The New Yorker articles from February 2007

The New Yorker archives from February 2007

TABLES FOR TWO.
February 5, 2007... KAMPUCHEA NOODLE BAR -- 78 Rivington St., at Allen St. (212-529-3901)--New York loves its noodles, judging from the enduring popularity of Carmine's, the ever-growing popularity of Momofuku, and the fact that the obituary of the inventor of...

POP NOTES.
February 5, 2007... PAIRED OFF -- There seem to be a lot of male-female duos in business right now; the high-profile White Stripes and Brooklyn's medium-profile Matt & Kim are only two of a growing cohort. This statistical spike must be due partly to coincidence,...

WEBBCAST.(The Talk of the Town)
February 5, 2007... For more than forty years, it has been the custom for the President's State of the Union address to be followed by a formal televised response. In 1966, the leaders of the Republican minority in Congress, the florid Senator Everett Dirksen and...

TAKING DOVER STREET.(The Talk of the Town)
February 5, 2007... Like residents of other photogenic parts of the city, people who live between the Brooklyn Bridge and the South Street Seaport have become accustomed to seeing their blocks turned into movie sets. Film trucks idle day and night in the street;...

OBJETS.(The Talk of the Town)
February 5, 2007... Last fall, Marc Newson designed a surfboard for Garrett McNamara, the rex of big-wave tow-surfing. McNamara took the board--a silvery projectile, fashioned from hollow nickel--to Tahiti, wiped out at Teahupo'o, and considered it a goner. "The...

PEP TALK.(The Talk of the Town)
February 5, 2007... "Apocalpyse Not" was the informal title given to a conference held last week at Trinity Church that was attended by four hundred-odd religious leaders and that took as its subject the end of the world as envisioned in the Book of Revelation....

OVER THERE.(The Talk of the Town)
February 5, 2007... These look like fat years on Wall Street. In 2006, the city's biggest financial firms made more than thirty billion dollars in profits. Trading volume on the major exchanges is climbing, while the merger market is booming. And bankers and...

GOOGLE'S MOON SHOT.
February 5, 2007... Every weekday, a truck pulls up to the Cecil H. Green Library, on the campus of Stanford University, and collects at least a thousand books, which are taken to an undisclosed location and scanned, page by page, into an enormous database being...

BOOMTOWN BLUES.
February 5, 2007... The annual Rendezvous Rodeo, held over the second weekend in July, is the largest of the season in Sublette County, Wyoming. Behind the chutes, cowboys were preparing to ride, wrapping old injuries, taping newer ones, stretching their backs,...

MR> BIG.
February 5, 2007... On November 5th, the day Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, Jalal Talabani, the longtime Kurdish guerrilla leader, who is currently Iraq's President, was in Paris, on a state visit. He was installed in the sumptuous Presidential Suite at Le...

DIFFERENT STROKES.
February 5, 2007... Vincent van Gogh's favorite color was yellow; Paul Gauguin's was red. It was not a trivial difference. It pertains to the clashing, deeply complementary temperaments of two painters whose idiosyncrasies, inseparable from their talents and...

HOSTILE ACTS.
February 5, 2007... Hostility may be the engine of humor, but the broadcast networks dread its snarl. Whenever they air a truly mean sitcom, such as the long-gone "Buffalo Bill" or "Action," the audience flees, so TV executives have learned to muffle their...

BRIEFLY NOTED.
February 5, 2007... "The Year of Endless Sorrows," by Adam Rapp "The Foundation," by Joel L. Fleishman "The Adventures of a Cello," by Carlos Prieto The Castle in the Forest, by Norman Mailer (Random House; $27.95). Mailer's new novel chronicles the...

BRIEFLY NOTED.
February 5, 2007... "The Castle in the Forest," by Norman Mailer "The Foundation," by Joel L. Fleishman "The Adventures of a Cello," by Carlos Prieto The Year of Endless Sorrows, by Adam Rapp (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $15). In this first adult novel...

BRIEFLY NOTED.
February 5, 2007... "The Castle in the Forest," by Norman Mailer "The Year of Endless Sorrows," by Adam Rapp "The Adventures of a Cello," by Carlos Prieto The Foundation, by Joel L. Fleishman (PublicAffairs; $27.95). Dwight Macdonald once called the...

BRIEFLY NOTED.
February 5, 2007... "The Castle in the Forest," by Norman Mailer "The Year of Endless Sorrows," by Adam Rapp "The Foundation," by Joel L. Fleishman The Adventures of a Cello, by Carlos Prieto, translated from the Spanish by Elena C. Murray (Texas;...

