This past August, clips of the millennial comedian and podcaster Adam Friedland speaking about the war in Gaza collected millions of views online, becoming some of the year’s most influential bits of commentary. In the footage, Friedland is slouched in a leather chair on a wood-panelled stage set, wearing a blue suit jacket with jeans, … Read more
When you make a purchase using a link on this page, we may receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The New Yorker. In general, I am a fan of the new. New people? Love to meet them! New experiences? Love to have them! New films and albums and books? All reasons to get up in … Read more
What’s in a like? That which we call a heart by any other name would be a retweet. (I am so sorry, mostly to my college Shakespeare professor, but really to everyone reading this.) On Instagram, in any event, the things we like perchance tell us more about ourselves than we might readily admit. For … Read more
In the beginning of Ha Jin’s new novel, “Looking for Tank Man,” a sophomore at Harvard seems to be on the verge of throwing her life away. Pei Lulu is the pride of her divorced parents. Her life in Boston is supported by her mother’s salary from a job at Tsinghua University and her father’s … Read more
In service to his vision of the world, the President has spent the year undoing every environmental law he can find. The zeal of his lieutenants—Lee Zeldin, at the Environmental Protection Agency; the former fracking executive Christopher Wright, at the Department of Energy; and others—has been remarkable. They’ve unleashed oil drilling along the coasts, opened … Read more
Documentaries about individuals are ubiquitous, but “Suburban Fury” and “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” explore the filmmaker-subject relationship in ways that recall classics of the form.
“He just bit me!” I said. The woman stood upright and pushed her hair away from her face. She was pretty except for her mouth, which was thin-lipped and hard-looking. “Huh?” “Your dog just bit me!” I repeated. “No, it didn’t,” one of the men said. I raised my pant leg and pointed to the … Read more
I had to wait for the next generation—my older sister—to break through that uncertainty and introduce me to the political, social, and aesthetic significance of Harlem. In my sister’s company, I protested the construction of the State Office Building, at 125th and Seventh Avenue, in 1969, and I went to the Studio Museum in Harlem, … Read more
Fourteen years ago, Emily Nussbaum, one of my esteemed predecessors in the TV-critic chair, notoriously titled her Top Ten list “I Hate Top Ten Lists.” I’ve seldom felt the same. I’m not much of a holiday person, but, for most of the time that I’ve been a working critic, I’ve loved the end-of-year ritual of … Read more
