The New Yorker articles from September 2005

The New Yorker archives from September 2005

CLASSICAL MUSIC.
September 5, 2005... ORPHEUS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA -- Virtuosos from the conductorless chamber ensemble offer music by two friends--Brahms (the First Serenade) and Dvorak (the Notturno)--in a lunchtime concert at Trinity Church. (Broadway at Wall St. Sept. 1 at 1. No...

WAR AND ANTIWAR.(Vietnam War, 1959-1975)
September 5, 2005... A few days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush, during a visit to the still smoldering Pentagon, said that what was already called the "war on terror" would be "a different type of war"--different, presumably, from the two...

NOR'EASTER.(The Talk of the Town)(storm naming)
September 5, 2005... It won't be long now before the hurricane season has passed, and, with it, the volatility of coastal winds. Bring on the mono-directional storms--the unrelenting northerly gusts, the odd gale-force southeaster. For Edgar Comee, of Brunswick,...

CAR SEAT LADY.(The Talk of the Town)(Alisa Baer)
September 5, 2005... Men, of course, do not give birth, but they have their own shadow form of labor: installing the baby's car seat. This seemingly simple job has ruined plenty of golfing Saturdays, even for guys who solved Rubik's Cube when they were younger....

ALDA ONSTAGE.(The Talk of the Town)(Alan Alda )
September 5, 2005... Alan Alda was still going strong last week, just before the end of his four-month run in the revival of David Mamet's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Glengarry Glen Ross." "Maybe I'm supposed to show some wear and tear with the eight...

SPEAKING OF SOUP.
September 5, 2005... I try not to let a decade pass without renewing my assault on Spanish, which I keep hearing described as an easy language to learn. In the nineties, in preparation for a trip to northern Spain, I bought myself a videotape Spanish course in the...

NIGHT KITCHENS.(Japanese cooking)
September 5, 2005... The abbot's garden at the temple of Daisen-in, in Kyoto, is a rectangle of raked gravel bordered by a white wall on one of its long sides, and by the wooden porch of an old pavilion on the other, where the monks meditate. From behind the wall,...

GONE FISHING.(Esca's David Pasternack )
September 5, 2005... A poll that I recently conducted among several of David Pasternack's friends and colleagues yielded a nearly unanimous result. The question was: if Dave were a fish, what kind would he be? The answer was: a tuna. One respondent, Artie Hoernig,...

TWO COOKS.(Fergus Henderson )(Alain Passard)
September 5, 2005... On an overcast, gray-to-white London summer morning, the British chef Fergus Henderson is standing and staring reverently at the edge of Smithfield, the great meat market in the East End. If it is still reasonably early by restaurant standards,...

RENAISSANCE PEARS.(Isabella Dalla Ragione's fruit orchards)
September 5, 2005... The Fiorentina is a squat and hippy pear, its dark-green skin blemished with black freckles. It is to supermarket fruit as real people are to supermodels. Until recently, the pear was thought to have disappeared from central Italy, where it...

THE EGG MEN.(Scott Gutstein)
September 5, 2005... Las Vegas is a city built by breakfast specials. Sex and gambling, too, of course, and divorce and vaudeville and the creative use of neon. But the energy for all that vice had to come from somewhere, and mostly it came from eggs. In the early...

CHEZ ADDAMS.(Charles Addams' cartoons)(Brief Article)
September 5, 2005... Charles Addams was my first cartoon love. His dark yet strangely jolly view of life jumped out at me from the pages of my parents' New Yorkers, and when I discovered his books in the library--"Monster Rally," "Addams and Evil," "Drawn &...

THE BAKEOFF.(Steve Gundrum's Project Delta )
September 5, 2005... Steve Gundrum launched Project Delta at a small dinner last fall at Il Fornaio, in Burlingame, just down the road from the San Francisco Airport. It wasn't the first time he'd been to Il Fornaio, and he made his selection quickly, with just a...

THE QUEST.(cookbooks)
September 5, 2005... I read cookbooks. I am addicted to them. I keep a pile on the floor of my study in New York, knowing that if I manage to write a couple of decent pages I can treat myself to a $4.50 Chinese lunch special in the company of Richard Olney or...

PARADISES LOST.(Shalimar the Clown)(Book Review)
September 5, 2005... Why, oh why, did Salman Rushdie, in his new novel, "Shalimar the Clown" (Random House; $25.95), call one of his major characters Maximilian Ophuls? Max Ophuls is a highly distinctive name, well known to movie lovers as that of a German-born...

