do this all the time. And now I go into the city once a week and walk between art galleries. Mission accomplished, baby.

1. “Today in Tabs,” Oct 13, 2021