The first time I remember encountering Renata Adler, she was mid-skirmish in the pages of Harper’s Magazine. It was the year 2000. She had just published a book called Gone: The Last Days of the New Yorker and apparently everyone in New York was angry with her. The New York Times, she reported, had published no fewer than eight pieces rebutting the book. She wrote of it as “institutional carpet bombing.” Never one to shy from drama, I was intrigued. That said, for a person like me, from the provinces (read: Canada), much of the piece was impenetrable. I didn’t live among people who tracked bylines, let alone mastheads. No one I knew had opinions about which regime at The New Yorker was best. The idea that a magazine could so closely resemble a soap opera, or perhaps a Roman epic—fiefdoms and rivalries and hard-set preferences for umlauts that would shape generations of readers and writers—still counted as a This story is from Kinfolk Issue Thirty-Seven Buy Now Related Stories Arts & Culture Issue 49 Amalie Smith The Danish arts writer finding clarity between the lines. Arts & Culture Issue 48 Peer Review Artist William Cobbing on painter, publisher—and family friend—Franciszka Themerson. Arts & Culture Issue 47 Julia Bainbridge On the life-enhancing potential of not drinking alcohol. Arts & Culture Issue 47 Peer Review Hadani Ditmars on the disappearing legacy of Rifat Chadirji, Iraq’s most influential architect. Arts & Culture City Guide The New York Edition A serene stay in the Flatiron District. Arts & Culture City Guide The Hoxton, Williamsburg A British bolthole in Brooklyn.
Arts & Culture Issue 48 Peer Review Artist William Cobbing on painter, publisher—and family friend—Franciszka Themerson.
Arts & Culture Issue 47 Peer Review Hadani Ditmars on the disappearing legacy of Rifat Chadirji, Iraq’s most influential architect.
