Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker [Hardcover]

David Remnick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2006

From one of the most gifted and widely read journalists at work today, a volume that collects the best of his pieces from The New Yorker over the last fifteen years. David Remnick is fascinated by the men and women obsessed with creating the history of our era as well as those intent on chronicling it. Public figures rarely step away from their public selves. But Remnick has the ability to see the private self beneath the public façade and give readers startling glimpses of familiar figures: Al Gore attacking George Bush as he tries to make sense of his incomprehensible loss in the 2000 election, Tony Blair struggling for votes in the midst of the Iraq crisis.

In Reporting, Remnick returns to two countries he knows well, Russia and Israel. His account of Vladimir Putin contending with Gorbachev’s legacy affords a fresh view of postcommunist Russia; his appraisals of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, and Sari Nusseibeh of the P.L.O. shed unexpected light on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Often, Remnick’s intent is to see someone up close, if only for a moment in time: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he packs his bags to return to Russia, Václav Havel as he prepares to end his career as President of the Czech Republic.

Whether David Remnick is writing about Katharine Graham and the state of American newspapers, the literary visions of Philip Roth and Don DeLillo, or the decline and fall of Mike Tyson and the sport of boxing, his powers of observation, analysis, compassion, and wit are always present. Reporting is confirmation of Remnick’s skill at writing insightful and influential political and cultural narratives, and of his unique gift for bringing his subjects to life on the page with extraordinary clarity and depth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Remnick's last collection of pieces (The Devil Problem) was published in 1996—two years before he became editor of the New Yorker (the magazine in which many of those essays appeared). This new collection of his essays from the New Yorker is divided into five parts, to account for Remnick's varied interests: the first focuses on politics and current events, including Katharine Graham and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Following that are sections on writers (Philip Roth, Václav Havel), Russia (Vladimir Putin, the Romanovs), Israel/ Palestine (Benjamin Netanyahu, Hamas) and boxing (cornerman Teddy Atlas, Larry Holmes). In his introduction, Remnick describes many of his subjects as those who "tend to be elusive." It is Remnick's art to reveal subtle, truthful qualities of people such as Don DeLillo, Mike Tyson and Al Gore who are reluctant to disclose themselves. Remnick is an ideal reporter, combining erudition, curiosity, wit, an eye for the telling anecdote and empathy. (May)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* In this collection of his profiles from the magazine's past 15 years, New Yorker editor Remnick presents writers, politicians, and pugilists who are embedded in our memory--for better and worse. Here we see a devastated (but occasionally goofy) Al Gore in the wake of the 2000 presidential election; British Prime Minister Tony Blair battling for votes after backing the war in Iraq; the final days in office for dissident turned Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel; volatile boxer Mike Tyson, bringing the sport to its knees; and legendary Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, exiled in Vermont, then returning to Moscow in the sunset of his life. A onetime Washington Post foreign correspondent who won the Pulitzer Prize for 1994's Lenin's Tomb, Remnick renders razor-sharp portraits that are intimate without being intrusive and often clipped with wry wit. (Of Don DeLillo, whose novel, Libra, revolves around Lee Harvey Oswald, he writes: when he "visited the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository museum, he wrote in the guestbook, 'Still waiting for the man on the grassy knoll.'") Remnick explores post-Communist Russia under "blandly agreeable" Vladimir Putin and ponders the Israeli-Palestinian crisis with Sari Nusseibeh, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israeli writer Amos Oz. Among the most stirring offerings is a portrait of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; Remnick's conversations with survivors resonate with resignation and grief. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 496 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307263584
• ISBN-13: 978-0307263582
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,204,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Remnick was a reporter for The Washington Post for ten years, including four in Moscow. He joined The New Yorker in 1992 and has been the magazine's editor since 1998. His book King of the World, a biography of Ali, was picked by Time Magazine as the top nonfiction book of 1998. Lenin's Tomb received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1994.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First- class reporting, June 13, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker (Hardcover)

A friend of mine who spent in his early years in the former Soviet Union, and knows its culture well, Moshe Fushman found Remnick's 'Lenin's Tomb' to be one of the most insightful books as yet written about Russian society.

