Kanye West’s Demolition Project

This week:David Sedaris on safari; why kids are hooked on CoComelon; and how the fridge changed flavor.Jump to a complete list of what’s in the issue.

As we head toward our centenary—The New Yorkerwas born, kicking and cackling madly, in the snowy days of February, 1925—I’ve been reading some of the masters of the Profile, a literary-journalistic form that was there from the very start of the magazine. (Thatfirst Profilewas about the opera impresario Giulio Gatti-Casazza. It ran just a little more than a page.) For years, I’ve been an evangelist about the Profiles ofKenneth Tynan, the British theatre critic who, in our pages a half century ago, artfully portrayed the lives of showbiz titans such as Johnny Carson, Laurence Olivier, Mel Brooks, and Louise Brooks. This week, we are publishing an astonishing and absolutely hilarious piece by a kindred soul, a fellow-Brit, aNew Yorkerstaffer, and an artist of the Profile, Ian Parker. The piece is a tale of creative genius gone bonkers.

With reportorial mastery, Ian tells us aboutthe recent adventures of Ye (formerly Kanye West) and his house on the Pacific; it is a quest for purity and perfection that ends in sadness, a sledgehammer, millions squandered, and no small amount of dust. In Ian’s telling, we glimpse Ye’s brilliance, his peculiarity, his ego, and his mania.

The piece is an amazement, at once moving and purely pleasurable. In that way, it resembles so many other pieces by Ian Parker. Mavens with a memory will recall his Profiles of movie starsAlec BaldwinandGeorge Clooney; Apple’s design master,Jony Ive; the acerbic writersChristopher HitchensandEdward St. Aubyn; and the thriller-writer-self-fabulistDan Mallory(a.k.a., A. J. Finn). He is so good that he can even profile, after a fashion,a bunch of apes.

As ever,

David Remnick
Editor,The New Yorker

Cover Story:Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “Pawns in the Park” captures a corner of calm contemplation amid New York’s hustle and bustle.Shop all our covers »

Why Our Kids Are Hooked on CoComelon:Jia Tolentino examinesthe animation juggernaut for pre-preschoolers.

Notes on a Last-Minute Safari:David Sedaris onwatching animals eat.

A Jewish-Palestinian Experiment in Pluralism:Masha Gessen reports on amixed community in the wake of October 7th.

Plus:Isaac Chotiner on asetback for India’s Narendra Modi; Elizabeth Kolbert onkilling some animals to protect others; and more.

1. “The opportunity to consumefrosty drinks and desserts opened up an entirely new vocabulary of sensation.” Nicola Twilley onhow the fridge changed flavor.

2. Across TikTok and Instagram,Gen Z creators are casting their Gen X elders as heroes, foils, antagonists, and comic relief. But, as Jessica Winter writes,artists have been using their parents as subjects for ages.

3. A new biography of Elaine Maygives a compelling sense of her comic and cinematic genius, and also of the forces that derailed her Hollywood career. Richard Brody on why the filmmakermay finally be getting her due.

4. The ESPN host Malika Andrewshas become one of the faces of the network’s basketball coverage by tackling thorny issues. Jennifer Wilson reports on how the young broadcasteris challenging norms and fending off critics.

5. Life after Doge.Kyle Chayka on what the death of the Shiba Inu behind one of the silliest memes of the twenty-tens revealsabout how digital culture has changed.

“We don’t talk in a public and philosophic way about children as objects of love nearly as often as we describe them as obstacles or means to an end.”

—Jay Caspian Kang on how liberals speak about raising kids

P.S. “My wife is fond of Timothée Chalamet.I am not. While I find him beautiful, I don’t find him attractive, if that makes sense.” For Shouts & Murmurs, Bruce Headlam and Stephen Sherrill imaginedisagreements about things other than flags in Justice Samuel Alito’s house.