DEALING HOUSEWIVES.(weeds)(Television Program Review)
September 5, 2005... "Weeds," a new Showtime comedy series in which a suburban widow takes up the not very noble profession of pot-dealing after her husband drops dead, can't be called courageous, since the premium-cable networks have little to lose when they...

WHAT ON EARTH.(Robert Smithson's works)
September 5, 2005... Robert Smithson is in fashion, in a hair-shirt kind of way. Excited reverence has marked the art-world response to a retrospective of his work that opened in Los Angeles last year and is now at the Whitney. This may seem odd, given that...

OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN.(The Constant Gardener)(Movie Review)
September 5, 2005... As if to warn that we are entering a disorderly world, "The Constant Gardener" starts with a farewell. Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) waves goodbye to his wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), as she heads toward a plane. She is accompanied by their...

TABLES FOR TWO.(Perry St)(Restaurant Review)
September 12, 2005... PERRY ST -- 176 Perry St. (212-352-1900)-- Inside Jean-Georges Vongerichten's latest venture, which anchors the middle tower of Richard Meier's glass-sheathed celebrity housing projects on the West Side Highway, the most prominent features are...

IN THE RUINS.(The Talk of the Town)
September 12, 2005... HURRICANE KATRINA Nicholas Lemann talks with Daniel Cappello about the fate of his home town, New Orleans. From 1992, James B. Stewart on his Illinois home town, threatened by floodwaters from the Mississippi. New Orleans is an...

UNDER WATER.(donations for Hurricane Katrina, 2005 victims)
September 12, 2005... HURRICANE KATRINA Nicholas Lemann talks with Daniel Cappello about the fate of his home town, New Orleans. From 1992, James B. Stewart on his Illinois home town, threatened by floodwaters from the Mississippi. One of the creepier...

PORCH DUTY.(The Talk of the Town)(analysis of storm damage)
September 12, 2005... HURRICANE KATRINA Nicholas Lemann talks with Daniel Cappello about the fate of his home town, New Orleans. From 1992, James B. Stewart on his Illinois home town, threatened by floodwaters from the Mississippi. From the front...

THE SUNKEN CITY.(The Talk of the Town)(Hurricane Katrina, 2005 damage)
September 12, 2005... HURRICANE KATRINA Nicholas Lemann talks with Daniel Cappello about the fate of his home town, New Orleans. From 1992, James B. Stewart on his Illinois home town, threatened by floodwaters from the Mississippi. (From "The Control...

ON THE ROOF.(The Talk of the Town)(Hurricane Katrina, 2005 effect)
September 12, 2005... HURRICANE KATRINA Nicholas Lemann talks with Daniel Cappello about the fate of his home town, New Orleans. From 1992, James B. Stewart on his Illinois home town, threatened by floodwaters from the Mississippi. The two families...

HOME ALONE.(The Talk of the Town)(Hurricane Katrina, 2005)
September 12, 2005... HURRICANE KATRINA Nicholas Lemann talks with Daniel Cappello about the fate of his home town, New Orleans. From 1992, James B. Stewart on his Illinois home town, threatened by floodwaters from the Mississippi. We finished boarding...

SWING SHIFT.(Anthony Kennedy of Supreme Court)
September 12, 2005... Few Justices in recent history have arrived at the Supreme Court from a more provincial background than Anthony Kennedy. Before he moved to Washington, seventeen years ago, his professional life had been spent almost entirely in Sacramento. He...

STEALING TIME.(Rickey Henderson)
September 12, 2005... One summer night not long ago, Rickey Henderson, the greatest base stealer and lead-off hitter in baseball history, stood in a dugout, pinching the front of his jersey and plucking it several inches from his chest--"peacocking," as some players...

THE CELLULAR CHURCH.(Saddleback Church)
September 12, 2005... On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Saddleback Church, Rick Warren hired the Anaheim Angels' baseball stadium. He wanted to address his entire congregation at once, and there was no way to fit everyone in at Saddleback, where the...

PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS.(John Brown's Brown University)
September 12, 2005... On May 14, 1770, John Brown laid the foundation stone for Rhode Island College, on a hill overlooking Providence and Narragansett Bay. According to the Providence Gazette, "a Number of Gentlemen, Friends to the Institution," attended the...

