Last Week’s New Yorker Review: April 1, 2024
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of April 1
"guttural distortions of pitch, cawing glissandos, clattering bowing effects"
Let's try something.
I'm loathe to change this newsletter's format in any way; my aim is to be constant and consistent. But I sensed a thread running through this issue, and it'd be hard not to restate the same point again and again. Namely, each piece in this issue (save one) features one of the magazine's strongest writers playing against their primary strength. It'd be cruel to pick at them for that; the impulse to stretch ought to be encouraged... even when it doesn't work out. So let's work the point into the format.
Must-Read:
"Twin Feats" - Alex Ross is a smooth Bartóker. But first, a contrapositive. Ross' strength: Snappy and visceral descriptions of music, both sound and technique. Sometimes playing to your strengths, as Ross does here, is just the right move. What an awesome double review, a firecracker of lively phrases that go off in phases and ring in the ears. Here's a central blast of brightness: "...things heated up handsomely: the coda built to a lusty frenzy... The stage was set for the Fourth [Bartók Quartet], whose five movements add up to a summa of Bartók's art, by turns tenaciously labored, sinuously swirling, nocturnally eerie, pizzicato-punchy, and flat-out wild." Your eyes turn upward in awe. The second act keeps dazzling, from a piano's "occult powers" to "brassy" chords that "evoked a trio of hunting horns." The button, an awed text from a colleague, refers to the pianist, but applies just as well to Ross' parade of pyrotechnics.
"Consider the Gun" - Helen Shaw cries Uncle Vanya with the new adaptation's director Lila Neugebauer. Shaw's strength: Witty, finely-crafted, brief reviews, with sparkling phrases and a minimum of characterization. And yet! Here, she pulls off a straightforward, mot-juste-light profile with aplomb – even if there's a sense that she's tossing frames around in the hopes that one will stick. Well, plenty stick: A "Chekhov's Gun" device is ironized to avoid cringiness; a therapeutic connection is taken seriously but not literally ("It would be facile, of course," to do so); an emphasis on Neugebauer's mad work ethic is taken just to the point of admiration, not to caricature. That admiration generally comes through in spades; Shaw's expertise – she drops that she's "seen fifteen of Neugebauer's New York shows" – edges toward the solicitous, but Neugebauer has a director's reticence ("Her focus is always riveted, intensely, on you") which keeps the portrait away from obsequiousness. Neugebauer's cypher quality – she's a master facilitator without an auteur's stamp – isn't exactly stripped away, but Shaw shows how much presence of mind that quality requires. And Shaw's eye for strange detail, from a chili cookoff to a "'heavy footfall,'" keeps things lively and light. She has the range!
Window-Shop:
"Around and Around" - Gideon Lewis-Kraus doesn't know if they're talkin' about a revolution. Lewis-Kraus' strength: the discussion of conflicting ideas in ways that make the cogent points and flaws in the logic of each totally comprehensible – often while also juggling twisty narratives. This piece doesn't play against that strength, exactly, it's just a nearly impossible setup to nail: A double review of a profoundly flawed and fairly shallow book and a far more thoughtful one, each of which approach similar conclusions (on their surface) by different paths. It's the conundrum faced by teachers everywhere: How to cater to the advanced student and the remedial one at the same time? I found myself somewhere in between: Zakaria's dumbassery gets a patient and charitable unpicking, which is easy to follow though lacking a catty edge that would make things really fun; Perl-Rosenthal's overview is ably analyzed, but, to be honest, I found it tricky to parse his concepts, which, as with most intelligent thought, can't be summarized as brief punchy statements. Late in the piece, Lewis-Kraus brings in the tangible example of the 1619 Project, to show how Perl-Rosenthal's ideas conflict with progressive orthodoxy; this finally made his central claim click for me.
I wished for another page – the final paragraph crams a lot in, and I wanted Lewis-Kraus' perspective to be unpacked more, not just to end on a clever phrase; I'm not sure if his argument that we should "relax our grip on 'revolution' itself" is primarily semantic (perhaps we should expand what we mean by the word) or pragmatic (perhaps the line between revolution and reform is blurrier than often understood). It's also possible there's no difference in that distinction. Maybe the shot heard 'round the world sailed over my head.
