newyorker.com / .newyorker-com-magazine / Page 7

Generate yourself as a [age] [gender] who sounds like [parental figure or lost loved one] mixed with [favorite entertainer].

Funny drawings from this week's magazine.

"You thought yourself lucky as a sickly / child, who got to spend whole days // reading long books in bed."

"Some homes almost disappeared, / as if the atoms that had made them were gone."

Francisco Coll gives Ibsen's drama a stem-winder of a score.

It horrified me to be from a species that did such things, over and over, but what good did my horror do?

The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that it is hewing to "gold standard, evidence-based science"--doublespeak that might unsettle Orwell.

The poem confirmed the ascent of a rare new voice--a mesmerizing voice that became indispensable to American verse.

Also: the galloping Americana of Ryan Davis, Michael Urie's tragic "Richard II," a holiday roundup, Inkoo Kang's TV picks, and more.

How the restaurateur Gabrielle Hamilton--of the beloved New York City establishment Prune--became a noted memoirist.