esrosedotblog

GOLDEN TREADMILL

We got our weekly The New Yorker yesterday and I told John that I felt like I was on a The New Yorker treadmill.

I had just gotten done reading one and here was another right behind it.

Lucy on the cake assembly line?

It is not a bad treadmill to be on, actually. I have been on it for fifty years.

This will be the approximate golden anniversary of my weekly readings of the magazine.

When I was a sophomore at MIT, I lived on East Campus and there was an office, mailboxes and so on, with a small magazine stand.

Freddy, the major domo of the office, handed me a magazine with my mail one day. Freddy was a flamer from the old days and kept a lot of 'his boys' under observation.

He 'explained' that if I was to be a cultured boy I should read this magazine and nothing less would do.

So, I took it (gratis for the only time since) and read it.

I was hooked.

Now. The New Yorker is not a gay magazine. But it is, or was, required reading for the homo-talk that went on in and around the random queer event. It would be like straight boys reading the sports page every day so they can manage in the land of the het.

In addition, it is, by and large, the most civilized and civilizing institution in the western world. It incorporates the arts, science, politics and many other areas of interest that one would not find elsewhere. It has a liberal sensibility as well as a biting tongue.

And, not only that, it has wonderful cartoons!

The only possible match for this magazine is The Atlantic and it does not even come close.

So, it is The New Yorker every week, week after week; fifty years of it. Let's see. That is 52x50=2600 copies!

Do I read it cover to cover every week? No.

That is what makes the treadmill possible. There is a frequency of more or less unreadable issues; issues where everything is dull or uninteresting.

These occasional lapses, what I call the 'junk issues', are what make the treadmill possible. It is a week off the machine. A time to rest.

Certain special issues can be counted upon to be duds for me: Fashion, often Literature, and sometimes even the cartoons are all too preciously featured in one issue. Too much of a good thing.

I would tell you more about the magazine but I do not have time.

As I said, the new one just arrived and I have to get started or next week I will be behind and that is not a good thing. I would never catch up again.