New Yorker magazine alert thread

it's weird though because i still feel impatience for the next one to come! "why isn't it here yet, it's been a few days!"

I catch up by reading a couple articles a week at work (I rarely read the fiction).

i think if i read 1) a little bit of the talk of the town; 2) maybe one feature, and; 3) a piece of criticism then that would be pretty good. even that's hard though

I look forward to the fiction issue every year, because it means two weeks off.

I gasped with relief three weeks ago when I saw the last issue was a double.

I let my subscription lapse last month, but until then I read (most of) every issue from 2010 to 2016. Yeah, it can be a relief when stuff you know you can skip comes around: "15 fiction writers reminiscing about about the smell of their mothers' kitchens? Oh yeah!"

i'm convinced that's intentional on their part

This is possibly too pedantic, but every week I mark the articles I want to read with a red X in the index, which makes it easier figuring out when to trash/recycle them.

my system is something like

-always read first section of Talk of the Town (the subsequent ones are always gossipy quiddities and agonies of the ruling class trash imo)

-always read Surowieckie, James Wood, Schjejdaal, and the music criticism

-always read the comics

-never read fiction unless it's someone whose name I recognize or if it got bigupped itt or on twitter somewhere

-never read theatre criticism. never read tv critic unless I've watched the show

also, i almost always skim 'goings on about town' (even though I don't live in NYC, it's just nice, the images are beautiful, and you can find out about interesting things) and the 'briefly noted' book reviews. and i read the first two or three lines of every poem

and then for the longform stuff, I just go by what interests me or writers I like. try to do one a week minimum

oh and i always read Anthony Lane but not Denby on film

also never read Gopnik

why do you guys get print? the kindle subscription is much cheaper and it doesn't pile up (physically)
i make it through an issue in a day or two but i'm pretty merciless about skipping articles i'm not interested in, even if they're important

kindle version also shows up first thing monday morning, no wait for it to show up in the mail

print is more fun to read, always

Print + ipad is the same price as just print iirc. I usually read the e-issue on Monday and my wife too the print to read on the train.

also all my books are in our attic in storage right now i so don't mind having physical issues pile up

i spend 8 hours a day looking at a computer screen, probably an additional hour looking at my phone, if i can avoid a screen for some of my leisure reading then i am better off

i wonder to what extent young talent will continue to draw from Gawker (Chen, Tolentino), pitchfork (Carrie Battan), n+1 (Blumenkranz, Batuman) in the next decade

never read Gopnik

otm

he wrote one of the worst new yorker articles i've ever seen, just a few days ago. not sure it counts as a true "article" or not because it was short and only posted online i guess, but it was about the idea that we're living in a simulation (which prompts seriously eye rolls from ILX i know but is actually fascinating) ...combined with the oscar best picture fuck-up, standing in for proof that the simulation had gone off the rails. i kept waiting for him to make a joke but it seems like he was half serious? but also that he just really wanted to write something about how surreal the shittiness of the last year has been in the context of the simulation argument, but wanted to wait for a new "crazy" event to occur in order to publish it, but then overreacted to the spectacle of the oscars thing and blew his wad too early? anyway it was the worst thing i've seen in the new yorker in a long time, other than borowitz

man people fuckin LOVE borowitz

borowitz is the worstowitz

patricia marx shopping articles are my personal bugbear, but i don't think they've published one in a while

ugh fuckin hate patricia marx

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, February 2, 2011 2:14 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I skipped a ton of stuff this week. Patricia Marx (ugh), Muslim brotherhood (feel guilty about this but I'm tired of these pieces), John McPhee (not in the mood for long personal reminisces). Pedophilia piece was good but I skimmed some because it was so hard to read.

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, January 7, 2013 8:42 PM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ugh I hate Patricia Marx so much. Her shopping updates were dumb enough, but this week she writes about taking a trip on a freighter, which is potentially interesting, but her writing is so self-centered and cutesy and trite that the piece is totally worthless.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Wednesday, January 29, 2014 9:20 AM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha how many times has this thread had the shouts and murmurs/Patricia Marx/denby conversation

― max, Sunday, August 12, 2012 8:27 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Karl otm, that simulation piece by Gopnik was abysmal. In more competent hands etc.. because it truly is an interesting topic. But you have got to do better than 'omg first trump won and now a wrong enveloppe at the oscars: the people running our simulation are losing it!1!'

what's weird is that they already published two pieces about it relatively recently!

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom
http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/what-are-the-odds-we-are-living-in-a-computer-simulation

haven't read the rothman one, but the bostrom profile was good, i thought. so it's weird that gopnik was itching to write about the same subject again, without adding anything of any value to it!

didn't read the gopnik (see my rule upthread re: gopnik of 'never read gopnik') but i, too, like to defend the groovy pleasure of contemplating the Simulation Hypothesis from its detractors (who afaict are mostly responding to Thiel & Musk's bizarre pronouncements on and interpretation of it)

Ohh monsieur Le Malone, you are spoiling me!

*beeps and bloops*

my eternal shame is that Gopnik is a Montréal native u_u

rothman is generally good, prob my fav of the web writers

though once he got a detail about ulysses slightly wrong and i turned on him forever

I liked Gopnik's piece a while back about baking bread with his mom

i liked gopnik's piece after trump officially locked up the GOP nomination -- it was about how countries don't really recover from having their institutions shown to be so fragile

but everything else sucks, including his occasional hockey forays on the website

anyway, New Yorker gigs are like tenured professorships, the quality of your work stops being a factor at some point

same with public radio contributors

xpost Yeah, iirc you get a nice salary and near total freedom and are just required to turn in x-thousand words a year.

remember when SFJ left his new yorker post to work for genius

"Genius."

Remember when, as a staff writer at the New Yorker, he solicited money online for a new laptop?

Those were the days ...

xp. seeing successful writers with patreons or whatever now seems commonplace. he was an innovator!

my in-laws got me a print subscription for christmas. the amount of good writing is overwhelming tbh, the issues arrive faster than i can read them. it's only march and already there are a bunch of issues on my shelf that i don't even remember opening

― marcos, Thursday, March 2, 2017 8:41 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep, that is the system.

― softie (silby), Thursday, March 2, 2017 9:44 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, soon you'll have piles all over, each with one article you've been meaning to get around to for years.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, March 2, 2017 9:46 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The story of every New Yorker subscriber ever (including me)

yep

i'm actually okay with the new yorker -- i'm usually more or less caught up and either way i toss them

the new york review operates on a more idiosyncratic schedule which gives you the illusion that you have time, thus dooming me

New Yorker plus the monthly copy of Bon Appetit that has been showing up every month for three years even though I've never paid for it.

When I die it will be under a hoarders stack of those two plus damaged comics and GNs I take from work planning to read

have to say i wasn't really enthralled by the grann excerpt. will still buy the book tho obv

I liked the Paul LaFarge piece on the unusual and ultimately tragic life of H.P. Lovecraft's young protege Robert Barlow.