It would be wrong of me to fail to acknowledge the awesomeness of the current New Yorker. Every piece in the April 24 issue, a fat one with with the topic of “Journeys,” is an absolute gem.
Anthony Lane’s “European Journal,” about the staggeringly low cost of airline flights in Europe ($20 round-trip cross-continent) makes a compelling case for getting the hell out of the U.S. for a weekend. Patrick Radden Keef’s “The Snakehead,” about Sister Ping’s international human-smuggling operation, exposes an enormous business that, frankly, I thought existed only in Jean Claude Van Damme movies. Nick Paumgarten’s “Annals of the Road,” which explains how modern GPS maps come into existence, gives me a totally new appreciation for my GPS. Michael Specter’s “Planet Kirsan” describes the Republic of Kalmykia (who knew?), a nation that is dedicated to chess or, more accurately, to its autocratic chess-tyrant. I assumed I’d hate reading anything about director Werner Herzog until I read Daniel Zalewski’s profile of him. I blame Dana Goodyear’s look into “What Happened at Alder Creek” at the time of the Donner-Reed Party for some of my recent trouble sleeping. Martin Amis’ fictional look at what Muhammad Atta spent September 10, 2001 doing would have been offensive in the hands of a lesser author.
What The New Yorker does well is the same thing that my employer, Virginia Quarterly Review, does well. Whatever topic is being written about, no matter how laughably far removed from my life or interests, ends up being an absorbing, educational, thoroughly enjoyable read. The current New Yorker is the best example of that of any issue of the magazine that I’ve ever read.
That’s what I used to do for a living, making maps from GPS and other geo-coordinates. I was looking at 1850-era forward land surveys, entering and mathematically adjusting them into a grid, which is then tied to a number of GPS-generated points for better accuracy. This was in the California State Office of the Bureau of Land Management. I was doing what would rightfully be called a combination of Cartography and Land Surveying.
I’ll have to check that out.
Waldo, somehow your admiration for the New Yorker comes as no surprise. As an “employee” of the “Virginia Quarterly Review,” pray tell, is your compensation provided directly or indirectly by the tax payers of the Commonwealth? Just an “awsomeness” query…
That’s not a question, BM. That’s just being a dick.
It’s cute how you put “employee” and “Virginia Quarterly Review” in condescension-quotes, as if neither actually exist.
Waldo-
About the Amis story, it was well written but I can’t help but feel that all the recent fiction/movie treatments of 9-11 are coming too soon. I wonder how long it was after Pear Harbor before writers began using that attack as a source for fiction- longer I bet. These are very different times but somehow it does not feel quite decent to me…
I tried to do without the New Yorker once but really, I just can’t live that way…. :)