International Fiction Issue

It's a double-sized New Yorker - a vacation- sized one. It says "international fiction issue" on the spine, which means I don't have to read too much. I avoid short fiction. Even if there's a Nabokov story? Can't say I'm too interested in a story written in 1925.

Talk of the Town:

The first bit is about the War on Christmas...which, really? I think only affect those who listen to morning shows on the radio and those who watch Fox News. I believe the polls have demonstrated that, too. But, Bill O'Reilly is making himself such a delicious, juicy target....why not?

This is followed by an interesting, though clunky story about a college web station that interviews Iraquis to find out what's going on. The reporting is sloppy with an eye on keeping things so short the rambling final paragraph almost derails the whole thing. One has an idea Ben McGrath is working on a much longer piece and he's keeping his cards close to his chest.

Froth follows the global, right? So something about Rod Stewart's biggest fan and how she got his star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk of Fame. The Talk concludes with a piece about the plague of illegal guns on the streets of New York.

Number of racial modifiers used in this issue's Talk of the Town? None.

The Philip Pullman piece benefits from a good subject, although the writer doesn't seem very familiar with Pullman's body of work. No mention is made of the radical nature of his fiction: that the protagonists are intelligent, resourceful, and flawed girls who must live by their wits. Even his lighter pieces (Count Karlstein) have a sophisticated structure and vocabulary - and pave the way for reading Victorian and Edwardian literature. It's sad that Laura Miller hasn't read the Sally Lockhart Trilogy, with its historical sweep and complicated morality. Or didn't even read enough of the His Dark Materials trilogy to pick up on its juiciest and controversial pieces: gay angels and the death of God.
Yes: God dies. My advice to parents would be to make as big of fuss as possible about how depraved and evil these books are, in order to make them irresistable to young readers.

Pullman does get to represent himself well, however. I particularly liked his opposition of the Theocracy - "...which he defined as encompassing everything from Khomeini's Iran to explicitly atheistic states such as Stalin's Soviet Union. He listed some characteristics of such states -- among them, 'a scripture whose word is inerrant,' a priesthood whose authority 'tends to concentrate in the hands of elderly men,' and 'a secret police force with the powers on an Inquisition.' Theocracies,
he said, demonstate 'the tendence of human beings to gather power to themselves in the name of something that may not be questioned.'"

A slippery slope.

"Yorick", a personal history is...uh...it started out and then I read it and then it ended. A bit too stylized to make an impression. Translated from Russian and includes the v. sad life of Grandmother.

So. For the past couple of issues there has been this half-page color ad for a book called "Fictoids" by Bill Dutcher. Illustrated by NEW YORKER CARTOONIST JACK ZIEGLER! The humor it posits underwhelms to the point of causing physical pain:

AN UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In 1975, 'I Did What?', a somewhat confused trip down a foggy memory
lany by Sixties drug guru Iben Stoned, became the first unauthorized
autobiography to sell more than one million copies, despite the author's
claim that the book was written by his alter ego without his consent.

The joke fails on so many levels...that "unauthorized autobiography" has been used by everyone from Lemony Snicket to Larry Rivers...Iben Stoned is a heavy-handed groaner, and the final twist has already been done by Woody Allen.

Okay. So. Jeffrey Frank is the Critic at Large, providing an overview of Norwegian writer and famed Nazi collaborator Knut Hamsun. A nice, lengthy piece. And you know what? I'll never feel the need to read anything by him.

Louis Menand takes on the Economics of Literature in his reivew of "The Economy of Prestige." The not-so-shocking revelation is that awards for literature drive sales and can elevate otherwise unworthy works. The piece isn't edited beyond checking to make sure everything is spelled right. On page 140:

"Literature is conventionally taught as a person-to-person aesthetic experience: the writer (or the poem) addressing the reader."

Or, even, perhaps, poet?

Paul Goldberger turns his eye to the Xintiandi district in Shanghai. It was designed by American James Wood and brings the colonial style of old Shanghi up-to-date by making it a boutique shopping area.


If you don't read the New York Times every day, it's hard to figure out what's going on in the world of opera. Alex Ross provides a tidy, elegant summary (Joseph Volpe is leaving as the Met's general manager; Peter Gelb is his replacement) and provides a great review of "An American Tragedy." The review is nice because it goes over the performances and the music, without requiring you to sit through the thing. We're also introduced to a new term: "opera hot". Those bloggers came up with it - it means someone is hot, for opera. But don't necessarily confuse being hot in Operaland as being hot Elsewhere.

Anthony Lane not so impressed by "Munich", liked "Hidden", and enjoyed "The New World" just to make fun of it.

The Winning Caption, while not profoundly un -funny, isn't worth repeating.