Teleidoscope

Fri, Oct 27, 2006

New Yorker

Posted at 7:05 pm MDT to Media

I have been a member of the Science Fiction Book Club for more than twice as long as Andrew Wheeler has been their senior editor. I've long enjoyed his comments in rec.arts.sf.written, and eventually found my way to his blog, which is full of wonderful book reviews and is also tweaking my long-dormant comic book addiction (as opposed to my virulently active manga addiction).

A recent entry contains the following quote from a 10/16 New Yorker review by Jill Lepore:

Thomas Paine is, at best, a lesser Founder. In the comic-book version of history that serves as our national heritage, where the Founding Fathers are like the Hanna-Barbera Super Friends, Paine is Aquaman to Washington's Superman and Jefferson's Batman; we never find out how he got his superpowers, and he only shows up when they need someone who can swim.

I love wit and articulate writing. It's enough to make me wish the New Yorker as a whole was less provincial (solipsistic? divorced from the world west of the Hudson, much less the Mississippi?), or less prone to publishing fiction about people who are stupid or boring or both. I like their cartoons and some of their columns and articles, but I can't justify a subscription because the proportion of stuff I end up skipping is too great.

Too much to read, too little time. Too many magazine subscriptions, though I'm dropping many of those as my attention focusses more and more online.

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