In a moment of madness in late July I decided that the thing I really needed in my life was a subscription to the New Yorker magazine. I first came across The New Yorker in Belfast Central Library in the 1980's and I worked my through the magazine from the 30's onwards. There's a lot of crap but a lot of good stuff in the early New Yorkers from the usual suspects: Thurber, EB White etc to lesser known writers and consistenly funny cartoons. When Pauline Kael and Woody Allen et alia came on board the magazine was firing on all cylinders. I've picked up the New Yorker now and again in bookstores or when it's been lying around someone's house or occasionally I've bought it for a long aeroplane ride but it's never got its hooks into me the way it does with some people. Why I suddenly felt the need to subscribe back in July is a mystery to me now. Perhaps it was nostalgia for the 7 years I spent living in New York or perhaps it was nostalgia for all those years reading the mag in Belfast Central Library. Who knows? It doesn't matter. I ordered the damn thing and I waited for it to come....
The first issue I got was August 9th. I read the contents and it looked interesting. A piece by David Sedaris on flying and another by Nicholson Baker on video games. I like both those gentlemen and in the hands of the New Yorker's famous editing team they were bound to turn out something brilliant. They did not. Sedaris complained that Americans dressed badly when they flew and got upset when their flight was delayed. That was his whole bit. It wasn't funny or insightful or even bad, it was just bleh. The Baker piece on video games was in the voice of a grumpy old man complaining about the lack of depth to video games. I thought it was a parody at first but it just went on and on like that. He didn't even like Assassins' Creed which is a great video game. The rest of that issue was all filler.
...
The next New Yorker I got was a double issue Aug 16 & 23. It was only 10 pages longer than the Aug 9 issue which felt like a bit of scam from the getgo (cue Woody Allen joke "this is terrible and the portions are so small"). I couldn't find a single interesting article in this issue. I was hopeful for John Lee Anderson's take on Iran (I read his biography of Che) but it wasn't very focused or interesting at all. Tony Lane reviewed The Expendables and complained about the lack of irony and wondered where Van Damme was (I assume rhetorically because the Van Damme-Stallone split has been well documented). I dropped this issue in the bath and it's all stuck together now but I don't feel the urge to mount a restoration attempt.
...
The last issue I got was August 30. This was the one that really annoyed me. The New Yorker is aimed principally at two groups of people: ageing Jews living in Florida and wannabe hipsters. Unfortunately it seems that the current editor is trying to increase the wannabe hipster demographic, which can be the only explanation for Adam Gopnik's piece on Winston Churchill. "Kids, listen up, there was this Churchill dude who, like, saved the world or something," was basically the tenor of his article. He'd read a couple of biographies, done no interviews or original research of any kind and produced a piss poor Churchill bio that was so shallow it felt like a script for the History Channel. There was also an article by Oliver Sacks about the same things he always writes about and finally a David Denby film review of Eat Pray Love that was actually pretty good.
...
So far my New Yorker year has begun badly, but I've only read the August material (BTW where the hell are my September mags?!) when everyone's away and the magazine was probably put together by the interns so I'm not despairing just yet. (Incidentally, the picture is the great Saul Steinberg View From 9th Avenue cover from the 70's. Nowadays the New Yorker costs $5.99 an issue.)
49 comments:
I read the New Yorker while I'm stuck at the cash register in a slow hour, so it's a different situation.
I liked Jonathan Franzen's vanishing songbirds of Europe article recently.
I've subscribed a couple of times, and stopped because it usually gets away from me, and I'm left with all these magazines I'm intending to read but never do.
Unfailingly, just as my subcription has expired, they will launch into a fantastic five part series on something that everyone is reading, except for,of course, me.
I do have one gripe about the New Yorker, though. When Lorrie Moore was visiting the store recently, we learned that the New Yorker has first rights with certain authors to scavenge their novels and publish segments as 'short stories'. I think this practice does a disservice to true short stories, and makes it that much less likely that any unknown author will ever breakout on those pages.
Plus, I don't like novel excerpts.
Seana
Well I have no idea when I'll get to read that as none of the September issues have shown up.
