Saturday Story Hour: Wells Tower

After taking a week off to reload, "Saturday Story Hour" is back. With a BANG.

This week, we're focusing on an author who is entirely new to Fosco! Just a few weeks ago, Fosco semi-randomly clicked on a story on the NY Times front page about a short story collection by an author named Wells Tower. The name of the collection is Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, which is a pretty catchy title. Fosco decided to buy the book (from his local independent bookstore--thus paying almost $10 too much), after reading these paragraphs in the Times piece:

Wells Tower’s book of short stories, “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned,” has attracted a great number of vivid descriptions from admiring critics in the few weeks since it came out, and “strange” is perhaps the most commonly employed.

Also: “lurid”; “crammed with more pathos than a 400-page potboiler”; “bittersweet,” “beautiful” and “ardently conflicted” (in the same review); and “sad-funny-disturbing” (all in the same hyphenated clause). The last came from Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, who wrote that the book “decisively establishes” Mr. Tower “as a writer of uncommon talent” and drew comparisons to Sam Shepard’s social radar, Frederic Barthelme’s ear and David Foster Wallace’s eye.

To me, those paragraphs pretty much sold it.

When Fosco got the book home and cracked it, he was surprised to discover that one of the stories had originally appeared in The New Yorker last November. Apparently, that one slipped past me. The story is called "Leopard" and I'm glad that I got this second chance to read it, because it's great.

The story is written in the second person--which is somewhat unusual and, in the hands of some writers, very show-off-y. However, in this case, I found it very easy to slip into. By the third or fourth paragraph, the oddness of second person address had entirely disappeared. At that point, I was comfortably living inside the head of Towers's teenage protagonist.

The story is also, in places, extremely funny--and poignant at the same time (just like your own teen years, right?). Consider this section that describes a small fungus spot that has appeared on your upper lip (wasn't Junior High absolute torture?):

A tiny hamburger is what the fungus resembles, cracked and brown and perfectly centered in the little fluted area between your septum and upper lip. Yesterday, in the cafeteria, Josh Mohorn pointed out the similarity before a table of your friends. A painful thing, considering how much you would like to be Josh Mohorn. He turned to you and said, “Hey, Yancy, do me a favor.”

“What’s up?” you said, excited by the rare pleasure of Josh’s attention.

“Could you take that seat down there?” he said, gesturing toward the far end of the table. “I can’t eat my lunch with your fucking burger in my face.”

Even you had to admire the succinct poetry of the line, which launched an instant craze of everyone jeering and calling you Burger King, or Patty, or All Beef, the name that stuck for the rest of the day and that will surely greet you this morning at school. You are eleven years old, the age that our essences begin revealing themselves, irremediably, to us and to the world. Just as Josh Mohorn is irremediably a soccer ace and a clothes ace, with feathered hair and white bucks, you are irremediably a fungus man.

I don't know about you, but for me that passage pretty much sums up my life during the years 1985-1989.

Sadly, it turns out that you live with your loathed stepfather. By the end of the story, you'll be silently praying for him to be devoured by a renegade leopard. How does the story go from your fungus to the leopard? That's what makes it so amazing--the strange chain of contingency that seems so perfectly normal for a day in the life of a misfit eleven-year-old.

You can read "Leopard" here.

If you would like to purchase Towers's collection from Amazon (thus saving almost $10), you can do so by following this link:

Saturday Story Hour: Boxing with David Schickler

It's Saturday Story Hour--even when it's a busy week.

Last week's story left at least one of you feeling melancholy, so this week I want to make up for that with a story that approaches romantic comedy(!).

Believe it or not, sometimes a writer publishes his or her debut story in The New Yorker--after which, of course, pretty much everything else is downhill. For example, the author of today's story, David Schickler, debuted "The Smoker" in TNY and (sadly) has never written anything nearly as good or successful. Fosco's writer friend NR was so enamored with "The Smoker" that he looked forward eagerly to the publication of Schickler's first collection (Kissing in Manhattan); however, after reading the collection, NR literally threw the book out the window--he was that disappointed. Fosco would never dispose of a book, but he agrees that the rest of Schickler's collection was not nearly as good as "The Smoker."

