The October 5th edition of The New Yorker is not happy.
Movies: “As a piece of moviemaking craft, ‘A Serious Man,’ is fascinating; in every other way, it’s intolerable.” Theater: “You feel as though you were watching not the play you’ve read but a sketch for an idea about a play.” Opera: “[H]e has failed to find a clear angle on ‘Tosca,’ and instead delivered an uneven, muddled, weirdly dull production that interferes fatally with the workings of Puccini’s perfect contraption.” Fiction: “Powers has for some time been writing fiction by dictation, with the help of speech-recognition software. Not enough help, alas: on the current evidence he also needs bullshit-recogntion software.” Television: “The forensic evidence so far indicates that a kind of death is taking place before our eyes; the only question is whether what we’re witnessing is an accident or a crime scene.”
The arts feature is about Michael Haneke and his sadistic movies. The news feature is about violent gangs in Rio de Janeiro. The opening essay, about the financial system, concludes: “The next time the structure starts to lurch and sway, it could all fall down.”
The happiest piece is a Letter from Tehran.