One way of being a modernist writer is to pay attention to the most saliently modern objects and experiences. So it is that Proust recounts the arresting novelty of a telephone call or an airplane sighting. For T. S. Eliot, the products of industrial capitalism can appear either literally ("a record on the gramophone" in "The Waste Land") or as a metaphor for inner states, as when he describes the hour of dusk at which "the human engine waits/Like a taxi throbbing waiting." Sometimes newfangled technology seems to enter into the nature of the writing itself. John Dos Passos's trilogy, "U.S.A.," features passages explicitly mimicking newsreels, and even in cases where the evocation of modernity is less self-conscious something similar is often detectable: it's not just that Hemingway's heroes shoot a .3006 or drive an ambulance; we also feel that Hemingway himself writes typewriter prose after an eon of longhand.
This story is from the December 16, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the December 16, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
INTIMATE PROJECTS DEPT. THE GOLDFISH BOWL
There are roughly eight hundred galleries that hold the permanent collection of the Met, and as of a recent Tuesday morning the married writers Dan and Becky Okrent had examined every piece in all but two.
ON AND OFF THE AVENUE - Top of the Class
Whenever I consider “taking a class,” as a grown woman living in New York City, my mind immediately turns to “The Ladies Who Lunch,” the show-stopping number from Stephen Sondheim’s 1970 musical, “Company.”
LAUGH DEPT.PRECOCIOUS
In \"The Great Depresh,\" Gary Gulman's documentary-style comedy special about his lifelong struggle with depression, a camera crew follows him to his childhood home in Peabody, Massachusetts.
L.A. POSTCARD - GHOST TOWN
On most weekday afternoons, U.S. Route 101, which slices through the city of Los Angeles, thrums with traffic, brake lights blinking like those on a Christmas tree. Several days ago, as wildfires ravaged the city and the surrounding county, a haze of smoke filtered the sun like a silk scarf over a lamp. It was eerily smooth sailing from Silver Lake to Exit 9B, Hollywood and Highland, near Runyon Canyon Park.
AFTER THE FIRE: PAPER AND ASH
\"The first thing you think of when you see your home engulfed in flames is, My world and future have changed,\" Robert J. Lang, one of the world's foremost origami artists and theorists, said recently.
THE TALK OF THE TOWN
The conflagration that became known that became known as the Bel Air Fire broke out on the morning of November 6, 1961, in a patch of brush north of Mulholland Drive. Fanned by Santa Ana winds, the flames jumped the drive, then spread toward the homes of the rich and famous.
MING HAN ONG
Thadeus had never offered to take Johnny Mac out for a meal before. This is new, Johnny Mac says, grinning. For twenty-five years, Johnny Mac worked as a tenant-rights lawyer. He is a fount of varied and surprising knowledge.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON'S CHOSEN PEOPLE
What a long-unpublished novel reveals about her magnificent obsession.
FEAR AND LOATHING
Are all our arguments really over who's harmed?
ODD JOBS
\"Severance,\" on Apple TV+.
