Did anyone else find the ostentacious sentence structuring in the article distracting, and a little infuriating? Sure, writing is an art form; I get it. I sometimes wonder if this very thing is what readers of The New Yorker actually want.
Sometimes using a more formal tone in writing can be a nice change, and give an article a more through out perview from the reader.
For example, for this article I found myself reading it at a slower pace than usual, attempting to piece the facts in with the time period, as it were. As such as I have written this comment, a more formal language used to convey a more inherent life or fact to the writing.
It doesn't mean that it is inherently more truthful, but, in my opinion, that the reader should spend more time thinking of the context of the article, and less about the absolute absorb the information and move on style of reading.
I do appreciate those writing styles occasionally, and frankly often find myself more drawn into the articles subjects (which I'm sure is the primary goal of the author), I do not find myself teaching these styles.
At the risk of digressing, of which I surely am, there are, at the most basic level, two levels of English. The common, more easily read article(such as we commonly see on HAN), or the more prosaic, lofty style.
Just because it's written as a high minded, lofty worded article though, doesn't mean it should be taken as truth(I am not referring this comment to the current article, just in general, I do not have enough knowledge of the subject matter to argue it's merits).
That's my opinion on the matter for what it's worth :-)
An example being, each time you would make a slight pause in your sentence, than a comma is required, otherwise you would keep writing until a sentence has ended with a period, or as I was originally taught, a full colon.
If you're talking about the 'Oxford comma', then that is definitely not a style advocating for gratuitous comma usage in general, only an extra one on the final item of a list.
Outside of lists, commas are used to separate clauses. They are never used so separate subjects and verbs, as that is always awkward and superfluous. It has nothing to do with pauses, and much more to do with coordinating intonation patterns.