Ezra recommends the current issue of The New Yorker. I strongly agree. It's really strong, and I haven't even gotten to the latest Murakami story they've published or read all the critics pieces yet. And there's much to recommend beyond what he comments on - I enjoyed Nancy Fanklin's love/hate review of 24, and Steve Coll's piece on the nuclear threat involving India and Pakistan is very good, important, and disturbing. But I think my favorite bit of the whole issue might be this week's Correction feature (this week picking up on a mistake in the Boston Globe):
… Dr. Arleigh Dygert Richardson III, former teacher at Lawrence Academy in Groton, was described in his obituary yesterday as favoring tacky pants with tweed jackets and Oxford shirts. Dr. Richardson favored khaki pants.Posted by armand at February 11, 2006 12:03 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Media
The Adam Gopnik article on Shaker furniture in this issue is also quite interesting. Gopnik makes the following comment on their contribution to American art:
The Shakers, then, did not simply survive as a path to purity never pursued. Instead, they permanently defined a curiously American composition, played in the blue key of E: enlightenment, entrepreneuralism, and exploitation all in counterpoint, with a half-heard chord of illicit eroticism.