I began subscribing to The New Yorker in 1973.
I am giving up the print edition and will be reading it on-line now.
The New Yorker is too big, too wonderful, too funny, too informative to hold in my hand. There is so much, and it comes week after week.
I have changed habits. I read things on screens now.
I will miss looking at the clever commentary of covers like this one as I walked from the mailbox to my house.
I will still see the cartoons. They have become more overtly political now than in decades past.
Most of them have an ironic sensibility. My parents never thought New Yorker cartoons were funny. My parents wouldn't think funny this one in the grocery. They did not fuss over the moral provenance of lentil beans, so they would think it strange that a grocery clerk would be giving this earnest option to a customer.)
I don't consider this cartoon about the evolution of the bass as laugh-out-loud funny, but I admire its cleverness for re-interpreting the evolution cliche.
I had no use for the formal silverware and dinner platter service that was stored on high shelves at my parents' home, and I know full well that no one will want the stuff we took from them as a courtesy and then ourselves store on a high shelf. So this cartoon is funny to me:
In decades past The New Yorker got fat in November and December with beautifully photographed ads from Hermes and Ferragamo and Rolex, but that has changed. Now the magazine wants to get paid by subscribers seeking its content, not by advertisers for its upscale audience. I am part of that. My going all-digital is part of the creative destruction of business models for journalism. I happily pay for content. I will never buy a Rolex.
This November 27 edition of The New Yorker had a single luxury ad, one introducing a high-end tourist destination, a city in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has money to spend on very-long-term image-building. (We aren't just a petro-state led by a murderer. We are a place of enchantment and beauty.)
My habits changed with the age of my eyes. Now I do my journal-length article-reading by looking at big pages on oversize screens. I like big print.
Not sure when I’ll make the transition away from hard copies of the New Yorker or The Atlantic, but it won’t be soon. I, too, read a lot online but I don’t enjoy it as much. But many reliable news sources are not available any other way. For me, one of the pleasures of retirement is a print copy of the New Yorker and a cup of coffee on a rainy afternoon. My iPad isn’t the same.
My first college English teacher at LaSalle College in 1964 Philly made all his students take out a subscription for The New Yorker. All reading and writing assignments were based on articles found there. Most of my fellow students hadn't heard of it before, and at first we were all offended by the hoity-toitiness of the ads and what we saw as the overly subtle short stories. Our teacher was grabbing us by the scruff of our lower middle class Irish and Italian necks and forcing us into a new world of Culture and Civility. By the end of the class, we stopped fighting the magazine and began enjoying it. Thanks, Mr. Cunningham.