Last Week's New Yorker Review: đ„ The Weekend Special (August 11)
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.
đ„ Fiction
âAn Unashamed Proposalâ by Kiran Desai. Two Knapps. mail, manner, marry. Desai has been working on her new novel for an astonishing twenty years, and not in a side-project way â as she says, âIâve labored over every sentence in this book for hours â more than hours, months.â This is a long excerpt from the book. All that labor does show; there is a hard crust over all this language, especially the dialogue, and never any sense that we are moving at the pace of life, yet as with a Hitchcock film this is much of the appeal: The romance of artificial perfection. To be clear, that doesnât mean this is a romance; the relationship at the center of this story is curdled, more profoundly than either party wants to admit. There is lots of fascinating background on the backbiting wealthy NYC immigrant diaspora. Most of the story is about interracial and cross-cultural understanding, which is hugely compelling when itâs internal (âSunny registered his own hypocrisy, too, when he looked away from other Indians he saw on the streetâIndians who were also avidly ignoring him, trying to make it in America by avoiding one anotherâ), but far more contrived when the main couple bickers. (ââItâs far easier,â Ulla, however, said, âfor you to say youâre from Delhi than for me to say Iâm from Prairie Hill, Kansas. New York favors foreigners.â) The excerpting is well done, but this never quite passes for a truly self-contained short story (especially when Lou Orsini makes his cameos) â the ending section cuts away to Sunnyâs mother and her own cultural anxieties, but if this is an attempt at juxtaposition, itâs an awkward one â after a months-spanning montage of Sunny, the Babita section is firmly tethered to a moment in time. This effect jolts, but not in a way that deepens either scene. Still, one admires this product mostly for the intricate, masterly carving of details. Itâs one thing to paint so many fish you can dash one off; itâs another thing, though, to spend decades painting a fish so detailed one can see the whole ocean in it.
đ„ Weekend Essay
âWatching the âKing of the Hillâ Revival from Texasâ by Rachel Monroe. One Downey. problems, promises, propane. The âessayâ part of this essay is pretty paltry, but as a fanâs mixed review of the new King of the Hill revival, itâs solid. I especially appreciate the formal critique of the animation, which, frankly, looks horrid, like an AfterEffects project, to my eyes. The question of who this is for is pretty pertinent â if youâre already a fan, you wonât need the recap; if you arenât a fan, an essay that dwells so much on nostalgia for the series might not resonate. But given that Iâm iffy on the magazineâs T.V. reviews lately, I appreciate the back door granted to a deeper and more thoughtful crit.
đ„ Random Pick
âSlim for Himâ by Rebecca Mead. (Jan 15, 2001). One Ford. restraint, revelation, resurrection. Given subsequent events â which, if you really want to test your ability to sniff out just how malignant an obviously malignant thing is, I suggest you refrain from Googling until after you read â there is an almost nauseating degree of dramatic irony involved in reading this article today. Some of it Mead certainly included unintentionally â the child resting in Shamblinâs lap â while thereâs more nuance to other points, like the cultiness of abandoning Christian principles, than would be needed if one wrote the same piece today. Mead spends quite a while just on the weight-loss stuff before getting into the really woo business, which she may intend as a move from reasonability to ridiculousness but instead just reveals the depths of the evil just beneath the fundamentally pro-E.D. principles governing Shamblinâs teachings. I am much more interested in before-the-event primary source texts like this one than lurid after-the-fact true crime documents, and given that most people are so thrilled by the latter, I have to imagine theyâd be interested in the former, too â if only as âevidenceâ of a thing that was always wrong, right in front of our faces. The detail about her hair not being that big for a Southern woman may be the most dramatically ironic thing here, though. You say that nowâŠ
đ„ Something Extra
âCan I Be Frankâ is a truly superb one-person show; while I like Bassichisâ alienating video art, theyâve managed to keep all the substance, here, while widening the locus â the refractive queer self-reference and gradual build toward sideways sincerity, perhaps tiresome on paper, are miraculously calibrated. More important, itâs just really really funny.
Sunday Song: