The New Yorker at 80

My favorite magazine used to be Harper's.  Although I  still subscribe, I don't read as much of it these days.   The New Yorker has supplanted Harper's in my affections, although at first I was deeply resitstant to this rag filled with cartoons.  I'm very grateful to my college friend John Evans for exposing me to the light.  Yes, there are cartoons, but there is also a tremendous amount of fine writing.

The New Yorker turns 80 this month, and has just published an enormous 258-page anniversary issue.  Although I would be fine if medical journals went completely electronic, I still value print for my leisure reading.  Whatever 258 pages equals in bytes, it far exceeds these bytes in heft.

Tonight I attended a lecture by David Remnick, the New Yorker's fifth editor.   He stood up for Seymore Hersh against the slanders of the Pentagon.  He explained why the magazine chose to endorse John Kerry in 2004.   He batted off insinuations that the magazine had become too commercial, saying it had always been that way.   And he was charmingly modest about his lack of editorial experience prior to taking this position. 

All in all, a fine evening.  The audience was generous, and it felt like we were in the "New Yorker Club."  I couldn't help but realize that nobody I grew up with would understand the pleasure in this event.  But I don't need to justify myself, so I shouldn't have cared about this.  Instead I should resume fantasies of being published in the New Yorker!

Comments

[Bill Cash]

I knew that you'd abandon that psycho Lewis Lapham eventually.

I missed a 258-page issue? I am getting mad. The New Yorker never comes on time or in the right order. One day I got two issues: the one from the 18th and the one from the 4th.

[Charlie]

I dropped my New Yorker subscription about the time that started being a parent and for a dozen years depended on the kindness of my mom and others to pass along batches of issues. Now that my kids are old enough to be provoked and provocative themselves by the New Yorker, I started the subscription up again. But at the time of renewal last year, I started to waiver, but then I picked up the issue with Seymour Hersh about "The Gray Zone" that created the climate for Abu Ghraib and felt morally compelled to renew. We vote in all kinds of ways....