The New Yorker articles from November 2003

The New Yorker archives from November 2003

Scare Tactics.(Possessions; The Night Country; Come Closer )(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 3, 2003... "Why is the Hudson Valley haunted?" Judith Richardson asks in Possessions (Harvard), a study of "the history and uses of haunting" upstate. Richardson reviews the area's bloody rebellions and wandering ghost sailors, drawing on county archives,...

THIS WORLD.(The Talk of the Town)(Pope John Paul II's foreign visits)
November 3, 2003... It's been a long papacy, beginning, a quarter century ago, in a humility so genuine and tender, and so exotically not Italian, that Charlotte the saintly spider could have spun her "humble" over the white cap that Karol Wojtyla put on when he...

MIDGE'S MASH NOTE.(The Talk of the Town)(writer Midge Decter)(Interview)
November 3, 2003... The air in Midge Decter's apartment last week was not particularly humid. Decter herself, sitting on her living-room sofa in a blue wool turtleneck, black pants, and tennis shoes, appeared cool and dry. She sat with her legs crossed and her...

ORACLE ON FLATBUSH.(The Talk of the Town)
November 3, 2003... On a broad patch of sidewalk at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Bergen Street, across from Yummy Taco, an old-fashioned wooden box telephone materialized recently. The phone, which is mounted on a metal stand, as if it were a floor lamp, has...

HAIL TO THE REV.(The Talk of the Town)(presidential candidate Al Sharpton)(Interview)
November 3, 2003... Imagine, for a moment, Al Sharpton's Washington. Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam Records, is in the West Wing, at work on hip-hop outreach. In the Oval Office, the President is talking policy with a group of Harvard professors. "I...

NO RESPECT.(The Talk of the Town)(National Science Foundation funds project to catalogue hundreds of currently unknown slime-mold species)
November 3, 2003... Even the most devoted slime-mold enthusiasts would probably concede that the professional study of slime molds--more formally known as Eumycetozoans--has some unique drawbacks. For starters, you must weather polite condescension from the smug...

ANCHOR WOMAN.("Saturday Night Live" writer Tina Fey)
November 3, 2003... From 2002, Malcolm Gladwell examines the creative process behind "Saturday Night Live" On a Monday afternoon last spring, at a diner in Manhattan, Tina Fey recalled her first days on the job at "Saturday Night Live." She told me, "I'd had...

TRICKED.(childhood narative of becoming self aware)
November 3, 2003... When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived in a rented house three blocks from the school where I would begin the third grade. My mother made friends with one of the neighbors, but one seemed enough for her. Within a year we would...

FAMILY BUSINESS.(Dow Jones and Co.)
November 3, 2003... At first glance, the Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones & Co., appear to be models of serenity. The newsroom, as newsrooms go, is surprisingly tranquil, despite a recent round of layoffs. Paul E. Steiger, the managing editor...

GANGSTA WAR.(Ivory Coast)
November 3, 2003... From my balcony on the eighth floor of the Hotel Ivoire, I could see downtown Abidjan across the lagoon in the mist. Skyscrapers rose along the waterfront, a blue neon sign blinked "nissan," and the plate glass of the commercial banks reflected...

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND.(Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity)(Book Review)
November 3, 2003... Few ideas have had a racier history than the idea of infinity. It arose amid ancient paradoxes, proceeded to baffle philosophers for a couple of millennia, and then, by a daring feat of intellect, was finally made to yield its secrets in the...

AN OBSTINATE SURVIVOR.(Goya)(Book Review)
November 3, 2003... Spain may have lost her American empire, but dead Spanish painters lately rule the hemisphere of art: Picasso going mano a mano with Matisse at moma Queens; Velazquez and Zurbaran up at the Met this spring, soberly showing Manet the way to...

THE TIES THAT BLIND.(The Retreat from Moscow)(Theater Review)
November 3, 2003... Once upon a time, when my only son was eleven, I leaned over his bed and heard myself say, "Your mother and I are separating." He was silent for a while; then he said, "I don't want your unhappiness." As I left the room, I naively thought, How...

DOUBLE OR NOTHING.(Merce Cunningham Dance Company)(Dance Review)
November 3, 2003... At the Merce Cunningham Dance Company's recent show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the average age of Cunningham's audience seemed to have dropped by about thirty years, and that is because the troupe, normally a rather egghead enterprise,...

ESCAPING THE MUSEUM.(Andrew Manze)(Pomerium vocal ensemble)(Concert Review)
November 3, 2003... Musicians who specialize in performing works of the deep past, from the Baroque, the Renaissance, or before, eventually have to face up to the impossibility of their task. The philosopher Lydia Goehr, in her book "The Imaginary Museum of...

THE JUNKMAN'S SON.(Philip Guston, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY)(Biography)
November 3, 2003... Around 1967, Philip Guston abandoned the tremblingly sensitive, lofty Abstract Expressionism for which he was revered. In its place came an outburst of gross cartoon imagery: gregarious Ku Klux Klansmen with fat cigars; one-eyed heads, like...

DECEIVED.(Shattered Glass)(The Human Stain)(Movie Review)
November 3, 2003... The new movie "Shattered Glass" depicts a nasty moment in the life of The New Republic. If the internal turmoils of a political magazine based in Washington are now considered sufficient grounds for a motion picture, there is no saying where...

Paging Through the Demimonde.('Lapdancer')(Brief Article)(Book Review)
November 10, 2003... A cheerful sign photographed on the wall of a house in Nevada in 1987 reads, "SMILE: It's the 2nd Best Thing You Can Do with Your Lips." The risque wall hanging is the only hint that the room in the photograph is the otherwise genteel parlor of...

UNCOVERED.(The Talk of the Town)(activities of the Tiger Force during the Vietnam War)
November 10, 2003... Last month, the Blade, a mid-sized family-owned newspaper published in Toledo, Ohio, devoted fifteen pages over four days to an exhaustive expose of an elite Army unit, known as the Tiger Force, that spun out of control during the Vietnam War....

THE RACE CARD.(The Talk of the Town)(production of 'The Human Stain')
November 10, 2003... In the new film "The Human Stain," based on the Philip Roth novel, an actor named Wentworth Miller plays the young Coleman Silk--or, rather, the young Anthony Hopkins. (Hopkins, you see, plays the older Wentworth Miller.) Silk is a black man...

THE ALL-TIME GREATS.(The Talk of the Town)(party celebrates book by Charles Murray, 'Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950')
November 10, 2003... Roger Hertog, the vice-chairman of Alliance Capital, the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, and the moneybags behind the New York Sun, opened up his Fifth Avenue apartment the other night for a party to celebrate the publication of a new book...

I'M LOSING YOU.(The Talk of the Town)(mobile phone service in New York, New York and nuber portability)
November 10, 2003... Last week, around the globe, airplane radio communication was disrupted and satellite signals were lost as solar flares sent geomagnetic storms into Earth's atmosphere. Here in New York, meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference to...

WHIFF.(The Talk of the Town)(ideas that have failed)
November 10, 2003... William Shawn, this magazine's editor absolute for a great many years, used to tell his nonfiction writers that the world's worst subject was the future. Hard to tie down, the future could too easily come loose and take off on unexpected...

PERSIA ON THE PACIFIC.(Iranians in California)
November 10, 2003... From October, 2001, Mark Singer on the Arab-American community in Dearborn, Michigan On June 21, 1998, Iran's national soccer team walked onto the field in its first World Cup tournament since the country had overthrown the Shah, installed...

CONCRETE JUNGLE.(concrete industry in New York, New York)
November 10, 2003... Some friends of mine--former New Yorkers who had moved to the country--bought a Labrador-retriever puppy. When the dog was six months old, they took her with them on a weekend visit to Manhattan. The dog adored New York's pungent sidewalks, but...

THE REEVE EFFECT.(actor Christopher Reeve's health)
November 10, 2003... The home of the actor Christopher Reeve is in the middle of horse country. He lives in Westchester County, down a winding country road that takes you past several estates with stables and riding tracks. At the end is a sprawling farmhouse set...

ALL HE SURVEYS.(media mogul and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi)
November 10, 2003... Silvio Berlusconi is the Prime Minister of Italy, its first media mogul, and its richest citizen. Italians who like him--and obviously millions do--usually start with "rich." It's a word they pronounce with some reverence, because, for...

DEEP FOCUS.('The Unexpurgated Beaton')(Excerpt)
November 10, 2003... Read an excerpt from "The Unexpurgated Beaton" The Hepburn most associated with Cecil Beaton is Audrey, whose "purity and integrity," whose "enormous understanding, tact and . . . willingness to learn" he hymned throughout "Cecil Beaton's...

STORY LINE.(Rembrandt paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts)
November 10, 2003... "Rembrandt's Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher," at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, is a large exhibition of mostly tiny pictures--about a hundred and fifty prints interspersed with thirty-five drawings and twenty-three paintings, only one...