A CLOUD OF DUST.(The March)(Book Review)
September 12, 2005... A number of readers, including this one, had a problem with E. L. Doctorow's best-known and best-selling novel, "Ragtime" (1975). Brilliantly written in a ricky-ticky ragtime prose, the book not only mingled the American celebrities of 1902...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(Desertion, Indecision, War Reporting for Cowards, Garbage Land)(Book Review)
September 12, 2005... Desertion, by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Pantheon; $23). At the heart of this novel, by a writer who has been nominated for the Booker Prize, is an Arabian-inspired tale of two pairs of lovers in the perilous ethnic and political landscapes of East...

PARTNERS.(The 40-Year-Old Virgin)(Television Program Review)
September 12, 2005... One way or another, sex is always in the head. It's clear from the opening gag of "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" that Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell), the gentle fellow who finds himself in so unhappy a state in early middle age, is not impotent....

THE MOVIEGOER.(Susan Sontag's movie criticism)
September 12, 2005... In late 1995, Susan Sontag, a devoted and often impassioned moviegoer, sorrowfully summed up the state of the art. "A Century of Cinema," an essay written for the Frankfurter Rundschau, and reprinted (in abridged form) in the Times, was an...

TABLES FOR TWO.(Burger Joint)(Brief Article)(Restaurant Review)
September 19, 2005... BURGER JOINT -- 118 W. 57th St. (212-708-7414)--The burger freak faces a dilemma if he finds himself in the lobby of Le Parker Meridien hotel at lunchtime on a weekday. He knows that, hidden behind the floor-to-ceiling curtain, down a short and...

DVD NOTES.(Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, Down with Love)(Video Recording Review)
September 19, 2005... The Current Cinema Movie Listings The Film File ROMANCE REVISITED -- In a summer where the romantic comedy has been reenergized thanks to "Wedding Crashers" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," a pair of recent, underappreciated examples...

STORM WARNINGS.(The Talk of the Town)(Hurricane Katrina, 2005)
September 19, 2005... Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina Jon Lee Anderson on rescue and recovery in New Orleans The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, founded in 1871 and headquartered in...

KAJUN'S.(The Talk of the Town)(Hurricane Katrina, 2005 damage)
September 19, 2005... Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina Jon Lee Anderson on rescue and recovery in New Orleans Joann Guidos, of New Orleans's Faubourg Marigny neighborhood, is a big woman with a piercing...

HIGH STAKES.(The Talk of the Town)(Carol Browner of Environmental Protection Agency critisizes storm forcasting)
September 19, 2005... Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina Jon Lee Anderson on rescue and recovery in New Orleans Among the blown-off rooftops, upended pine trees, and other detritus that Katrina scattered...

TRANSFER STUDENT.(The Talk of the Town)(shool enrollment)
September 19, 2005... Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina Jon Lee Anderson on rescue and recovery in New Orleans The process of enrolling in public school in New York City can be onerous enough to deter...

RITES.(The Talk of the Town)(Supreme Court elections)
September 19, 2005... Jeffrey Toobin talks about the future of the Supreme Court Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court's next big battle The week after Labor Day was grim for almost everyone in official Washington. Hurricane Katrina turned swiftly from epic...

LEAVING DESIRE.(Hurricane Katrina, 2005 damage)
September 19, 2005... Last week's coverage of Hurricane Katrina Continuing coverage of Hurricane Katrina When I first saw Lionel Petrie, he was standing on the second-story porch of his house, at the junction of Desire Street and North Bunny Friend, in the...

COME RAIN OR COME SHINE.(Harold Arlen's composition)
September 19, 2005... The composer Harold Arlen, a dapper man whose songs brought something both dashing and deep to the Republic, liked to tell a story about the time he danced with Marilyn Monroe. "People are staring at us," Arlen whispered to Monroe. "They must...

UNHAPPY FAMILIES.(Proof)(Video Recording Review)
September 19, 2005... Movie Listings DVD Notes The Film File Not long ago, in "Sylvia," Gwyneth Paltrow played a suicidal poet. Now, in "Proof," she plays a mathematician steeped in mourning and mental agony. The question we must address to Ms....

TABLES FOR TWO.(Brandy Library)(Bar Review)
September 26, 2005... BRANDY LIBRARY -- 25 North Moore St. (212-226-5545)--No prizes for guessing what Brandy Library is about. Floor-to-ceiling shelves all around the room display nearly a thousand bottles--not just brandy (though there are more than four hundred...