What makes "The Smoker" so good? Well, for one thing, it's a humorous and quirky take on the old teacher-student romance cliche. Charmingly, it plays that scenario without resorting to cheap sexual thrills, favoring instead awkwardness and sweet incomprehension. And there are some gems of dialogue:

"Is this real? I mean, are you . . . in love with me?" He couldn't believe what he'd asked.

"I'm ready to be," said Nicole. "And I mean this as a compliment, but I've got nothing better to do."

I must say, that's kind of a good line.

Now if still think the story sounds a bit odd and creepy, that's because I haven't sprung the story's surprising twist on you. I don't want to give things away, but this isn't really your typical teacher-student romance story (no "Don't Stand So Close to Me" here). I would suggest you give the story a chance: see if it doesn't charm you by the end...

You can read "The Smoker" here.

And if you must discover David Schickler's other work, please do so by following these links:



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Battlestar Galactica as "future history."

There were probably ten disturbing bits of information in this recent New Yorker article about the military uses of robot-mounted shotguns (seriously). But this might have been the most troubling:

Combat-robot advocates are quick to say that the decision to fire will always remain in the hands of a human operator. Their refrain is "Man in the loop." Yet several weapons systems, including the Patriot missile and some defense systems built for U.S. Navy ships, can be programmed to shoot without a human pulling the trigger. P.W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Wired for War," about the growth of robotic warfare, says, "We've already redefined what 'in the loop' means. It's moved from making the decision to fire to mere veto power. The lines are already fuzzy, and they're disappearing."

In two hundred years, as the last remaining human historians trace the developments that eventually led to the Cylon Wars, this passage will seem sadly prophetic.

Can humankind change course in time?

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New Yorker Roundup: Florida Ruins Everything.

The most recent New Yorker is not completely a John Updike tribute (although there is quite a bit of that). Yesterday, Fosco called your attention to the amazing Steven Millhauser story (that didn't seem a hit with the commenters...); today, he wants to share another titbit with you.

The best article in this current issue is George Packer's reporting on Florida as the ground zero of the mortgage crisis (unfortunately, you must be a subscriber to read the full text). The area around Tampa has been hit the hardest. Packer describes why Florida has been uniquely susceptible to this crunch:

The state's economy depends almost entirely on growth--that is, on new arrivals and the wealth they generate in construction and real estate. "Until two years ago, this was a growth machine that was the envy of the world," said Gary Mormino, a professor of history at the University of South Florida, in St. Petersburg, which is across the bay from Tampa. "Florida, in some ways, resembles a modern Ponzi scheme. Everything is fine for me if a thousand newcomers come tomorrow. The problem is, except for a few road bumps--'73, '90, and they were really minor--no one knew what would happen if they stopped coming."

Only Nevada has a lower population of native residents than Florida. The state's growth machine did not depend on higher education or high-paying professional jobs; it depended on real estate and sunshine. Tourism and migration allowed Florida to become a low-tax, low-wage state, where living was relatively cheap. "The Florida economy has been based on selling Florida," David Reed, who runs the Florida operation of an investment fund called CapitalSouth Partners said. "Our growth is all about population growth. When you take that away, what have you got?"

Apparently, pretty much everyone bought into this bubble of insanity:

By 2005, the housing market in Florida was hotter than it had ever been, and the frenzy spread across all levels of society. Migrant farmworkers took jobs as roofers and drywall hangers in the construction industry. Nearly everyone you met around Tampa had a Realtor's license or a broker's license or was a title agent. Alex Sink, the state's chief financial officer and a Democrat, said, "When the yardman comes and says he's not going to mow your lawn anymore because he's going to become a mortgage broker, that is a sure sign that something is wrong." Flipping houses and condominiums turned into an amateur middle-class pursuit. People who drew modest salaries at their jobs not only owned a house but bought other houses as speculators.

