Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

John McPhee's New Bear Piece - "Direct Eye Contact"




















Yesterday, visiting newyorker.com, I was delighted to find a new piece by my all-time favorite New Yorker writer – John McPhee. Called “Direct Eye Contact,” it appears in the magazine’s March 5, 2018, issue with the tantalizing tagline, “The most sophisticated, most urban, most reproductively fruitful of bears.” Ah, a bear piece – one of McPhee’s great specialties (see my post “Bears, Bears, Bears”). I wanted to read it immediately. But I managed to resist, opting to wait for the print version. As soon as it arrives, I’ll devour it faster than a bear eats a honeycomb, and post my response here.  

Credit: The above artwork, by Tamara Shopsin, appears on newyorker.com as an illustration for John McPhee’s “Direct Eye Contact.” 

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