I used to read the news every morning in middle school. Maybe that was why I was so depressed.
I read CNN, and the New York Times, and Vulture’s Bachelorette reviews. The minute I got my dad hooked on The Bachelorette (no matter how many times he’ll deny it), he returned the favor by introducing me to Ali Barthwall, the fabulous Bachelorette reviewer. We just get each other.
This past weekend, I purchased a New Yorker subscription. And now, every morning, I’m met with a new audio link to a new article or new fiction piece in my inbox. This is anything but spam.
Today, I woke up and listened to Molly Fincher’s commentary on Emily Weiss’s Glossier empire. Yesterday, I read a fiction piece titled “The Choc-Ice Woman” by Mary Costello. The day before that, I read a book review by Anthony Lane, one of my favorite critics, of Arthur C. Brooks’s newest release which features Oprah Winfrey. Here’s a quote from the article:
“Moreover, according to a study cited by Brooks, ‘The research found that among great composers like Beethoven, a 37 percent increase in sadness led to, on average, one extra major composition.’ That sentence makes me twenty-four per cent less sad, and eighty-one per cent more inclined to giggle, than anything I have read this year.”
Lane should have read The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Anchor instead.
It’s valid to question, why the New Yorker and not The New York Times? I’m a creative writing major and above all else I revel in a solid creative piece. The New Yorker extensively delivers these pieces if not with more content. For example, the cartoons are seriously entertaining. I have a particular fondness for Barry Blitt, the political cartoonist who illustrates in a quite distinctive and light-hearted style.
So subscribe to The New York Times or the New Yorker. Better yet, subscribe to each one. They both play into the radical NYC liberal aesthetic, consuming the consumer. If you access the magazine on your laptop, you won’t go five seconds without seeing five ads for St. Laurent. But listen, even if I play the role of teenage patron, I would say the investment is worthwhile.
I’m reading about the world and I’m doing it with sophistication.