September 7, 2025

Last Week's New Yorker Review: September 1 & 8

Last Week’s New Yorker, week of September 1 & 8

“Would a bird poop yellow? Maybe, if it had a liver problem.”

Must-Read:

“Vaunted” (Dept. of Amplification) - Zach Helfand erases errata. Largely a series of anecdotes about the fact-checking department, which is a real “had me at hello” proposition. That’s assuming those anecdotes aren’t of the print-the-legend variety, and thankfully the bulk of Helfand’s are of the inside-scoop sort, minus a few recent reader letters. (I remembered them, but how could one forget “‘The chicken is NOT wearing overalls [which you mention twice]. He is wearing lederhosen.’”) The usual Edna St. Vincent Millay origin story is given, but with caveats; when Helfand launches into a description of Ross’ approach to truth, one sees not only how much his attitude influenced the magazine, but also how much his manner of speaking became its ersatz-posh house tone, one that largely survives today. (“‘By God, if it’s very slender he couldn’t have rowed this boat with it.’”) The choice to pretend as though this piece is being fact-checked as it’s being written – one section begins “So far, Anna has found errors of counting, errors of framing…” – is delightful in a loopy, meta way. And Helfand even starts to build a kind of dichotomy of character between a Jay McInerny, perhaps the first checker fired by the department (“‘Why don’t you just write it and see what the fact-checking department says?’”) and a Martin Baron, who lasted thirty-six years (“After Baron’s death, Ian Frazier recalled, ‘Gesturing to the water below the window, he once said to me, “I think that’s the Hudson River.”’”) To give too many of Helfand’s other anecdotes away would be to give away the joy, minus Helfand’s snappy pacing and generally clever callbacks. I guarantee you’ll have fun – and if you don’t, write in; I’ll have to issue a correction.

Window-Shop:

A periodic reminder – included because you’ll need it, this week – that pieces are sorted, top to bottom, in order of preference; a high window-shop, in other words, is superior to a low.

“A Novelist in Covers” (Showcase) - Chris Ware asks not for whom the bell cord rips. Mary Petty’s covers are quite superb, and perhaps better grouped together than on their own; Ware examines them with such care one wonders if a column on illustration from him might become a more regular feature. Ware fixates on the covers’ “existential” sadnesses, which makes sense if you know Chris Ware; there is a bit more humor, though, than he credits. Petty’s horrific death might be taken as a bitterly ironic indicator of the city’s ‘70s decline – the Victorian era she illustrated was truly over and done with – or as what it was, a terrible, random tragedy.

“After the Algorithm” (Annals of Artificial Intelligence) - Joshua Rothman takes a world-dissociation test. I had no expectations for this; Rothman is a thoughtful writer but he can be rather staid, even a bit conservative, and while I don’t keep up with his column, which features lots of A.I. coverage, I vaguely thought of him as a slop positivist. (The hideous generated artwork didn’t help my preconceptions.) This is by no means a broadside, to be sure, it’s more of a personal essay, and largely one about frustration at an industrialized world’s seemingly ever-increasing banality. That’s a conception I’m more amenable to, and treating A.I. as just one more major example and accelerator of this trend is a weirdly revelatory framing. Maybe it takes philosophy to remind us that the individual is not a corporation or a sorting algorithm controlled by one, but something much stranger; if Rothman’s view of the ineffable is both boring and very much elite (his view of the “world of culture” is defined by his Princeton creative writing professor, a world easier to “write your way in” to if you’re, you know, attending Princeton) we each have our own ineffable worlds (or we ought to). Rothman is clearly one of those thinkers who feels that in trying A.I. tools, it will become clear to us exactly where we ought to, and ought not to, use them; having seen how the social-media world has developed, I’m inclined to think this grants people’s critical thinking skills a bit too much credit. (He also spends a while talking to the makers of an A.I. sketch comedy series, who apparently “‘have an edge’” because they “‘understand lighting, lenses, film stock’” – which, after you watch what they’re making, may cause you to wonder if filmmaking should be a skill with a revocable license.)