[...]

Jim Thorner, a real-estate reporter in the Tampa office of the St. Petersburg Times, said, "There were secretaries with five to ten investment homes--a thirty-five-thousand-dollar salary and a million dollars in investments. There's no industry here, only houses."

[...]

Karen Johnson-Crowther, another real-estate agent in Fort Myers, showed me the sales history of a property in an upscale gated community which she had recently bought at a foreclosure auction. Building had begun in 2005. On December 29, 2005, the house sold for $399,600. On December 30, 2005, it sold for $589,900. On June 25, 2008, it was foreclosed on. Johnson-Crowther bought it in December for $325,000. I said that the one-day increase in value must have been some kind of record, and she looked at me pityingly: "No."

What we have here is an entire state that drove off the cliff of irrational exuberance--and took billions of dollars in "wealth" with them.

And you know the strangest part? I can't understand why anyone would want to live in Florida in the first place...

January Music

A new Fosco Lives! feature: Music Mondays.

You may recall that, in preparing his half-baked end-of-the-year recommendations, Fosco discovered that most of the songs he really liked in 2008 were actually released in 2007. Well, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, because Fosco has spent these first few weeks of 2009 grooving to some great music from 2008.

At one point recently, Fosco complained that he sometimes feels adrift in the world of contemporary music, with no reliable guide to what new music he might enjoy. Basically, Fosco was bemoaning the demise of radio as a source of music that appeals to him. But then, something miraculous happened: Fosco's friends came through for him! Ted Gideonse announced his Golden Teddy Awards for Music which introduced Fosco to TV on the Radio and Fleet Foxes. And then the always reliable Todd chimed in to recommend The Gaslight Anthem and Cut Copy.

But then things got even better, thanks to... The New Yorker?

I guess Fosco shouldn't be too surprised. I mean, after all, he does owe much of his initial interest in Radiohead to an Alex Ross piece from 1997 (right after the release of their masterpiece, OK Computer.) And he learned about the importance of Wilco from an excellent review of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

But ever since the arrival of full-time pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones (who is not, as Fosco believed for over a year, a woman), music criticism in the The New Yorker hasn't been that helpful to Fosco (except for one great piece that introduced Fosco to Slint). The problem is probably the extraordinary catholicity of Frere-Jones's taste: he is interested in everything in pop music. Fosco not so much. Fosco may be sheltered or narrow-minded, but he just can't that excited over a review of Little Lil Wayne's newest mix tape.

And then, just days into 2009, things got better. The New Yorker ran Kelefa Sanneh's profile of Will Oldham, who (as of late) records and performs under the name of Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The profile is glowing and it made Fosco curious about this obscure musician who is quietly extending the authentic tradition of American country music. Also, any musician who uses quotation marks in their name is totally cool in Fosco's book.

Well, it turns out that his music is really amazing. Powerful lyrics and simple melodies. The only problem with Will Oldham's oeuvre is that it is huge and much of it is recorded on odd labels and under many different names. However, if you start with the easy-to-find iTunes stuff (I'm still there), you'll be just fine. This is a song called "Easy Does It" from the most recent Bonnie "Prince" Billy album, Lie Down in the Light. I have no idea what the video accompaniment is.



Try to get a hold of his songs "New Partner" or "I See A Darkness."
Be forewarned: BPB can get much darker than the rollicking tune you just heard.

The next week, in the following New Yorker issue, Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a review of his favorite album of 2008: Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago. Apparently, the entire album was recorded by one man alone in a cabin in the woods near Eau Claire, Wisconsin (much multi-tracking is involved, which is one of the things that make the songs so great). The lyrics are mostly (Frere-Jones's phrase) "word salad." And the whole thing is absolutely gorgeous. Fosco has listened to it almost nonstop since last week. This is Fosco's absolute favorite song from the album, "The Wolves (Act I and II)". The auto-tune in the second half of the song is absolutely exquisite. Seriously.



