The Defiant Ones. In today’s picture books, the kids are in charge.
posted by The Dryyyyy Cracker on Dec 12, 2009 - 46 comments

The House Behind A Weeping Cherry by Ha Jin
posted by vronsky on Dec 8, 2009 - 12 comments

All That: "new" fiction from David Foster Wallace.
posted by Lutoslawski on Dec 7, 2009 - 56 comments

Michelin inspectors have been anonymous as CIA spooks. Until now. And now. The New Yorker has a rare interview with one.
posted by converge on Nov 18, 2009 - 33 comments

Such are the contradictions that seem to riddle not just Gladwell's thinking but the thinking on Gladwell's thinking, and perhaps even the thinking on thinking on that, and it is precisely these slippery but substantive contradictions that have allowed Gladwell to tout his revolutionary "big ideas" without couching them in anything so mundane as a logical, well-supported or otherwise sound argument. Gladwell for Dummies.
posted by defenestration on Nov 5, 2009 - 102 comments

"Every opportunity for peace in the Middle East has been led to slaughter" Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker writes about the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip nearly eleven months ago, talking to Palestinians, Israelis and aid workers. Political context combined with incredibly saddening everyday civilian life.
posted by smoke on Nov 4, 2009 - 45 comments

The New Yorker's "Critterati" contest invites you to "take a picture of your pet—dog, cat, ferret, iguana, or any other nonhuman member of the animal kingdom—dressed as a character from literature, and upload it to newyorker.com by October 25th." Gallery | About | Rules | Enter. [more inside]
posted by taz on Oct 22, 2009 - 42 comments

Does american football unavoidably lead to brain damage over time? Does a culture favoring perseverance at the expense of well being begin in high school?
posted by phrontist on Oct 13, 2009 - 96 comments

John McPhee writes about basketball, headmasters, oranges, tennis, hybrid airships, nuclear weapons, bark canoes, Alaska, the Swiss Army, the merchant marines, dissident Soviet artists, shad, long-distance trucking, and - Pulitzer Prize-winningly - geology (282kb PDF). He discusses his work here. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Sep 30, 2009 - 32 comments

The Rubber Room: The Battle Over New York City’s Worst Teachers.
posted by Oxydude on Aug 27, 2009 - 81 comments

Atticus Finch and the limits of Southern liberalism. An essay in the latest The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell. "Atticus Finch is faced with jurors who have one set of standards for white people like the Ewells and another set for black folk like Tom Robinson. His response is to adopt one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama."
posted by billysumday on Aug 10, 2009 - 188 comments

Michael Savage unplugged. Behind the scenes. "This year, Savage is celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of his radio career. On the air one day, he marked the occasion in typically perverse fashion: by thinking of all the listeners who stuck around, and all the ones who didn’t. “Some were fifteen, they’re now thirty,” he said. “Some were five, they’re now twenty. They grew up on me. Their fathers are dead; the guys who had it playing in the car are gone. They’re still here, they can’t believe it. I’m their voice of freedom. I’m the last hope. I’m the beacon. I’m the Statue of Liberty. I’m Michael Savage. I’ll be back."”
posted by Xurando on Jul 30, 2009 - 94 comments

The Psychology of Overconfidence
posted by anotherpanacea on Jul 27, 2009 - 82 comments

The New York steak dinner, or beefsteak, is a form of gluttony as stylized and regional as the riverbank fish fry, the hot-rock clambake, or the Texas barbecue. Some old chefs believe it had its origin sixty or seventy years ago, when butchers from the slaughterhouses on the East River would sneak choice loin cuts into the kitchens of nearby saloons, grill them over charcoal, and feast on them during their Saturday-night sprees. - Joseph Mitchell, 1939. [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 14, 2009 - 39 comments

Louis Menand in The New Yorker surveys American creative writing education, past and present, and asks whether it should still be taught. (via) [more inside]
posted by shadytrees on Jun 4, 2009 - 17 comments

The Cost Conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care. Via Musings of a Distractible Mind.
posted by zinfandel on May 28, 2009 - 40 comments

