Okay, so among the editors of AFLM it’s no secret that I hate the New Yorker; now it’s no secret to anyone who’s reading this blog.
Why do I hate the New Yorker? There are a lot of reasons: the dull layouts, the lack of self-awareness, the banal poetry, and the douchey cartoons are all contributing factors (seriously, how do they manage to make cartoonists who write for Playboy and Mad Magazine into snobby dicks?) but what mostly drives me crazy about the magazine is the pretension.
Here’s a short sampling of the kinds of articles I found in a stack of New Yorkers I liberated from the coffee shop where I used to work (I only read it for the fiction, I swear): “Pseudonymously Yours,” an article that explores the validity of pop-fiction pen names for High Art authors while sneering at the authors, the publishing industry, literary audiences and the whole concept of pseudonyms; “The Great and the Good” an examination of the division between critical acclaim and popularity in the career of Somerset Maugham that ends with a disdainful quote about the author’s need for recognition (i.e., popularity); “I was Ghandi’s Boyfriend,” a Shouts and Murmurs column about a history-ignoramus bro-type gay man going on a date with Ghandi (as a response to the fact that Ghandi’s biography may be banned in India, of course); “Funny like a Guy,” yet another article about how it’s totally okay for women to be funny but when women are funny we’ll still say they’re not funny like a woman (seriously, I’ve seen about six articles on that topic in various underground weeklies – thanks for catching up a few years late, New Yorker); “Futurism,” about a hot new artist’s fascinating and highly meaningful art (all dedicated to remembrance of obsolete computer technology – includes a website in Arabic devoted to Christopher Cross and smattered with moving GIFs); and “Strange Fruit” an article which mocks people for their fanatic obsession with Acai a few months ago while bemoaning the fates of the poor Acai farmers whose market has now burst – and that sampling was taken from only four magazines.
Who is the New Yorker’s audience? I’m really quite curious about that; clearly they’re aiming for actual New Yorkers, because all of their art show, theatre, and sales articles are centered on things that only take place in New York, but they must be aware that people in the rest of the country read their magazine, so why do they market so stringently at a very particular class of intellectual elite, upper-crust New Yorkers. Come to think of it, I’ve never bought a copy and I’ve never seen someone buying a copy of the New Yorker – I’ve only found abandoned issues on tabletops in coffee shops. Perhaps there’s a secret mafia of rich, art snob, 34-year-old men in rimless glasses with shaved head whose job it is to wander the cafes of the nation and surreptitiously place magazines on countertops and under chairs. After all, who would buy a magazine that has an annual cover price of approximately $341.64? Hell, I never spent that much on textbooks in a given year so I find it hard to imagine that someone would spend that much on insipid art reviews and an editorial staff that insists on using an umlaut wherever two vowels happen to sit together.
Anyway, long story short, I hate the New Yorker. But this is a good thing! Part of the reason I wanted to get involved with AFLM is because I have such a problem with the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and so many of the other wretchedly pretentious magazines out there that try to sell themselves as representatives of the artistic community. You don’t need a massive staff and offices on the East Coast and a penchant for smelling your own farts to do something about art in the real world; you just need to get together with a bunch of other kids who have no idea what they’re doing and try to have fun while making the world a better place for artists. We’re a little lost and clueless here, folks, at least in a lot of ways; but we know what we like and we’re hoping to share some of what we like with you – in that way, at least, we’ve been something of a success. So if our heads start to get to big or we start talking about an artist’s “oeuvre” or we in any way become pricks to any of you, please let us know; either we’ll try to fix the problem and improve ourselves (because we, unlike some other hoity-toity magazines understand that we are capable of making mistakes) or we’ll laugh at you, because it takes something pretty egregious to make us act like pricks.
Until Thursday, and my Thanksgiving post on the best things to do with four days off, have a great week.
- Alli
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