that's glib, david remnick; you're being glib.
here's a quote from a june 9, 2006, interview that aired on book-tv sometime around 1:00 AM this morning, spoken by my glib hero/antagonist in reference to the new yorker's (apparently) eagerly polled readers:
"ninety-nine percent of the people say they read the cartoons first, and the other one percent are lying."
this makes me think that when remnick was a reader rather than employee of said periodical, he thumbed through from cover to cover and read all the cartoons first himself, and that's fine, absolutely fine. maybe he still approaches it that way, and that, too, would be fine. but it would also mean he should give me his god-damned job, because i open the magazine and read every page, in numerical order (gladwell pieces excepted), because i'm in it for the stories. if the magazine stopped running the cartoons all together, i would continue to read it in that same manner, because i am in love with that stupid stapled mess of blow-ins and snooty ads and condescending fonts and brilliant ideas and crystalline prose and political sincerity and all the things i dream of dedicating my day after day after day to.
but i know, really i do, that i am in love with it because remnick and the people around him make it a thing i can love. so however eager i am to despise him for making smarmily charming jokes about work i want to do so badly that it has, on occasion, kept me awake at night, especially when i remember that he's only about 46 and by the time he steps down i'll be old and defeated and maybe no longer willing to stand with one hand on william shawn's typewriter until the other applicants have collapsed from exhaustion and dehydration,
i can't quite manage it. it's my job, i'm sure of it. it's my job, and he has it, and i'm pretty sure that that means i never will, and it's terrible to be as certain about the future you need to arrive in as you are about the impossibility of your ever actually arriving in it. it's my job.
but he's doing it exceptionally well. if ninety-nine percent of the people demand cartoons, you must give them cartoons, no? but the one percent are still the people, and you should take us at our word. our zealous, crazy-eyed word.
and then you should give us our jobs.
"ninety-nine percent of the people say they read the cartoons first, and the other one percent are lying."
this makes me think that when remnick was a reader rather than employee of said periodical, he thumbed through from cover to cover and read all the cartoons first himself, and that's fine, absolutely fine. maybe he still approaches it that way, and that, too, would be fine. but it would also mean he should give me his god-damned job, because i open the magazine and read every page, in numerical order (gladwell pieces excepted), because i'm in it for the stories. if the magazine stopped running the cartoons all together, i would continue to read it in that same manner, because i am in love with that stupid stapled mess of blow-ins and snooty ads and condescending fonts and brilliant ideas and crystalline prose and political sincerity and all the things i dream of dedicating my day after day after day to.
but i know, really i do, that i am in love with it because remnick and the people around him make it a thing i can love. so however eager i am to despise him for making smarmily charming jokes about work i want to do so badly that it has, on occasion, kept me awake at night, especially when i remember that he's only about 46 and by the time he steps down i'll be old and defeated and maybe no longer willing to stand with one hand on william shawn's typewriter until the other applicants have collapsed from exhaustion and dehydration,
i can't quite manage it. it's my job, i'm sure of it. it's my job, and he has it, and i'm pretty sure that that means i never will, and it's terrible to be as certain about the future you need to arrive in as you are about the impossibility of your ever actually arriving in it. it's my job.
but he's doing it exceptionally well. if ninety-nine percent of the people demand cartoons, you must give them cartoons, no? but the one percent are still the people, and you should take us at our word. our zealous, crazy-eyed word.
and then you should give us our jobs.
Labels: despair, new yorker
posted by juniper pearl @ 6:24 PM
2 Comments:
At 8:49 AM,
zoe p. said…
bah. the cartoons. who reads them.
that said, i think they've introduced a few new cartoonists lately who are less deadly dull than the regulars. like that one who does funny shaped heads.
At 1:33 PM,
juniper pearl said…
do you mean william haefeli? all the heads look a bit funny to me.
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