I've always found the New Yorker to be hit and miss and mostly miss so never buy it. The interesting stuff always turns up in anthologies etc anyway.
The only mags I subscribe to these days are Vanity Fair and Viz, with the latter providing most of my intelligent reading.
Rob
I get Viz for long train journeys. I like the 1970's Geordie mindset.
There are however way too many people we know who are exactly like The Modern Parents.
Are you sure you'd feel no temperamental affinity with a grumpy old man complaining about video games?
Peter: I very much enjoy Roger Ebert managing to keep his integrity on his position over video games whilst also managing to taunt gamers about it.
Adrian: Having lived in Newcastle for years, I'm familiar with many of the characters
Seans: when I worked in a bookshop I would read Mills and Boon whilst stuck at the register. Some of them actually had good writing.
Rob, as an American, I know Mills and Boon by reputation only.
I can't read fiction at any of the wait for the customers desks. I get too immersed. Doesn't matter what.
Peter, I think Adrian can defend himself against grumpy old man allegiance by pointing to the fact that he only used bold in complaining about those New Yorkers not coming, rather than ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
Seana, I think our host has called himself a dour Presbyterian. How great a leap can it be from that to grumpy old man?
Adrian, nice tribute to Harvey Pekar in this post's title.
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Peter
Its a thin line between dour and grumpy and its probable that I have indeed crossed it.
Kids today. Their music. Eh?
I did not however side with Camille Paglia against Lady Gaga. She (Lady Gaga) seems like a smart Jersey girl on the make to me.
Rob
I was impressed during my visit to Newcastle by the willingness of everyone to live up to the stereotype. It was November and the wind was coming straight from the N Pole and the men were in T shirts and the women in short denim skirts. I felt that it was the coldest place I'd ever been on planet Earth but of course I was only a poncy Mick.
Seana
I am pretty annoyed about this. Thats three issues they owe me. And I did want to read that Franzen thing about the birds.
Peter
Ah Harvey we miss you already. I just read a great one of his in the library last week called The Quitter. One of the last things he did and it was top notch.
Oh, Seana, to have that power of concentration. I envy that. Even with fiction I'm loving and stay up all night to read, the concentration like that isn't there.
I think I had it in high school when I'd be late to school because I'd stayed up until the wee hours reading mysteries and nonmysteries, although I still have that habit, but not the powers of concentration.
John McFetridge continues the Inception convo with a nice post on the Do Some Damage blog..
I love the line about Stieg Larsson:
"Whenever a novel begins with some hidden secret in the past, and it turns out to be incestuous child abuse, it is like saying the butler did it."
Or increasingly whenever a mysterious stranger turns out, yawn, to be a vampire...
The New Yorker stabbed itself in an already flabby buttock when they made Tina Brown editor. Then the decline became serious. The London Review of Books is the only periodical left worth reading. It has awful issues (the latest one, for example, in which an execrable short story by Alan Bennett takes up half the space), but it can also be wonderful: full of wit and savagery.
That's a shame because the New Yorker had so many good short stories by famous writers way back in the day.
Of course Peter got the title reference. I just knew I had heard the sound of it somewhere and half consciously thought, Thurber?
No.
I think they still do good stories, sometimes. It's just that they all seem to be solicited from the already pretty well known.
And no, Kathy, my concentration isn't that great. Rather the reverse. It's just that stories kind of drag you in in a way that essays do not. We're talking paragraphs of time here, not chapters. People can sneak up on you during a paragraph.
Adrian, they'll probably all come together, slightly mangled.
The New Yorker still publishes short stories by Alice Munro, doesn't it?
Although I don't see how they could appeal to either retired jews or hipsters...
J
I have read the LRB and the NYRB on occasion and both are consistently serious and high quality publications. I admire the fact that neither has dumbed down or compromised their values (at least not that I've noticed).
Sean
I've been finding the short stories in the ones I've read a bit of a slog. But its a small sample size.
Seana
At this as long as they come I'll be happy. If only for David Denby.
John
Havent read any by her, yet.