CALIFORNIA SCHEMING.('Arrested Development' and 'Kid Notorious')(Television Program Review)
November 10, 2003... There's a sense of loopy serendipity about Fox's new half-hour comedy "Arrested Development," which premiered on November 2nd. It's the kind of show you want to tell everyone about and yet keep to yourself--if the network finds out how good it...

BITCHES AND WITCHES.('Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' Music Box Theater, New York, New York; 'Wicked,' Gershwin Theater, New York, New York)(Theater Review)
November 10, 2003... "I'm a peculiar blend of the Pragmatist and the Romanticist and the crocodile. The Monster," Tennessee Williams said. After the triumph in 1947 of "A Streetcar Named Desire," he dedicated himself to his own greatness; the result was a moral and...

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.('The Matrix Revolutions,' 'Veronica Guerin' and 'Beyond Borders')(Movie Review)
November 10, 2003... "Not much philosophy there," a real-world philosopher, Colin McGinn, of Rutgers, said to me after a screening of "The Matrix Revolutions" last week. I hasten to add that my own unphilosophical temperament found the picture somewhat more...

THAT'S NOT QUITE ALL, FOLKS!('Looney Tunes Golden Collection')(Video Recording Review)
November 17, 2003... The rerelease of classic Warner Bros. shorts has topped the wish lists of film fans since the beginning of the DVD era--yes, even more than the collected slapstick comedies of Sylvester Stallone. And now Warner Bros. has obliged, in a fashion,...

GETTING WARMER.(The Talk of the Town)(efforts to pass Climate Stewardship Act, which would have protected the environment)
November 17, 2003... During the debate last month on the Climate Stewardship Act, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, held up a map of the Arctic ice cap. The map, based on a series of nasa satellite photographs, showed the extent of year-round sea ice...

BLALKING.(The Talk of the Town)(journalists use the Internet to irritate each other, leading to allegations of stalking)
November 17, 2003... In San Diego last month, the Times columnist Paul Krugman dropped by the Revelle Forum lecture series and was greeted with rapturous applause. He delivered a half-hour speech, which amounted to an indictment of the entire economic strategy of...

THE RETURN OF BANJO BOY.(The Talk of the Town)(actor Billy Redden)
November 17, 2003... Billy Redden is synonymous with a singular type of movie role: the banjo boy. He got his start in the 1972 film "Deliverance," which followed four urbanites on a canoe trip through rural Georgia. After a bit of exposition, the film really...

WHOOSH.(The Talk of the Town)(expansion of pneumatic garbage collection system in New York, New York)
November 17, 2003... The Avac is New York's only pneumatic garbage-collection system. Designed in the late nineteen-sixties to service Roosevelt Island's housing developments, the system runs under all the island's high-rises. When people throw their garbage down...

HONG KONG HOOEY.(The Talk of the Town)(why blaming China for US unemployment is wrong)
November 17, 2003... In the nineteen-eighties, as the United States struggled with high unemployment, vanishing factory jobs, and soaring trade deficits, American politicians found their culprit: Japan. Japanese exports were turning America into a land of burger...

GENERAL CLARK'S BATTLES.(presidential candidate Wesley Clark)
November 17, 2003... The first important decision of retired Army General Wesley Clark's new political career was the long deferral of its launch. As Clark lodged safely in the rear echelon, the other Democratic Presidential aspirants spent most of the year...

ANIMAL ACTION.(using animals in entertainment productions)
November 17, 2003... According to the American Humane guidelines, no animal actor should have to work like a dog. For instance, if an ape is on set for more than three consecutive days the production must provide a play area or a private park where the ape can...

CHASING THE WITCH.(comedian Billy Connolly)(Interview)
November 17, 2003... The Scottish comedian Billy Connolly likes to date his enduring optimism to his days in the shipyards of Glasgow, where he worked as a welder from the ages of sixteen to twenty-four. One day, he says, he went to buy a pack of cigarettes from...

ARSE POETICA.(life of poet Arthur Rimbaud)
November 17, 2003... What poet's life lends itself better to myth than Arthur Rimbaud's? By the age of sixteen, he had written one of the most celebrated poems in French literature. Soon he was shocking bohemian Paris, living on absinthe and hashish and openly...

SONS AND LOVERS.('The Caretaker,' American Airlines theater, London, England)(Theater Review)
November 17, 2003... Mick (Aidan Gillen) has a body like a switchblade--always ready to spring into action and respond to violence with violence. In a leather jacket as black as his brilliantined hair, Mick is a neat, presentable sociopath. When the world around...

