ON A MUGGY July afternoon in Iowa City, I went grocery shopping with the writer Garth Greenwell. We hit up the town's 1971-founded co-op armed with a short list from his partner, the poet Luis Muñoz. I was going over for dinner the next day, and ingredients needed to be acquired.
Greenwell is one of the more respected practitioners of American fiction working today. His first novel, What Belongs to You, the story of a love affair between a young Bulgarian hustler and an expat teacher from Kentucky, was nominated for the 2016 National Book Award and will be adapted as an opera this fall. His second novel, Cleanness, mines the same American-in-Sofia premise to create a deeper, more layered work. Cleanness is full of sex and feeling, painstakingly unfolding the desire and alienation that underpin one gay man's life; it was widely celebrated by critics and a finalist for multiple awards.
But on this day's errand, in the New Pioneer produce aisle, Greenwell could be mistaken for someone a little more quotidian: an obliging, slightly flustered midwestern husband.
"Good fresh lettuce'... hmmm. Will you help me pick a good fresh lettuce?" he asked, peering at the handwritten list. "A couple of tomatoes. Yellow and red. That's perfect. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're here." In their household, Muñoz does more of the cooking, while Greenwell often shops and cleans, an arrangement with roots in one of their early dates 11 years ago, when Greenwell showed up at Muñoz's apartment and found him pressing the water out of tofu with heavy books of poetry.
As we wandered the aisles like pilgrims in search of potato bread, Greenwell told me that his doctor had recently put him on Zepbound, “one of these weight-loss drugs,” for the sake of his health. It has been a startling experience for him, even at a very low dose. “I’ve always had a difficult relationship with food,” he said, “and it just totally shuts down what they call food noise, food anxiety.”
Denne historien er fra August 26 - September 08, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra August 26 - September 08, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
