The Rules According to Pamela Paul

Plus: the Oscar nominations, America’s gun-violence plague, and how monks pay attention. View in browser | Update your preferences Tuesday, January 24, 2023 In today’s newsletter, the limits of opinion writing, and then: • Richard Brody on the Oscar nominations • The never-ending plague of gun violence • What monks can teach us about paying attention The Rules According to Pamela Paul At the Times, Paul often writes on the hazards of shifting norms. But she’s also revealed the fraught position of the opinion columnist. Illustration by Núria Just Before the age of social media, the role of opinion columnist at a place like the New York Times was at once exalted and, for a writer who stopped to think about it, quite daunting. “You got the job and you were automatically a Delphic oracle,” Anna Quindlen, who was a Times columnist in the nineties, explains. “It was scary as hell.” The scope of a columnist’s influence has narrowed in the years since, as has the loftiness of the perch, but certain writers still have the power to provoke strong responses—for better or worse. Take the case of Pamela Paul, who, since beginning as a columnist at the Times early last year, “has produced a body of work—deliberately contrarian or not—that reliably results in buttons being pushed,” as Molly Fischer writes, in a revelatory examination of Paul’s work and of the columnist job more generally. Fischer takes on a central question: When a writer lays claim to the subject of “the way we live now,” who is the “we” for whom she is speaking? Read the story Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » The Academy Awards The Front Row The 2023 Oscar Nominations, and What Should Have Made the List These selections highlight the gap between what’s on the Academy’s radar and what’s going on in the world of movies at large. By Richard Brody From the News Desk Our Columnists Gun Violence Is America’s Never-Ending Plague The mass shooting in Monterey Park was one of dozens already this year. By John Cassidy Letter from the U.K. On the Picket Lines of Britain’s Shattered National Health Service The N.H.S. is the country’s pride. But rolling strikes reveal a system in the midst of collapse. By Sam Knight Editor’s Pick Books What Monks Can Teach Us About Paying Attention Lessons from a centuries-long war against distraction. By Casey Cep Screening Room Five films released by The New Yorker were among the nominees for the ninety-fifth Academy Awards, announced this morning. The films span the categories of documentary, animation, and live action, and explore such themes as the dangers of P.T.S.D. and xenophobia, the threats posed by climate change, the bonds between fathers and sons, the precarity of life, and the ways in which public harassment goes unpunished. See the nominated films: Best Documentary Short Film: “Stranger at the Gate,” by Joshua Seftel “Haulout,” by Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev Best Animated Short Film: “Ice Merchants,” by João Gonzalez “The Flying Sailor,” by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby Best Live Action Short Film: “Night Ride,” by Eirik Tveiten Fun & Games Dept. Name Drop Play Today’s Quiz Can you guess the notable person in six clues or fewer? By Matt Jackson Daily Shouts The Secret to Wealth Is Giving Up Pointless Expenses And other lessons from my twenty-eight-dollar book. By Chandler Dean and Sarah Gruen Crossword A Moderately Challenging Puzzle Biblical nickname for Harriet Tubman: five letters. By Erik Agard Daily Cartoon Tuesday, January 24th By Yasin Osman P.S. Edith Wharton was born on this day in 1862. Back on the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of Wharton’s birth, Jonathan Franzen wrote about the problems of sympathy in appraising her work. “To be rich like Wharton may be what all of us secretly or not so secretly want, but privilege like hers isn’t easy to like; it puts her at a moral disadvantage.” Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for The Daily. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for The Daily from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.