Chosen...But why?
I had an interesting letter show up in my mailbox last October. It came from The New Yorker, offering me 26 issues of the magazine for the incredibly-low price of $26 (plus an extra $2 for my state's sales tax.) After thinking it over, I decided to go for it. Two weeks after sending off my check, the first issue arrived.
Now, four months later, I have decided not to renew the subscription. Because really, it just isn't my thing.
Okay, don't get me wrong....
There is nothing wrong with The New Yorker. The reporting is almost BBC in its calm staidness. The humor is often provincial (meaning, if you aren't from New York, you may not get it), but the cartoons are cool. And it always has something to expand my mind about some subject.
It's when it starts talking about the "arts" that it loses me.
There is a way of talking about art, whether it's literature, cinema, theater, dance, music, or visual art, that makes you want to learn more about it. A way that assumes that some readers may not be familiar with So-and-So, but here's why this person, play, movie or album is worth a listen or look. A way that uses common language to express those sentiments.
The New Yorker doesn't talk about the arts in that way.
Not a non sequitur, I promise!
I cannot stand Ann Coulter. She's a mean girl, especially when she's talking about people and situations that she's never met or experienced. But after reading almost 16 weeks of New Yorker reviews of new plays and profiles of trendy artists of various and sundry kinds, I found Ann's brand of mean words infesting my thoughts: Rarified air. Ivory tower. Out of touch with the norm. Liberal elitism. Bleah!
So what the hell does that mean?
Well, after a great deal of thought, I found that what it means is that The New Yorker (or at least its arts section) isn't written in my native artistic language. My Language of Art boils down to a single phrase: "I may not know much about art [of any sort], but I know what I like." The New Yorker's Language of Art boils down to a different phrase: "You should like (or hate) this." The reviewers never seem to really give their own reasons for liking or hating a film or exhibit or whatever; instead, the reader is made to feel as though they ought to like, or hate, the art or the artist--but the reasons given are so esoteric that only the "in-crowd" of artistically-fluent people will understand them. I'll be the first to agree that art is in the eye of the beholder, and that this is not only okay but necessary; but I refuse to let someone else define art for me...no matter how "ironic" or "iconic" it's supposed to be.
So I guess I'm not trendy enough for a magazine like The New Yorker.
Two different cities.
There are two different New York Cities that share space in my head.
The first is the one that N.K. Jemisin and other authors (and filmmakers) made me fall in love with. That NYC is a mixed bag of folks from all ethnic backgrounds and walks of life, trying to live, love, and make a living; a whole lot of little communities balled together in one city. That was what I was hoping to see more of by subscribing to The New Yorker.
The other NYC is the one from The New Yorker, and I don't like it much. I don't speak the language, and really, I bet that if I actually went to the city, a lot of real New Yorkers wouldn't speak it either.
