I just this week read the last Sports Illustrated of 2017, which is also, I learned from the editor’s letter, the last weekly issue in the magazine’s 63-year history. I may save it, not as a memorable piece of history but as a sterling example of doublespeak. In explaining the move to a biweekly, the editor follows the lead of countless newspapers and presents a diminished product as a positive development, something that is really for the benefit of readers. There is no mention of declining advertising or revenue. (Does he think his audience is so besotted by sports that it's not aware of the economic forces in publishing?) The most offensive part of the letter comes at the end, when this man who has made a career out of working with words tells his readers – who have just learned that they will be receiving about half the number of issues they’re accustomed to getting – “we’re excited to have you along as Sports Illustrated evolves and grows.”
For Christmas I received Don’t Save Anything, a collection of James Salter’s nonfiction writing. Each piece is followed by the place and date of its publication. His profile of Graham Greene includes this line: “He has no part of the casual view of life, hedonistic, mindless, glittering.”
It appeared in People magazine January 19, 1976
It’s been hard not finding a newspaper outside the door every morning. Now I have to come in here, where I work, blog, waste time on Facebook, to read the paper before blogging, working, wasting time on Facebook. The front page appears on my screen, but I have to scroll down to see what’s at the bottom of it. Yes, I can reduce the size, so only the headlines are readable (headlines being the majority of what one reads in a newspaper), but as soon as I click to turn the page it reverts to its previous size. If I scroll down to read the bottom of a page, and then turn the page, instead of seeing the bottom of the next page, I see the top, making it necessary for me to scroll down again. (I thought perhaps I could do one page down, the next page up, etc., but that would be too logical.) I’m tempted to read only stories above the fold, but then I’d be tormented by the idea of missing something I shouldn’t. Reading online has further reinforced for me the beauty of paper. No wonder people addicted to screens aren’t getting their news from newspapers.
I’m off to Pennsylvania. Will be back here next Monday.
There is no better illustration of the devolution of travel writing (periodicals division) than the 30th anniversary issue of Condé Nast Traveler, now on newsstands. The editor, in her letter to readers, tries to make a case for continuity, but she sabotages her argument by pasting above it a photo of the cover of the inaugural issue. You read the titles of the stories that ran in 1987, and the names of the people who wrote them – “Adrift up the Amazon,” Christopher Buckley, “A passion for Barcelona,” Robert Hughes – and then you turn the pages to find articles about luxury lodgings in Paris and Rome. The magazine’s original slogan still graces the cover: “Truth in Travel,” though it should now be changed to “Faith in Advertising.”
I am usually so far behind in my New Yorkers that I'm delighted when a new issue arrives and I see an article I have absolutely no interest in reading - like Gary Shteyngart's essay on his new obsession with luxury watches. I wouldn't have read Nabokov on luxury watches.
In the August 6 issue, between an analysis of Brexit and a Matthew Parris column on the importance of the Bible, one finds this headline: "My wild success: Hedgehogs, and other joys of a carefully messy garden."
Oh, and there's also a Diary by Geoff Dyer. (I so want to add a 'y' to his surname.)