Rating: 
Summary: The New Yorker Strikes Again
Review: Anyone who has ever read Joseph Mitchell's fascinating profile "Joe Gould's Secret" (now a book and a movie) knows what the New Yorker does with "Profiles". If you haven't read Mitchell, here's your chance, plus an unbelievable collection of life rendered beyond simple biography by a stable of superb writers. It's a must for any serious reader !
Rating:
Summary: The New Yorker Strikes Again
Review: Anyone who has ever read Joseph Mitchell's fascinating profile "Joe Gould's Secret" (now a book and a movie) knows what the New Yorker does with "Profiles". If you haven't read Mitchell, here's your chance, plus an unbelievable collection of life rendered beyond simple biography by a stable of superb writers. It's a must for any serious reader !
Rating:
Summary: The New Yorker Strikes Again
Review: Anyone who has ever read Joseph Mitchell's fascinating profile "Joe Gould's Secret" (now a book and a movie) knows what the New Yorker does with "Profiles". If you haven't read Mitchell, here's your chance, plus an unbelievable collection of life rendered beyond simple biography by a stable of superb writers. It's a must for any serious reader !
Rating:
Summary: Delightful and Revealing Profiles
Review: Hemingway, Baryishnikov, and Henry Luce are the subjects of some of my favorite celebrity profiles in this wonderful book. But topping my list is "Man Goes to See a Doctor", the awesome Adam Gopnik's sweet and funny rendering of his shrink. Here's a snippet: "Your problems remind me of" - and here he named one of the heroes of the New York School. "Fortunately, you suffer from neither impotence nor alcoholism. This is in your favor." Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: The New yorker Strikes Again
Review: If you have read Joseph Mitchell's New Yorker Profile "Joe Gould's Secret" (now in book and movie form)you know how interesting life can be. If you haven't read Mitchell, here's your chance to visit his talent along with a score of other superb New Yorker writers who are so good they make most biographys look simple by comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Profiles from (and of) The New Yorker
Review: It is expected that the profiles contained herein are what they are: insightful, well-written vignettes of interesting, often celebrated, lives. What isn't expected, and what I found most appealing, is that the collection achieves a certain unity, a distinct flow, from one profile to the next. It makes the reading experience less like an irrelative tour through a picture gallery, and more like a deconstruction of the human community.Not willing to arrange this "greatest hits" package chronologically, editor David Remnick structures the book to create pregnant dichotomous pairings. In some cases they are rather obvious, as Mikhail Baryshnikov follows Isadora Duncan. But in other cases, the order enhances both pieces: A dissection of a man passing himself off as a descendant of the Romanoff's is followed by one of Anatole Broyard, a black literary critic trying to pass himself off as white. These two pieces, which on their own didn't hold my attention, came into full view once I'd read both (furthermore, Broyard is followed by Floyd Patterson, much reviled by Muhammad Ali for being a black boxing champion easily digested by white audiences). Connections are made in other ways. Roger Angell's piece on Pittsburgh Pirate Steve Blass is followed by a profile of legendary New Yorker editor Katherine White, Angell's mother. The outcome of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election is made more palatable -- in hindsight -- by back-to-back profiles on Bush and Gore, both done by Nicholas Lemann. And a fascinating troika of profiles -- on Johnny Carson, Marlon Brando, and Richard Pryor -- pull along the notion that reaching the heights of ones profession, in the field of entertainment, does not necessarily bring peace of mind (furthermore, profiles on Carson, Pryor, and Roseanne Barr advance my own hypothesis that a comedian must lead the life of a Cassandra for a while, before the spoils come to ruin them for good; Carson is said to have "painted himself not into a corner but onto the top of a mountain."). At times, the book takes on a secondary function: detailing the lengthy and lofty history of The New Yorker magazine itself. Following the life of Katherine White, and her correspondences with New Yorker founder Harold Ross, made Nancy Franklin "giddy with a feeling of discovery, as if I'd suddenly hit upon the structure of The New Yorker's DNA -- almost as if I'd been present at the creation." This is a fantasy that others appear to share. Remnick admits that an early skewering of Time publisher Henry Luce (itself a marvel of gymnastic prose) was in response to Time giving the same treatment to Ross. At many other times throughout the collection, a subject is caught recognizing the magazine's reputation, making the accuracy of the profile presented (in Heisenbergian lingo) quite uncertain. More often than not, though, the author presciently notes when this has happened. So hermetically, the collection works. Now let me note a few of its high points. Mark Singer's illumination of sleight-of-hand master Ricky Jay portrays the man (who I'd only known as an enjoyable bit player in David Mamet's movies) as a tireless perfectionist, an undiscovered genius, and an unabashed curmudgeon. It is a treat to follow Jay through his magical world, and hear of his principled theories. Richard Preston spent many uncomfortable hours in a hot, cramped New York apartment, in order to bring back a fascinating portrait of Gregory and David Chudnovsky. The brothers, obsessed with finding the meaning of Pi (to the point where they've built their own supercomputer out of FedExed spare parts!), engage in myopic dialogues with each other that Preston only has to present verbatim to complete his profile. And in one of the few profiles of non-celebrities, Adam Gopnik hilariously recounts a five-year relationship with his shrink. It's simple, riotously funny, and at times quite poignant. "Life Stories" has few missteps (most notable: Janet Malcolm's piece on the '80s wunderkind painter David Salle tries too hard to be a piece of postmodern art itself; its efforts ultimately proved distracting). It is a mostly precise retelling of the lives of some of this century's most interesting people. It's urbane, without ever being excessively insular, and will be easily enjoyed by even those who've never folded over the pages of the magazine from whence it came.
