I want to read every article. I want to read all the “Faith and Doubt” stories, because I basically majored in doubt in college. I want to read the Sex and the City movie review wherein Anthony Lane compares the actresses to thoroughbred horses. I want to read the new Nabokov short story! I want to read the Annie Proulx short story that she awesomely named “Tits-up in a Ditch”! I want to read about how Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami found his road legs and his book-writing arm. I want to read about rapper Lil Wayne nailing his perfect pitch with Auto-Tune. I want to read the funny captions for the photo of an orca in a courtroom.
But here is the problem. And this is embarrassing for a writer to admit. In fact, admitting this will probably destroy my nascent writing career. The New Yorker has too many words. And, as a corollary, I only have one week to read it. And when you consider the pile of half-finished books on my bed-stand and my day job and my television set and my sleeping and my eating and my checking my email 100 times a day, I am actually a very busy girl.
So I’ll get through this exciting issue, but it might not be today, or tomorrow, or even the next time I am early to my therapy appointment. I might have to wait until I am strapped to an ambulance gurney or sent to solitary confinement. But mark my words, I will conquer this New Yorker of June 9 & 16, 2008. Okay, so I honestly just realized it’s a double issue. I feel way better now. Talk to me in two weeks and we can exchange orca lawyer jokes.
I just read my New Yorker from April 14. I can’t even consider reading this week’s until I break into May. I will cheat and read the movie review, though.
Either the author accidentally broke the Sex and the City link or the fact that it links to nothing is a commentary on the vapidity of the movie.
Start with “Tits-up in a Ditch”. It will:
a) engross you
b) rip your guts out
c) eat the guts
d) make you fancy yourself a hard-bitten prairie woman
e) make you shake your fist and be all “oh you men!” and cry some.
I still haven’t read it. I’m waiting. How can the story live up to the title?
How was your high school reunion?
As your Official Photographer who has yet to officially photograph you, I’d like to put in a request to borrow this issue when you finish it.
Speaking of photographs, Billy’s CLAW images are rather good.