PFBNOW ADVENTURES!

  On the evidence of a newly expanded anthology, Bolinas, California, was once governed at least in part by poetry itself.       What the Bolinas Poets Built Along the coast of California, a vibrant literary community came together, but its many styles could not be defined together.

 

  From “Notes of a Pianist,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, to “Women and the Piano,” by Susan Tomes, the classical pianist and author Jeremy Denk recommends books that might help shape “how we think about our common humanity.”       Jeremy Denk’s Musical Account of American Divisions The award-winning pianist on the relationship between music and politics—and on five books that hold them in tension.

  In New Yorker Humor, in times like these, it’s important to remember that we’re the good Americans—who didn’t vote for “him.”

 

 

  Rui Goes, a park staffer whose job was just terminated, unfurled a giant upside-down flag on the side of the rock dome.       A Fired Yosemite Locksmith Messages Trump from the Summit of El Capitan Rui Goes, a park staffer whose job was just terminated, unfurled a giant upside-down flag on the side of the rock dome.

  Bang Si-hyuk, the producer behind BTS, is now entering the U.S. music industry. He named Braun a C.E.O. of the American branch of his company, HYBE, and announced a 10-year partnership with Universal Music Group.

 

  In its second season, “Severance” continues to “indict the corporate workplace while secretly longing for it,” Katy Waldman writes. Without the innocence and sense of adventure that the characters have while in the office, they “would be dull, dull, dull.”           How “Severance” Makes a Fetish of the Office In its second season, the show continues to indict the corporate workplace while secretly longing for it.

  “He was always contemplating going home; nothing about him was stable or secure.” New fiction by Colm Tóibín.

  In a Personal History, Leslie Mamy Jamison writes about ending her marriage shortly after becoming a new mother. “I’d hoped that having a baby would force us to find a better version of our relationship. But it seemed to be doing almost the opposite.”

 

  “I was content, sated. I was where I was supposed to be. Yet in quiet moments, alone, I feared that my contentment was a kind of resignation.” Read new fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, excerpted from her forthcoming novel.

  “This Life of Mine,” the last film by the French director Sophie Fillières—who died before completing it—is a bold reckoning with an artist’s self-awareness and personal freedom in the face of illness. “With this film, Fillières reaches new heights of refinement and audacity, uniting a quietly bold concept of cinematic performance with a needle-fine script and a vision that sets actors, dialogue, and action as if with a jeweller’s eye,” Richard Brody writes.    

  Much of what President Trump said in his address to Congress “was inflammatory, radical, and dangerous,” Susan B. Glasser writes. “But it was also familiar, his by-now-standard mix of braggadocio and self-pity, partisan bile and patently absurd lies. It turns out that even the most unhinged of Presidential speeches can seem kind of boring if it goes on long enough. “There’s no doubt that Trump, in just six weeks, has compiled a most unusual list of accomplishments to boast about—much of it a result of allowing the world’s richest man to take a chainsaw to the federal government, cutting hundreds of thousands of federal jobs and unilaterally shutting down federal programs and contracts worth billions of dollars in defiance of Congress,” she continues. “But you wouldn’t have known it from hearing Trump wind his way through nearly a hundred minutes of mostly standard-issue Fox News culture-war talking points and alpha-male American exceptionalism.” Glasser writes about the performat...

  In a short story by Alice Munro, a young fat woman is tempted by her boyfriend’s brother.

  In New Yorker Humor: “You have reached the U.S. government. We are currently unable to answer your call, because everyone has been fired except Bob.”   You Have Reached the U.S. Government We are currently unable to answer your call, because everyone has been fired except Bob. If this is Melania, press 183 if you wish to accept the buyout.

  Mary Ellen Matthews has been shooting “S.N.L.” ’s “bumper” photographs—those portraits of the week’s host and musical guest that flash onscreen before commercial breaks—for a quarter of a century. Now you can admire her work for more than a few seconds.

    Susan B. Glasser writes about President Trump’s lengthy, inflammatory address to Congress: “It turns out that even the most unhinged of Presidential speeches can seem kind of boring if it goes on long enough.”