Remnick shows in his investigative interviews an in- depth knowledge of his subjects that enables him to present them in a new light. He is a writer who tends to see things others may not. And certainly he is one with a stance and position of his own.

I saw that clearly in the long New Yorker interview he did with former Israeli Prime Minister Barak. This largely favorable report proved later to somewhat overplay Barak's brilliance and underplay his difficulty in learning from others less brilliant than himself. But in general Remnick in his Middle East interviews shows ( Netanyahu, Sari Nusseibeh, Hamas) good knowledge, with not always the best judgment. His optimism is naive, and his understanding of Palestinian society not really critical enough.

He writes more surely about Solzhenitsyn, Putin, and the world of Eastern Europe. His takes on literary figures beside Solzhenitsyn, Amos Oz, Don DeLillo are also insightful.

In general his pieces tend to have a swiftness and comprehensiveness which makes them, to me, at least very appealing.

This is a first- class collection of essays and highly recommended.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like Reading About Interesting People?, June 4, 2007

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Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker (Hardcover)

Reporting contains a rich assortment of twenty-three essays, all essentially personality profiles. In the book's preface, Remnick describes his method: "The pieces collected here--all written for The New Yorker, where I have worked since 1992--attempt to see someone up close, if only for a moment in time." Attempt is the key word. Remnick admits his interest in profiling people who seek to shape their public image and control what any writer (and reader) learns about them. Each essay is an account of a struggle between Remnick, who is seeking understanding and access, and (usually) a powerful or famous person, who only wants the public to have access on his or her terms.

As a former newspaper reporter with experience on beats ranging from police to politics to sports, Remnick is well equipped for this task. He wields all the tools of good journalism--observation, interviews, research, and writing strong sentences--to construct lengthy and riveting pieces of narrative nonfiction. His essays always embody what David Halberstam used to call "density"; Remnick clearly has more material and knowledge than he weaves into his finished pieces, which he crafts to present his readers with the most truthful portrait of the person he has managed to uncover. But when necessary, as in a favorable profile of Katharine Graham, Remnick can be as blunt as any editorial writer: "the demand for unreasonable profits is undermining the quality of American journalism."

The essays in Reporting are arranged into five untitled sections, which might be labeled as domestic politics and media, literary intellectuals, Russia, Israel and Palestine, and boxing. Since David Remnick is one of the remaining standard-bearers for the long article, the essays are educational feasts for the curious mind. "The Democracy Game: Hamas Comes to Power in Palestine" should be on the reading list of anyone who wants to understand the dynamics of power, hatred, and faith in the Middle East, and the profiles of Vaclav Havel, Vladimir Putin, and Mike Tyson are fascinating.

Armchair Interviews says: This book is highly recommended for readers who enjoy well-written profiles of interesting people.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good, not great, July 28, 2007

By 

a reader "a reader" (Washington D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker (Vintage) (Paperback)

David Remnick is a perceptive reporter and a lucid writer. The longer stories, such as the first of two profiles of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, have nuance and a sense of completeness that are the hallmark of the best kind of journalism. The shorter pieces are packed with verve and deadpan observation. The story of aging boxer Larry Holmes' "comeback" bout -- held in an annex of Madison Square Garden that is "the venue for such parental jungle missions as Sesame Street Live" -- is probably the funniest, saddest one-and-a-half pages I've read in a long time.

I mentioned that there are two pieces on Solzhenitsyn; this is part of the problem with this anthology: there simply isn't enough variety here. There are five profiles of literary figures(six if you count the piece on translators of Russian literature), four pieces about Mike Tyson or in which he figures heavily, four pieces on Cold War-era dissidents (including the two on Solzhenitsyn) and so on.

It's reasonable to assume that these subjects fascinate Remnick most, though he never gets around to telling us so himself. But for me, it sometimes felt like I was reading more or less the same story over and over.

These all are good stories, but there could have been more.