The New Yorker and I

What would we do without the New Yorker? When my copy arrives every week, with its beautiful cover, I know I have a treat in store. The magazine is a source of truly good prose on so many topics: politics, art, current events, and much more. Often its compelling prose draws me into reading about a topic I didn't even know I was interested in until I began the article. One of the magazine's great contributions is that it has always published, and still publishes, fiction, at a time when many other mainstream magazines have stopped doing so. I know that some feel that the stories published by the New Yorker are too much alike, all in "the New Yorker style." I disagree, and am most grateful for the magazine.

I can't resist adding a New Yorker-related personal note here. A photograph of my daughter and me appeared in the May 17, 1999 issue. Why was that, you may well ask! It came about because my friend B, a professional, gifted, and well-exhibited photographer who specializes in photographing people in their homes, had in 1995 taken a posed picture of my young daughter doing a dance pose on our dining room table, with me sitting nearby, my face obscured by the newspaper I was reading. This photograph was in her portfolio and was chosen by the New Yorker to accompany a short story titled "How Was It, Really?" by the late great John Updike. I was happy for B. that her photograph was published in such a venue; I must say I was also tickled that my daughter and I had even this small connection with a writer whose work has given me much pleasure over the years.