KINGDOM COME.(Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California)
November 17, 2003... The old American concert halls were built not just to usher in the right sort of people but to keep the wrong sort out. Upper-crust music lovers believed that they alone had the education and the cultivation to grasp the European masterpieces....

THE INCREDIBLE HULK.(Time Warner Center, New York, New York)
November 17, 2003... The new Time Warner Center, at the southwest corner of Central Park, isn't a bad piece of urban design. The base of the building reflects the curve of Columbus Circle in a sumptuous, even graceful arc, and it gives the circle a monumentality...

RULING THE WAVES.('Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World')(Movie Review)
November 17, 2003... The new Peter Weir film is called "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and what a mouthful it is. There are sailors in this movie who can load and fire a twelve-pounder in less time than some viewers will take to pronounce the...

UNCRAZY CALIFORNIA.(The Talk of the Town)(gubernatorial election)
November 24, 2003... On Monday of this week, for the first time in television (and American) history, a gubernatorial inauguration is to be carried live and coast to coast on all three networks--CNN, MSNBC, and FNC. Network TV ain't what it used to be. Still, this...

ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW.(The Talk of the Town)(Central Park condominiums)
November 24, 2003... Let's say you're looking to drop fifteen or twenty million on a condo in the new, twin-towered Time Warner Center, on Columbus Circle. What might you be getting? Four or five thousand square feet, for a start. His and hers marble bathrooms....

TOUGH SHELL.(The Talk of the Town)(DonorsChoose funds public schools)
November 24, 2003... Bill Gates may have donated fifty-one million dollars to the New York City public-school system this fall, but Amy Wallace's first graders still can't afford a new home for their pet crab, Clifford. Wallace, who is twenty-seven, teaches at...

CLOSED.(The Talk of the Town)(Bobbi Boland closes)
November 24, 2003... Life on Broadway is exceedingly rough. Casts change overnight; directors get fired, critics attack, and plays close. But what is rare--it has happened only four times since 1980--is to see a play shut down before opening night. In the case of...

GONE SOUTH.(Major League Baseball rescheduling)
November 24, 2003... From 1963, Roger Angell on that year's World Series, between the Yankees and the Dodgers Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, in a surprise news conference two days after the conclusion of the recent World Series, announced that Major League...

WAR AFTER THE WAR.(Iraq)
November 24, 2003... In the shade of a high sandstone arch, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and a platoon of American soldiers from the 1st Armored Division guard the main point of entry into Baghdad's Green Zone, the heavily fortified area west of the Tigris River from...

BABY, REMEMBER MY NAME.(Taboo)(Fame on 42nd Street)(Theater Review)
November 24, 2003... Like a number of pop artists who have attained lasting notoriety, the British singer and spectacle Boy George has a canny understanding of the needs, hopes, and dreams of his audience. In Culture Club, the rock group that made him a household...

TRUE COLORS.(Howard Hodgkin)(Biography)
November 24, 2003... The first time Howard Hodgkin came to the United States, he was seven years old. The year was 1940, and Hodgkin, whose father was serving in the Royal Air Force, had been evacuated from his native England, along with his mother and sister. They...

PAPERY PASSIONS.(My Life as a Fake)(Book Review)
November 24, 2003... Rebecca Mead on the marriage market Peter Carey's new novel, "My Life as a Fake" (Knopf; $24), is so confidently brilliant, so economical yet lively in its writing, so tightly fitted and continuously startling in its plot that something,...

LOVE FOR SALE.(Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School)(Book Review)
November 24, 2003... John Updike reviews "My Life as a Fake," by Peter Carey The notion that dating, mating, and marriage take place within a marketplace is a conceit universally observed by writers of comedic-dramatic television shows, directors of romantic...

THE RAY OF DEATH.(La Juive)(Opera Review)
November 24, 2003... A hundred years ago, in the fall of 1903, Gustav Mahler was rehearsing Fromental Halevy's opera "La Juive" in Vienna. By Mahler's time, the art of French grand opera that Halevy exemplified had gone out of fashion, its stylized set pieces and...

CLOSE TO THE END.(The Barbarian Invasions)(21 Grams)(Movie Review)
November 24, 2003... In "The Decline of the American Empire" (1986), the French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand created a companionable erotic fiction. A group of university intellectuals gathered at a lakeside house outside Montreal for a weekend of food,...