In the Ring

By Norman Mailer
Issue: Oct 6

The New Yorker got its hands on all these letters Norman Mailer wrote between 1945 and 2005 and printed them. The first letter is to Sweet Baby Beatrice Mailer and addresses the emergence of the atom bomb. Not all the letters are quite so heavy, but the subhead for the article does read, "Grappling with the twentieth century."

Casually referencing this article will serve you well in several upcoming conversations with your relatives about how nobody writes letters anymore. If, however, you have no thanksgiving plans, go ahead and read this compilation. I certainly didn't.

The Stolen Forests

By Raffi Khatchadourian
Issue: Oct 6


Alexander von Bismarck is an environmental activist who has been tracking poached wood through sales in Russia, the manufacturing process in China and seeing where it lands in U.S. products. Much of this wood ends up in mass produced, finished products such as Wal-Mart's oak toilet seats.

As you might expect, there is a tangled web of false companies and back-room deals to smuggle, trade, and cut all this stolen timber, and Bismarck seems to be making good headway in uncovering the links and finding the sources of the wood.

At points, this article turned into a strange, badly written post apocalyptic novel: "There were shavings near the logs. He listened for the sound of chain saws, but the forest was quiet." But on the whole it was really informative and you probably learned a lot about the tree smuggling business. Apparently, it's really hard to catch illegal logging in action, and much easier to see the extra timber and sales that appear to come from nowhere.
“Because when we are trying to catch these guys, I mean, just the visual of an illegal logger in action, actually cutting down a tree—we have really only gotten it once, in Indonesia, and we have used that image a lot.”

One interesting thing I learned was that ramin, an Indonesian tree whose wood is sought after for its strength and workability, is illegal to export. (Of course, it still shows up in products all over). Maybe it's time to start a local ramin farm and make some legit cash.

Pictures of People

By Calvin Tomkins
Issue: Oct 6

In this article, Tomkins discusses the portrait paintings of Elizabeth Peyton (though she calls them "pictures of people" instead).

Peyton often uses her friends or celebrities as subjects, as in her first big NY show which focused on paintings and drawings of Kurt Cobain. Her work is often described as personal, and her paintings exude a sense of familiarity with the subject, even when she does not know them (as is the case with her series on the European monarchy).

Personally, I didn't used to like her, but like Tomkins, and maybe because of him and this article, she is growing on me. Who knows, she might grow on the Presidential-elect's family, too. Her portrait of Michelle and Sasha Obama is the latest addition to her New Museum show and is up now.

The Appalachian Problem

By Peter J. Boyer
Issue: Oct 6

Back when he was considering a run for president, Barack Obama's advisers questioned whether the country was ready to elect a black president. Obama believed it was.
Later, when pundits wondered aloud if Virginians would actually vote for the Democratic candidate, David Mudcat Saunders, also known as the Democrats' "Bubba Coordinator," insisted they would.

"That's what burns me up, when they talk about racism down here in the hills," Saunders said, adding that Virgina was the first state to elect a black governor in 1989.

In the months leading up to the election, however, Saunders worried that Obama's change message wouldn't quite cut it with "hill people."

"They were screwed by the English in Scotland and Ireland way before they came over here and started getting screwed," Saunders said. "They've been screwed since the dawn of time. And you know what? You ain't gonna do anything with them, talkin' about change. You know why. We're all changed out."

The article made you think about how you could make a Primary Colors for the new millenium. You'd give William H. Macy a chance to beef up and play a strawberry blond Jim Webb. And Philip Seymour Hoffman could probably do a mean Mudcat Saunders.

The Last Tour

By William Finnegan
Issue: Sept 29

The suicide rate among veterans is the highest it has been since 1980, the year the government started keeping track. In this article, Finnegan tells the story of Louisianan Travis Twiggs, a combat veteran who suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and killed himself just weeks after telling President Bush: "Sir, I’ve served over there many times — and I would serve for you anytime."

Finnegan writes of Twiggs' extreme affection for the commander in chief.

"Rather than simply shake the President’s hand, Twiggs bear-hugged him."

After this meeting with the president, Travis, joined by down-and-out brother Will, visited some relatives and drove to the Grand Canyon. They tried to drive off a cliff, but the car got stuck, they lived, and so backpacked through the desert - "a landscape suited to an apocalyptic frame of mind." Next was the carjacking.

“I’ve made a lot of wanted posters,” Ken Phillips, National Park Service ranger, said. “But this was the first time I had to crop out the President.”

Two days later Travis shot his brother, then himself. P.T.S.D. sufferers are not, at the present time, eligible for a Purple Heart.

Travis' wife Kellee was constantly trying to calm and distract her husband, especially at bedtime when he would act as though he were on duty.

"I’d call his name, get him back to bed, and the only way I could get him to sleep was to put him in a bear hug and rock him," she said.

The Madness of Spies

By John le Carré
Issue: Sept 29

This article starts with the story of le Carré's first mission as a spy in which he follows around an experienced A.I.O. (Air Intelligence Officer) and then drops his hidden gun from his chair which ends the mission early. They drink from a flask in a car instead.

Looking back on the incident, le Carré decides that there probaby was no mission to begin with and that the guy was probably just a lonely former spy who missed the excitement and pretended to be more important than he was.

Next we hear about Arthur, who worked at M.I.5 with le Carré during a time when everyone was suspicious of Russian spies infiltrating their group. Arthur started stealing files and was convinced that he was being persecuted. He started believing that he could himself be a secret communist. "In a world that was almost as paranoid as ours is now, the security-risk assessor had become a security risk to himself."

The story ends with an explanation of why this happens and why people, including spies, want to believe in the secret world. "The trouble is that the reader, like the general public to which he belongs, and in spite of all the evidence telling him that he shouldn’t, wants to believe in his spies: which, come to think of it, is how we went to war in Iraq."