Last Week's New Yorker Review: đ„ The Weekend Special (October 27)
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.
Due to an editing error (also known as a âfuckupâ) I did not review the âTakesâ in last weekâs issue! I will include my brief review-of-a-review here; I will also edit the previous edition to include it in its rightful spot, which is high in Window-Shop, between Laneâs Bunny Lang piece and Lachâs Zohran profile.
Schwartz on Acocella (Takes) - Absolutely nails whatâs so wonderful about Acocellaâs writing, âunpretentious plainnessâ wedded to âsophisticationâ. A glowing, quote-heavy tribute/review.
Click through for a very stupid footnote.
đ„ Fiction
âFinal Boyâ by Sam Lipsyte. Two Knapps. fan, fact, facetious. Itâs so rare that the magazine publishes funny stories these days, which is too bad â just about every issue pre-Gottlieb, at least, had a funny story in it (often one by Donald Barthelme, an ever-present inspiration for Lipsyte), whereas now itâs really only Shouts and Murmurs, which is⊠you know. Plus, too often the rare funny story that does make the Fiction section is actually just a slightly longer Shouts. So what a treat to get this from Lipsyte, which is consistently funny, and operates in a reference-heavy satirical mode that feels more and more impossible to get right in this delirious age. (Sophie Kemp is doing it, but sheâs twenty-nine, so the degree of difficulty is lower.) In the best of times I am not the biggest fan of arch isnât-late-modernity-so-random humor, which can feel both easy and sweaty, so my two Knapps are not easily earned; even as I am more than a bit repulsed by the Charles in Charge runner and the silly-named coffee shop and the goofy-evil A.I. therapy job, I admit they all serve the story ably because they show us the speakerâs white-knuckle attempt to retain individuality in a malignantly homogeneous ecosystem. Itâs clever, and because there is no ridiculous incident, just ridiculous scenario (in other words, nothing silly happens, everyday things just happen in silly ways) there is none of the usual hamstring soreness that accompanies prolonged suspension of disbelief.
đ„ Weekend Essay
âThe Real Housewives of Moscowâ by Julia Ioffe. No Downeys. mistress, militant, millionaire. Iâm just sort of exhausted and at a loss here. Ioffe is pretending to be shocked that one of the results of a fascist takeover of a country is that suddenly everyone is acting like fascists. Even calling this a âfeministâ take is strange, since thereâs almost no discussion of anything structural here; everything is framed as individual choice, which is egregious but also too confusing to be mad about. Where does Ioffe think all this atomization is coming from? Apparently itâs the âfailure of the Soviet feminist experimentâ â I genuinely donât think Ioffe is trying to say that Soviet feminism failed because it gave women too much power, but her writing is so cloudy Iâm not sure what else the message is meant to be. (The âhypocrisyâ of granting women freedom without giving them support is⊠not something that led to the near-total demise of feminism in the States, for example. What other factors were at play?) The critique of Russian patriarchy is so veiled I wonder if itâs even there. Even as I write this, I donât feel Iâm being entirely fair; mostly I was just befuddled by this piece, which is maybe poorly excerpted or maybe just taken from a less-than-coherent project. Ioffe is not trying for a structural analysis but for a moral one; even her moral position, though, is difficult to parse.
đ„ Random Pick
âUnion Presidentâ (Profiles) by Richard O. Boyer. (July 6, 13, and 20 1946). Three Fords. ship, strike, speech. A few months before Herseyâs infinitely famous Hiroshima, Boyer published this mostly unknown profile, which is, in its own, less showy way, nearly as masterful. Its legacy is mainly that, after being turned into a long-out-of-print book, it got name-dropped by your friend and mine, Roy Cohn, as part of the McCarthy hearings. âMr. Cohn: âIn this book, The Dark Ship, didn't you give very high praise to Joseph Curran, president of the National Maritime Union?â Mr. Boyer: âI think the book is the best evidence on that and I am not trying to fence with you on this, but the appraisal of Curran is quite a mixed thing. There is praise and criticism in there.ââ That assessment is correct; Curran is inarguably authentic; heâs also a ludicrous roughneck â he happily gets into a fistfight at one point, and favors a murderous metaphor â and itâs not especially surprising to learn, after reading the piece, that he stayed in his position longer than was probably wise, while pulling a somewhat inflated salary. Curran is a hugely compelling character, a late-in-life but natural scholar and an accidental leader (âhe moodily ties sailorsâ knots in the cord of the Venetian blindâ), and the concerns of this piece (political authenticity, identity issues, solidarity-building) usefully recast the labor struggle as an ongoing battle waged, in relatively similar ways, for many decades. (A few past battles are hard to imagine â did you know the Supreme Court once ruled that sailors arenât covered by the 13th Amendment? â while others are still being waged â a conversation on fighting discrimination is refreshingly practical.) Beyond any contemporary political pertinence, this is an incredibly engaging, fast-moving piece. Its structure is a little strange â the third part, possibly the best, which concerns Curranâs life story, would more naturally come first; the first part, which is mostly day-in-the-life storytelling, might gain something from contextualization â but the heartfelt humanism and wry wit of the piece are enough to suggest that Boyer ought to be rediscovered, and that The Dark Ship certainly ought to be reprinted.
đ„ Something Extra
I really dug the very eerie, very Euro, posthuman dance Larsen C at Powerhouse. I also saw, right before it closed, a show of some excellent little paintings of Palestine protests on paper bags by Max Schumann, ex of Printed Matter and also the kid of the Bread and Puppet founders. I got a wire-bound book of Riso prints of the paintings (the last copy they had!), instantly among the coolest things I own. And he was there & was very personable. Also a personable legend: Agosto Machado, whose show (up through Sunday) I got to just a few hours after Hilton Als reviewed it in the magazine, thus granting me the pleasure of having him read the review off my phone.
Sunday Song: