The New Yorker, 2008-{03-24, 05-26}

[fiefoe]

"April & Paris" / David Sedaris
__ As the spiders moved from healthy to obese, their feet tore holes in their webs.
__ Other nagging questions, such as ... "Why is it you never see a baby squirrel?"
__ When you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.

"Chef on the Edge" / Larissa MacFarquhar  {So wanted to try "Noodle Bar" after reading this.}
__ A soft heap of foaming dashi (kelp and dried-bonito broth), made intentionally unstable with just a little methylcellulose, so that in front of the customer’s eyes the bubbles would burst and dissipate into a fishy liquid, at exactly the speed that foam from a wave dissipates onto sand. It looked like the sea and tasted like the sea, and Chang was extremely proud of it.
__ Serpico... pouring the liquid from a tiny saucepan into a bowl over the back of a spoon, so that it flowed smoothly and didn’t splash.

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"Hungry Minds" / Ian Frazier
__ Somehow, writing even a few lines makes the person who does it more substantial and real. In geometric terms, it's like the difference between being a point and being a plane.

"Beyond a Boundary" / James Wood

• Fiction has an entrepreneurial element, akin to the inventor’s secret machine, elixir, or formula... Gogol surely knew that he had invented a devastating symbolic structure when he came up with the story of a devil figure who travels around Russia buying up the names of dead serfs.
• “Netherland” has opened where “The Great Gatsby” ends, with its forlorn dreamer dead in the water.
• He is one of nature’s flâneurs, willing to be swept along by powerful events and people, curious but happy to turn a blind eye to human imperfection, fastidious but uncensorious.

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