IN BLACK AND WHITE.
February 5, 2007... In 1963, LeRoi Jones, a twenty-eight-year-old poet from Newark, New Jersey, sat down and wrote a play. Titled "Dutchman," Jones's one-act work was more or less finished twenty-four hours after its inception. In his 1984 autobiography, the...

TOWARD SILENCE.
February 5, 2007... Near the end of the Second World War, soldiers and civilians on the Japanese home front constructed networks of underground bases in anticipation of an invasion that never came. In one of those dugout fortresses, in the mountains west of Tokyo,...

EMINENT DOMINION.
February 5, 2007... For a generation, the standard view of Robert Moses has been that he transformed New York but didn't really make it better. This view was shaped by Robert Caro's epic biography "The Power Broker"--published in 1974 and in print ever since....

POP NOTES.(West)(Dangerous Game)(Sound recording review)
February 12, 2007... TOWN AND COUNTRY -- Lucinda Williams's new album, "West" (Lost Highway), chronicles the death of Williams's mother and the end of a turbulent romance, and the opener, "Are You Alright?" could be addressed to either of the departed ("Are you...

TABLES FOR TWO.(Centovini)(Restaurant review)
February 12, 2007... CENTOVINI -- 25 W. Houston St. (212-219-2113)--The unceasing traffic of Houston Street and the construction pylons and plastic netting along the sidewalk might distract an unwary passerby from this whimsically elegant wine bar and restaurant....

HOT TOPIC.(The Talk of the Town)(global warming)
February 12, 2007... SHOUTS & MURMURS, by Paul Rudnick Except in certain benighted precincts--oil-industry-funded Web sites, the Bush White House, Michael Crichton's den--no one wastes much energy these days trying to deny global warming. Credit Al Gore's...

APARTMENT S.O.S.(The Talk of the Town)(real estates)
February 12, 2007... SHOUTS & MURMURS, by Paul Rudnick When Antonio del Rosario, the managing director and executive vice-president of Barak Realty, remembers the golden era of real-estate sales--the spring of 2005--he does so with a mixture of nostalgia and...

BOOK 'EM PARTY.(The Talk of the Town)(Stanley Alpert's The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival)
February 12, 2007... SHOUTS & MURMURS, by Paul Rudnick Nine years ago, Stanley Alpert was kidnapped at gunpoint after dropping a woman off at her apartment building in the Village. He had met her on the subway, less than an hour before, and on a whim invited...

SHEEPISH.(gay sheeps)
February 12, 2007... Charles Roselli set out to discover what makes some sheep gay. Then the news media and the blogosphere got hold of the story., --The Times. Enough already. I'm Troy, a gay sheep, and I'll tell you the truth. Although I'm conflicted about...

WHITNEY BALLIETT.(The Talk of the Town)(In memoriam)
February 12, 2007... Balliett on Duke Ellington; the Newport Jazz Festival; Ellis Larkins. SHOUTS & MURMURS, by Paul Rudnick Whitney Balliett, who died last week at the age of eighty, was above all a poet, who pursued poetry by other means. He wrote for...

THE LORAX.(Joseph Lieberman)
February 12, 2007... Hillary Rodham Clinton, like many capable politicians, has the ability to arrange her face in such a way as to convey nothing but placidity and benign pity when confronted by a hostile or unpleasant comment. On occasion, though, when her...

DISAPPEARING ACT.(Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton, Sydney Theatre Company)(Interview)
February 12, 2007... In Sydney, Australia, on the bright, blustery morning of November 10th, toward the end of Pier 4, a "finger wharf" that reaches out two hundred yards into the harbor and houses the Sydney Theatre Company, a little bit of show-biz history took...

THE FIXER.(Howard Rubenstein, public relations executive)
February 12, 2007... For years, many of the city's wealthiest and most visible personalities have been represented by a somewhat achromatic gentleman who is paid to keep them in the public eye in times of triumph, out of the press in their hours of shame, and, in...

TWO HEADS.(Patricia Churchland, Paul Churchland )(Biography)
February 12, 2007... It's a little before six in the morning and quite cold on the beach. It's low tide, and the sand is wet and hard-packed and stony. This early on a Sunday, there are often only two people here, on the California coast just north of San Diego....

MISSING LINK.(Alfred Russel Wallace)(Biography)
February 12, 2007... When he was twenty-four years old, Alfred Russel Wallace, the greatest field biologist of the nineteenth century, had his head examined by a phrenologist who determined that, while his "organ of wonder" was very big, his "organ of veneration,"...