Frere-Jones spends a paragraph of his review talking about the beauty of the sentence fragment "what might have been lost" from this song. The "might" is what makes it so powerful. As he notes:

Those words are what get me—joined with melody, they seem like a summary of the entire album, especially with that highly conditional “might.” Trying to keep track of everything lost? Or celebrating what wasn’t? When the band was done, and the crowd had filed out, I was still in my seat.

There is a new Bon Iver EP making the rounds on the intraweb and Fosco can recommend it. Other highlights of For Emma include "Flume" and especially "Re: Stacks" (Fosco's second favorite song on the album). This is exactly what music is supposed to sound like in January.

Beware of Pumpkin Head

Fosco has mentioned before how he feels about New Yorker fiction. Well, he just finished reading Joyce Carol Oates's most recent story in The New Yorker. It's called "Pumpkin Head" and it is not a little bit upsetting.

Fosco enjoys reading a JCO story once or twice a year, but the last few published in The New Yorker have been pretty tame by her standards. For a while, she seemed to be interested in exploring news stories "ripped from the headlines" from a fictional perspective. In my favorite JCO story, she considered obliquely the whole Jim McGreevey saga from the perspective of the young son of a somewhat similar politician. Last year, she wrote another story about the accidental death of college student via a trash chute (based on a case from New Jersey) from the perspective of the student's mother. Both these stories were not explicitly violent--the small violence in them happened "off-camera" as it were.

So Fosco forgot that JCO can write stories taut with a fine-tuned threat of horrific (often sexual) violence that, when it explodes into the horror that was expected, still does not come as a relief. And that's what she's done in "Pumpkin Head"--a story that you know will end badly from the beginning, but that still disconcerts you when it does end badly. In some ways, it's an adult version of Oates's most famous (and justly so) story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Both stories take seriously the threat of male sexuality and its ability to strip away safety and normalcy from everyday life. It's some bad mojo, that's for sure.

If you want to read this story, I would suggest that you do that now and then come back to this post. Hint: this next paragraph will include spoilers.

The most impressive part of this story is the last few sentences:

She stepped outside. She wiped at her mouth, which was still bleeding. She would run back into the house and dial 911. She would report an assault. She would summon help. For she required help, badly; she knew that Anton Kruppev would return. Certainly he would return. On the front walk, she stood gazing toward the road—what she could see of the road in the darkness. There were headlights there. An unmoving vehicle. It was very dark, a winter dark had come upon them. She called out, “Hello? Hello? Who is it?” Headlights on the roadway, where his vehicle was parked.

There are a couple of amazing things about this passage. First, there is the use of the verb "would," which introduces a profound uncertainty (that is partially temporal) into the action. "She would run back to the house and dial 911" can be read several ways:

• she will objectively do this in the future (in a moment).
  
• in her head, she is planning to do this (but may not actually do it).
  
• she wants to do this, but knows she will not (as in, "I would that it were so").
  

The uncertainty here is potent, as is the uncertainty produced by the seeming certainty by the phrases "she knew that Anton Kruppev would return. Certainly he would return." The word "certainly" in the second sentence has the paradoxical effect of calling into question her previous assertion that he will return. Consequently, the sum effect of these sentences is to leave the reader unclear as to whether Hadley will actually phone for help and whether Anton will actually return. This is a powerful and fear-inducing effect: is the story over? Or will it continue after the narration stops?

The second amazing thing about this passage is the oddness of the penultimate sentence. Oddly, Hadley suddenly seems to become confused or disoriented, calling out "Hello? Hello? Who is it?" This seems extremely strange as both the narrator and the reader seem to clearly know who is there (after all, in the next sentence, the narrator refers to "his" vehicle, making it clear that Anton is still nearby). Why do the narrator and the reader suddenly break away from Hadley at this point in the story? Why does she ask questions that she should know the answer to (and that the narrator and reader both know)? This is disorienting.

