From Kurt Andersen’s New York magazine piece on Lewis Lapham’s retirement:

The frothiest magazine he reads regularly is The New Yorker. He reads nothing at all online.
…
I ask [moneybags publisher Rick] MacArthur how his readers differ from those of The Atlantic and The New Yorker, expecting an answer involving geography, demography, psychography. “Harper’s readers are less interested in conventional wisdom.” Meaning? “[David] Remnick was pro-invasion, The Atlantic was very pro-war.” I ask how the magazine will change post-Lapham. “I’m more of an investigative reporter than Lewis. He’s more interested in turns of phrase and insight. There was a real bias against doing journalism. I’ve changed that mentality.”

Editorial positions on Iraq aside for the moment, aren’t New Yorker readers and Harper’s readers more or less the same people? The Atlantic, too, although maybe slightly less so. I just read the complete current issue of The Atlantic as I was traveling last weekend, because I’m deciding whether to subscribe and it’d been a long time. I was completely captivated by Paul Bloom’s winsomely evenhanded “Is God an Accident?” and, predictably, enjoyed Christopher Hitchens on Lolita, but was repelled by Mark Steyn’s tin-eared, bitchy obituary of Sidney Luft, some of whose facts looked fishy to me. I’ll keep buying the magazine till I make up my mind.

Update: Have now subscribed. Also just re-ordered the daily NYT after a multi-year break. I’ll have to buy some Grist environmental indulgences for all those pretty, doomed trees.

I’ve mentioned this before (thanks to Greg.org), but I only just put it into my own Gmail web clips. Here’s a source for all your New Yorker RSS feed needs. In the small Vermont town—really, minuscule village—where my mother lives, the richest man in town is John Brown, who owns the feed store. For real. I’ve seen him at the supermarket, in person, and he even said hello to us. Like a regular guy! Not like the richest man in town! Although I guess that honorific should really be reserved for George Bailey.

Here’s an ‘I Don’t Believe it’ Item

Everybody agrees that Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” was one of the brightest spots in the 2005 literary world.

But how in tarnation do they plan to make a movie from it?

In November, Gladwell optioned the film rights to Universal Pictures.

According to Publishers Weekly, Stephen Gaghan, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “Traffic” has been retained to write and direct, as well as co-produce, the film.

Leonardo deCaprio is another co-producer.

Book Briefs [Santa Cruz Sentinel]

about Shopgirl, which I actually liked except for the weirdest, most illogical direction and cinematography I’ve seen in a long time. Which made the incredibly beautiful and indisputably youthful Claire Danes look…old and dead. A big thing not to like, I know.

Incredible Franz Wright spread of a long poem, “East Boston, 1996,” on pp. 78-79 of the current issue. “Walking home, for a moment/you almost believe you could start again./And an intense love rushes to your heart,/and hope. It’s unendurable, unendurable.”

Doug Moe, that is, Capital Times columnist, Madison man, and New Yorker watcher extraordinaire. This is his review of Just Enough Liebling.