Last Week's New Yorker Review: ☀️ The Weekend Special (July 22)
Pieces are given up to three Jacksons (for fiction), Malcolms (for essays), or Rosses (for your picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Jackson, Malcolm, or Ross indicates a generally positive review.
☀️ Fiction
“Abject Naturalism” by Sarah Braunstein. Three Jacksons. tender, teacher, telescope. A wonderful, romantic, and deceptively complex tale. It would be easy enough to start in the story’s “present” and give us the past as backstory, but opening with a blast of compressed time starts things off kaleidoscopically. We get Amalie’s self-assurance in a few quick strokes,1 after which Toni and Marco’s gradual coming together fills most of the space. It’s remarkable how much a will-they-or-won’t-they dynamic, which could so easily feel worn out, can still serve as a potent narrative engine. It helps that the danger which underlies this dynamic is made explicit but never exploitative. Braunstein is attuned to the subtleties of class dynamics, as her interviewer (Willing Davidson) points out, but the story is also about storytelling, and our interest in others. The eventual minor revelation about Marco and the telescope connects to Toni’s difficulty coming up with stories, but not in any easy-to-put-together way. The fourth-wall-break at the end is a bravura flourish; I have a major issue with children-in-peril as a narrative driver, so I really liked the almost political stance the story takes against that sort of thing. Beyond any clever analysis, there’s just a lot to enjoy here; a believable tripartite dynamic pulled taut as a string.
☀️ Weekend Essay
“What We Know About the Weaponization of Sexual Violence on October 7th” by Masha Gessen. Two Malcolms. trauma, traction, truth. I’ve happened upon some Twitter criticism of this piece from the left, but I have to say I don’t think it’s fair. Gessen isn’t juxtaposing October 7th with the Bosnian mass rapes in order to equate the two; they’re very clear that it’s because Bosnia was the first time assault narratives “were told, preserved, and ultimately used to prosecute some of the perpetrators” – akin to what Israel is attempting, despite the vast differences in the situations and how much proof is available. This piece is very critical of the Israeli apparatus, which has spread some grotesque fabrications – the opening anecdote concerns the extreme “crackdown on dissent” inside Israel, the closing section sheds light on rape as a reality in the I.D.F, and the stance of total denial in Israel that functions to shield its perpetrators. In between, Gessen makes it very clear that reports of public or extreme assaults on the 7th are totally unsubstantiated. I’m open to the argument – in fact, I’ve made the argument several times around here – that the magazine ought to be devoting significantly more space to the situation in Gaza as it unfolds. But that doesn’t mean they can’t cover October 7th, especially in skeptical and fair-minded fashion, as Gessen does here.
☀️ Your Pick
“Pointe Counterpointe” by Kevin Conley. (Dec 9, 2002). Three Rosses. shuffle, shoe, showdown. A reader writes that this piece “made such an impact on me that I started to add ‘or a writer at [the magazine]’ to my usual answer of ‘A professional dancer’ when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up (I was 12 years old at the time of publication). I haven't read it since then and am curious about your take!” What a charming anecdote, and I have to say, your twelve-year-old self was onto something: This is a snappy winner. A version of the story did well on Reddit’s r/HobbyDrama about a year ago, and it was covered by the excellent Articles of Interest podcast shortly before that, but Conley got there well before either – and nailed the assignment. Time hasn’t resolved the question of whether the Gaynor Minden is the superior shoe – ultimately, it has advantages and disadvantages, but it’s also certainly true that its comfort can be as much the latter as the former in a rather masochistic field. Conley isn’t too concerned with philosophizing; mostly, he focuses on characters and their quotes. The mentor: “The shoe looks gorgeous on her foot. Excuse me. Excuse me!” The craftsman: “Most difficult shoe – period. Everything else is pie compared to this.” The loyal customer: “I can’t get used to another [shoe] maker. It’s like changing husbands.” And those are practically consecutive. To come: The passively demanding mom, the physical therapist, the dance critic (hi, Joan!), and an incredible ending one-two punch of suffering, triumph, and torn connective tissue. A piece as precise as a pirouette – but probably less painful.
Conley’s been out of the magazine business for eight years now, working mainly as a ghostwriter, and also, judging by his Instagram2, tending to a flourishing garden. He seems to have mainly been an editor, but clearly he’s a crack journalist, too. And I’m certain I never would’ve stumbled across his work if not for my lovely readers.
☀️ Something Extra
brief thoughts on an online piece:
“The Irresolvable Tragedy of the Karen Read Case” by Jessica Winter. A grim but quite good recounting of a crime story, especially in the last section, where Winter connects the story to alcoholism – “a totalizing drinking culture” around Boston that’s a big part of why the case is “unresolved, perhaps irresolvable”. Winter’s writing has a dark beauty to it as she describes the blackout drinker, “a person who, in that moment, doesn’t fully exist”.
“Your Pick” is a piece chosen by a randomly selected paying subscriber. (Except when it’s a “Random Pick”, in which case it’s chosen by random number generation.) Have a piece you want to be "Your Pick"? If you're a paying subscriber, you can also skip the vicissitudes of fate and force your way to the front of the line! Venmo $20 per request to @SamECircle, then write me an email or a note on Venmo letting me know you've done so and what your requested piece is. No limit on the number of requests, BTW. If you want to give me a more open-ended prompt ("1987 reported feature by a woman") that's great as well – and pieces from other venues are okay too, if you ask nicely.
The Sunday Song:
It was really odd reading this story on the subway to Lincoln Center where I watched Annie Baker’s new film “Janet Planet”, which also concerns a single mother’s romantic connections while she raises a headstrong kid of roughly the same age. There’s even a climactic rhyme in Braunstein’s story: “Amalie my anomaly”. The pieces almost had too much in common to be “in conversation” with each other.
I’m not going to link to it, don’t be weird.