Hardly a week goes by without my reading at least one piece from The New Yorker. Its long-form journalism and the sheer breadth of its coverage—from global wars and haute couture to fiction and cinema—have always been a magnet for me, along with that unmistakable, one-of-a-kind font that makes every page instantly recognizable.
Netflix has this wonderful documentary that covers the planning within the New Yorker in the run up to their 100th anniversary issue which came out in February this year. The documentary was a marvellous piece documenting life within the holy precincts of the institution.
The star of the documentary is undoubtedly David Remnick. I became a fan of his after reading his profile of the great Philip Roth a few years back. Through the documentary, I got to know that both of Remnick’s parents died in their 50s due to disability (Parkinsons and MS) and his younger daughter is also autistic. And despite this, he shows up and runs a world-class journalistic enterprise day in and day out.
The roll call of writers whose first published work appeared in the magazine reads like a veritable who’s who of literature : J. D. Salinger, John Cheever, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth, Shirley Jackson, E. B. White, John Updike, George Saunders, James Baldwin, Joseph Mitchell, Hannah Arendt, Haruki Murakami, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Truman Capote. How can one not have goosebumps seeing this!
The 90- minute piece also threw the spotlight on some of the ground-breaking pieces that literally changed the discourse around the themes they handled:
- John Hersey’s Hiroshima, for the first time brought out the horrors of the nuclear age. The essay was broadcast through radio all over and made the world realize the terror of the genie that was unleashed. An entire issue of the magazine was devoted to this single essay when it was first published
- Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ arguably launched the global environment movement and made us take note of the pitfalls of the chemical industry
- James Baldwin’s ‘Letter from a Region in My Mind’ altered race relations with his visceral prose.
- Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ rewrote narrative non fiction forever
- Ronan Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein which triggered the #MeToo movement was also published in the New-Yorker!
Do watch it if you get the time:
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