The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
18 Feb 2025
Staff writers and contributors are celebrating The New Yorker’s centennial by revisiting notable works from the magazine’s archive, in a series called Takes. The writer Jia Tolentino and the cartoonist Roz Chast join the Radio Hour to present their selections. Tolentino discusses an essay by a genius observer of American life, the late Joan Didion, about Martha Stewart. Didion’s profile, “everywoman.com,” was published in 2000, and Tolentino finds in it a defense of perfectionism and a certain kind of ruthlessness: she suggests that “most of the lines Didion writes about Stewart, it’s hard not to hear the echoes of people saying that about her.” Chast chose to focus on cartoons by George Booth, who contributed to The New Yorker for at least half of the magazine’s life. You can read Roz Chast on George Booth, Jia Tolentino on Joan Didion, and many more essays from the Takes series here.
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From the online spectacle around Leo XIV's election to our favorite on-screen cardinals. This week on Critics at Large, we're talking all things Pope.
The Catholic Church was made for this moment. I think 2,000 years ago, the Catholic Church basically anticipated TikTok, Instagram, X. You don't have those little Swiss guard outfits and think they're not being photographed. Oil painting is not enough.
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Listen, I am not one for anniversary journalism or even birthdays. You reach a certain age, and it's hard to remember what all the fuss is about. But when you reach 100, well, at 100 you get to make a fuss. And the debut issue of the New Yorker magazine appeared on newsstands dated February 21st, 1925. Throughout this year, we're going to be celebrating the centennial in many ways.
And one of them is to highlight a few of the gems from the New Yorker's archive. And we've asked some of our writers to pick a piece that means something special to them. And so we'll start off today with Gia Tolentino, who's the author of the bestselling book, Trick Mirror. And Gia picked a story by one of the great genius observers of American life, the late Joan Didion.
Joan Didion. One thinks of the stingray, the mohair throw, and the typewriter, Bloodshed and Laurel Canyon, the decaying summer of love. It's always a surprise to remember that the neurasthenic empress of American nonfiction once turned the terrifying gimlet of her attention to Y2K-era fan blogs and Kmart cake toppers for a defense of Martha Stewart.
The dreams and the fears into which Martha Stewart taps are not of feminine domesticity, but of female power. Of the woman who sits down at the table with the men and, still in her apron, walks away with the chips.
Joan Didion's essay on Martha Stewart, read for us by an actor, and I'm here with staff writer Gia Tolentino. Gia, tell me why you picked this story out of so many thousands that we've published over 100 years. Why Joan Didion? And why this piece about Martha Stewart?
This is published in the year 2000. And three years later, Martha Stewart gets indicted for securities fraud. And four years later, Joan Didion starts writing The Year of Magical Thinking.
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