A Pseudo-Intellectual Feast

For those of you who are putting together your Christmas/Hannukah/etc. shopping lists, or for those of you who (like me) are compulsive late-night Amazon purchasers, may I recommend The Complete New Yorker, a collection offering 80 years of The New Yorker, copied onto eight CDs, from its inception in 1925 through February 2005 (with annual supplements offered each year).  That's 4,109 issues, at a discounted cost on Amazon of $63.  It's really a fascinating archival history of the last 80 years, especially of America and American culture, albeit as seen through the lens of writers inhabiting that little island off the coast of America.

For lawyers and those interested in moments in American history, it offers a plethora of distractions.  To wit, based only on my stream-of-consciousness searches in the last day or so: a three-part profile of Felix Frankfurter dating from 1940 ("Some people claim . . . that although Frankfurter was hugely successful as a teacher, he didn't really teach law, he 'taught Frankfurter,' and Harvard let him get away with it."); a profile of A.A. Berle, Jr.; a report from the "I Am An American Day" ceremony in Central Park in 1944, at which Learned Hand delivered his Spirit of Liberty speech ("For me, writing anything is like having a baby"); a report from the early 70's on a reunion of Holmes clerks; a great Jeffrey Rosen piece on law and social norms scholarship at Chicago; Calvin Trillin's piece on HLS in the 80's, "Beirut on the Charles"; and so on. 

Then there are the other wonderful pieces: the famous Woolcott Gibbs profile of Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life, written parodically in old-fashioned Time-speak ("Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind."); the uncollected J.D. Salinger stories, including "Hapworth 16, 1924," the last (but not best) word on the Glass family; early iterations of books by Truman Capote, John Hersey, Robert Caro; all the original Pauline Kael reviews; and then there are the ads, which are incredible.  My personal favorite: revisiting Elizabeth Wurtzel, back when she was an up-and-comer and not simply the pair of breasts that inspired a cinematic disaster, and her great review of Guns N' Roses' "Use Your Illusion" albums.  "[I]s Axl Rose a true paranoiac, or are his public tantrums and thumb-sucking bouts a deliberate play for attention?  [Time would answer that question in favor of the former thesis, I think.]  That this remains a question suggests that Guns N' Roses are the quintessential postmodern band -- they leave you suspecting that they just may be what they appear to be."  Excellent stuff.