Last Week's New Yorker Review: š³ The Weekend Special (May 6)
Welcome to the Weekend Special.
Pieces are given up to three Munros (for fiction), Sontags (for essays), or Herseys (for your picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Munro, Sontag, or Hersey indicates a generally positive review.
š³ Fiction
āPulseā by Cynan Jones. No Munros. hero, pine, thwack. Jones mostly pulls off his amplified style, which pairs a Jack London-esque focus on the unbearable intensity of nature with a Welsh flavor of its own ā more onomatopoeic, more roving. A few times I was snagged by his language ā I had to Google the different meanings of āquarryā to make sense of one metaphor. Iām not sure how much is willful opacity and how much is just the condition of being Welsh. Itās all in service of a simple, eerie narrative in which a man and his family are menaced by a storm. Unfortunately, it hits the same tonal note again and again; the underlying sense of instability is reflected in every action, every moment. Thereās no real room for lift or change ā itās hardly a narrative at all, more of a tone poem on Man V. Nature themes, complete with a wife and daughter that are mostly there to be protected from harm. Iām tired of climate change stories with no economic point of view. Itās about more than saving your babies, dude.
š³ Weekend Essay 1
āHow to Eat a Rattlesnakeā by John Paul Brammer. One Sontag. men, bites, skin. I love Brammerās newsletter and am happy to see him published here for the first time. This piece feels slightly over-edited; his inimitable voice, shorn of its ebullience and run-ons, has shifted to something more like a college-admissions essay. Still a rather strong one ā the connection between his queerness and rattlesnakes never feels forced, itās just a dual link between a few anecdotes which deepen when placed in a row. Thereās some humor here (āāYo, whatās your relationship with Christ like?āā) and a straightforwardness about queer oppression thatās more moving for its restraint. Its bite wonāt knock you out ā but itāll leave an impression.
š³ Weekend Essay 2
āThe Hidden-Pregnancy Experimentā by Jia Tolentino. Two Sontags. maternity, media, monitors. Somewhat false advertising: Tolentinoās supposed social experiment is totally half-assed and shrugged off quickly. Thatās just a peg; her real interest is in connecting our surveillance-capitalist landscape with motherhood and pregnancy in particular, and itās a connection she draws ably, without too much metaphor. Pregnancy is a literal conduit to state surveillance, and to individual practices of surveillance, too. Tolentino is so good at this kind of high-level state-of-things-now essay; she manages to make it feel visceral because she makes the stakes, both broadly and for her in particular, very clear.
Shouts to the magazineās Pulitzer winners: This brief comic piece by Medar de la Cruz, which I hadnāt read previously ā itās pretty good, although that category is a bit of a āweāll keep awarding this until the work improvesā situation, and Sarah Stillmanās piece on felony murder, a must-read.
Shouts also to Angie Wang, whose finalist comic would probably have been my choice to win; Justin Chang, who won for L.A. Times columns he put out before he left for the greener pastures of the magazine, and to Vinson Cunningham, also a finalist in that category. No shouts to the third finalist, Zadie Smith; Iām a big fan generally, but frankly, thank god I donāt have to cover that godawful essay she wrote for the magazine online this week, because christā¦
As always, a smattering of the arts & letters winners and finalists have written for the magazine: fiction writers Ed Park & Yiyun Li, memoirists Jonathan Rosen & Andrew Leland, poets Robyn Schiff & Jorie Graham. The General Nonfiction winner Nathan Thrall has been interviewed by Isaac Chotiner a couple of times, one of the Biography winners was reviewed in the magazine (not to my liking) and a finalist was covered online. Thereās some open tabs for your workweek!
Have a piece you want to be "Your Pick"? If you're a paying subscriber, you can get a review of any piece in the magazine's history: 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 ā and pieces from other venues are okay too, if you ask nicely.