"The Next Abortion Battle" (Comment) - Amy Davidson Sorkin mails mifepristone. Davidson Sorkin's strength: Detailed and thoughtful political commentary, usually in brief. This is basically that, but it gets deep into legal weeds in ways that feel more like Lepore's wheelhouse, or maybe Suk Gersen's. Sorkin keeps things clear, and she isn't afraid to state the truth in bold terms.
"Nightbrawler" - Justin Chang sees two Road Houses diverge. Chang's strength (extrapolating from limited data): Reviews that take advantage of their length to explore knotty, complicated movies. Road House is very much not that, and for once I'll say that this probably could've been a two-film column; I don't need to know Chang's take on every supporting performance in this particular flick, which, Chang admits, "passes from memory as quickly as it passes on the screen." Chang's read on Gyllenhaal is nothing special, his gripe about the film's direct-to-video nature is a bit tired, but in random pockets he makes space for pops of prosody: The film's violence is "toggling between intimate, close-quarters stabbery and Looney Tunes-level absurdism"; a "drawling" Sam Elliott provides "pin-up-worthy pulchritude." That packs punch.
Skip Without Guilt:
"Time's Up" - Sam Knight looks back in anger at fourteen years of Tory folly. Knight's strength: Propulsive, character-driven narratives. His piece on a disputed Lucian Freud is a prime example. Knight's also very good on British politics in general, but, again, best when there's a natural narrative scaffolding. Here, the scope is so broad – the entire last fourteen years of British leadership – that his view must, by necessity, be of the thirty-thousand-foot sort. He sums up the gestalt of the era brilliantly early on, comparing it to a "convoluted and ultimately boring dream": "If you really concentrate, you can recall a lot of the details, but that doesn't lead you closer to any meaning."
Unnnfortunately, in the absence of clear meaning or sense, Knight struggles to find an alternate through-line beyond the chronological. This means the piece grows steadily less interesting as it approaches the present moment: The only thing Knight can really add is perspective, and the nearer the present gets, the less perspective is available. The piece presumes the defeat of the Tories, but the question of "what went wrong" is too obvious to bother answering – and somewhat meaningless, as two relative centrists battle it out "'like they're arguing over trivia,' as one blowhard fashy reactionary puts it. Knight oddly chooses that reactionary as his central figure, giving him too much space for no clear narrative reason. He brings to mind a British Steve Bannon; similarly, there's a risk of taking him too seriously just because he knows how to phrase a quote. If you need a refresher on knifecrime island, though, it's still worth reading this up until you get bored.
"Skin Deep" - Jackson Arn bodies the Whitney Biennial. Arn's strength: Clever, thesis-dense prose that delves deep into an artist. Unnnfortunately, the Biennial comes for us all; perhaps the only way to avoid grasping for common themes is to make like Jerry Saltz and write around six sentences. But Arn certainly didn't need to go for the especially dusty gripe of complaining about the wall text! As true as it may be (and this Biennial, which I actually managed to see before the reviews dropped, does have exceptionally tuneless texts) it brings to mind the native speaker who complains about subtitles: Of course you don't need explication, you're an expert! Museums are definitionally didactic; they contain not only the art but a story about the art. Yes, duh, that's troublesome – but if you're throwing anything into the Hudson, maybe start with the lawyers.
As for the art: I agree with all of Arn's takes, but he's not amazing at the rapid-fire thing. If the selected image is of a Fan sculpture, I'd like a descriptor beyond "dun," and I'd love a longer, more Arn-ian look at Suzanne Jackson's gel paintings. Regarding the Nikita Gale – I'm sure Arn's thoughts on copyright and the legal system are his own, but it's funny that in this case they're almost identical to what's written on the label, though he says the piece "might be even stronger without one." I saw that piece as "about" race in music and performance, and as a tribute/memorial for Scott Joplin in particular; I was surprised by the more diffuse, lawyerly perspective on the label. But I was influenced by my knowledge of Gale's other work [^1] – I'm a gallery-hopper, of course the wall text isn't for me.