Thankfully, Rothman pairs his try-it-out position not only with the usual vague advocacy for regulation, but also with extended observations of the many places he finds A.I. to be useless, meaningless, stagnant, and possibly creating a cultural dystopia; a topic which fills the latter two thirds of the piece, and which leaves a reader wondering if any of this shit is worth it. Of course, like any technology, the Luddite position is only meaningful if one can get a few friends together to smash some cotton mills; otherwise, it’s mostly just contrarianism. (I don’t even own a TV!) The broad environmental impact of these products is disturbing, but it’s weird how that discussion has often circumvented the hard-earned common knowledge that blaming individuals for the climate catastrophe is how corporations distract us. I do wonder if an outside, authoritative human source detailing how good A.I. is at different tasks might be really helpful; the trouble with an endlessly effusive machine is that it will convincingly lie to you about its own abilities. The people selling it have reason to take those lies at face value. But A.I’s face isn’t what it looks like.

“Every Sword Fight Is a Conversation” (Letter from Tokyo) - Matt Alt brings a story to Shōnen tell. As far as I can tell, this is the first anime/manga coverage in the magazine since a 2011 Schjeldahl review of a Japan Society show featuring artists playing with the look, if not even necessarily working in the form. It’s a startling lack, especially as the medium grows more and more popular in the West. (Unlike American superhero movies, anime based on manga tend to remain quite loyal to the original, and therefore the two forms tend to reinforce each other’s popularity. Superhero comics did not boom along with their films.) Kagurabachi is an interesting pull; I wonder if focusing on a violent, dark-fantasy manga reinforces American stereotypes about the genre. Alt is a true subject-matter expert, and I trust his judgement, but notably the awards he juries and co-hosts have not yet nominated Kagurabachi, preferring more left-field subjects like fantasy cooking and queer slice-of-life horror.

Anyway, this is a fine article, though it focuses so much on how grueling the production process of weekly manga is that one can only wonder if monthly drops just make more sense – Alt never presents a solid rationale for weekly releases, just lots of justifiable complaint. The broader history of shōnen manga publication is much-appreciated, especially because Alt dives into its fascinating connection with radical politics in the country. I also never realized that America and Japan had dual anti-comics crusades at roughly the same time; and I wish Alt had gestured toward their connection, if there was one. The comics artist Hokazono, meanwhile, never seems like a true artiste, just a talented, driven, very young guy; Alt doesn’t quote him much, perhaps because he didn’t say much of note (“when we spoke, he declined to go into any details about his personal life”), and the article is thus driven more by its subject matter than its subject. That’s okay because the subject matter has been covered so little. Maybe they ought to convene a panel.

🗣 “Sweating It” (Storytelling Dept.) - Leslie Jamison won’t wave the white towel. Yee-haw! Jamison’s first Talk – and she’s cooking with, well, wood. But it’s hot!

“Pray, Love, Repeat” (Books) - Jia Tolentino wears her poker face All the Way to the River. As ever, excellent work, though Tolentino has to rush through Gilbert’s impossible story to make sure there’s time left to analyze it. Indeed, I’d strongly recommend you have the tale unspooled by Gilbert in the excerpt from The Cut, and only then return for Tolentino’s take. In reverse order – the way I did it – the air’s let out. Tolentino spends one part praising Gilbert’s early prose, another part critiquing her recent; her excerpts are solid evidence of the latter, though really most of Gilbert’s writing, including the Italian-food stuff Tolentino praises, doesn’t work out of its slightly delirious context. She suggests that Gilbert has been too influenced by the Instagram captions that she, in turn, helped inspire; her most compelling idea is that the “amnesiac perpetual becoming” Gilbert exemplifies may be a product of narrative record-keeping itself. It’s dangerous to read your own journal – or to scroll back a bit too far. You never know which self you might end up confessing to.

Heller on White (Takes) - White’s paragraph is truly top-notch, and Heller addresses his editing process, noting how each trim strengthened his piece. Heller could have taken some notes and cut his final paragraph (and possibly the first two) entirely.

“Under the Hammer” (A Reporter at Large) - Sam Knight hopes Patrick Drahi reaps what he Sotheby’s. How much patience do you have for evil people doing annoying things to somewhat malignant but certainly storied institutions? Would you like a deep dive into pokerfastlane.com, which recently acquired the Sheinhardt Wig Company? Knight is happy to deliver, at somewhat excruciating but meticulously well-researched length. (This is the sort of piece where the third section begins “The word ‘auction’ comes from the Latin auctio, which means ‘increase.’ But it’s always been a bit more complicated than that.” You don’t say!) If it’s immediately obvious to you that Sotheby’s relies on expertise and, especially, the perception of expertise more than any business I can think of, well, then you’re smarter than Drahi, who put his son in charge of blowing money in China and implemented an “American newspaper” management style to the rest of the place, e.g: buyouts, bizarre dictates, and the breaking of souls. There are certainly a few points that look uniquely bad – selling art to yourself to make it look like business is booming: that’s a tough one – but mostly this story is familiar. Knight hardly has to punch the most ironic point: That this is what comes, in the end, of selling yourself to the highest bidder.

