November 12, 2025

Last Week's New Yorker Review: 🥐 The Weekend Special (November 17)

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.

🥐 Fiction

“The New Coast” by Paul Yoon. No Knapps. moving, money, mountain. A gloomy tale of two brothers fleeing the destruction of a war. The details are hazy, so the setting is past (Korea?), present and apocalyptic future, all together. This indeterminacy infects things, ending up as a central theme plus a general vibe. This story is grim enough to be a parable, and there’s not the sort of psychological revelation one would expect from a character study; ultimately, though, Yoon’s interest in the individual is too strong and the next-to-last section is a slightly stilted announcement of various plot advancements; it doesn’t quite click. There is some hazy business about suicidality as well, and an ending nature image that feels very workshopped. Line by line, Yoon is a strong writer. This one just didn’t snap together.

🥐 Weekend Essay

“What Did Men Do to Deserve This?” by Jessica Winter. Three Downeys. profess, provide, procreate. An absolutely surgical dissection of the ridiculous Men-Are-Sad-Now messaging that centrists have hit on as a way to cater to misogynists under the thin guise of social justice. Winter is also seriously funny; the essay suggests a world in which Jezebel had its own Defector equivalent, posting intelligently snarky feminist blogs that are in touch with the present mood. The first two sections give basically the expected counterargument, pointing out cherry-picked statistics, misleading framing, and the obvious bad-faith perspective of the manosphere evangelists. The really special stuff comes toward the end, though, where Winter goes to the source of this stuff – more-obviously patriarchal social scientists pushing openly reactionary narratives. At least, Winter slyly suggests, an identity tied to degradation and care work is an identity, whereas men are so tied to their own supposed helplessness, they slip into alienation. (Even the seeming opposite, the Jordan Peterson ‘Clean Your Room’ thing, ends up reifying self-care as self-worth.) Winter ends by expertly unpacking the implications of some glib quotes from Scott Galloway; you should discover the ending for yourself, but it’s a finishing blow.

🥐 Random Pick

“Cruising Speed” by William F. Buckley Jr. (Aug 21 & 28, 1971). No Fords. discussion, dismissal, diary. Reader, please don’t say I never did nothin’ for you. This excruciatingly long week-in-the-life by Buckley – the first in an occasional series; a later installment was the framing device for a recent Louis Menand book review of a Buckley biography – ruined a perfectly good commute! I’ll admit, there is something slimily compelling about Buckley, who knows how to put words together; he’s like Humbert Humbert with, ah, a different set of hangups, but the same brutal vanity and incuriosity. His business is debate, and he quotes at length from the speeches and letters of his interlocutors – indeed, at greater length than he does from his own speeches – and these texts are often excellent rebuttals, at which Buckley largely just smirks. One starts to doze off amidst the name-dropping and genteel self-assuredness, then the blaring horns of one Christian-nationalist precept or another come to disrupt things. Stultifying and infuriating in equal measure; avoid with prejudice. (There’s plenty of that around!) But you already knew all this; you know who William F Buckley is and so do I. Random numbers give and random numbers take, take, take.

🥐 Something Extra

Blue Cowboy, David Cale’s enigmatic monologue at the Bushwick Starr, just got extended for one last week; I made it out on Monday and it’s really superb stuff. Worth the trek. Bat Boy is what Encores should always be: unbelievable amounts of talent forcing a slightly misshapen show to work by pure force of will. Heaux Church has the same plot as seemingly like four other off-Broadway shows right now, and all the plots are just A Strange Loop; despite this, the other shows do not have superb genitalia puppets and gonzo participation to spike the usual stuff in the monologue, delivered with feeling by Brandon Kyle Goodman.

I do not note shows here unless they’re either notably good or notably awful. If you’re wondering whether I saw something, shoot me a note!

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Sunday Song:

Another from the Grammy mines. Mavis Staples covering Frank Ocean.