The New Yorker, July 12 & 19, 2010

Well, readers, in an effort to give this blog a broader array of topics, I am debuting a new recurring post series about each issue of The New Yorker. I feel sure by now that you know Jen is kind enough to buy me a gift subscription every year, and so for the majority of the 52 weeks of the year, we receive a fresh issue each week. As an homage to Heather Champ's great blog post about how to read The New Yorker, I want to begin this inaugural post with a small overview of how I read each issue.

The issue arrives every week, but not on a specific day of the week. Usually, at some point after it comes, I sit down with the issue and gland through it, cover to cover, turning down the pages of articles I want to read, as well as cartoons I think are funny and want to share with Jen. I turn up the article tabs as I read them, so I know what I have and have not read. I never read the Goings On section, but if I lived in or near New York City, I feel sure that would be different. In addition, I almost never read the fiction section, unless the piece is by an author I really love. I just don't care much for short fiction.

Beyond that, pretty much everything else is fair game - meaning I will read it if I find it interesting when I initially glance at it. So, this series is going to go like this (unless you all have a better idea, which I am happy to entertain):

At the beginning of each post, I will share with you the page number, title, and author of each article I read, as well as give you a brief synopsis of my favorite article from that week. I will also share with you the page numbers of the cartoons I liked, and pick my favorite one. Manageable? I hope so. Without further ado, here it goes!



Articles
Talk of the Town
The Name of the Game, by Hendrik Hertzberg (p. 29)
Francophrenia, by Dana Goodyear (p. 31)
Say What?, by Ben McGrath (p. 32)

The Undead: Big Papi's Late Innings, by Ben McGrath (p. 37) This article had a nice quote about the general public's opinion of baseball:

Amid declining attendance at a number of major-league ballparks, many observers have pointed to the upward-creeping length of individual games, and, by extension, to languorous approaches like Ortiz's, as potential problems in need of fixing. Kids need to get home to bed. All that spitting and clapping adds up. After the Yankees and Red Sox opened the season, in April, with a series of three-and-a-half-hour marathons at Fenway Park, the umpire Joe West publicly rebuked both teams for what he called a 'pathetic and embarrassing' display, 'a disgrace to the game.

(Note: I strongly disagree with this sentiment, but it is reflective of how people feel about baseball games.)

Nothing Left: Is North Korea Finally Facing Collapse?, by Barbara Demick (p. 44)
The Mark of a Masterpiece: The man who keeps finding famous fingerprints on uncelebrated works of art, by David Grann (p. 51) This one was my favorite, as it really set me up. I thought it was going to be a laudatory article all about how science and art authentication were coming together, when really it was an exposé about a man who "scientifically" authenticates art, but who actually is a con man. Very cool. Great quote from this article:

For all their seeming kinship, a restorer is the antithesis of a painter: he is a conserver, not a creator. Like a mimic, he assumes another person’s style, at the expense of his own identity. He must resist any urge to improve, to experiment, to show off; otherwise, he becomes a forger. Yet, unlike a great actor, he receives no glory for his feats of mimicry. If he has succeeded, he has burnished another artist’s reputation, and vanished without the world ever knowing who he is, or what he has accomplished. The art historian Max J. Friedländer called the business of the restorer “the most thankless one imaginable.”

Cartoons
Pp. 38, 52, 59, 65, 69, 85.

(PS - the librarian part of me is really bothered that The New Yorker doesn't have traditional volume and issue enumeration. Oh, well.)