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Martin Schneider writes:

There is a fantastic event coming up at the 92nd Street Y this month—New Yorker literary critic James Wood does a "First Read" of David Foster Wallace's adventurous, uneven, maddening, delightful, never-boring short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The event is on Monday, March 22, at 8:15pm, and has a hipster-friendly pricing policy: $19 admission, but only $10 for those 35 and younger (ID will be checked, people, so no funny business).

I had the great pleasure of seeing Wood speak at the 2008 New Yorker Festival, and his intelligence, gentleness, and patience were extraordinary. As a longtime fan of Wallace, I'm genuinely excited to hear what (continued)

Martin Schneider writes:

As Pollux noted recently—and our friend Ben Bass posted too—there is a mind-blowing trick in the special four-Eustace 85th anniversary cover of last month. If you place the four covers in the proper two-by-two configuration, the outlines of the original classic Eustace cover can be discerned.

Now we have Adam Kempa's excellent slider application, which allows you to find it without spreading (multiple copies of) the issue all over your living room floor.

I am endlessly impressed by such cleverness! Françoise Mouly, hats off to you! (A top hat, of course.) (continued)

A: Jonathan Taylor writes:

I was pained by Patricia Marx's shopping column on Brooklyn in the March 8 issue, but she was correct to highlight the thrilling tours of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (also the subject of a 1982 Talk piece by Bill McKibben).

But that didn't prepare me for these pictures from a tour of Cincinnati's never-completed subway (via Lawyers, Guns & Money)—they're a must see. (continued)

Jonathan Taylor writes:

At Close Read, Amy Davidson has the last word on the tall crop of Rahm Emanuel tales being told at various firesides:

Would the President's advisers really take pride in striking a deal to open a new Guantánamo? It's the sort of bargain a clever tailor in a fairy tale proposes to a bad elf.
(continued)

Jonathan Taylor writes:

  • Via the neatly searchable archive of the Harper's Index, they are:
    (Jan. 1993) Percentage of New Yorker articles since Tina Brown became editor whose first sentence includes a person's name: 70
    (July 1996) Chances that a cartoon in The New Yorker's Women's Issue was drawn by a man: 5 in 6
  • In the Times Book Review, Craig Seligman shares some (self-) revealing recollections of St. Clair McKelway, on the occasion of a new collection of McKelway's New Yorker reporting.
  • At the Edge of the American West, a historian's reflection on Paul Krugman's comments about studying economics versus studying history in the recent New Yorker Profile of him—with some spirited exchanges in the comments. Coincidentally, "Undercover Economist" Tim Harford's latest column in the Financial Times illustrates the persistence of long-ago history in contemporary outcomes.
  • Continuing on the history tangent, I was delighted to see Adam Cohen's Times Editorial Observer appreciation of the BBC Radio 4 program (and podcast) "In Our Time," in which Melvyn Bragg harries his academic guests into distilling great topics in civilization into their pithiest essence. (Will Self also wrote about "In Our Time" recently in the London Review of Books.) WNYC's Laura Walker wrote a letter to the Times defending U.S. radio against the suggestion that it doesn't host such erudite discussions. But Walker's counterexamples are telling: All the topics are basically contemporary; none represents the undiluted interest in the past that "In Our Time" exhibits.
  • I reviewed Country Driving, by Emdashes fave Peter Hessler, at Bookforum.com.
(continued)

03-01-10 Brian Stauffer Whiteout.JPG

Pollux writes:

She's knee-deep in a blanket of pure white snow. She's out for a walk with her dog. Her faithful dog cannot be seen except for its tail. In fact, the dog is clearing a pathway for her as they make their way through the wintry landscape.

This is the scene depicted in Brian Stauffer's cover for the March 1, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, called "Whiteout." (continued)

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