The Tyranny of The New Yorker Magazine
By Yuvi Zalkow | February 18, 2012 |
I won’t lie to you. I’ve been totally swamped doing edits on my book over the past month. It’s a tale I’ll eventually tell in one of my videos, of course, but I’m too much in the midst of it right now. Like the old saying goes: Insane Novel Editing + Time = Funny. But for now, I decided to make a more therapeutic and sillier video than usual. I’m taking a break from the Failed Writer series to tackle a great burden that I suspect many of you are familiar with. It is a burden that plagues many households on a weekly basis. I’m talking about the burden of The New Yorker magazine. And the guilt associated with not reading them as frequently or as thoroughly as you think you should. Here is my radical proposal:
What do you think? Am I the only one in this predicament? How do y’all handle the gap between what you want to read and what you have time to read?
(Check out my website if you haven’t already. It has a stash of every video I’ve ever done and will soon have updates about my upcoming book… and my therapy visits associated with my upcoming book.)
NOTE: No New Yorker magazines were harmed in the making of this video.
Yuvi Zalkow is the author of the novel I Only Cry with Emoticons (Red Hen, 2022) as well as A Brilliant Novel in the Works. His stories and essays have been published in Catapult, Narrative Magazine, Carve Magazine, Rosebud, The Los Angeles Review, and others. Yuvi received an MFA from Antioch University. He uses his poor drawing skills to make YouTube videos and mobile apps that ooze with his worries and anxiety.
Oh, haha, I used to subscribe to the New Yorker. I felt that I should, of course. But honestly? It was such a disappointment. Certain nonfiction pieces stand out, and the liberal bias fits my worldview, but I hardly ever enjoyed the fiction, and I had no need to know the Goings On About The Town in NYC. Like you, it became a burden, an obligation that I couldn’t live up to. Exact same thing.
Rather than a co-op, I came to the conclusion that there is NO “should.” I do not need to read the New Yorker if I don’t want to.
And actually, what I ended up doing was subscribing via RSS, so I can still read some of the articles I want to, and the ones that are behind pay-walls? Psh, don’t need ’em.
Free yourself from tyranny, I say!
My to read pile is taking over my living room – not enough time to read everything – and write – and live.
*laughing!* — okay, I never had a subscription – I’d purchase a copy in the airport, read a little, take it home with me after my trip, and then sorta kinda forget about it . . . lawd.
Love the props – especially that gin bottle :-D
Just cancel the damn subscription and lie when friends ask you if you’ve read the last issue. You might be challenged on this? Ha! They haven’t read it either.
Unless, of course, you think they’ll be accepting your next short story because it’s real good and you are a subscriber to their magazine.
This is the relationship that I have with the New York Times, especially the Magazine. My parents (the source of my hoarding tendencies) pass along a stack of their Times in grocery bags. I recycle any sections I don’t like (sports is out of there). Then I put some next to my bed and desk to read in those spare minutes.
Sometimes I’ve had a such a backlog that I’ve been tempted to dump them in the recycle bin. But I just can’t! As a child I had to finish reading every book I started, so I’ve come a long way. I do skip articles that don’t interest me now.
OMG. Have you been hanging out in my bushes, spying? I’m the friend the magazine is handed off to. I guiltily toss it into the recycling bin once a week.
Maybe, we need a 12-step program. “I’m a writer, and I don’t read The New Yorker. There, I’ve said it. Is there any hope for me?”
Fabulous video. On the nose.
Ah, the things we “should” do. As soon as we figure out how to get by on a single hour of sleep per night, we should all make great headway on those lists, don’t you think?
I’d like to read The New Yorker, really, I would. But it’s just Not. Gonna. Happen. I’d have to give up reading books in order to do it, and that’s not an option.
Love the video!
I have the same problem – Not with the New Yorker but with all the books I keep buying and haven’t read yet. They keep calling me, but how to find the time to read? My New Year’s resolution was to read for at least an hour everyday, but that hasn’t worked out so well. The crazy thing is, I love to read.
Thanks for all the great feedback. It looks like I’m not the only one with unread piles of things… Whew.
You break me up, man. Your videos retrieve me from whatever funk I happen to be indulging. Thanks for that. The New Yorker is an icon, a totem to be left casually around (with open copies of Turgenev and ‘The Faerie Queene’) in case someone comes to visit.
Hilarious and so true! I stopped subscribing because it was just too much & left me feeling guilty. I think your co-op idea is perfect! Ince a month is the right frequency for any magazine delivery.
I no longer get the new Yorker, the economist or vanity fair. Can’t keep up, and if there’s a must read article, I can get it on whatever idevice is in my hand at that moment.
We still get national geographic and both my partner and I read it. He gets the atlantic, too, and devours it, but rarely reads a book.
I jam through four to eight books a month.
Maybe there are magazine people and book people and that’s just the way it is.
When my life became more cluttered with children and husband and family obligations, I stopped shaving my legs on a strict schedule. At least with your New Yorkerless you are still attractive to your wife. I assume.
I simply adore your videos, Yuvi.
Thanks, Sarah! And yeah, I hear you… my rigid schedule went out the window for shaving, showering, giving myself haircuts, and plenty of other things that surely brought me down on the attractiveness scale…
Oy, Yuvi. This is how I feel about all the blogs I’ve subscribed to. It’s eMadness.
Yes… I don’t know how people keep up with blogs!
My mother used to read the New Yorker. I wonder if she felt tyrannized. I wanted to be different from her so it never crossed my mind to read it!
I read Archaeology Magazine cover to cover (no kidding, it’s really interesting) and it doesn’t feel like an obligation because I love it. Maybe that tells you something about the New Yorker Mag?
Plus I read books. Some of them feel like obligations. Hmm.
I work the reader’s advisory desk at a public library. Part of my job is shelving the new books and new magazines. It used to drive me crazy! I wanted to read everything and everything was right THERE in front of me day after day. But the New Yorker never tempted me, except for a brief game my co-workers and I would play: “What do you think they mean by this cover?”
Carolyn — I’ve spent a lot of time with the covers as well :) I used to try and guess the title to the cover art. Actually, I even brought an (unread) stack of New Yorkers to a writing class I taught and made the students write a story just by looking at the cover…
Boycott the New Yorker.
Boycott New York.
Nobody, except New Yorkers, needs either.
Steve
I loved your video. Very very creative.
I still think that the New Yorker is a great magazine. Even though I don’t live in New York, I still enjoy reading it.
You are telling my story with the New Yorker. I subscribed because I wanted the fiction articles, but they just kept accumulating on the my dining room table like weeds. They come entirely too much – seriously, once a week… why? I started ripping out the fiction section, and chucking the rest of it (unless I happened to like the cover, then I would rip it off as well). By the way, I loved your video. The coop is an excellent idea.
[…] about falling behind on the New Yorker is a favorite pastime for many subscribers. For some, it’s a strange and significant source […]
[…] Let’s try again. How about blog post headers piled atop one another to consume an entire in-box screen? Or the heap of unread New Yorkers on the floor beside my desk, a plight apparently shared by many and wittily described by Yuvi Zalkow on Writer Unboxed? […]