The third amazing thing here is the final sentence (fragment, actually). In response to Hadley's question, we are presented with no actual action (literally, as there is no verb here), but only an image--and a chilling one at that.

Fosco admires greatly these last lines: they do most of the work of creating the lasting creepiness of this story.

Catching Up on your Reading: Part I

The last few weeks were the holidays and all, so it's entirely understandable if you fell behind on your reading. Today on Fosco Lives! Fosco will be pointing you toward things you should have read over the holidays but might have missed.

As far as New Yorker writers go, Patricia Marx always seemed pretty entertaining to Fosco (although it was hard to tell when her only assignments were guides to shopping in NYC and beyond). But in the January 5, 2009 issue, we finally get to see Marx's talent on display in a feature article (of sorts). Marx's piece is about kosher inspectors in China and it is one of the better short pieces I've read in TNY in quite a while: funny, interesting, with an eye for quirky detail.

Here's a particularly enjoyable excerpt, describing the standard first meeting between the inspecting Rabbi and the Chinese factory managers:

The Schmooze: This takes place in the conference room, which is perhaps adorned with a wood-and-brass captain's wheel from a ship. On the wall, there might be a framed certificate for "High Tech Enterprise 2006" or a large painted sign with an adage in English. "Only Faulty Product, No Captious Customer" and "People and Products Working Together" were two that I saw. Among those in attendance could be a plant supervisor, an engineer, an export manager, a sales representative, and a factory-hired translator. There is always a lot of chuckling--about what, I don't think anyone present ever has a clue.

Fosco recommends reading this article in full, but access is only available online for New Yorker subscribers. One alternative, however, is to download the full text of the article in .pdf format from this site (if asked, Fosco will deny all knowledge of how the article could have been posted here. Remember: Fosco is ignorant.)

Also, in writing this post, Fosco came across the coolest thing: a New Yorker reading group that meets in Washington DC! How fun!

Space Oddities: New Yorker Fiction

Fosco is one of the few people he knows who still reads short stories. As the novel and the memoir battle for dominance in book sales and as the "personal essay" becomes the standard non-journalistic genre for magazine publication, the short story remains almost entirely irrelevant to literary culture (to say nothing of popular culture). The short story is essentially an academic exercise at this point--a genre practiced for its own sake, with little interest from most literary readers.

The educated reader can still find short stories in two main sources: McSweeney's (which has had some financial difficulties) and The New Yorker. While Fosco enjoys much of the McSweeney's short fiction, his relationship to NYer fiction is more ambivalent. Truly, Fosco only reads about five NYer stories a year.

And yet, some of Fosco's very favorite recent stories first appeared in that magazine: Jonathan Safran Foer's "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" (6/10/02), Stuart Dybek's "If I Vanished," "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July (6/11/07), "Spider Boy," by Joyce Carol Oates.

And yet, Fosco still can't bring himself to read most NYer fiction. In fact, there is a very complicated set of rules that determine the likelihood of Fosco reading a New Yorker story.

Fosco is less likely to read a story IF

1. he's never heard of the author (sorry, Janet Frame).
   
2. dislikes almost everything else written by that author (sorry, John Updike).
   
3. the story appears to contain numerous words NOT in English (sorry, Daniel Alarcon).
   
4. it's by Roddy Doyle or Tessa Hadley (sorry, Roddy Doyle and Tessa Hadley).

Fosco is more likely to read a story IF

1. it's written by a writer whose previous work he admires (George Saunders!)
   
2. it's short (Miranda July!)
   
3. it's "ripped from the headlines" (Joyce Carol Oates!)
   