INSURRECTION.(post disaster reconstruction )
September 26, 2005... LETTER FROM MISSISSIPPI THE FINANCIAL PAGE James Surowiecki talks with Ben Greenman about the economic effects of Hurricane Katrina From September 19, 2005, Jon Lee Anderson on holdouts in New Orleans From September 19, 2005,...

A VERY GOOD YEAR.(The Talk of the Town)(Latif Jiji's grapevine)
September 26, 2005... One day in 1977, while his wife, Vera, was out doing errands, Latif Jiji, a professor of mechanical engineering at City College, stuck a small grapevine in the ground in the back yard of his town house, on East Ninety-second Street, between...

A GENTLEMAN RETURNS.(The Talk of the Town)(William Eggleston, photographer)
September 26, 2005... William Eggleston, the supposedly reclusive photographer, was in town the other day from Tennessee, having a grand time seeing and being seen. On the agenda was the premiere of a documentary, "William Eggleston in the Real World," and a...

JOE HILL IN THE HAMPTONS.(The Talk of the Town)(Writers Guild of America East's writes children's show, "It's a Big, Big World")
September 26, 2005... Any resort town's list of unwelcome visitors would have to include picketing workers and giant rodents. These days, East Hampton has both. Last month, aggrieved members of the Writers Guild of America East set up a picket line outside Wainscott...

PUMP PRESSURE.(The Talk of the Town)(Hurricane Katrina, 2005's effect on natural gas and petroleum industry)
September 26, 2005... COMMENT LETTER FROM MISSISSIPPI James Surowiecki talks with Ben Greenman about the economic effects of Hurricane Katrina From September 19, 2005, Jon Lee Anderson on holdouts in New Orleans From September 19, 2005, continuing...

GONE WITH THE SURGE.(Hurricane Katrina, 2005's damage in Mississippi)
September 26, 2005... COMMENT THE FINANCIAL PAGE James Surowiecki talks with Ben Greenman about the economic effects of Hurricane Katrina From September 19, 2005, Jon Lee Anderson on holdouts in New Orleans From September 19, 2005, continuing...

CAR TOWN.(Wuhu)
September 26, 2005... On the way to Wuhu, I drove through Confucius' home town. I also passed the Stone Warriors of Nanpi, the Iron Lion of Shijia, and the Alfalfa Land of Jinniu. The village of Jinxiang had posted a big sign, in English, above the highway: "The...

OUT ON THE TOWN.(Sam Nazarian appoints Philippe Starck to design to his restaurants)
September 26, 2005... Sam Nazarian, the gregarious thirty-year-old C.E.O. of a restaurant-hotel-club-and-film group in Los Angeles, is six feet four and heavily cologned, with meaty cheeks and a soul patch. He wears a dense gold watch and opal cufflinks and a slinky...

THE KINGDOM.(Valentino Garavani's works)
September 26, 2005... June has never been an easy month for Valentino, the seventy-three-year-old Roman designer. But this spring was more frantic than usual. He introduced a new fragrance--V--and celebrated in New York at the end of May with a party that began at...

STAND BY YOUR MAN.(Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir's works)(Interview)
September 26, 2005... Jean-Paul Sartre preferred the company of women. As one would expect of the great advocate of transparency, he discussed his reasons frankly. "First of all, there is the physical element. There are of course ugly women, but I prefer those who...

BRIEFLY NOTED.(The Diviners)(Book Review)
September 26, 2005... The Diviners, by Rick Moody (Little, Brown; $25.95). Moody's latest novel revolves around a proposed mini-series epic that follows generations of a tribe of diviners, from the conquests of the Mongols to the founding of Las Vegas. Unbeknown to...

MAMMY FOR THE MASSES.(Hattie McDaniel)
September 26, 2005... We're in the last reels of a claustrophobically black-and-white world. The film: "Alice Adams," the director George Stevens's 1935 adaptation of Booth Tarkington's novel. Determined to marry up, Alice (Katharine Hepburn) has invited a...

GUNS AND MONEY.(Lord of War)(Movie Review)
September 26, 2005... Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War" gets under way with the story of a bullet. The camera takes us inside an armaments factory, where, from the cartridge's point of view, we see a brass casing filled, sealed, picked up and inspected, thrown back into...