The New Yorker April 11, 2022

Andrew Solomon (“The Unthinkable,” p. 28) is a professor of clinical medical psychology at Columbia University. His books include “Far and Away,” “Far from the Tree,” and “The Noonday Demon.” Rachel Syme (“Showtime,” p. 16), a staff writer, has covered style and culture for The New Yorker since 2012. David Baker (Poem, p. 35) teaches at Denison University. His new poetry collection, “Whale Fall,” will be out in July. Hannah Seidlitz (The Talk of the Town, p. 15) is a member of the magazine’s editorial staff. Saul Steinberg (Cover), who died in 1999, contributed to The New Yorker for nearly sixty years. An exhibition of his work, “Saul Steinberg: In the Library,” is on view at the Pace Gallery, in New York, through April 30. Amanda Petrusich (Pop Music, p. 66) is a staff writer…

FIXING PUBLIC EDUCATION As a Lowell High School alumna, I was impressed by how Nathan Heller captured the ambivalence surrounding the school’s transition from a highly selective admissions process to an open lottery system (“The Access Trap,” March 14th). The devotion and skill of teachers such as Rebecca Johnson show that it’s possible to introduce the school’s legacy of intellectual excellence to a wider range of students. But I found heartbreaking the financial gut punch discussed toward the article’s end: the school’s sudden loss of $3.6 million, and likely twenty per cent of its faculty, because of changes in the city’s budget. As a professor in a public university system that similarly prides itself on bringing serious scholarship to low-income urban students, I have seen that underprepared students can flourish with…

APRIL 6 – 12, 2022 In the mid-seventies, the Brooklyn-born photographer Jamel Shabazz—the recipient of the 2022 Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize—borrowed his mother’s camera to record the camaraderie and the style of his high-school friends. He has continued to aim his compassionate lens on Black life throughout New York City ever since, capturing such scenes as “Best Friends, Red Hook, Brooklyn, 1982” (above). On April 6, the Bronx Museum opens “Jamel Shabazz: Eyes on the Street,” a survey of his legendary career. As New York City venues reopen, it’s advisable to confirm in advance the requirements for in-person attendance. THE THEATRE At the Wedding Bryna Turner’s slight if zippy one-act (it clocks in at seventy minutes) serves as a deserved star vehicle for the fantastically fiery Mary Wiseman, who appears in every scene as…

Does the world need more Julia Child content? The California-born, French-trained chef and patron saint of home cooks has more or less dominated culinary pop culture for decades. For the past twenty years, there has been a veritable glut of Childiana: several biographies, published collections of letters and recipes, reissues of her cookbook “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” at least two podcasts devoted to her life, and, perhaps most notably, Nora Ephron’s jaunty bio-pic “Julie & Julia,” in which Meryl Streep played Child with singsongy aplomb. One might wonder what terrain is left to cover about duck terrine. And yet “Julia,” a new HBO Max series, from the creator Daniel Goldfarb, manages to squeeze a bit more juice out of her phenomenal rise from a humble housewife (who may…

If anyone objects to the union of two types of anchovies in the pintxo matrimonio al ajillo at Ernesto’s, a Basque-leaning restaurant on the Lower East Side, speak now and I will eat yours for you. The matrimony of a boqueron (plump, meaty, and white, pickled in wine vinegar and olive oil) and an anchoa (a dark, skinny, salt-cured umami bomb) is holy indeed, made holier by the kitchen’s decision to mount the pair, like prostrate wedding-cake toppers, on a rectangle of delicately crisp, buttery pastry. Though the fillets are separated by a neat line of ajillo, a zingy condiment of parsley and garlic, each bite brings them together in perfect harmony. I have a feeling that none of the ingredients in the tortilla abierta con Cinco Jotas, meanwhile, are married,…

“If I look at the mass, I will never act,” Mother Teresa once said. “If I look at the one, I will.” During the pandemic, we’ve all grappled with this dynamic. Our country is on the cusp of a grim milestone: soon, a million people in the United States will have died of covid-19. Yet for many Americans this reality seems vague, abstract—a group problem for which we must take individual responsibility. We struggle to see the crisis we’re in. Part of the problem is fatigue. Another is that the coronavirus has exacted its toll unevenly. covid is relatively unthreatening to younger people, but has killed one in seventy-five older Americans; residents of long-term-care facilities make up less than three per cent of the population, but have accounted for about one…