Monday, Feb. 24, 2025
There’s a gag in the brilliant Michael Schur’s philosophy-and-ethics vehicle The Good Place where one of the torture scenarios for the Bad Place was a room where issues of The New Yorker won’t stop delivering. It’s impossible to keep up. Michael (a character on the show played by Ted Danson), a demon, laughs and says something to the effect of, “They just keep coming!”
That’s always the feeling. I barely have time to read the cartoons before the next issue arrives at my door. The hundreds and hundreds of unread New Yorkers that have come through my house is upsetting and dispiriting. I’m wasting the gift subscription my mother-in-law gives me every year. It’s not a cheap subscription.
But with all the hullabaloo surrounding the 100th anniversary of The New Yorker, I put my foot down and said, “THIS is the week I read The New Yorker cover to cover.” And I did!
Somewhere in the ballpark of 170 pages. It weighs about one pound. I even read the letters to the editor, the restaurant reviews, the little book blurbs in “Briefly Noted.” I read it all. A Nick Paumgarten feature (perhaps my favorite New Yorker writer, right along side Louisa Thomas). A brilliant and heartfelt essay by Tara Westover. A banger of a poem by Jericho Brown. A terrific short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A Kelefa Sanneh profile. And leave it to Lawrence Wright to somehow to steal the show from all of them with his poignant (and very long) feature of on a group of nuns who visit the women on Texas’s death row (one of whom is likely innocent). It’s a breathtaking piece. I texted a friend about it.
The 100th anniversary issue was a great opportunity to really pack it to the gills with ads. Many congratulated The New Yorker for turning 100. I picture an ad rep calling, say, Hachette, and saying, “So, hey, listen, wanna buy a full-page ad and on that ad you’ll showcase titles of authors who have appeared in our magazine? And, and, and, you’re going to congratulate us for 100 years. Sound good?”
My typical routine with The New Yorker is to first flip to the table of contents and see who I recognize. I will read any feature or profile or book review or personal history by writers I deeply admire (Kathryn Schulz, Patrick Radden Keefe, David Grann, Rachel Aviv, Charles Bethea). Then I read all the cartoons because deep down I wish was a cartoonist. It actually seems like the perfect job (No cold calling!). If I read one story, I consider it a win.
Of late, I’ve been trying to read the short stories more because I want my features and profiles to feel more like short stories. The best ones have that feel to them.
The New Yorker is kinda the one magazine I’d like to sell a feature or profile to. It wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t complete me. I won’t have finally “arrived.” My ambition, such as it is, isn’t tied to it. I basically no longer have ambition. I’m not competitive in the way I used to be, in the way that made me an (even) uglier version of myself. My worth isn’t tied to it.
It’s my favorite writing and I want to be in and among my favorite writers. I want to be edited by some of the best editors. I’m working on a pitch right now on a famous runner (not you know who).
I’m doing something I rarely do, and that’s give myself credit for finishing something. Now, if I could only finish more than a book per week, we’d really be making hay.
