This was my Facebook status for a day. And I meant it. But what I meant was that I cannot keep the pace with the weekly delivery of New Yorker magazine. I liked that I kept the status loosely cryptic so one could infer anything. My own New Yorker attempt at being a wit, a fop!
I love this magazine and it opens me up to all sorts of worlds and ideas, but once you have finished an article on nuclear reactors in Russia and are ready to read a John Lahr review or tuck in to the fiction piece thinking that one day that will be your spot, PLOP another issue comes through the post. Arrggghhh. I haven't even dealt with DETAILS or Preservation let alone the self-help book or that bible on Manhattan that I could chuck at someone's head and cause real problems.
How do people do it? My friend Sue (an ex-subscriber) maintains that all people who say they read the New Yorker weekly are, well, liars. But I hear them and they are well-versed liars who also comment on all the NPR they listen to and read the New York Times (paper edition) cover to cover. And they have read the classics, they co-parent a dog or child and hold down a job and a relationship and get to the opera. Some have abs.
There I go comparing myself again.
I say I am drowning in New Yorkers and I suppose I mean the beasts themselves as well. It is a rat race here and I am trying to keep up. Oh and loads of them run marathons or pop off a quick 10K in the park for some lesser cause like feline cancer just cause they can.
I digress. Quickly.
So for today I will read what I can about solitary confinement as a form or torture and then I will wash my dishes and take a nap with a New Yorker on my chest.
3 comments:
The trick to reading The New Yorker is to look at it immediately, read something if it strikes your fancy (preferably the sublime Nancy Franklin), then put it in the recycling. Never let them pile up.
I used to read them on the Subway. Now I just have them with me, so if there are a few minutes to spare waiting--like at a Dr.'s office or before a movie--I read them there.
And then throw away old ones.
Ex-subscriber Sue here (I could no longer take the constant taunting from the pile). Clarification: I believe that those who say they read TNY to be fakers, not liars. I have been on the subway sitting next to a New Yorker "reader" who during 10+ stops never even turned a page. In most cases I believe an US or People magazine is actually tucked inside. It's a prop that says who someone aspires to be versus who they really are. Which reminds me that I need to send in my renewal for the Harvard Business Review today.
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