Rating:
Summary: Profiles from (and of) The New Yorker
Review: It is expected that the profiles contained herein are what they are: insightful, well-written vignettes of interesting, often celebrated, lives. What isn't expected, and what I found most appealing, is that the collection achieves a certain unity, a distinct flow, from one profile to the next. It makes the reading experience less like an irrelative tour through a picture gallery, and more like a deconstruction of the human community. Not willing to arrange this "greatest hits" package chronologically, editor David Remnick structures the book to create pregnant dichotomous pairings. In some cases they are rather obvious, as Mikhail Baryshnikov follows Isadora Duncan. But in other cases, the order enhances both pieces: A dissection of a man passing himself off as a descendant of the Romanoff's is followed by one of Anatole Broyard, a black literary critic trying to pass himself off as white. These two pieces, which on their own didn't hold my attention, came into full view once I'd read both (furthermore, Broyard is followed by Floyd Patterson, much reviled by Muhammad Ali for being a black boxing champion easily digested by white audiences). Connections are made in other ways. Roger Angell's piece on Pittsburgh Pirate Steve Blass is followed by a profile of legendary New Yorker editor Katherine White, Angell's mother. The outcome of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election is made more palatable -- in hindsight -- by back-to-back profiles on Bush and Gore, both done by Nicholas Lemann. And a fascinating troika of profiles -- on Johnny Carson, Marlon Brando, and Richard Pryor -- pull along the notion that reaching the heights of ones profession, in the field of entertainment, does not necessarily bring peace of mind (furthermore, profiles on Carson, Pryor, and Roseanne Barr advance my own hypothesis that a comedian must lead the life of a Cassandra for a while, before the spoils come to ruin them for good; Carson is said to have "painted himself not into a corner but onto the top of a mountain."). At times, the book takes on a secondary function: detailing the lengthy and lofty history of The New Yorker magazine itself. Following the life of Katherine White, and her correspondences with New Yorker founder Harold Ross, made Nancy Franklin "giddy with a feeling of discovery, as if I'd suddenly hit upon the structure of The New Yorker's DNA -- almost as if I'd been present at the creation." This is a fantasy that others appear to share. Remnick admits that an early skewering of Time publisher Henry Luce (itself a marvel of gymnastic prose) was in response to Time giving the same treatment to Ross. At many other times throughout the collection, a subject is caught recognizing the magazine's reputation, making the accuracy of the profile presented (in Heisenbergian lingo) quite uncertain. More often than not, though, the author presciently notes when this has happened. So hermetically, the collection works. Now let me note a few of its high points. Mark Singer's illumination of sleight-of-hand master Ricky Jay portrays the man (who I'd only known as an enjoyable bit player in David Mamet's movies) as a tireless perfectionist, an undiscovered genius, and an unabashed curmudgeon. It is a treat to follow Jay through his magical world, and hear of his principled theories. Richard Preston spent many uncomfortable hours in a hot, cramped New York apartment, in order to bring back a fascinating portrait of Gregory and David Chudnovsky. The brothers, obsessed with finding the meaning of Pi (to the point where they've built their own supercomputer out of FedExed spare parts!), engage in myopic dialogues with each other that Preston only has to present verbatim to complete his profile. And in one of the few profiles of non-celebrities, Adam Gopnik hilariously recounts a five-year relationship with his shrink. It's simple, riotously funny, and at times quite poignant. "Life Stories" has few missteps (most notable: Janet Malcolm's piece on the '80s wunderkind painter David Salle tries too hard to be a piece of postmodern art itself; its efforts ultimately proved distracting). It is a mostly precise retelling of the lives of some of this century's most interesting people. It's urbane, without ever being excessively insular, and will be easily enjoyed by even those who've never folded over the pages of the magazine from whence it came.
