Last Week's New Yorker Review: š„ The Weekend Special (September 1)
The Weekend Special
Pieces are given up to three Knapps (for fiction), Downeys (for essays), or Fords (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Knapp, Downey, or Ford indicates a generally positive review.
I forgot to change the email title last week. It was the August 25 edition but was labeled August 18.
š„ Fiction
āProjectā by Rachel Cusk. No Knapps. actor, accountant, acquire. Cuskās style is deliberately icy, usually threading her philosophical musings about the demands of art through an ambiguous narrative of alienated modernity. My issue is certainly not her choice to try to write against the demands of narrative; doing so, though, demands that your musings have a consistent electricity; here, there is a lot of stuff about the nature of fame and its effect on our moving through the world that feels sort of rote. Itās not overdetermined; Cusk makes a variety of points that arch in various distinct directionsā¦ but not enough of them surprise. The last segment shifts to an odd, close collective third person āĀ which would be more striking if Cuskās voice didnāt already edge so deliberately close to the rough equivalent, in which, despite circling an āIā, there is a deliberate haziness around this character, whose mind we never feel entirely embedded within. I suppose Cusk is exploring the idea of distance from identity āĀ alienation, the condition of modernism, et cetera. And maybe also something deterministic about gender and artistry, as is her wontĀ of late āĀ though this element isnāt too distracting here. The speaker has given up on acting, content to just look, while also idealizing actors; eventually, as the story folds in on itself, itās as though the closeness of experience becomes too much for the speaker to hold. Cuskās writing is often called ātenseā, but this element is totally missing here; there is a pervasive slackness (perhaps the result of writing to a prompt?) and a sense that the storyteller is refusing not just to act but even to pay close attention.
š„ Weekend Essay
āMy Mother, New Orleansā by Jeanie Reiss. No Downeys. Frustrating in much the opposite way from the Cusk: Reissā tone is so teary and yearning, so obviously heartfelt, it grows a bit repulsive when her points are muddled. Reiss pivots toward anthropological analysis (āThere is something thrilling about a city that embraces death the way New Orleans doesā) before we know very much at all about her upbringing; the ghosts of race and, especially, class haunt this piece, which is most compelling when Reiss speaks plainly about her parentsā alcoholism, and grows less persuasive as she justifies her transposition of these traits onto a place that canāt possibly hold them. Of course we all associate our parents with the places we lived as children, but Reiss continually validates this metaphor without unpacking its oddity. My read of this piece is that it is largely about upward mobility; Reiss feels guilty for transcending her circumstances, and to process this has decided that the place in which she experienced these circumstances is actually responsible for them, and even definable by them. There is something weird about this, because it means New Orleans stands in for poverty and alcoholism, while New York stands in for a numb, placeless prosperityā¦ but of course plenty of New York babies grew up in poverty, and there are definitely some wards in NOLA where, these days, you could live a childhood not all that different in style or substance from that of a kiddo in Park Slope. They do sell seven-hundred-dollar strollers everywhere now, you know. The real question is: Why does Reiss feel such guilt that she can afford one?
š„ Random Pick
āBooksā by Harry Este Dounce1. (Jan 16, 1926.) Two Fords. institutions, independents, intellectuals. Funny, bright, snappy reviews of books youāve never heard of ā maybe Van Loonās Tolerance, among the more popular generalist histories of the era. If I had to research to get Dounceās joke ā that he likes Van Loonās childrenās picture book better ā it was worth it. Heās also good on a meh book about H.L. Mencken (āsuch stuff as enterprising professors write and publishers take to market after somebody has, beyond mistake, arrivedā) and a truly obscure book of essays on the American West (āweā¦ canāt trust ourself to be parliamentary, let alone gallant to herā¦ even when we like what she says, we always detest the air with which she says itā¦ a frightfully bright and rather priggish Bryn Mawr undergraduateās theme.ā) Thereās even a rather contemporary jab at Gerouldās dismissive race politics (āIn these papers she discovers that there is a West beyond the corn belt, and that natives of most parts of it are really splendid fellows, on whom Eastern culture, in her person, is delighted to bestow the accoladeā.) Anyone who thinks the small handful of actually catty critics still writing are somehow a contemporary manifestation of lefty social-media culture have the story completely backward; there ought to be more of what Andrea Long Chu fondly terms āBad Criticsā these days āĀ if only someone were paying.
š„ Something Extra
I donāt know if it was theater orā¦ what, but this Fight Back thing was certainly worth my evening. Next one is in October.
Sunday Song:
The writer is credited as Touchstone, which, according to Thomas Mallon in a fairly recent piece, was a pseudonym for Dounce. ā©