‘Summer of Hell’ gets surprise boost

If not for The Post, just what would the New Yorker do for cover art?

This week’s newsstand copy (a double issue) of the genteel elite newsweekly has caught up to our “Summer of Hell” series, with a view of Satan himself as motorman of the “H” line. Oooo, clever.

As is the “Subway Substitutes” by cartoonist Luci Gutierrez that makes us wonder just why Bruce McCall didn’t get the gig.

Elsewhere, there’s a story by Don DeLillo, with the opening line: “But nobody showed up, so he sat awhile looking at the wall.” That kind of sums up perfectly how this issue makes us feel.

For those with a penchant for poetry, though, with a manic hook on a political story that doesn’t get virtually any attention these days, check out the spread called “Clive Song” by Anne Carson, which introduces a Guantanamo lawyer who has visited the prison 36 times. We’ll never think the same of soggy French toast after reading her poem.

Time’s cover story, “The Anti Antidepressant,” reveals why Club Kids are so happy. Their drug of choice, Special K, is being considered a treatment for the 5 million Americans afflicted with so-called treatment-resistant depression.

Studies show that up to 70 percent of adults with TRD respond to what’s formally known as ketamine, Time says. It’s also good at keeping suicidal thoughts at bay, although experts don’t know why.

Ketamine is already FDA-approved as an anesthetic, which allows physicians to prescribe it for any condition they think it might help.

Accordingly, ketamine clinics are already popping up, offering the 6.7 percent of the US population with depression access to what Yale’s Dr. Gerard Sanacora calls “the most exciting treatment to come in mood disorders, probably of the last 50 years.”