Two great ones from the 2011/11/28 issue:

Ariel Levy on an American woman who becomes an Italian aristo (lots of unintentional lols in it)

Fascinating profile on JR, who seems remarkably non-douchey for an artist

Both paywalled, btw.

Elif Batuman on Stone Age megaliths (2011/12/19, paywalled).

i loved per peripatetic animal sanctuary article a couple of months ago, psyched for this one to show up

Yeah, normally, I like my articles to be very focused and rhetorically shapely. Batuman is kind of all over the place, but her writing is so otm that I love the weird digressions she goes on.

totally, they are travelogues i think. i haven’t really read the possession but it is a funny book i think, although the conceit is the tangential relationship to russian literature i think so much of its appeal is just diaristically reading about her & where she’s been & the perigrinations around wherever she is, etc. i occasionally dig up her mfa article & it sits open as a tab for a week before i accept it isn’t time for me to read it yet.

(i just read the packer article on OWS from a couple of months back; i’m so behind w/articles from the last month or two, partly because December post slowed everything down. there was a good Libya one i have to read soon, too, iirc)

read the one on the dudus coke raid on friday, p good stuff

She has a blog! I just found that out, it’s like an Xmas present.

Packer’s OWS is great but disillusioning, since it looks into the movement’s anarchist roots (lol @ dum ignorant me). You also should check out his profile on the liberterian billionaire that is an intersting companion piece in a Government Is Broken diptych.

And FYI, the last December one I got is a double issue that has been keeping me warm, so you’re not that far behind.

Dudus Coke article is depressing in that “Humanity is Doomed” sense.

Also, wtf there’s apparently going to be another season of Portlandia: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/02/120102fa_fact_talbot — I mean, it’s got Carrie Brownstein so I’m there but seriously.

yeah we talked briefly in the politics thread about the second packer article you mentioned, one of my absolute favorites of the year. the turn packer takes at the end is amazing, spot-on, and well-earned

Is that the real politix thread or the sandbox thread?

it’s near the beginning of the original revive of the sandbox politics thread. i’d link but i’m on my phone

She has a blog! I just found that out, it’s like an Xmas present.

yes, her blog is v funny, there are those tangents about the editorial wrangling that goes on for her harper’s/nyer pieces. she posted to ilx a couple of times, a year or two ago.

i am sorta behind; the one with the dan clowes cover hasn’t showed, & i wonder looking at the libertarian billionaire issue whether that one turned up, it doesn’t look familiar. ty for the recommendation, i might start tonight.

why is this thread impossible to search for?

anyway, does anybody read this on the iphone? i cna’t figure out how to set it up

How does the NYT Magazine come out with a profile of Carrie Brownstein a WEEK after a profile in the New Yorker? Doesn’t someone lose their job over something like that?

yah that confused me