🗣 “Bang! Boing! Splat!” (Surround Sound) - Michael Schulman adds an entry to Fred Armisen’s encycloonomatopoeidia. Has a sound effect on the reader, in two senses: You’re almost certain to hear yourself laughing.

“The Play’s the Thing” (The Theatre) - Helen Shaw bends the misrules. An “amusing” but featherweight Twelfth Night dominated by Orsino? That sounds a bit like every production I’ve ever seen. The best Shakespeare productions hold many things in their arms, but it’s always far easier to pick a tone and stay there. This needs both more and less time: I’d take Shaw’s class on the Bard, but I don’t have much use for a list of her nitpicks of a show I’m not going to stand in line for six hours to see.

“Once Upon A Time in Hollywood” (Books) - Sloane Crosley thinks you oughtn’ta be in picture books. Crosley did nothing wrong here, it’s just that Emily Gould took on exactly the same assignment last year, and this is one prompt that is better served by a fleshed-out listicle than an essay. Besides, Gould found both a worse celeb children’s book (while duchess Meghan’s bad scansion is miserable, Natalie Portman’s performative-woke Aesop is truly insufferable) and a better one (Emma Thompson is a ringer in this category, but she’s in on a technicality.) Neither mentions my pick, which is Spike and Tonya Lee’s “Please, Baby, Please”, a beautifully illustrated (by magazine regular Kadir Nelson) rhythmic gem for the very young. Crosley’s prose is rhythmic, and some of her burns are fun (“the book champions originality, a virtue it never exhibits”), but I’m not totally convinced by the perseverance-or-individualism dichotomy she posits; she has to break it a few times, and I was never clear on whether it’s meant to encompass children’s books in general (no way!) or just the celeb variety (maybe there’s a case.) I’m also not sure I trust Crosley’s taste: She mentions liking a Dale Earnhardt book about a race-car graveyard, which, as she points out, has “a tonal funkiness” – I’d say it’s sorta ghoulish. If she’s mostly reviewing brand-new releases (the Sotomayor and Ardern books aren’t even out yet) it would be interesting to consider what these books say about the present moment in children’s books, which, like any creative medium, have trends. That would require a bit more expertise: They should’ve sent a children’s librarian.

Skip Without Guilt:

“Créme de la Créme” (The Weekend Essay) - Ruby Tandoh had to do the cooking by the book. (What?) Tandoh can make anything readable, but she is obviously no expert on reality-competition casting, which near-universally screens for “purity of intention”, though the purity Survivor wants (are you here because you want to try your best to win this game?) is surely different from the purity The Bachelor seeks (do you truly seem to believe that you are the only woman here for ‘the right reasons’ even if you are also definitely trying to sell merch?). If you watch Bake Off, you can certainly skip Tandoh recounting its highlights and catchphrases; if you want a real look inside, you won’t quite find it here. “Before the cameras started rolling, we were miked and aproned up, and I would pop an ineffective herbal anti-anxiety candy” – that’s the sort of thing on offer. Everyone from her season seems to be exactly who they appeared to be on telly, to a degree that almost beggars belief – the ebullient psychologist gives Ruby a motivational speech, the decorative perfectionist gives her that anti-anxiety candy… and twists bread dough all night in her hotel room. No revelation means no rise – but, as they say on the show, the flavor is good.

“Everything Nice” (A Critic at Large) - Kelefa Sanneh thinks we’re out of the Poptimist prime. Sanneh works toward a compelling point here, but I don’t think he quite gets to the bottom of his own argument. If music reviews are always positive these days, and Anthony Fantano, one of the most popular and influential music critics¹, is pretty ruthless, then can it really be the viciousness of fans that is allegedly making reviewers tamp down their takes? Could it just be that they, too, are sometimes uncritical fans? The insultingly insipid new T. Swift offering² does have a shockingly high Metacritic score, but that’s weighted by a Rolling Stone 100 from a man who’s coming out with a book about how great Taylor Swift is – come on – and certainly does not indicate that critics “virtually all agreed” the album was “pretty good”. This may just be a problem with Metacritic, or with caring more about the score than the writing. It’s weird to see Sanneh play into that. It’s also funny that one of the examples he gives of a negative review comes from Amanda Petrusich, who has arguably not given a negative review to an album in these pages in over a year, when she panned – oh, huh, that’s funny. The idea that the poptimist mindset is exclusively about celebration is also ahistorical; if you think Meghan Trainor and AJR are as likely to put out good music as Carly Rae Jepsen and Lana Del Rey just because they sell similarly, you are not a poptimist, you are either a normie or unbelievably irony-poisoned; this is not a world about hits and flops, as Sanneh indicates, but about something stranger – control of the narrative. Mostly I just think Sanneh’s argument is scattered, which is presumably why my rebuttal has turned out scattered as well. That or someone pressed “shuffle” when I wasn’t looking.

