Katy Waldman

6 days ago | newyorker.com | Katy Waldman

At some point during our new Gilded Age, as the United States and the world have become more unequal, did Prince Charming die? His cohort of have-yachts have made themselves newly and counterproductively available to our imaginations, posting on social media, sometimes using their own platforms, their glamor dissipating with every bid for laughs or likes.

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Katy Waldman

The author page of “Next to Heaven,” James Frey’s new novel, breathlessly notes that Frey “was called America’s Most Notorious Author by Time Magazine and the Bad Boy of American Literature by The New York Times.” The copy does not discuss where this reputation came from—cigarettes? Motorcycles? You imagine Frey holding up a liquor store while delivering some close-to-the-bone truth about contemporary life that no one wants to admit. But, of course, Frey’s offense was less glamorous than that.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Katy Waldman

In the run-up to the première of “Thunderbolts*,” on May 2nd, Marvel earned some light mockery for the art-house vibe of one of its trailers. Over an edgy E.D.M. beat, closeups of the Academy Award-nominated cast members Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan were interspersed with strobing text that conjured various prestige offerings from the indie studio A24.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Katy Waldman

Have novels left anything unsaid about the internet of the past fifteen years? It feels as though they’ve exhausted the terrain, but perhaps they’ve just made the same points over and over, their fragmented forms conjuring a user experience of broken attention, malaise, outrage, envy, and boredom. They have evoked the texture of e-mail exchanges; they have barged into the group chat; they have skewered the rhythms and argot of apps such as Hinge and Slack.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Katy Waldman

On February 19th, Donald Trump logged onto Truth Social to congratulate himself on vanquishing congestion pricing in his home state. “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” he posted. “Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” The message was amplified by the White House’s official X account, which tweeted it with an A.I.-generated image of Trump, golden-haired and golden-crowned, blotting out the New York City skyline.