Los Angeles-based writer Caitlin Flanagan joins the staff of The New Yorker to write stories about "modern domestic life," says the NY Observer's Sridhar Pappu.

Since 2001, Ms. Flanagan has written essays and book reviews for The Atlantic Monthly, where she was twice nominated for the National Magazine Award...

"If it were possible to splice the DNA of Mary McCarthy and Erma Bombeck without the world exploding," said Ms. Flanagan of her new gig, "that’s what I’m going for. I’m interested in the kind of keen social observation and—at times—caustically precise criticism of McCarthy, but my subject is domestic life. Middle-class Americans used to think of work as a burden and home life as a pleasure—but now people tend to think just the opposite. I’m interested in how and why that change took place. If a household is a tiny state—as, of course, it is—I want to be its chronicler."

It's the last item in a column mostly about Adam Moss and New York magazine.