COMM 337: The original "Soup Nazi" in New Yorker's "Talk of the Town"

Posted to an online forum for bicycle enthusiasts, linked here for nonprofit educational purposes, i.e. classroom discussion, under the doctrine of fair use ...

Tuesday we looked at a New Yorker "Talk of the Town" feature on the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest. In class Thursday, we'll look at another, along with an episode from a TV show.

The New Yorker piece is an unbylined January 1989 feature titled "Soup" that got picked up in 1995 by the Seinfeld TV sitcom and took on a life of its own in the popular culture. The Seinfeld episode (but not the New Yorker piece) even has its own Wikipedia page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soup_Nazi and several video clips on YouTube.

User Psydotek posted the New Yorker piece, along with the headnote from the St. Martin's Guide to Writing, a freshman English textbook, on Bikeforums.net. The St. Martin's Guide said: ""Soup" is an unsigned profile that initially appeared in the "Talk of the Town" section of the New Yorker magazine (January 1989). The New Yorker regularly features brief, anonymous profiles like this one, whos subject is the fast-talking owner/chef of a takeout restaurant specializing in soup. In 1995, Albert Yeganeh, the subject of this profile, also inspired an episode of the television series Seinfeld. As you read, notice the prominence given to dialogue."

Good idea. Let's read it here, and notice the prominence given to dialaog, description and all that other artsy literary stuff English teachers like to talk about (and everybody likes to read whether they paid attention in English class or not).

Compare it to the "Talk of the Town" piece we looked at Monday. How do they fit the Wikipedia description of "brief pieces — frequently humorous, whimsical or eccentric vignettes of life in New York — written in a breezily light style" (see post immediately below "COMM 337: A typical New Yorker color story")?