Last Week’s New Yorker Review: December 25, 2023
Last Week’s New Yorker, week of December 25
Hey paying subscribers! My eternal gratitude for your support. I'm almost done ironing out the last few snafus with the transition to Buttondown; one of which may have caused you not to receive this week's Cartoon and Poem Supplement on Monday – so I'm re-sending that to all of you as well. Your subscriptions have been paused while we switch over, but they'll kick back in very soon.
Must-Read:
Nothing quite rose to the level this week, since most of the issue consisted of comics (covered last week; here's my favorite strip, consider that the must-read) and puzzles (I solved a few and was stumped by others, but have no commentary on any of them.)
Window-Shop:
"Spacing Out" - James Wood boards the I.S.S. with the new novel from Samantha Harvey. Skip the first section, fairly shallow preliminary musings. Wood's gift is for quote-heavy exegesis, especially when he loves the writing in question, as he does here. The connections he draws to Melville and Woolf ring true, but the real gift is his probing of Harvey's philosophy, her "generous agnosticism," and her prose, with its "musical modulations" that move "into the key of the metaphysical." It helps that astronautics hasn't been thoroughly mined by the fictional world, so the "spectacular strangeness" on display is both textual and extratextual.
"Family Matters" - Kathryn Schulz tracks down the homebody Polish Jew who might be her relative. Best when least directly engaged with the somewhat mundane genealogy narrative at its center, which draws its tension from questions Schulz can't resolve. The two far poles concern Bruno Schulz's work and the closing question of Jewish and Israeli claims to secular artists – the latter I find personally interesting, as the descendant of a secular Jewish artist Holocaust survivor. The former analysis could, on the one hand, be written by anyone at the magazine who loves Bruno Schulz, but Kathryn Schulz's insight into his self-negation and fear bring him to life as a character.
"Rearrangements" - Natan Last rewords himself. The main thrust of this piece concerns Indian puzzler Mangesh Ghogre, whose immigration journey through puzzles is charming. Last wants to make a broad point about diversification of clues; it's a worthy enough stance, but not novel to me, and it doesn't always follow naturally from Ghogre's story, which leaves the whole piece somewhat labored, trying to connect an "across" with a "down" that doesn't have the same letters. There are lots of parallel images that try to make up for this; a few are compelling ("constructors load a clue with the kind of accolades" that might secure a visa application) but most feel clever for clever's sake. Last is writing about American culture, but he never quite articulates why crosswords are representative of that culture, and his idea of "crossword diplomacy" smacks a bit of representation matters liberalism. Despite some messiness, though, it's hard not to recommend a piece this pleasant and well-meaning. Ghogre is charming, and Last gets his points... across.
"Musical Revolution" - Vinson Cunningham grooves to two musicals based on documentaries. The main review, discussing Buena Vista Social Club, is excellent, with vivid description (Songs remind one character of "political interludes whose senselessness and brutality have left unmusical lacunae in her life,") and a well-articulated critique of the show's reluctance to focus on politics. ("...to have [skin] color be the clearest takeaway is to have failed to consider something huge about the afterlife of colonization, the alchemy of revolutionary rhetoric, and the troubling hemispheric influence of the United States.") The second review is insultingly half-baked; it doesn't really bother to criticize the show it's reviewing, but something so dashed-off can hardly read as positive. It adds nothing – at least it's brief.
"Royal Blues" - Inkoo Kang abdicates at last. Perfectly serviceable; never very special. Kang lodges some reasonable critiques of the increasingly Monarchist show, but there's no vinegar in them, and thus nothing to wake me up – necessary here, given how little I care about The Crown or the crown.
Skip Without Guilt:
"Speed" - Ed Caesar hyperventilates for hypercars. Begins as a sort of human-interest dumb-rich-guys story, which is entertaining enough – an early quote nails their million-dollar cars as "big-game hunter's trophies" that are "appealing to the very worst of us." Quickly, though, Caesar loses the cocked eye and pivots to a straightforward, engineering-heavy profile of the biggest names in hypercar development. These sections, which make up most of the piece, are mind-numbingly repetitive ("Again there were hangars") and serve as an apologia for a gross toy of the elite. The late-breaking argument that, actually, these cars may be good for the environment because they develop efficient technology is in bad faith (making gas cars more efficient should no longer be the goal). And Caesar's various descriptions of accelerating monstrosities never manage to convey any thrill. Perhaps car nerds will get a kick out of this; those of us with other priorities can steer clear.
Letters:
I put this week's letters in Monday's free Cartoon & Poem Supplement. What did you think of this week’s issue? I love receiving any and all notes, just reply to this email!