Nathan Heller
@nathanheller.bsky.social
New Yorker staff writer, hapless itinerant, reader.
My concise and infrequent newsletter announces significant new publications, public appearances, and nothing else: nathanheller.substack.com/about
My concise and infrequent newsletter announces significant new publications, public appearances, and nothing else: nathanheller.substack.com/about
Thinking today of a Christmas Eve, years ago, when I got to the register at City Lights Books just ahead of Tom Stoppard. He wore a tweed suit and a big silk scarf and carried an enormous stack of books with the merry air of someone who'd found just the thing, just in time. Sic perpetuum sit.
December 24, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Thinking today of a Christmas Eve, years ago, when I got to the register at City Lights Books just ahead of Tom Stoppard. He wore a tweed suit and a big silk scarf and carried an enormous stack of books with the merry air of someone who'd found just the thing, just in time. Sic perpetuum sit.
Regarding "60 Minutes," useful to remember that most people have no idea how the standards, norms, and protocols of journalism work (and why should they?), so when someone claims that a story didn't meet standards, she might be trying less to seek industry accord than to seed the idea with public.
December 23, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Regarding "60 Minutes," useful to remember that most people have no idea how the standards, norms, and protocols of journalism work (and why should they?), so when someone claims that a story didn't meet standards, she might be trying less to seek industry accord than to seed the idea with public.
I always say that the MOST special thing about The New Yorker is that you can read something from fifteen years ago, thirty years ago, seventy years ago, and find it to be as fresh and engrossing and worth your time as a piece published on Monday. This is the best periodical archive in the world.
This is big and a very long time coming! Your TBR pile just got 100 years longer. www.newyorker.com/news/press-r...
The Entire New Yorker Archive Is Now Fully Digitized
For the first time, every cover, article, and issue in the magazine’s hundred-year history can be enjoyed on newyorker.com.
www.newyorker.com
December 18, 2025 at 3:31 PM
I always say that the MOST special thing about The New Yorker is that you can read something from fifteen years ago, thirty years ago, seventy years ago, and find it to be as fresh and engrossing and worth your time as a piece published on Monday. This is the best periodical archive in the world.
At least eighty-five per cent of the work of writing onto a blank page is figuring out what not to write.
One of the many reasons AI can't produce good writing is it can't hate its own writing. It can't think to itself "Maybe I'm illiterate" during the writing process. And that's essential
December 9, 2025 at 9:16 PM
At least eighty-five per cent of the work of writing onto a blank page is figuring out what not to write.
There ought to be a word for the great American tradition of generating an idea you know is ridiculous and impractical in the final countdown to a meeting, just to hold space and show that you are generating ideas. Feignstorming?
Duffy on what he's doing to improve the airport experience for travelers: "Maybe I want a workout area where people might get some blood flowing doing some pull ups or step ups in the airport."
December 8, 2025 at 10:52 PM
There ought to be a word for the great American tradition of generating an idea you know is ridiculous and impractical in the final countdown to a meeting, just to hold space and show that you are generating ideas. Feignstorming?
Unexpectedly heartbroken by the death of Tom Stoppard. He was—as a writer with a high-flying career, but also as an artist—the real thing.
November 29, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Unexpectedly heartbroken by the death of Tom Stoppard. He was—as a writer with a high-flying career, but also as an artist—the real thing.
An important point about A.I. writing, not to be lost, is that no one enjoys reading it.
ChatGPT’s signature writing style is everywhere now, and I hate it. It reminds me of when we tried mixing all the beverages at the soda fountain in middle school. We didn’t actually create the perfect drink, we just made a cloying monstrosity that lost everything good about its constituent parts.
November 20, 2025 at 1:34 AM
An important point about A.I. writing, not to be lost, is that no one enjoys reading it.
My lovely and brilliant colleague Mark Singer is always very funny about his ongoing nightmare of the one magazine profile he never wanted to do continually returning to relevance, like the re-gifted holiday fruitcake that keeps coming back.
