Come on, the line "If “How To” has an ethos, it’s “When a guy invites you to watch a sewer drain get unclogged, you say yes" made that piece the clear pick of the week.
More seriously, I was looking forward to a new Nussbaum piece (who I wish was still on the TV beat). I didn't get much new from it compared to other recent ones on the genre in outlets like Slate and what have you.
As always, Lane's film review didn't thrill me. His snide comments didn't add anything useful. Funny that he thought a nearly three hour long film had too many words, when a nearly 30 minute car chase has almost no dialogue. Someone should send Lane picture books.
I kept waiting for Lane to give away even more of the plot than he did. Apparently audiences can become easily alarmed if they walk into a cinema without having been given a scene by scene breakdown beforehand, and notes on how they should consume and respond. (In fairness, a lot of book reviews do the same thing.)
It's funny but unsurprising-- since starting to read your newsletter I have become a lot more attuned to the style of different articles on a critical level rather than just consuming them for their content. (I'm a very fact-hungry reader and very focused on style in fiction, but haven't previously applied that so much to nonfiction.)
This escalating critical attention is enjoyable, mostly, though has also led me to get more irritated with some articles with prose I previously would've breezed through. A good example of this is the MS article -- it was a pleasure to read a medical story where people are *getting better* and I learned so much about MS, but the style kept really rankling me, maybe exactly because it was -- I think? -- aiming to charm. There were just too many kinda cutesy metaphors or descriptions that didn't land for me; there was the observation that -- wow! -- Dr. Sidiq also cares about his patients' feelings (evident from every previous detail shared about him!!! Not a profound insight!!!), the "tiny brains!" bit that the research scientist quoted clearly disliked, and then just the general random ambling vibe with (to me) overly simplistic syntax and, maybe, effort to convey childlike wonder that I just bounced right off of. I'm not familiar enough with Rivka Galchen's other articles to know if this is just how she writes, or if this was specific to an article whose genuinely optimistic subject matter that style ostensibly suits, or what. I wanted to like it and not be such a curmudgeon but I couldn't help it.
Disagree on the Whitmer profile: it makes her seem surprising for a Midwest politician, and charming, to _New Yorker readers who care about but don’t otherwise follow politics_, who are a decently important constituency in the invisible primary (see also: Pete Buttigieg, 2019).
I also have some first person experience with Bush-era radio sausagemaking that leads me to think both you and Nussbaum are a little wrong, but I agree with your assessment of the piece, and anyway no one’s paying any of us enough for those stories.
Come on, the line "If “How To” has an ethos, it’s “When a guy invites you to watch a sewer drain get unclogged, you say yes" made that piece the clear pick of the week.
More seriously, I was looking forward to a new Nussbaum piece (who I wish was still on the TV beat). I didn't get much new from it compared to other recent ones on the genre in outlets like Slate and what have you.
As always, Lane's film review didn't thrill me. His snide comments didn't add anything useful. Funny that he thought a nearly three hour long film had too many words, when a nearly 30 minute car chase has almost no dialogue. Someone should send Lane picture books.
I kept waiting for Lane to give away even more of the plot than he did. Apparently audiences can become easily alarmed if they walk into a cinema without having been given a scene by scene breakdown beforehand, and notes on how they should consume and respond. (In fairness, a lot of book reviews do the same thing.)
It's funny but unsurprising-- since starting to read your newsletter I have become a lot more attuned to the style of different articles on a critical level rather than just consuming them for their content. (I'm a very fact-hungry reader and very focused on style in fiction, but haven't previously applied that so much to nonfiction.)
This escalating critical attention is enjoyable, mostly, though has also led me to get more irritated with some articles with prose I previously would've breezed through. A good example of this is the MS article -- it was a pleasure to read a medical story where people are *getting better* and I learned so much about MS, but the style kept really rankling me, maybe exactly because it was -- I think? -- aiming to charm. There were just too many kinda cutesy metaphors or descriptions that didn't land for me; there was the observation that -- wow! -- Dr. Sidiq also cares about his patients' feelings (evident from every previous detail shared about him!!! Not a profound insight!!!), the "tiny brains!" bit that the research scientist quoted clearly disliked, and then just the general random ambling vibe with (to me) overly simplistic syntax and, maybe, effort to convey childlike wonder that I just bounced right off of. I'm not familiar enough with Rivka Galchen's other articles to know if this is just how she writes, or if this was specific to an article whose genuinely optimistic subject matter that style ostensibly suits, or what. I wanted to like it and not be such a curmudgeon but I couldn't help it.
Disagree on the Whitmer profile: it makes her seem surprising for a Midwest politician, and charming, to _New Yorker readers who care about but don’t otherwise follow politics_, who are a decently important constituency in the invisible primary (see also: Pete Buttigieg, 2019).
I also have some first person experience with Bush-era radio sausagemaking that leads me to think both you and Nussbaum are a little wrong, but I agree with your assessment of the piece, and anyway no one’s paying any of us enough for those stories.