Last Week's New Yorker Review: đ± The Weekend Special (December 23)
New year, new emoji. đ±
Pieces are given up to three Boyles (for fiction), Harrimans (for essays), or Parkers (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Boyle, Harriman, or Parker indicates a generally positive review.
đ± Fiction
âRevisionâ by Daisy Hildyard. Two Boyles. institution, inspiration, instruction. A really clever story about what we are and arenât supposed to learn in school. Has a really clear grasp on privilege â in a way, this is the kind of story I think the people that complain about Sally Rooney would like Sally Rooney to write; its politics are central and unignorable but the somewhat charming, somewhat awful upper-crust Britishness of it all is not only critiqued but also taken advantage of as a setting. (At the very end, in a touch that reminded me of the best sequence in the so-so Dahomey, the setting literally becomes the speaker.) The first line gives us the setting, and just as Oxford is key, so, too, is the 2009 of it all; financial crises and class awakenings all around. The unspooling of the plot, which takes its sweet time getting going, is most of the appeal here, so I wonât give away too much. Note that the storyâs cleverest twist, though, involves the intimations of the protagonistâs eventual job â yes, we all live in history, but some of us live more in History than others.
đ± Weekend Essay
âHave the Democrats Become the Party of the Ălites?â by Andrew Marantz. One Harriman. woker, worker, world. Marantzâs astute and very funny writing earns this its single Harriman, but itâs really not something you need to read â the subject, al-Gharbi, is one of those pundits whoâre only five percent wrong, but that five percent is what they structure their entire argument around, because itâs especially provocative. Those people are best ignored because the smart points theyâre making are made by plenty of other people, and the unique points theyâre making â in al-Gharbiâs case, that the reason Democrats lose is because they appeal too much to what he calls âsymbolic capitalistsâ, a fuzzy group with plenty of nicknames of which the most popular and apt is knowledge workers. He does the classic thing of vaguely waving at the very ideas heâs dismissing and calling them ââboth important and fairly uncontroversialââ and claiming that the real issue is the ways in which this information is presented â in practice, of course, this just means that these ideas should be accepted without being talked about, a patently absurd formulation which would only make sense to the exact kind of knowledge worker who takes these ideas for granted because it makes up the water in which they swim. The real solution is not better marketing but better education â but pundits arenât teachers, theyâre marketers. The truth is that whatever al-Gharbiâs intent, his ideas provide a thin pretense of respectability to anti-immigrant and anti-Trans hate, and everyone left of center should reject that out of hand. Marantz, to his credit, quotes plenty of sane people who disagree with al-Gharbi, including Anat Shenker-Osorio (âIf we become the G.O.P. Light⊠not only are we not standing for our principles, we are also boosting the right-wing framingâ) and Eric Kleinenberg (âThis line of argument can be weaponized to discredit truth-seeking institutions⊠at a moment when those institutions are about to be under severe attackâ), neither of whose points al-Gharbi does anything to meaningfully refute. âWe canât control the Fox News crowd⊠We can only control ourselvesâ, he mewls pitifully â in other words, we canât influence the Right, we can only adopt their beliefs to get them to vote for us; the most self-defeating argument imaginable. When Marantz points this out, he counters that âyou have to try to persuade people who donât yet agree with you, which means engaging with them charitably, in language they might actually find compelling. We havenât really tried this.â Of course, al-Gharbi is totally uninterested in actually providing this supposed obviously-compelling language. He uses hard objective data to draw a progressive economic point, then Sharpies in an arrow pointing to a big frowny face and the word âwoke!â Once you notice that elision at the heart of al-Gharbiâs argument, you see it everywhere: His gripe with Clinton has to do with his ârhetoric and signature policiesâ, but Clintonâs rhetoric wasnât remotely woke. The idea that Clintonism was some kind of slippery slope that lead to todayâs âwokeâ left is laughable; if anything, theyâre motivated by resentment toward Clintonism themselves. al-Gharbi is absolutely right that the working class dislikes the Democrats; for my money, this is largely because the Dems have failed to find a resonant message on economics (in part because theyâve been betraying the working class for so long it could be on their business cards) and the Republicans have taken advantage of that to push a fascist message against immigrants, Trans people, et al. al-Gharbiâs argument lacks this cause and effect, which leads him to the insipid conclusion that the solution is to embrace the fascist message in hopes that it will convince people that the Democratsâ newfound economic populism is actually sincere. Marantz has a few good gags, and he gives al-Gharbi a fair shake; still, you can find better ways to spend your time. In fact, you can probably find better ways to spend your time than reading my inexpert one-long-paragraph screed, but I guess itâs too late for that nowâŠ
đ± Random Pick
âThe Theatreâ by Herman J. Mankiewicz. (November 12, 1925). One Parker. farce, fineness, failure. In case you werenât aware, Mank himself, of Citizen Kane and truly abysmal biopic fame, was the magazineâs first ever theatre critic. Nothing much distinguishes these reviews, which have a few bits of cleverness (one show stars âa young man who seems likely to be discovered by one or more of the townâs official discoverers at any momentâ) and the sort of erudite voice the magazine helped pioneer, but which mostly make the past seem like a very foreign country indeed, one where a drama about a schoolboy kissing his housemasterâs wife focuses mainly on âthe drama that is ever provoked by the first manifestations of the tender passion in the young male breastâ â ignoring the moderate-to-severe grooming implied by the scenario, a topic thatâs all the rage these days. The second review features heavy snark which seems to be referencing something that eludes me; the third review is generic and a bit leering, focusing on the showâs âlarge number of beautiful and nimble young women.â Thatâs just for daddy.
đ± Something Extra
Greatly enjoyed Cult of Love, a closely observed, searching and reverberant big-family drama. Woulda been #12 on my best-of-the-year list, for whatever thatâs worth. Also really liked the reinstallation of the permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum, which even when it fails is at least committed to trying new things in a way most permanent collections⊠are not really.
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Sunday Song: