Have you gotten hopelessly behind on your New Yorker reading this year? Let me assist by offering my very subjective top 5 articles of recent months.
Walton Ford's Nila
1. Atul Gawande on our horrific practice of keeping prisoners in solitary confinement. For years. By the tens of thousands.
2. D.T. Max on David Foster Wallace. Devastating and memorable.
3. Mariana Cook’s A Couple in Chicago. A small, moving portrait of a relationship, originally published in 1996.
4. A selection of John Updike’s poetry. More satisfying than the snippets from longer pieces, the poems are complete on their own and present gorgeous visions from the last days of a life.
5. Calvin Tomkins profile of the visual artist Walton Ford. Super-interesting ideas on the relationship between humans and nature.
*bonus favorite bit from Joan Acocella’s review of the Miami City Ballet in New York: “[Jennifer] Kronenberg and Jeanette Delgado are big-time stars, but a number of the women in the company–Patricia Delgado (Jeanette’s beautiful sister), Katia Carranza (a Mexican powerhouse), Amanda Weingarten (a comer, still in the corps)–dance as though they think they’re stars. Someone told them they could be, and that makes all the difference.”
Go Amanda! A comer for sure!
article on d.f.w. still haunts me…
i’d add kelefa sanneh’s piece on will oldham to that list.
Comment by Keith — April 11, 2009 @ 3:30 pm
That’s true, that was a good one. And now I’d add that great article on the poet twins, Michael and Matthew Dickman, by Rebecca Mead. Loved it.
Comment by wideningthei — April 14, 2009 @ 8:27 pm