No New New Yorkers

My latest New Yorker magazine came and on it was a cover that practically screamed, "Only one month to go!" In my old life, that would have had me scrambling to renew. But now I can only think, "Thank goodness!" Those New Yorkers have been piling up, taunting me, teasing me with this idea of an outside world that I've all but shut myself out of in favor of Sandra Boynton and Goodnight Moon. I've taken to asking the Tweedle Twirp (who reads the magazine regularly) to let me know if there are any must-read articles because I just can't find the time to find them myself.

The magazines are heaped by the living room arm chair, and I can't help but look at them guiltily, thinking about how little I know about what's going on in the world. My grandfather used to collect New Yorkers because he couldn't keep up with them either. Of course, he read them from cover to cover whereas I merely skim them for the cartoons and then read just the articles that look interesting. I think my grandfather stopped his subscription in 1986 and finally finished reading the stack that he had sometime in the early 1990s. I finally admitted defeat a couple of weeks ago and tossed a whole bunch of the magazines into recycling. And yet they're like bunnies, and even though I disposed of a good twenty, the pile has gone forth and multiplied.

At this point in my life, I'm not meant to be a New Yorker reader. That time will come again. Someday. (And let's not get into my thoughts on how much the magazine has deteriorated over the years. The David Remnick New Yorker is of course better than the Tina Brown New Yorker, but it's not the New Yorker I remember from, well, my New York years. Ah the William Shawn/Robert Gottlieb eras. Now those were the days...).