Two movie reviews³ (The Current Cinema) - Justin Chang thinks breakin’ up is maybe not that hard to do, actually. The negative opener is more disappointed than vicious, and thus largely lifeless; the capsule finisher, while genuinely related thematically, is still rushed-through. Chang’s style does not cleanly accommodate the two-picture review (this is his first); he needs time to build momentum.

“Auteurs, Inc.” (Onward and Upward with the Arts) - Alex Barasch is A24-sensing celluloid man. Pegged to that worrisome press release announcing the company would focus on mid-budget offerings, but unsure whether we need to worry. One narrative is that A24, having developed a talented roster, will now give them the resources they need to take bigger swings like Eggers’ Northman (its production chronicled in the magazine) and Nosferatu or Reichardt’s upcoming The Mastermind. The other is that the timeline there doesn’t work out – they probably could’ve funded the new Reichardt as part of these efforts – and more venture capital money will lead to a push for profits which will probably also lead to a push to exert more control over films, the thing they’ve staked their success on not doing. That’s an interesting enough story; what isn’t is the company’s success with viral marketing, which boils down to: They tried it and it worked! It’s impossible to fully know how much marketing contributes to the success of films; I have absolutely met people who go to see “A24 films” regardless of the director (truly bizarre behavior, sorry) but I also don’t think they ran out to see On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, or whatever; if it doesn’t look like an A24 movie (spicy, hazy, American), it might as well not be one. I don’t think there’s a way to artificially create the conditions that lead to Moonlight; without that film leading the way, A24 just doesn’t become the brand it is, guerilla advertising or no. A24’s executives seem genuinely thoughtful and invested in the creative side, but plenty of startups look that way until they don’t.

“Going Viral” (Profiles) - Alexandra Schwartz looks for the Key to Patricia Lockwood. There’s a formative flaw here that I’m not sure any writer could overcome. If you’re a regular Lockwood reader, literally nothing here will come as a surprise – it’s all straight out of her writing. If you’re not a Lockwood reader, I’m not sure finding out her life story without the very thing that makes it compelling – her prose and twisty insight – would have any appeal. I’m somewhere in-between (I’ve read most of her LRB columns and No One Is…⁴) so I was equally hit by both downsides. Schwartz’s occasional apparent attempt to sound like Lockwood (her partner is like “Mr. Clean’s laid-back little brother”) is awkward, her pointing it out is worse (“There is a kind of Lockwood lens that brings into focus the improbable and hilariously bizarre features lurking in the midst of ordinary life”) and the eventual plodding chronological biography, which abandons the Lockwood lens, is possibly worse still. If you read Lockwood’s latest (superb) story for the magazine, you’ll have to read a plot synopsis; if you read the interview about it, you’ll have to read most of that material over again. Is there a right way to profile a memoirist/autofictionist? Maybe, but start-to-finish isn’t it.

“Critical Distance” (Portfolio) - Richard Renaldi snaps judgement. The magazine is allowed to be self-aggrandizing for its birthday, as a treat. However, I really have no need to scroll through what is basically just a series of fancy headshots of its writers. Interesting only for reminding me that Casey Cep and Kathryn Schulz are a couple and live in a part of Maryland that may be the most annoying place to travel to on the contiguous East Coast. Good for them!

Cusk on Spark (Takes) - I didn’t like Cusk’s story so I wasn’t gonna like her rationale; even so, this is exceptionally circuitous. But no biggie: Nothing all that bad in this issue, really, which is saying something – it’s a lotta words!

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Letters:

Michael O. says: “Hua Hsu's piece on R.F. Kuang promised something about the process behind a wunderkind. I guess the process is just be really, really smart.”

Michael also liked Leslie Jamison’s piece on perfectionism more than I did: While it “had its holes”, it merited a recommendation to friends who don’t usually read the magazine.

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Marry, and you will regret it;

don’t marry, you will also regret it;