This is a pretty remarkable recollection by Mark Singer about a plane ride he took in 1997 with Trump and Ghislaine to Palm Beach. When they were about to land, they got on the phone w/ their mutual friend, "Jeffrey." www.newyorker.com/newsletter/t...
Jeffrey, Who? A Plane Ride with Donald Trump
From the daily newsletter: remembering a trip to Mar-a-Lago.
www.newyorker.com
November 20, 2025 at 1:25 AM
My lovely and brilliant colleague Mark Singer is always very funny about his ongoing nightmare of the one magazine profile he never wanted to do continually returning to relevance, like the re-gifted holiday fruitcake that keeps coming back.
Reposted by Nathan Heller
Some inspiring words on cinema in the streaming era from the Pope.
Yes, THAT Pope.
Yes, THAT Pope.
November 15, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Some inspiring words on cinema in the streaming era from the Pope.
Yes, THAT Pope.
Yes, THAT Pope.
Helen Rosner, @hels.bsky.social, who brings frankness, precise expertise, sane perspective, and humanity to her writing about food, is one of my favorite critics to read these days, full stop. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
La Boca Is All Smoke, No Fire
The Argentinean chef Francis Mallmann is notorious for his love of cooking over open flames. With his New York début, he fizzles out.
www.newyorker.com
November 9, 2025 at 10:59 PM
Helen Rosner, @hels.bsky.social, who brings frankness, precise expertise, sane perspective, and humanity to her writing about food, is one of my favorite critics to read these days, full stop. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
A real and alarming loss for CBS News, or any operation. Dickerson is both an irrepressibly responsible journalist and one of the most patient and good-faith colleagues in the industry. deadline.com/2025/10/john...
John Dickerson To Depart CBS News In First Major Talent Exit Under New Paramount Owners
John Dickerson, co-anchor of CBS Evening News who has been with the network since 2009, said that he is exiting at the end of this year.
deadline.com
October 28, 2025 at 2:32 PM
A real and alarming loss for CBS News, or any operation. Dickerson is both an irrepressibly responsible journalist and one of the most patient and good-faith colleagues in the industry. deadline.com/2025/10/john...
The President says that his team is accepting $130 million checks from individuals whose identities cannot be disclosed and using that money to fund the military, so don't worry.
Trump: "By the way, a friend of mine called us the other day and he said 'I'd like to contribute any shortfall you have because of the Democrat shutdown. I'd like to contribute any shortfall you have with the military.' Today, he sent us a check for $130 million. It's gonna go the military."
October 24, 2025 at 3:39 AM
The President says that his team is accepting $130 million checks from individuals whose identities cannot be disclosed and using that money to fund the military, so don't worry.
Reposted by Nathan Heller
One way to think about this, perhaps, is as a side effect of an increasingly plutocratic-standard society. As middle-class life becomes more fundamentally uncomfortable and plutocrats exercise increasingly visible influence, more busy, ambitious people feel an entitlement to billionaire-style life.
October 18, 2025 at 7:05 PM
One way to think about this, perhaps, is as a side effect of an increasingly plutocratic-standard society. As middle-class life becomes more fundamentally uncomfortable and plutocrats exercise increasingly visible influence, more busy, ambitious people feel an entitlement to billionaire-style life.
A small thing—but also not—is that I've never seen a greater explosion of misuses of the English language by people in public life wearing suits and ties than recently. "Begs the question" is one of the most minor. It helps support this sense of language coming unmoored from reality.
Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."
October 13, 2025 at 10:52 PM
A small thing—but also not—is that I've never seen a greater explosion of misuses of the English language by people in public life wearing suits and ties than recently. "Begs the question" is one of the most minor. It helps support this sense of language coming unmoored from reality.