4. there is a cool picture next to it
   

So, based on the second rule #4 (cool picture), Fosco read last week's story by Jonathan Lethem called "Lostronaut." It's an epistolary short story, a form that Fosco does not particularly like. It's a one-sided correspondence from an astronaut trapped in an international space station as it begins to shut down. There are some remarkably affecting passages in the story, especially the description of an emergency space walk:

Oh, the lie of weightlessness! We feel we’re floating only because we’re forever falling, as in an elevator with no bottom floor to smash into. And so, inside the elevator, the human party continues oblivious, the riders flirt and complain and mix zero-G cocktails, or chase bewildered zero-G leaf-cutter bees. Outside the ship, our consoling elevator’s walls dissolved, Keldysh and I were two specks falling forever, specks streaming down the face of the night. Ourselves plummeting downward to the gassy blue orb, the gassy blue orb also plummeting at the same mad rate away from us.

And yet, there are also some stupid bits (like why does the narrator need to have cancer?). But, on the whole, the narrator's mix of forced good nature, gallows humor, and willing acquiescence to her fate is strangely appealing.

There is another beautiful bit at the end, as the narrator resigns herself to her fate: abandoned in void, the space station begins to shut down.

(Did you know we can’t even properly gaze at the stars now? Our breath fogs any window we turn to. We’re moisture, Chase, we’re returning to dew.)

Perhaps it's something about the times in which we live, but this kind of dreamy resignation seems appropriate right now.

Up, Down, Up, Down, Chu Chu Chu.

Fosco loves it when The New Yorker buries something cool in its "Goings On About Town" calendar. From the October 13, 2008 issue:

Oliver Sieber's photograph "Ulala, Bad Neuheim, 2007"

For those of you who don't recognize the costume, that's "Ulala"--the protagonist of fun fun fun Sega Dreamcast game Space Channel 5.

If you've never seen Space Channel 5, do yourself a favor and watch the first sequence:



It was because of Ulala that Fosco spent two years in journalism school.

The Foscovian Update: Still Here, Still Queer.

It's been over a week since Fosco last blogged (did anyone win the betting pool?). But that doesn't mean that Fosco hasn't been thinking, Dear Reader. He's been thinking up a mess o' somethin'! And what thoughts have been rattling around in his gigantic gourdic cranium?

• Just like my third grade teacher always said, California seems to be the likely location of the coming apocalypse (although I think she meant it more eschatologically--and no, that doesn't mean what you think it means). And while all those insatiable wildfires were nowhere near Fosco's beloved Bay Area last week, the local media didn't lose an opportunity to remind us Northern(ish) CA residents that our doom is imminent, whether from a nearly overdue "tectonic time bomb" or our own giant flaming holocaust. The End is near! Whee! Even so, I'd rather die in a flaming crack in the earth than from getting lung cancer in a casino boat while losing my social security check in the slots.
  
  But seriously, if you want to read about the SoCal fire experience, check out my friend Ted's blog.
  
  
• Hey, did you hear that Dumbledore is gay? Fosco had known this for years, ever since he was fellated by the wizard in a Minneapolis airport mensroom. Even so, Fosco isn't quite sure what to feel about this whole story. To some extent, he'd rather let his friend Ted do the blog work for him (thanks again, Ted. At this rate, Fosco Lives! will eventually just be one big hyperlink to your blog). Fosco would like to raise two questions about the story that seem worth considering:
  
  1. Does a gay Dumbledore make up for Rowling's repulsively heteronormative epilogue to the seventh book ("Seventeen Years Later..."), in which everyone is happily married (heterosexually) with kids?
     
  2. What is the status of an extra-textual author's statement about a character? Could Dr. Seuss (from beyond the grave) tell us that the Lorax is gay? Would we have to believe that?
  These are the problems that a gay Dumbledore raises for me.
  