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding collection of profiles.
Review: It's easy, I suppose, to knock 'The New Yorker' as effete and self-satisfied. Certainly its left-wing bias looks a bit strange surrounded by all those ads for expensive imported whisky and porcelain figures. This book demonstrates, however, that for seventy-five years the magazine has been turning out splendid profiles of a very disparate group of people. And, what's even more important, they're written so beautifully. Even an oddball piece like Ian Frazier's 'Nobody Better, Better than Nobody' is lucid and full of fine sentences. Every one of the profiles in this book has something to recommend it. You needn't admire or be familiar with the subject of the profile. I harbour an intense dislike for Roseanne Barr, for example, but John Lahr's profile of her had me enthralled; and I enjoyed Roger Angell's piece on Steve Blatt, despite my never having seen a baseball game. David Remnick states in his introduction that he gave pride of place to Joseph Mitchell's 'Mister Hunter's Grave', and that's understandable: it's a masterpiece. But Richard Preston's long story about the Chudnovsky brothers and their search for pi, or Mark Singer's tale of the amazing sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay, would distinguish any anthology. I think that Remnick could easily compile another volume as strong, and I hope he does so in the future -- he should include something by himself next time.
Rating:
Summary: As good as it gets
Review: One cannot choose what is the greatest profile - the Hemingway piece from 1950 or the greatest piece ever on Richard Pryor. Every one of the profiles here is a testament to what made the New Yorker the New Yorker - way back when.
Rating:
Summary: "The Noooo Yawkuh" George W. Bush, campaign 2000
Review: The well-known New Yorker writer, Nicholas Lehman's profile of George W. Bush on the campaign trail would be an atmospheric, perhaps poignant look at the country previous to the Supreme Court decision and 9/11, except for one thing. On the campaign bus, Bush came up to Lehman and said, "So who you writin' this piece for Nicky?" - (NICKY?) Lehman answered, with the name that Bush already knew. And Bush replies, "The Noooo Yawkuh, don't see why any of those readers would be interested in me." That, no matter what your political viewpoint or opinion about the magazine and its readers may be, is an indicator of the power of the magazine via its writing. The authors of the selected pieces are sometimes the primary reason to read the article. Perhaps the most famous example is Capote writing on Brando making Mitchener's Sayonara, an impossible thing to imagine today. The grandiosity of Brando doing something that he would no doubt later be ashamed of is not lost over time. Capote always boasted of his ability to keep himself out of an interview, something that I found amazingly untrue and part of his attraction. In this case, he managed to find the comedy in the Japanese girls calling, "Marron" while remaining deferential to the star. Capote innocently notes every plate of high calorie food consumed like Henry VIII and the serious tone Brando took about his own artistic endeavors. The result was that upon reading the article, Brando vowed to kill the author. Every reader will find their particular famous people who are no longer interesting, and that itself is instructive. For me, those were Johnny Carson, an early Roseanne, Baryshnikov and perhaps sadly, Al Gore. Others, eternally fresh are Isadora Duncan, Richard Pryor and Ernest Hemingway drinking champagne with Dietrich, who was passing around pictures of her grandchild. Papa mentioned that he'd like to see a Dietrich grandson in the ring.
The best, I think most New Yorker fans will agree are the otherwise unknowns, sometimes to everyone, and sometimes just to you. These are those pieces that seem to bring on Buddha-like powers of concentration where time stops and you can't account for the hours, the stuff's been so good. The pieces that will be the most deeply memorable for me are, "Mr. Hunter's
Grave," a 1956 favorite of David Remnick, the editor who placed it first. It's about a lost, secret community of black Oystermen and a mystery solved in graveyard fashion. There are the `Chudnovsky Brothers' and their entire apartment and life spent studying Pi, A piece of Henry Luce that was a savage, sarcastic and hilariously wicked perspective that quite naturally infuriated the tyrant. Nancy Franklin's profile on the infamous Katherine White was an unexpected source of female pride, without the attachment of doctrinaire feminism.
This is a sure thing for future journalists with an interest in the ubiquitous personality piece. Plenty here for those that may aspire beyond People Magazine but still can't quench the thirst for celebrity. For readers just seeking a good read however, it is a promise that life abounds with intriguing characters, subject of course to the eye and the voice of the finest
No matter the proportion of those who deplored reading a campaign piece about the future president, he managed to spark our interest once he shared his opinion about us.
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