On your Rubicon point. I basically gave up half way through The Connect The Dots episode. Does it pick up after that?
Adrian,
No, nothing has really happened on Rubicon. They are quite stubbornly avoiding everything.
It is actually kind of funny to watch the main character freak out when he finds bugs in his apartment and realizes he's being followed and not make any connection to the fact that his entire job is invading other people's privacy all over the world.
I suspect that's the big ending they're heading towards, the "greater complicity" (ha ha) that they're going to try and pass of as deep and meaningful.
But I watch it every week.
Sometimes I look at this site to see what's in development in Hollywood and it tells me that AMC was looking at a series based The Conversation and I wonder if that morphed into Rubicon.
The New Yorker is read by a lot of older Jewish people in New York City, neighbors of mine.
And it seems to be in EVERY doctor's waiting room in the entire city. That's where I catch up.
Nothing unusual in what I saw flipping through pages today, the usual book and movie reviews, a few nonoutstanding articles.
I tried to read the New Yorker at the register today, but it was the dreaded Style Issue, so there wasn't much to intrigue me, other than the cartoons, which were pretty good, actually. The humor piece, Shouts and Murmurs, was called Brooklyn, Et Tu? It was kind of a Brooklyn insider joke, I guess about hip single childlessness, sort of, but it was a little too insider to be funny to me.
Well, of course the New Yorker should be about New York, and if some of us don't get it, tough luck. I think in America, it's been a beacon of light to a lot of people who lived in little towns where they felt themselves outsiders and probably prevented more than a few suicides in its time.
I wasn't actually one of those kids, though. I was too lazy.
It is actually kind of funny to watch the main character freak out when he finds bugs in his apartment and realizes he's being followed and not make any connection to the fact that his entire job is invading other people's privacy all over the world.
I suspect that's the big ending they're heading towards, the "greater complicity" (ha ha) that they're going to try and pass of as deep and meaningful.
Sounds several cuts below, say, Greg Rucka's Queen and Country, which I've been reading.
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
When I was a young wannabe hipster just out of school, I subscribed. I figured I'd better read the magazine that had published so much great fiction.
This was pre-pictures, so it was all text all the time, except for the ads.
I simply couldn't keep up. The articles went on forever, even the good ones. I violently disagreed with the theatre critic and was never on the same page with the movie reviewers.
And the fiction-fashion at the time was minimalism, so that really killed it for me.
After a year of watching the unread things pile up, I cancelled.
Like Kathy D, I look at the doctor's office. And the last time I really read one was when I was waiting for the birth of our first kid. I started reading a Thomas McGuane story to my wife and before I got to the end of it, she told me to shut the fuck up, she'd rather have the baby.
And I did stop. And the boy was born shortly thereafter.
I just know that the birth of your child could be turned into a selling point, Malachy.
I do remember the articles as being interminable, even the good ones. It had something to do with the three columns of small type, where you'd get to the end of one and gulp, knowing there were a zillion more.
However I wish everyone had read the pre-Ayatollah one on Iran I forced myself to the end of when I was in high school. It might have saved the world a lot of grief.
That story about the birth of the baby is hilarious, about reading to the about-to-be mother, who couldn't take it any more.
I have read some good short stories in the New Yorker over the years, but nothing recent that I recall.
I enjoyed Nora Ephron's parody of the Larsson trilogy, "The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut." It was ingenious. Glad the New York ran it.
Seana
Style Issue? No one told me anything about no goddamn style issue.
Slaps head off forehead.
That Franzen better be brilliant.
Peter
If you havent seen Rubicon there's no point at all watching now.
Its 3 Days of the Condor stretched out to 12 hours with no shooting or sex.
Malachy
That is effing brilliant.
Ironically that would make a great New Yorker short story.
Kathy
I feel she missed an opportunity by not mentioning Lisbeth Salander's breast implants. That was definitely the funniest bit of book 2 for me. (That, or maybe the narrator of my audiobook trying to do a Grenadian accent).
ok this is weirdly timely...I was *just* reminiscing about the New Yorker and was about to subscribe again once I got my pay at the end of the month.