SLAUGHTERHOUSE.(The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... In "The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare As We Know It" (Houghton Mifflin; $27), David A. Bell, a professor at Johns Hopkins, tries to restore military history to the center of history. This ambition may come as a...

Briefly Noted.(Wish I Could Be There)(Zoli)(A Long Way Gone)(The Terror)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... "The Terror," by Dan Simmons "A Long Way Gone," by Ishmael Beah "Wish I Could Be There," by Allen Shawn Zoli, by Colum McCann (Random House; $24.95). In the story of Zoli, who is loosely based on the Romany poet Papusza, McCann...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(The Terror)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... "Zoli," by Colum McCann "A Long Way Gone," by Ishmael Beah "Wish I Could Be There," by Allen Shawn The Terror, by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown; $25.99). Simmons's historical suspense novel depicts the real-life plight of the Franklin...

Briefly Noted.(Zoli)(The Terror)(Wish I Could Be There)(A Long Way Gone)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... "Zoli," by Colum McCann "The Terror," by Dan Simmons "Wish I Could Be There," by Allen Shawn A Long Way Gone, by Ishmael Beah (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $22). In 1993, when the author was twelve, rebel forces attacked his home...

Briefly Noted.(A Long Way Gone)(The Terror)(Zoli)(Wish I Could Be There)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... "Zoli," by Colum McCann "The Terror," by Dan Simmons "A Long Way Gone," by Ishmael Beah Wish I Could Be There, by Allen Shawn (Viking; $24.95). Shawn, a composer and professor of music, probes the causes of his long struggle with...

VENETIAN BRASS.(Tintoretto)
February 12, 2007... Tintoretto was too good an artist for his time's uses; he still clamors for a proper role, seeking affirmation, four centuries later. This thought came to me as whimsy, and stayed as conviction, at the Prado, in Madrid, which has just opened...

GUILTY PARTIES.(The Lives of Others)(Movie review)
February 12, 2007... Movie Listings The Film File If there is any justice, this year's Academy Award for best foreign-language film will go to "The Lives of Others," a movie about a world in which there is no justice. It marks the debut of the German...

TABLES FOR TWO.(Fondue)(Restaurant review)
February 19, 2007... TRESTLE ON TENTH -- 242 Tenth Ave., at 24th St. (212-645-5659)--Last summer, Ralf Kuettel, who hails from a small town outside Zurich, took it upon himself to provide the city with a new Swiss-influenced restaurant. (The last one of note,...

DVD NOTES.('Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection')(Video recording review)
February 19, 2007... THE CREDIBLE HULK -- Robert Mitchum was a marijuana smoker in an era of drinkers, and his heavy-lidded eyes and laconic drawl seem to come straight out of the postwar cool-jazz scene. As proved by the masterworks in a new six-disk boxed set,...

TOO MANY CHIEFS.(Presidents' Day)
February 19, 2007... According to some of the calendars and appointment books floating around this office, Monday, February 19th, is Presidents' Day. Others say it's President's Day. Still others opt for Presidents Day. Which is it? The bouncing apostrophe bespeaks...

ON PARADE.(The Talk of the Town)
February 19, 2007... Before you can fail upward, you must first dabble sideways. For example, you're a twenty-one-year-old newcomer from Amish country, in Pennsylvania, and suddenly the star of a new Broadway hit, and in the initial gust of acclaim you accept an...

ANALYSTS UNSPOOLED.("Psychiatry and the Cinema")(Discussion)
February 19, 2007... When it comes to unflattering portraits of mental-health professionals on film, Glen O. Gabbard, as they say, wrote the book. Gabbard, a psychoanalyst and a professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, is the author of...

BLENDING IN.(Loren Kreiss)
February 19, 2007... Loren Kreiss, the twenty-six-year-old scion of a family-owned furnishings company that is based in San Diego, moved to Manhattan in 2005 and would be the first to admit that becoming a New Yorker has been an education. First, there was the...

TROUBLED WATERS OVER OIL.(Iran)
February 19, 2007... The past few months haven't been easy for Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His refusal to halt Iran's uranium-enrichment program led the United Nations to impose sanctions in December. Inflation in Iran has exploded, with the price of...

WHATEVER IT TAKES.(Television program review)
February 19, 2007... The office desk of Joel Surnow--the co-creator and executive producer of "24," the popular counterterrorism drama on Fox--faces a wall dominated by an American flag in a glass case. A small label reveals that the flag once flew over Baghdad,...

