You may have heard about this. In October an 8 DVD set containing digital images of every page of the 4,109 issues of the New Yorker from February 1925 to February 2005 will hit stores (retailing for $100 – but cheaper at Amazon and other discounters). As a huge fan of the New Yorker, my eyeballs nearly popped out of my head when I first saw the NY Times story about this, but I’m trying to restrain myself. As some of you know, I’m extremely compulsive about the New Yorker, in fact it may be the only compulsion I have. I read he magazine cover to cover every week, and if my issue is late in arriving I’ve been known to panic. My fear is that once I got my hands on this set, I would be compelled to consume every word of it at the expense of school and work and everything else, possibly even eating and sleeping. I’m may have to put myself into forced hibernation starting in October in order to keep those DVDs from falling in to my hands. Also, normally I would find the subtitle of this collection – “Eighty Years of the Nation’s Greatest Magazine” – to be somewhat presumptuous, but I happen to agree with it.
A Magazine Monster
Baseball is Back
Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while know that during the summer I tend to pen the occasional post about baseball. Feel free to skip them if you like, but I just can’t help myself. Now, on with it. In Chicago, I’m finding that the start of baseball season seems to awaken a collective joy across the city. Riding the El on Friday, I was startled by the conductor’s gleeful announcement that the slowness of our train was due to the Cubs home opener. I also learned that the Cubs typically eschew night games at Wrigley Field because, essentially, night games would wake up the neighbors. Most modern stadiums are surrounded by moats of asphalt, but ancient Wrigley is nestled into a city block and surrounded by rowhouses and city traffic and streets lined with bars and diners. Driving north on Clark Street, the stadium explodes into view, surrounded on game day by throngs of fans. A whole section of the city turns into a clamoring carnival of baseball ferment. And then, a few blocks beyond, one returns to quiet streets lined with leafy trees and brick three flats. In the past few days I have noted the pleasure with which the Cubs fan declares that the season has returned. In my experience, they don’t talk about the team’s chances this year or the strength of the bullpen or anything pulled from the sports pages, they talk about how it feels to have baseball back. They tell me that it’s so great to see people drinking beer in Cubs gear on their front porches and shouting “hey” to fans walking to the game. But mostly they sort of cock their heads back so as to gather in some springtime sun, still new enough to be a novelty. In Chicago, baseball doesn’t just mean baseball, it means that the gloomy, icy, sunless winter is over. No more trudging through the ankle-deep snow in the pre-dawn darkness to the El, and no more returning by the same route – stepping in the same holes my feet made that morning – in darkness to a home whose clanging radiators provide a cozy warmth, which, over time, simply seems to be the temperature they have set for your prison cell. But, if you see Cubs fans marching through Wrigleyville, all that can be put to rest and forgotten until October, a whole baseball season away from now. There are some grizzled Chicago vets who insist to me that we’re not out of the woods yet, that April chills and snows are not unheard of, but I ignore them because, well, baseball is here!(I should note that my already considerable happiness at the return of baseball season has been further enhanced by the book I’m reading right now, a collection of baseball writing by the incomparable Roger Angell called Game Time : A Baseball Companion)
Greetings from Europe
I’m sitting in a Barcelona internet cafe in the completely empty non-smoking section… The smoking section is packed. It’s only noon though, so it seems like most of the city isn’t really awake yet. We are staying about four blocks from Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. It is under construction as it has been for decades, and it is a bizarre building to look upon. Over the next couple of days we will see some of Gaudi’s other work. Today: art museums and La Boqueria, Barcelona’s massive open air food market. I had hoped to get a lot of reading done on the plane, but the trip was so grueling that I didn’t accomplish much. I worked my way through the first issue of The Believer, McSweeney’s magazine about books and other fluff. Heidi Julavits’ article about the lost art of book reviewing is the high point, after that it’s mostly uneven to dull. But, hey, at least the folks on Valencia keep churning out new and interesting projects. Til next time…
Tivo for readers
As a proud TiVo owner, I get their email newsletter letting me know about new features and promotions. Rarely do my TV habits and reading habits occupy the same mental turf, but the latest newsletter included a TiVo tip for TV watchers with a bookish bent.TiVo Tip: Bookworms love TiVo, too! Here’s how one TiVo subscriber is using the smart TiVo service to think outside the (TiVo) box, too (oh, c’mon; that’s clever). “Many bad movies are based on good books,” Larry H. so aptly points out (Prince of Tides, anyone?). “So before I go to the library or bookstore, I do a keyword WishList search for ‘BASED ON.’ Usually about a dozen or so programs pop up. I’ll read the descriptions and see if anything looks interesting.”There you have it, use your TiVo to find good books to read.
Jason Lazarus’ Nirvana: Honor in Confusion
Noah’s post reminded me that I’ve been meaning to direct readers to an amazing project being undertaken by Chicago-based photographer Jason Lazarus. “The Nirvana Project” asks participants to document, in words and images, the people who turned them on to Nirvana. A gallery of the responses Jason has received so far can be viewed at www.jasonlazarus.com. (click on “images,” then “Nirvana.”)Jason is contributing a photo to a book I’m doing, and asked me if I wanted to contribute something to “The Nirvana Project” in return. Here’s what I came up with: The person who introduced me to the band Nirvana was a kid named Jeff Smith, who had a mullet and a habit of peeling skin from his palms and fingers and eating it during class. He wrote, “here we are now, entertain us” on the blackboard of my 7th Grade math classroom. We were the kids who got to math class early, if that says anything about the Nirvana audience.It even has the virtue of being true. Unfortunately, I have yet to come up with a picture of Jeff Smith to go along with the text. But if you’ve got a photo of your Nirvana sherpa, check out Jason’s project statement and participate.
Lan Samantha Chang gets the Iowa job
Earlier today it was announced that Lan Samantha Chang has been named the new director of the Iowa Writers Workshop. Here’s what my friend in Iowa had to say about the choice:So, yeah, Sam Chang. The gossip had her picked since last week. The students as a whole, are somewhat disappointed. Ben Marcus was definitely the favorite among everyone…for his exciting workshop and even more exciting craft talk, if not for his reading. We all knew he wouldn’t get it though. Too much craziness, perhaps? Sam’s workshop, as I reported, was great, and it’s my hope that her leadership and fundraising skills match her teaching abilities. Since she’s a workshop grad, I don’t think much will change around here, which is both good and bad. It would’ve been nice to get some new blood around here.Lots of related links can be found at Babies are Fireproof.
New Year’s Resolution
I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions, but I wanted to echo and add to something I wrote about last year around this time. I’ve always been an avid reader. As long as I can remember, I’ve spent a portion of my day reading, but it was keeping this blog that really helped me grow as a reader. I’ve valued the discussion, the community and having a platform to share my thoughts. I think, though, the most valuable part of this experience for me has been using the blog as a reading journal. Keeping track of what I read and writing a few sentences about most of those books has changed the way I read. Before, I never kept track of what I read, but now I feel like I’m building a library of knowledge to mull over and share. Books live on in my memory a lot longer than they used to.So, if you happen to be in the market for a resolution this New Year’s, feel free to borrow this one. It’s simple: Keep track of every book you read this year. Write down the title and author, and, if you feel like it might be a worthwhile exercise for you, jot down a few thoughts about each book. It will enrich your reading experience.