"Water World" - Kyle Chayka floats through life with houseboat revitalizer Koen Olthuis. Chayka's strength: Close readings of objects, places, and eras (often complete with clever coinages) that snap them into place: Just hearing the word "AirSpace" suddenly unites a whole aesthetic category – and changes the way you look at, and interact with, the world around you. Unnnfortunately, these skills add little to the profile side of this piece, and the architectural-design side is oddly muted – Chayka doesn't spend enough time really delving into what these buildings look like, which is a strange oversight. Olthuis is a remarkably dull subject; his theoretically innovative spirit is undercut by the fact that in practice, for now, he's just building houses for rich people, so he comes across as an ordinary, somewhat frustrated nerd, battling red tape in his chosen corner. Any sense of personal risk is missing; these battles are theoretical for him, which renders the piece bloodless. We get a good sense of the argument over whether Olthuis' ideas are practical, but no sense of whether those ideas are interesting. Chayka's focus on feasibility leaves the piece at sea.
"The Art of Memory" - Doreen St. Félix tours the new Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, which "presents a painstaking narrative history of slavery." St. Félix's strength: Profiles of minor and major celebrities that capture not just their personalities but the importance of the specific role they play to "the culture" – read: both mass culture and, usually, Black culture. (In her tenure as T.V. critic, these profiles were smuggled into her reviews – and all the better for their brevity.) Here, she's unnnfortunately adrift. The brief profile of park (and related museum) founder Bryan Stevenson is serviceable, though largely focused on his reputation over his personality. But things go awry when St. Félix transitions to an art critique; her language goes slack ("His sculpture, of wooden horns that are curled together, like a pair of arms, mimics the trees around it") or strains for feeling gratuitously ("...the park's artifacts feel like more than just momentary portals – they are genuine doors to history.") If not for two lines of halfhearted critique, it could pass for a press release, and not a great one. The park is conceptually fascinating; it deserved a sharper eye.
"Ballparking It" - Adam Gopnik doesn't care if he never gets back. Gopnik's strength: Roving and nerdy takes on surprising subjects. The issue here, unnnfortunately, is that baseball, though it can certainly be nerdy, has been covered by more journalists-per-capita than... maybe any other subject? Gopnik never finds a hook that really compels; his perspective is basically "Baseball: Cool, right?" He tries to spin something about the importance of "games into play and play back into games," a point which is somehow both too obvious and incoherent. It feels like he's trying to describe sports from first concepts, a pointless and doomed endeavor. Ultimately, I just didn't find anything here to be interesting, and Gopnik's tone, which verges on party-ambush infodumping, grows tiresome quickly when you can't get on his wavelength. The button, on videogames as the new sports, is unrefined, mostly irrelevant, and just... annoying.
"Truth or Dare" - Vinson Cunningham pardons the interruption of An Enemy of the People. Cunningham's strength: Careful, detailed description of stagings' formal qualities, especially their lighting. Unnnfortunately, for the second time in a row, Cunningham completely ignores the show's formal qualities, in favor, here, of a long description of the preview protest which has already been covered everywhere and is an unrevealing hook; and of two massive quotes that give away climactic moments for no particular reason. Cunningham's one-paragraph description of Jeremy Strong's performance is good; otherwise, there is simply no reason to read this, whether or not you see the show.
Letters:
Meave Gallagher writes in to complain about Jackson Arn's coverage of Klimt: "I don't know much about art but I do love Vienna Secession artists... How an art critic dances around historical context to explain an artist's evolution is beyond me. Like, Klimt is known as the father of the Vienna Secession for a reason, and that reason wasn't 'a hunger to please.' Please WHOM, exactly? And why?" She also recommends a look into this 2005 show in Frankfurt, which discusses the era.
Michael "thought Gopnik's piece [on Hitler] was the must-read of the week. It fits into my favorite genre of history in this magazine, taking a familiar topic and adding fresh detail."
Zoë Beery agrees that the issue was "thin," and seconds my critique of the copaganda in Paige Williams' piece on retail theft. She also takes issue with Gopnik's description of the Shoah as "the worst thing that has ever happened" – "to place it unqualifiedly in the top spot would be questionable at any time but is incredibly careless right now, when... Israel is carrying out a genocide rooted, essentially, in the same claim."
This comment, combined with Shaw's piece on Neugebauer, prompts me to compel my NYC-based readers to check out "The Ally", which she directed, before it closes on the 7th – it's a brilliant and deeply thought-through explosion on Jewish identity and Zionism. And it's funny, too.
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[^1] That linked piece doesn't really translate in photographs, but it's one of the greatest shows I've seen in a gallery.