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We abandoned you after the election. We left you to make small talk on your own and we apologize.

We took our break, confident that the majority of your conversations would concentrate on one of two topics - Obama's victory or the economy - and you could get by with either smiling or teeth sucking, depending.

But now that it's 2009, we're back, and more determined than ever to provide you with all the tools you'll need to become a genuine New Yacker.

Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?

by: Malcolm Gladwell
Issue: Oct. 20

Everyone's reading Gladwell's new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success." But not everyone has read his piece in the New Yorker about the nature of genius. Fortunately, I have and now you can talk like you have too. Here's the basic idea: Gladwell outlines the various kinds of "genius" by comparing two writers who produced great works, but in very different ways.

Ben Fountain left his law firm to become a writer. He eventually found inspiration in Haiti. He went again and again, supported financially by his attorney wife. He was 48 when his collection of short stories, “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,” received critical acclaim.

Jonathan Safran Foer, on the other hand, took his first creative writing class as a freshman at Princeton. Joyce Carol Oates encouraged him to keep writing. The summer after his sophomore year he took a trip to Europe, returned to the states and ten weeks later had produced "Everything is Illuminated."

"Both are works of art," Gladwell says of "Brief Encounters" and "Everything." "It’s just that, as artists, Fountain and Foer could not be less alike. Fountain went to Haiti thirty times. Foer went to Trachimbrod just once."

Foer describes his creative process as "explosive."

“Why does a dam with a crack in it leak so much?” Foer said. “There was just something in me, there was like a pressure.”

But for Fountain, fulfilling his creative potential required an entirely different set of circumstances.

“Sharie never once brought up money, not once—never,” Fountain, referring to his wife. “I never felt any pressure from her...Not even covert, not even implied.”

Biden's Brief

by Ryan Lizza
Issue: Oct. 20

Before Biden accepted the VP nomination, he seriously considered whether he might rather serve as secretary of state in an Obama administration. He consulted with some consultants.

"They convinced me that I could have more influence on policy as a Vice-President with Barack,” Biden said.

One has to wonder how Biden must feel now that former rival Hillary Clinton (and by extension Bill) has received the secretary of state nomination. Will a Biden VP feel threatened by a Clinton team at the state department?

According to the article you read in the New Yorker, Biden is close with the couple. In fact, Hillary once told him, “I think you and Bill were separated at birth."

Oct. 13: The Political Issue

The editors endorsed Barack Obama. They had the right answer. Take Lipstick on a Pig: A 2008 Campaign Quiz to see if you have the right answers.

I recommend the article about Crawford.
Exile on Main Street: George W. Bush’s weary neighbors.

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.