THE WAY WE ARE.(Viewpoint essay)
February 19, 2007... In Paris they warn you before cutting off the water, but out in Normandy you're just supposed to know. You're also supposed to be prepared, and it's this last part that gets me every time. Still, though, I try to make do. A saucepan of chicken...

THE DELIVERER.(Tom Monaghan)(Biography)
February 19, 2007... Tom Monaghan always believed that someday he would be rich, and when that day finally came, courtesy of a Domino's Pizza empire, he knew just how to proceed. In the nineteen-eighties, as Monaghan attained a place on lists of the wealthiest...

THE ORIGAMI LAB.
February 19, 2007... One of the few Americans to see action during the Bug Wars of the nineteen-nineties was Robert J. Lang, a lanky Californian who was on the front lines throughout, from the battle of the Kabutomushi Beetle to the battle of the Menacing Mantis...

THE MONEYED MUSE.
February 19, 2007... Michael Lewis, a journalist and the author of "Liar's Poker" and "Moneyball," appeared in the magazine Poetry for the first time in the summer of 2005, with a satirical piece called "How to Make a Killing from Poetry: A Six Point Plan of...

THE CASTAWAYS.(narrative of three Mexican fishermen's 5,000-mile odyssey)
February 19, 2007... Very early on the morning of October 28, 2005, in the town of San Blas, on the central Pacific Coast of Mexico, five men boarded a small boat. The day started out looking promising: hurricane season was waning, there were few clouds, and the...

THE KONA FILES.
February 19, 2007... Leaks are inevitable in business and politics, but as acts of defiance they are maddening to those who prize order and control. At Hewlett-Packard, under the tumultuous stewardship of Carly Fiorina, the country's most visible female chairman...

BIG TIME.(Arcade Fire)
February 19, 2007... There is little about the Montreal band Arcade Fire that is not big. The group has seven core members, including its founders, a married couple named Win Butler (who is six feet three) and Regine Chassagne. Onstage, Arcade Fire expands to nine...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(Call Me by Your Name)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 19, 2007... "Fruit of the Lemon," by Andrea Levy "John Osborne," by John Heilpern "This Has Happened," by Piera Sonnino Call Me by Your Name, by Andre Aciman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $23). Aciman's first novel shows him to be an acute...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(Fruit of the Lemon)(Brief article)(Book review)
February 19, 2007... "Call Me by Your Name," by Andre Aciman "John Osborne," by John Heilpern "This Has Happened," by Piera Sonnino Fruit of the Lemon, by Andrea Levy (Picador; $15). Levy's previous novel, "Small Island," examined the lives of Jamaican...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(Brief article)(Book review)
February 19, 2007... "Call Me by Your Name," by Andre Aciman "Fruit of the Lemon," by Andrea Levy "This Has Happened," by Piera Sonnino John Osborne, by John Heilpern (Knopf; $35). This biography provides a nuanced portrait of a playwright whose...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(Brief article)(Book review)
February 19, 2007... "Call Me by Your Name," by Andre Aciman "Fruit of the Lemon," by Andrea Levy "John Osborne," by John Heilpern This Has Happened, by Piera Sonnino, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Palgrave Macmillan; $21.95). Sonnino's...

NOTABLE QUOTABLES.
February 19, 2007... Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson." Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in "Casablanca" says "Play it again, Sam"; Leo Durocher did not say "Nice guys finish last"; Vince Lombardi did say "Winning isn't everything, it's...

SIGHT UNSEEN.(Theater review)
February 19, 2007... A good playwright always signals his theme, if only obliquely, in the first exchanges of a play. In the opening scene of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," for instance, a sentinel on the parapets in the dark cries out, "Who's there?" The question lies...

DOUBLE LIVES.(Robert Hanssen)(Edie Sedgwick)(Movie review)
February 19, 2007... Movie Listings The Film File Some kinds of perversity are so bizarre that one despairs of ever understanding them. The mental state of Robert Hanssen, who for more than twenty years spied for the Soviet Union and then for Russia while...

The Moneyed Muse.
February 19, 2007... Editors' Note appended. Michael Lewis, a journalist and the author of "Liar's Poker" and "Moneyball," appeared in the magazine Poetry for the first time in the summer of 2005, with a satirical piece called "How to Make a Killing from...

Notable Quotables.
February 19, 2007... Letters appended. Sherlock Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson." Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in "Casablanca" says "Play it again, Sam"; Leo Durocher did not say "Nice guys finish last"; Vince Lombardi did say...