The New Yorker - Issue: 41; December 24 - 2007

TALK OF THE TOWN Elizabeth Kolbert on the climate's big week; James Surowiecki on holiday shopping. FICTION "Alma" Junot Díaz. ONWARD & UPWARD WITH THE ARTS Demolition Man John Lahr Harold Pinter and "The Homecoming.". PERSONAL HISTORY I Hit Hamlet Paul Rudnick Behind the scenes at a Brooklyn fiasco.. FICTION "Natalie" Anne Enright FICTION "The Arbus Factor" Lore Segal FICTION "Beginners" Raymond Carver LIFE & LETTERS Rough Crossings Raymond Carver's letters to Gordon Lish and unedited versions of Carver's stories reveal an extraordinary battle of wills between an author and his editor. FICTION "Beginners" Raymond Carver SKETCHBOOK "Five Writers in Search of Utopia" Edward Sorel FICTION "Beginners" Raymond Carver FICTION "Year's End" Jhumpa Lahiri POP MUSIC Led Zeppelin's return. Sasha Frere-Jones THE THEATRE "August: Osage County," "The Farnsworth Invention." Hilton Als THE CRITIC AT LARGE The science of reading and its decline. Caleb Crain BOOKS J. M. Coetzee's "Diary of a Bad Year." James Wood The history of American snapshots. John Updike CURRENT CINEMA "Charlie Wilson's War," "Sweeney Todd," "Persepolis." Anthony Lane POEM "The Candlelighter" Simon Armitage "One Day" Grace Paley "The Onion Poem" Fady Joudah "Suddenly There's Poughkeepsie" Grace Paley COVER "Urban Landscape" Kim DeMarco DRAWING David Sipress, Jason Patterson, P. C. Vey, Drew Dernavich, Leo Cullum, Jack Ziegler, Carolita Johnson, Ariel Molvig, Gahan Wilson, Roz Chast, Bruce Eric Kaplan, Matthew Diffee, John O'Brien, Edward Koren, Michael Maslin, Lee Lorenz, Christopher Weyant, Zachary Kanin, Barbara Smaller, Emily Richards, Paul Noth, Michael Shaw SPOT Philippe Petit-Roulet