  
• Fosco was planning to spend most of this month in a blissful Jimmy Eat World coma. See, they're one of Fosco's favorite bands and the last three albums have been amazing. The previous release, Futures, obsessed me for several months. Plus, the first single ("Big Casino") from the new disc was the soundtrack to Fosco's September (because it rawks). But here's the thing: the new disc is TERRIBLE. With the exception of "Big Casino," there is no song on the disc that this Jimmy Eat World diehard fan ever wants to hear again. Fosco is sad.
  
  So what has filled the musical void in Fosco's month? Things have been a bit weird, to tell you the truth:
  
  • Radiohead's In Rainbows, which upon first listen sounded inaccessible and boring, but really gains by repetition. And I'm not just saying that because I paid £5 for it. Good tracks: "Reckoner," "All I Need," and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi."
    
  • a short but excellent Bach chorale: "Heilig, heilig" (BWV 325). Bach is usually too boring for me, but I like the calm this month.
    
  • a trance track: Agnelli and Nelson's "Wear that Dress." Trance is great for driving and paper-writing. Really!
    
  • "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want," The Smiths. I could revive a different Smiths song every month and be happy. Well, actually, sad. I wear black because that's how I feel inside.
    
  • Bruce Springsteen, Magic. I've mentioned this one before.
    
  • an amazing work by my blogpal John Mackey called "Kingfishers Catch Fire." It is seriously one of the most amazing compositions I've heard this year. The CD comes from Japan, so it might be easier to hear it streaming on his website (under "Works" on the main page). The first movement is gorgeous, but the second movement knocks it out of the park. I've been listening to it a lot in my car.
  
  
  
• Has anyone else noticed that the New Yorker section "The Critics" has become the Harvard Faculty Lounge? I suspect that it's the influence of longtime New Yorker contributor (and Harvard English prof) Luke Menand. In addition to reviews by Menand, Fosco has recently run across reviews by Professor of History Jill Lepore, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History Niall Ferguson, and the (oddly-titled) Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism James Woods James Wood. Their ambition has lead them beyond traditional academic publishing and I, for one, welcome our new Harvard overlords.

Decline and Fall: What's Wrong at The New Yorker?

Even during the school year, Fosco always reads The New Yorker. I would like to suggest that it is a defining characteristic of any New Yorker subscriber to feel as if the magazine was at its best when she began her subscription and that ever issue since then has been symptomatic of a decline. Fosco still cherishes his memories of the editorship of Tina Brown and execrates the muscular current events focus of Dandy Little David Remnick. But suddenly, in the last few months, The New Yorker has been getting pretty bad. Ergo...

Welcome to new recurring feature here at Fosco Lives!: a column grousing over editing/fact-checking/writing problems at The New Yorker.

This week's offense is from the "Talk of the Town" piece by octagenarian baseball aficianado Roger Angell. Read closely:

Bonds's record dinger, in the fifth inning of a night game against the Washington Nationals at Petco Park, in San Francisco, came in his third at-bat of the evening, succeeding a loud double and a single. (p.25)

I don't think you have to be Morganna the Kissing Bandit to notice the factual error in the above sentence. Of course, Petco Park is in San Diego, not San Francisco. The San Francisco ballpark in which Barry Bonds hit his "record dinger" is, as millions of people know, AT&T Park. Do they have fact checkers at The New Yorker anymore? Do editors read Talk of the Town pieces? And is Roger Angell senile? I want answers.

Oh, let's do one more... I owe this one to the editorial-eye of my good friend Jean Goddard. It's from John McPhee's essay on the US Open golf tournament from the 8/6/07 issue.

Soon, though, a day of epiphany came, on a specific round, when, aged twenty-four, clearly, if not for the first time, I envisioned golf as a psychological Sing Sing in which I was an inmate.

Readers of this blog know that Fosco is a longtime admirer of John McPhee, but the above sentence is hideous. McPhee should have to give back the Pulitzer for writing it. And even if McPhee thought this was a good sentence, is he now beyond editing? Couldn't a New Yorker editor have done something about all those commas?