Reposted by Nathan Heller
Diane Keaton, who died today, at 79, was “one of the most comedically pure and brainy actresses in our midst,” Penelope Gilliatt wrote, in 1978. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/12/25/diane-keaton-her-own-best-disputant
October 11, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Diane Keaton, who died today, at 79, was “one of the most comedically pure and brainy actresses in our midst,” Penelope Gilliatt wrote, in 1978. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1978/12/25/diane-keaton-her-own-best-disputant
I disagree. High school and college are still, for better and worse, the closest things to wormholes in American society—where people can enter with one future and exit with another—and places of intellectual acculturation, where style and values are set. Flip a switch there, and the effects ripple.
It is frankly strange to be this obsessed with college if you no longer attend one and do not work in education. More people in legacy media need to be told that.
And who is the author of this op-ed? The billionaire CEO of an asset management firm who helped author the compact.
October 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
I disagree. High school and college are still, for better and worse, the closest things to wormholes in American society—where people can enter with one future and exit with another—and places of intellectual acculturation, where style and values are set. Flip a switch there, and the effects ripple.
I still agree with the guy who wrote this.
The only reason to hire a critic, instead of giving a megaphone to the crowd, is that creative work—books most of all—isn’t processed as a collective. People make sense of art as individuals, and their experiences of the work differ individually, too. @nathanheller.bsky.social, @newyorker.com, 2017
September 11, 2025 at 2:36 AM
I still agree with the guy who wrote this.
Anyone who has spent time in archives knows that one of the things that really vanished with the end of the pen-and-typewriter age is colored paper. Letters, manuscripts, etc., used to be done on paper of all hues. For several decades everything written at the NYer was done on canary-yellow paper.
September 4, 2025 at 5:52 PM
Anyone who has spent time in archives knows that one of the things that really vanished with the end of the pen-and-typewriter age is colored paper. Letters, manuscripts, etc., used to be done on paper of all hues. For several decades everything written at the NYer was done on canary-yellow paper.
A well-put point.
It’s not just that every accusation is a confession; every accusation is also a rationalization. Trump constantly pretended Biden was personally directing prosecutions of Trump & allies, when of course DOJ norms would have made it unthinkable for the White House to have any direct contact.
SCOOP: Donald Trump and DOJ ‘Special Attorney for Mortgage Fraud’ Ed Martin are speaking as often as four times per week as the GOP activist prepares to seek indictments against prominent Democrats
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
August 29, 2025 at 8:03 PM
A well-put point.
From this week's @newyorker.com anniversary issue: me on the paragraph-level genius of E. B. White. www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...
Nathan Heller on E. B. White’s Paragraph About the Moon Landing
What sort of response could measure up to the occasion? White’s idea was as simple as it was audacious.
www.newyorker.com
August 28, 2025 at 6:44 PM
From this week's @newyorker.com anniversary issue: me on the paragraph-level genius of E. B. White. www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...
Reposted by Nathan Heller
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
August 27, 2025 at 6:42 PM
remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature
Scott Bessent went from public school to Yale, where he subsequently did some teaching on economic history. He worked in his industry for forty years. These tributes, of which this one isn't the most comical, must surely mark the exact point where careerism meets self-loathing.
Scott Bessent praises Trump like a parent praises their 3-year-old
August 26, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Scott Bessent went from public school to Yale, where he subsequently did some teaching on economic history. He worked in his industry for forty years. These tributes, of which this one isn't the most comical, must surely mark the exact point where careerism meets self-loathing.
The Glib, Asinine Artlessness of Web Headlines has become too much. Can we go back already to when headlines were good? Who on Earth wants these?
August 26, 2025 at 3:41 PM
The Glib, Asinine Artlessness of Web Headlines has become too much. Can we go back already to when headlines were good? Who on Earth wants these?
My colleague @zhelfand.bsky.social gets New Yorker fact checking right in this delightful history. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
The History of The New Yorker’s Vaunted Fact-Checking Department
Reporters engage in charm and betrayal; checkers are in the harm-reduction business.
www.newyorker.com
August 26, 2025 at 3:10 PM
My colleague @zhelfand.bsky.social gets New Yorker fact checking right in this delightful history. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...