But there's a reason why I cancelled the subscription.
Looks like I should subscribe to something else.
Anyone have a suggestion?
Sheiler I'm half thinking of subscribing to the New York Review of Books again, but that's partly due to a really low 'professional discount' they're luring me back in with, and partly because I'm under the delusion that I actually read magazines outside of work anymore.
Adrian, the Franzen is more or less just simple reportage, but at least he did do his own research.
"12 Hours of the Condor." I like it.
==========================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Sheiler
I'd recommend Guns and Ammo but its never been the same since Susan Sontag passed on has it?
Actually I was reading Adrian's post on bibliophobes and saw some items to add to my reading list.
I don't have the time to wander around books waiting for something to call to me, alas, like many of us. It's how I found so many great books I know I'd never hear about (Jane Rule was a find). It's how I slogged through many crap books. But I liked the whole package deal of discovery.
When I can break away from my office I can go to the MIT library, but doing so is dispiriting. In light of being practical and useful and literal and assholish, the library took to covering every single book with a prolitariat book cover of a solid cover with gold colored lettering. I walk around trying to use dewey decimal or a pretend game of chance, pull out a mystery book: see what you've got, but I find the covers mean so much to me.
I try to keep lists of things I want to read as a result of this but it's not the same. I don't come home with a treasure, opting out of tv, the internet and eating like I used to.
Seana, I'm not sure I've read the NY Review of Books. I think I must investigate. But there's a pull with me between a subscription of a journal/mag and a book. I realize that with me it's become a question of what format do I wish to support (since I feel I have to choose one out of my time not being my own so much)?
Plus also I just succumbed to reading glasses.
I can put away the audio books for now.
Well, one of the great pleasures of my life at one point was going out for coffee and reading a couple of essays in the NYRB. But the schedule has changed a bit, so I don't know quite where I'd fit that routine in.
I think one of the sad things about life is that it's hard enough to find the things that work for you, and then something comes along and changes it all anyway.
That MIT library sounds very dreary. Way to hide the treasures, MIT!
Although not the same thing as serendipity,you could do worse than to take a gander at the list of books at the NYRB book site. I could do worse, actually.
Yes, I'd have to say that going out to a cafe with the NYT Book Review section or a good book sometimes works for me or going to Murray's, which has great bagels. This is a bit of stolen time.
Seana, is that NYRB link working as it ought to be?
Thanks. It seems to get you so far, but no further. Let's see if this is any better.
Sheiler
I dont get anything for that Guns and Ammo joke?
Kathy
Ahh, Murrays which can only mean that you're a downtown gal. I was more your H&H, Zabars, Fairway kind of guy.
As I said to my nephew when he was about eight, when it comes to jokes, you have to know your audience.
Actually, I think it may have been the way you threw Susan Sontag into the same sentence.
when i was still in high school, i subscribed to the new yorker once and after about 4 months, only 1 issue ever came, then i got fed up and cancelled the sign-up ... it's all up to you my friend - an old book shop is never far away, you can mine their archives easily if you want.
... i used to read heaps of those and to a certain degree the harper's (not bazaar) back many years ago when i obliged myself in the uni library day and night and these were the coffee and biscuit equivalents to my brain when i needed a break. now i look back i don't really remember anything i read from these magazines, unlike full-on novels, they stay in the head like movie quotes.
Red
If they're only going to start delivering one per month then I'm completely being ripped.
Adrian,
Very sorry for the slight. I offer you many angry theatrical devices for the guns and ammo bit. I coughed out loud when I read it, which is high praise from me, other than my offering to buy you a beer. But that will have to be another time, another continent.
After I started (and then completed) my whine/rant about reading and MIT libraries and so on, about 10 minutes later, I came across a site that recommended two mags to check out...that look very interesting from a drive-by kind of perspective.
http://www.believermag.com/
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/
Thanks for the link Seana to the NYRB. I am definitely going to peruse and possibly subscribe. Trust a bookseller to get me all excited about...books.
I would like to exchange links with your site adrianmckinty.blogspot.com
Is this possible?
Post a Comment