Should it surprise us that Franzen is big on “The Crucible”?
Yves Saint Laurent’s amazing “Polas"; "The Bear" still sucks
Between the rightfully famous Golden Diner pancakes cut up into fluffy wedges (the better to pluck off the plate with your fingers) at Mary H.K. Choi’s Pool House launch; the endless wagyu/caviar bites and kimbap bar at Min Jin Lee’s Public Hotel party for this fall’s incoming American Hagwon; and the gift bags to be had at Chris Gayomali’s SuperHuman podcast party (inclusive of venison sticks, a cortisol “hormometer,” an 11-oz tub of whey protein, and the uber-fashionable Brick), the book/media party circuit is feeling so unexpectedly plummy lately. How nice!
I felt a zap of delight yesterday on the train while paging through the annual New Yorker fiction issue and landing on the new Jonathan Franzen short story, “A Talent for Seeming” — adapted, apparently, from “the early pages of a novel-in-progress,” AKA the next in The Crossroads trilogy, glory be to god! (The bad news: “I’m still far from finished,” per Franzy).
There is always something in the pacing and the density of Franzen’s storytelling that makes me feel like a greedy little thief racing through his sentences and gorging myself on the words as fast as I can, but one aspect of the story that made me stop and have a deep belly laugh is how fitting it is for “The Crucible” to figure so heavily.