Writer Dan Baum is twittering the epic saga of being hired at the New Yorker, after 17 years of trying, and then let go. It's an eye-opening and engaging tale for any writer. Baum, who wrote on a myriad of subjects, is perhaps best known for his post-Katrina New Orleans coverage. Told (annoyingly, if innovatively) in 140-character spurts, his tale takes you into the New Yorker offices ("like being in a hospital room where somebody is dying,") reveals that writers at the august mag get $70k and no benefits, and outlines the cumbersome process of story pitches to mercurial editors. In a rare inside look at the biz, he links to the pitches that worked, and those that didn't, on his website.
posted by CunningLinguist on May 11, 2009 - 145 comments

Last year, best-selling biologist Jared Diamond (prev) published an article in the New Yorker describing a cycle of revenge in Papua New Guinea, contrasting the conflicting human needs for vengeance and for justice. (Mefi discussion). Now, the subjects of Diamond's article are seeking their own revenge, suing the publishers for $10 million, claiming Diamond's story amounts to false accusations of serious criminal activity, including murder. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll on Apr 29, 2009 - 65 comments

Breakfast at Sulimay's with Bill, Moon, Joe and Ann: 1 featuring reviews of The Thermals, Joanna Newsom, The Decemberists, and Clipse. l 2 with The Knife, Deerhoof, and Paul Wall featuring 'lil Keke. l 5 with Asha, TI, Toby Mac. 6 with the Shins , !!!, and Common. l 7 with Bjork , Wilco , and Black Reble Motorcycle club. l 9 with Santogold, Portishead and Death Cab for Cutie! more (v) yt
posted by vronsky on Mar 12, 2009 - 19 comments

The Invasion From Outer Space: Steven Millhauser gives The New Yorker a short, unsettling sci-fi story.
posted by The Whelk on Feb 10, 2009 - 111 comments

If Breast is Best, Why Are Women Bottling Their Milk? Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker explores the rise in the popularity of breast pumps. [more inside]
posted by otherwordlyglow on Jan 16, 2009 - 39 comments

New Yorker fiction 2008. Annotated list of short fiction from the past year. "As perhaps the most high-profile venue for short fiction in the world, taking stock of the New Yorker's year in fiction is a worthwhile exercise for writers and readers alike."
posted by stbalbach on Jan 5, 2009 - 24 comments

The plan isn’t foolproof. For it to work, certain things must happen:
posted by oxford blue on Nov 20, 2008 - 59 comments

A new article in the New Yorker discusses the work of Dr. Kent Kiehl, one of the world’s leading investigators in psychopathy. While Kiehl's research focusses on violent psychopaths, not all psychopaths are violent, or even criminal. At least one psychiatrist contends that the definition of a psychopath - first described by researcher Robert Hare and made manifest in his Hare Psychopathy Checklist (previously) - is more accurately attributed to narcissism.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Nov 6, 2008 - 56 comments

CliffyB Knows Fun (single-link New Yorker)
posted by turgid dahlia on Oct 27, 2008 - 33 comments

2008 MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grants announced. Probably the biggest name is the New Yorker's music critic Alex Ross. [more inside]
posted by mattbucher on Sep 23, 2008 - 76 comments

I LOVE LAZER BASS (BEAMZ MUSIC PERFORMANCE SYSTEM REMIX) much more here
posted by vronsky on Sep 12, 2008 - 19 comments

The New Yorker interviews Josh Fruhlinger, a.k.a. The Comics Curmudgeon. [Previously.] Josh also writes a weekly political cartoon post for Wonkette, and recently appeared on Jeopardy!
posted by the littlest brussels sprout on Aug 14, 2008 - 24 comments

Thirteen Hundred Rats : a short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle on the importance of choosing your pets. [more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon on Aug 7, 2008 - 27 comments

"That's why so many insights happen during warm showers."[pdf/html]
A print-only print-mostly article in last week's New Yorker magazine fascinatingly describes the neurological processes behind human insight, with nods to Henri Poincaré's omnibus eureka ("Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it") and Archimedes' bathtub eureka* ("Eureka!")
posted by jckll on Jul 30, 2008 - 33 comments

The end of Moore’s influence came when, years later, she tried to block the publication of a book by E. B. White. Watching Moore stand in the way of “Stuart Little,” White’s editor, Ursula Nordstrom, remembered, was like watching a horse fall down, its spindly legs crumpling beneath its great weight. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jul 14, 2008 - 30 comments

Making It, in which a young, black, upstart politician rises through the Chicago political scene by having his opposition stricken from the ballot, turning against his endorser, and redistricting himself into a fundraising monster. [more inside]
posted by Weebot on Jul 14, 2008 - 32 comments

