The unexpected stress of my New Yorker subscription
Magazine just keeps coming and coming and coming
I subscribed to The New Yorker in early 2020. After long admiring the legendary Manhattan-based publication, myself being not only a writer but an aspiring professional cartoonist, I signed up for a cheap six-week trial. When the trial was nearing its end, I’d already become accustomed to receiving a crisp new magazine in my mailbox every week, and so, when my mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told her I wanted my subscription renewed.
I plan on receiving The New Yorker for a very long time, quite possibly the rest of my life. I can’t foresee ever choosing to forego the well-crafted articles on endless niche topics, the at once surprising and classic single-panel cartoons, or the poems by authors I’m often discovering for the first time.
I’m becoming as attached to The New Yorker as I am to my vintage boot collection, to my selection of inherited china teacups, to my extensive array of jewelry acquired over decades.
The problem is, The New Yorker is published weekly, with the exception of two issues in the year that each span two weeks. That’s 50 issues per year. It shouldn’t be hard to read one issue per week, in theory, but a week seems to go awfully quickly, and since I don’t check the mail every day, especially during pandemic isolation, I sometimes end up pulling multiple magazines from the mailbox at once.
I’m a decidedly slow reader. I’m actually capable of speed-reading, but I’m also particular about digesting every detail of a text. If I’m going to read it, I’m really going to read it. The second my mind wanders, or at least as soon as I realize it’s up and walked off, I have to go back and reread. My mind is a veritable bouncy castle, so this can mean backtracking several paragraphs.
I’m drowning in top-notch New Yorker content, and as much as I’m not chewing through each magazine in its allotted week, I’m also not willing to give up on the fantasy of reading through every issue. Recycling unread copies is not an option I’m considering.
I suppose I have a lifetime to harness the discipline to sit down a few times every week and read through the bulk of each New Yorker magazine, but in the meantime, that increasing stockpile is stressing me out. You wouldn’t think that something that ought to be only a gift of intellectual and creative content would produce anxiety, but the idea of being so backlogged has produced in me a sense of unease, of unmitigable urgency.
Having books on my shelves with which I’ve not yet enriched my mind is stressful enough, but The New Yorker just keeps coming, and coming, and coming, as though I were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and the undead had compelling academic works, short stories, and hilarious cartoons and humour pieces strapped to their backs. Homicidal, flesh-eating humanoids notwithstanding, it’s just too much of a good thing.
I’m thinking about displacing a shelf of books to accommodate the growing stacks, but that’ll only stretch so far. I’m just glad I have a crawl space.