The New Yorker

An early look at the cover of next week’s issue, “Alexei Navalny,” by Owen Smith. #NewYorkerCovers

In Barry Blitt’s latest Kvetchbook, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin gab on the phone. https://lnkd.in/gQANH3US

In an excerpt from Alexei Navalny’s prison diaries, the Russian opposition leader wrote an admonition to his country. https://lnkd.in/g-Z8a3Qm

Anne Brigman was an artist who helped shape American modernist, feminist, and landscape photographic traditions—and she was one of the first women to photograph herself in the nude. She would load her heavy camera equipment into stagecoaches to sojourn 8,000 feet up in the Sierra Nevada, creating the images that made her a groundbreaking early-20th-century photographer. See more of Brigman’s spectacular, little-known work: https://lnkd.in/gqC2hcDF

With the 2024 election, which is now less than four weeks away, we have found ourselves in a blinkered version of a poker game, where every decision probably can be justified in one way or another, Jay Caspian Kang writes. “The difference is that in poker the agnosticism over individual decisions all serves a larger plan. In this election, the uncertainty comes from an inability to actually grasp and prioritize an optimal series of choices.” But it’s also possible that there isn’t actually anything exceptional about this election, except that the peculiar, harrowing circumstances of Harris’s ascent to the nomination and the static nature of Trump, both in his repulsive provocations and in the bedrock of support he receives, have made the truth about all Presidential elections a bit more obvious. “We don’t actually know why a whole lot of voters decide to support one candidate over another,” Kang writes. Read his latest column: https://lnkd.in/gm3Uk24y

For a little under a year, in 1987-88, Dolly Parton had her own variety show on ABC, called “Dolly.” It gave us one of the most charming encounters in pop-culture history: Parton and the singer Patti LaBelle sat together, in matching bespangled black dresses, and “played” their acrylic nails like percussion instruments. “Artificial talons have never produced something more authentically wonderful,” Rachel Syme writes. Nearly four decades later, press-ons are back in style—and arguably better than ever. In this week’s Goings On newsletter, Syme recommends her favorite glue-able-tip brands, that range from $15 to $30 and are available in near-countless styles, colors, shapes, and lengths: https://lnkd.in/gaPp-VFv

Rachel Kushner is a master of first-person narration, pressing the reader close to her wary, observant protagonists. With her new spy novel, “Creation Lake,” she attempts to expose the tradecraft of fiction itself. However, “the notion that a book is playing with its genre is cold comfort when the play proves a slog,” Alex Schwartz writes. “Stalling is not the same thing as suspense, and plot is an unfortunate thing to dispense with in a spy story, even—maybe especially—if it is only a pastiche of one.” Read her full review: https://lnkd.in/genw6B4Z

“The Apprentice,” starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, dramatizes Donald Trump’s rise to prominence in the 1970s and 80s and spotlights his relationship with the lawyer-slash-fixer Roy Cohn, whose mentorship of Trump offers one explanation of the movie’s title. In the film’s telling, Trump’s rise to success and fall into moral turpitude are linked by the bare-knuckle tactics with which Roy helps him make his fame and fortune. Trump, a worthy apprentice, ultimately runs his personal life in similarly ruthless fashion. “The endless cascade of aggressions and abuses ultimately makes ‘The Apprentice’ feel like a tale of the natural order—the wonder being not that these characters turned out so appalling but that anyone doesn’t,” Richard Brody writes. However, the film fails to capture Trump’s dubious star power. “The movie racks up a tally of dramatic incidents but stays far from wider implications or inner lives.” Read Brody’s full review: https://lnkd.in/gtt9QPTJ

Today’s Daily Cartoon, by Nathan Cooper. #NewYorkerCartoons https://lnkd.in/gUp6AGkn

The Shakers came to America 250 years ago. Their founding leader preached Quaker ideals, like pacifism and gender equality, but added collective ownership, and, trickiest of all for a utopia trying to grow, celibacy. Shaker missionaries recruited eloquently, and by the middle of the 19th century, thousands of believers lived in villages as far south as Florida. Today, the religion has a grand total of two members—not that expansion is the only measure of success. “No society chooses its legacy, and the fact that ‘Shaker’ never became a slur like ‘Puritan’ or a punch line like ‘Amish’ has a lot to do with the slender, unembellished loveliness of their furniture,” Jackson Arn writes. An exuberant new exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum shows that, when it comes to art, the community should be known for far more than its furniture. The show “is a splendidly offbeat way to celebrate our country’s favorite strict-yet-serene religious splinter group,” Arn writes. Read his full review: https://lnkd.in/gWXRHW7p