"The New Yorker says it's satire. It certainly will be candy for cable news." The cover illustration (by Barry Blitt) of the magazine's July 21^st. issue depicts Barack Obama in tribal African dress, fist-bumping his wife "in full revolutionary garb, an enormous afro making her look like a millennial Angela Davis, holding an automatic weapon and wearing military pants" in the Oval Office. On the wall -- a portrait of Osama bin Laden; in the fireplace a burning American flag. [more inside]
posted by ericb on Jul 13, 2008 - 257 comments

The Itch: The New Yorker's suprisingly interesting Annals of Medicine article which includes the story of a woman whose scalp itched so badly she scratched through it. And then through her skull.
posted by nevercalm on Jun 24, 2008 - 88 comments

Tourists black out reflective retinas in snapshots before printing them, and millions of people refer to strangers they’ve never spoken to as friends, because they’ve connected through a social-networking platform. [...] It should come as no surprise, then, that singers sometimes choose to correct recorded flaws in pitch with modern software, like Antares’s Auto-Tune.

Sasha Frere-Jones on auto-tuning, in The New Yorker. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jun 10, 2008 - 98 comments

From the diamond to the street (literally) to your mailbox, one thing is absolutely certain: Nails never fails.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Mar 21, 2008 - 18 comments

Here are the essays and short stories originally published in The New Yorker that were later collected in Houghton Mifflin’s annual “Best American” anthology series (1915-present). [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Feb 20, 2008 - 7 comments

“I tried ‘Gravity’s Rainbow,’ and I thought it was fraudulent:” Art Garfunkel’s Reading Habits. (previously on MeFi)
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear on Feb 2, 2008 - 44 comments

For your consideration: the entries of the New Yorker's Eustace Tilley redesign contest.
posted by youarenothere on Jan 25, 2008 - 19 comments

"The really disturbing thing about Lagos’s pickers and venders is that their lives have essentially nothing to do with ours. They scavenge an existence beyond the margins of macroeconomics. They are, in the harsh terms of globalization, superfluous." The Megacity, George Packer in Lagos.
posted by afu on Dec 11, 2007 - 25 comments

Why do we read diaries?
posted by anotherpanacea on Dec 6, 2007 - 31 comments

Having served as a troop transport in WWII, a luxury liner, and a sea cadet training vessel, the Texas Clipper will come to her final resting place tomorrow as part of an artificial reef in the Texas Gulf. During preparations for sinking, a long lost mural (1 2 3 4) by Saul Steinberg, best known for his work at The New Yorker, was rediscovered hidden behind wallpaper and paint and saved from a watery grave.
posted by Orb on Nov 15, 2007 - 4 comments

The inaugural New Yorker Conference, “2012: Stories From the Near Future,” took place on May 6 and 7, 2007. Here is an archive of videos from the event.
posted by parudox on Nov 12, 2007 - 10 comments

Margaret Talbot's wonderful profile of David Simon, the creator of "The Wire." Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”
posted by geoff. on Oct 15, 2007 - 34 comments

Paul Theroux reads Jorge Luis Borges’s short story The Gospel According To Mark and discusses Borges with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. mp3
posted by vronsky on Oct 8, 2007 - 11 comments

The New Yorker now has animated cartoons. Animating by Ring Tales.
posted by nickyskye on Aug 17, 2007 - 31 comments

Bonobo chimpanzees are commonly thought to be "an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness" in the animal kingdom. Ian Parker's Swingers suggests a darker, more savage side to the species that belies popular perception.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 3, 2007 - 20 comments

We've discussed ways to win the New Yorker caption contest for its cartoons (use "previous" to see more), but the tradition of attacking the cartooning institution continues. One long-time mocker has been the anti-caption contest, which has strict rules on how to write the worst captions. Compare this and this, and this and this, to get the idea. Now, Gawker has invited people to draw the worst possible New Yorker cartoons; here are some results. [prev and prev.]
posted by blahblahblah on Aug 2, 2007 - 20 comments

"Did you see the politics? It made me angry." Conversations by Grownups As Imagined By Kids.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Mar 20, 2007 - 36 comments

New Yorker 2.0 Conde Naste has finally shelled out the beans to create a truly Web 2.0 version of the New Yorker...just as the term Web 2.0 is beginning to get on everyone's nerves. RSS feeds, embedded Flash video, and lots of clean white space.
posted by KokuRyu on Mar 12, 2007 - 30 comments