 

  If there is something that unites “Anora” and “The Brutalist,” which received most of the big Oscars, “it’s a masterful dedication to the art of the hustle,” Justin Chang writes. Both films’ directors have learned to temper their outsized visions with resourcefulness.   At the Oscars, “Anora” Keeps a Dream of American Cinema Alive The ninety-seventh annual Academy Awards were buoyed by two plucky indies and a brave, history-making Palestinian-Israeli documentary.

  For bakeries in New Orleans, the first few months of the year are among the busiest. As the rest of the country stares down the barrel of January, the city is just easing into Carnival. The weeks are marked by parties, by parades, and by pastry, most specifically king cake: a wreath-shaped confection made with a yeasted dough—the kind you’d use for brioche or sticky buns—and finished with white icing and a shower of crystallized sugar that’s dyed purple, green, and gold. King cake is rooted in religious tradition—it’s a Catholic custom that’s believed to have been adapted from an ancient Roman one—but in New Orleans it’s also a “huge economic boon,” one baker told Hannah Goldfield. It’s considered sacrilege, even among the secular, to make or eat a king cake before or after Carnival. In the past decade or so, the season has become a frenzied pageant of baking innovation. “Even the larger king-cake bakeries are pushing the boundaries now,” the baker said. From king-cake lattes to ...

 

  Anthony Lane writes of his long-standing obsession with risotto, the history and lore of the dish, and the time he took part in a risotto-making competition.     The Secret History of Risotto.   The dish is governed by a set of laws that are rooted in tradition, rich in common sense, and aching to be broken or bent.

 

  “I think Putin has determined from the beginning of this war that Russia must win it,” Angela Stent, an expert on U.S.-Russia relations, tells Isaac Chotiner in a new Q. &. A. Read their full conversation    

  A new book by the critic Adam Plunkett shows how the circumstances of Robert Frost’s peripatetic life gave rise to some of his most successful poems. The book “is a thorough, elegant, and, at times, surprising study of Frost,” Maggie Doherty writes. The Many Guises of Robert Frost Sometimes seen as the stuff of commencement addresses, his poems are hard to pin down—just like the man behind them.

  How did Samuel Richardson, a straitlaced tradesman, produce a book that deftly inhabits the turbulent emotional life of a teen-age girl & woman.

 

  In February, President Donald Trump threatened to “take over” Gaza and forcibly relocate its population of two million. A few weeks later, he posted a 33-second video to Truth Social featuring the tagline “GAZA 2025 WHATS NEXT?” The clip shows victims of war scrabbling in gray rubble and running from soldiers, until the color palette suddenly brightens and the people pass through an archway into the promised land of “Trump Gaza”: a grotesquely slick seaside metropolis of modernist beachfront mansions, hotels, and casinos branded with the President’s name. “The A.I. video made the neocolonialist mission nauseatingly explicit,” Kyle Chayka writes. The video is the work of two Israeli-American filmmakers, Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen. The pair created the clip to test the capacities of the generative-A.I. software Arcana Labs. Avital said he set out to make a video that depicted Trump’s Gaza plan while satirizing the President’s self-aggrandizement. Vromen then put it on his Instagr...

  “The next Pope will be a figure of consequence, like his predecessors and a symbol of change,” Paul Elie writes. But the very forces of tradition and ritual “that empower the Pope also stand in the way of any thoroughgoing renewal of Catholicism.” newyorker.com The Pope’s Role Has Changed in Our Time. But Has the Church? A new account of the papacy’s recent history reveals the transformation of the office in the mass-media age.

  “The Super Bowl may well be the last great vestige of the monoculture: it’s the pop event that most Americans, whatever their beliefs, circumstances, or motivations, can gather around,” Nick Paumgarten writes. Read his report from Super Bowl LIX.

  In New Yorker Humor, a guide to help you easily identify the main subspecies of bro in their natural environments.

  On the evidence of a newly expanded anthology, Bolinas, California, was once governed at least in part by poetry itself.   What the Bolinas Poets Built Along the coast of California, a vibrant literary community came together, but its many styles could not be defined together.