New Yorker magazine alert thread

Sometimes it seems like the older parents I know - ten years older than me, with kids the same age - can't wait to be empty nesters

they'll have to keep waiting; empty nests are becoming rarer these days.

<3 john mcphee

what he said

"just gonna state the obvious here and say 7 is not 5"

True, but I still wouldn't say that it's categorically "crazy" even at 5. It depends on the kid, depends on the neighborhood, depends on the distance to the school, ya know.

When I was trying to break into pro writing a few years back I found there was a night school course dedicated entirely to getting your prose into the New Yorker. It was run upstate and staffed entirely by ex-New Yorker writers, the failed and the fired. I guess their job was to teach how they got in, but not how they got kicked out.

Well, I did badly want to be a New Yorker writer myself at the time. In fact that idea dominated pretty much all my waking hours. I'd be washing the dishes and find myself thinking: "I'd rather be writing a New Yorker article." Or I'd be walking the dog and wondering how I'd render his little sniffs and tics into New Yorker-esque prose: "Biffo paws desultorily at a pale piece of fossilized dogshit like a jaded gourmet forking shiitake."

Was that good? Would it get past the desk editor? That's what I needed to know. That's what made it worthwhile boarding the night bus and traveling to the little town of Sidney NY, where the course was happening. They have an airport up there, but I figured I wouldn't be able to afford the commute from LaGuardia until I was actually, you know, cashing those New Yorker paychecks. And by then, of course, I'd be halfway to teaching there myself.

It was a weird experience. Lessons didn't start until 2am. The journo-profs were a semi-phosphorescent caliphate, turbidly hardboiled, recognizably post-damascene. I won't reveal too much here; I'm working this up into a piece I think the New Yorker might really go for. Wish me luck!

I misread what you wrote as "when I was trying to break into pro wrestling ..."

Hahah same here.

nancy franklin teaching the crippler crossface

That fuckin jerkoff John McPhee article.

not for us, mr. bancquern

lol that took me a second

i feel bad that i can't really read mcphee. feel like i would be a better person if i could appreciate his litanies of tree and shrub names. i always start his things with good noble intentions and i start to drowse off during a description of wood grains or something and i stop and never finish. i think i'm just blighted. like a conifer infected with Amillaria root rot.

The article would've been better if it'd had that level of particularity and focus. Instead, it was his freewheelin' recollection of (1) the eff word and cursing at nyer (in 2012, when the world needs it most), (2) a bunch of stuff about William Shawn (in 2012, etc.), and (3) a bunch of stuff about another guy who came right after Shawn (in etc.), all with a lot of references to other things John McPhee did that he's not doing now and several John McPhee quotes of nyer articles you're currently not reading.

Sometimes when the nyer is so consistently annoying and disappointing and a waste of $7, the best I can say is at least it's not The Atlantic.

are you buying newsstand copies? craziness

just i'm sure in some recess of my brain the knowledge that what i'm reading cost me almost nothing is reassuring, subscriptions are so rad

60 bucks a year for digital or print. 47 issues. someone do math.

kindle subscription was just 36 bucks a year until now

I've considered it but I think I'd have a lot of unread New Yorkers lying around if I had a subscription, and I already have a lot of unread things lying around. But I will consider it!

ilxor who once said a subscription makes you feel like a very urbane hobo OTM for all time.

it definitely detracts from me reading anything else (/novels full stop) but i've come to terms with choosing breadth (of subjects, at least) over depth by now, so. i spent a while agonising over whether to subscribe (getting an international subscription, which are slightly dearer), but i think it's so worth it. i'd probably pay the same over now just to get it in a more timely fashion (argument in favour of digital subscription).

i got two years for $50 almost two years ago, but i don't suppose i'll be able to renew that cheaply

xpost i used to have that problem until kindle (several issues completely unread, piling up cuz there'd be one piece i definitely wanted to read), now i'd guess i read at least 70% of every week.

i keep up with the nyer but am getting buried by the nyrb

i have still not got w/ereaders &c but i do like having paper copies. they're cool, portable lazy things to give to people, to leave in their bathrooms & stuff.

$25 for a year's print subscription. I accepted long ago that The New Yorker isn't meant to be read entirely; some issues serve a purely decorative value.

It helps when I read both the NYROB and New Yorker at the library at lunch so I'm not swamped on weekeknds.

yeah something like a lunchbreak or a commute is pretty essential for getting through a bunch of the issue, even on a daily basis, so you can read a long article in chunks or zip through all the talk of the town stuff

Nyrb is impossible for me to keep up with, but i do keep within three weeks on nyorker generally.

I can't think of many of subscriptions totally worth their price, though. I did lock myself into three years of "Wired" for something like $9 a year. That's an awesome deal for top notch casual reading.

i feel like i started a "what magazines do you subscribe to" thread a zillion years ago.

I accepted long ago that The New Yorker isn't meant to be read entirely

Finally did this and feel like a burden has been lifted. All these books I get to read now!! It does suck reading all these ACA/supreme court articles knowing the final outcome.

I still don't understand why there hasn't been more euro crisis coverage -- seems like perfect fodder for their style.

I just found a copy of E.B. White's collected essays in a trash box in my building. The prose is so perfect and the content is so boring.

otm abt the lack of euro crisis stuff, so weird

http://i.imgur.com/dsy5s.jpg

Yeah but they have frequent articles about the middle east, latin america, and actually europe only not about what's going on in europe right now afaict

feel like they've had like 100 articles about euro crisis stuff in the past year?

there was an article about the situation in greece recently

Was there? A full-length piece or just a TOTT thing or Suriowiecki short? Cause I would like to read a feature-length NYer piece on Greece.

i feel like it was full-length but i can't find it now

oh shit

this is embarrassing

just realized i was thinking of a "this american life" piece

:(

he is human

They got there early:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_parker

oh man, this grann thing on the american commander in the cuban revolution is FASCINATING

i can see george clooney making a movie out of that article.

which issue was that!!! what was on the cover.

5/28 - cover was college grads in gowns floating on chunks of ice

what do y'all think of Menand's review of Brinkley's Cronkite bio? I like the irreverence. Dunno what his name means to people who didn't grow up with him (I was six when he retired).

douglas brinkely's a bit of a hack in general so enjoy any means of taking him down; not sure if the cronkite (or murrow) myth is really that alive - i've seen plenty of 'actually' challops pieces about both, spurred by good night and good luck and cronkite's passing. barely old enough to actually remember watching cronkite, not sure if what he meant or what he said to have meant can be conveyed in anyway to someone for whom jennings/brokaw/rather are ancient memories. there's a great moment cronkite figures into very heavily in gerard jones' men of tomorrow that kind of captures what we lost when that kind of hegemony went away for better or worse.

Like this:

http://coacheshotseat.com/coacheshotseatblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/RonaldReaganJoke.jpg