A Classic Keeps Getting Better

The New Yorker isn't just any magazine - it is The Magazine. Despite the fact that it may or may not have only 800,000 paid subscriptions, or that it may or may not be losing a few hundred thousand dollars per year, this venerable book contains some of the finest weekly prose available anywhere, in any language. And since David Remnick took over for Tina Brown at the editor's desk (a position viewed more as an appointment than a job, even in status-obsessed NYC) the content has only improved.

The irony is, when I was younger I would leaf through my parents' copy of the New Yorker searching for the cartoons, ignoring the text completely and assuming it was just arcane, boring stuff aimed at stuffy older folks. I couldn't have been more wrong. At some point I actually began reading the articles, and I found myself sucked in by the writing, the subjects, and the palpable self-importance of the writers themselves. Somehow they managed to make interesting everything that I had skipped over all that week in the papers - foreign policy, domestic politics, and other gripping topics. New Yorker writers never stop at the surface - they're like the opposite of Newsweek. They dig for character notes and subtle circumstances that a less acute observer might miss, then detail their observations in prose so witty that I often laugh out loud in mid-read (just ask my bemused fiancee). Steve Martin has been known to contribute hilarious short pieces, and the book and movie reviews are especially entertaining when the author decides to skewer the target (see "The Phantom Menace").

The magazine is probably best known, however, for its wonderfully esoteric cartoons. It's impossible to do these justice in a short epinion - if you've even flipped through an issue you know how offbeat and dry they are. The humor is calculated and articulate, sometimes current and more often timelessly perfect. Once you've glimpsed a few New Yorker gems you'll never look at the Sunday funnies the same way again.

If anything, the New Yorker is guilty of a bit of pompous over-acting at times. The short pieces in "Talk of the Town" can be especially self-serving and pointless, and the generally reviled JFK Jr. issue was a prime example of When Good Writers Go Boring. Each issue contains a few "skippable" pieces that just never get up enough steam to keep you involved, or else the writing will be so convoluted that it is incapable of carrying you along. But these are hardly reasons to pan the entire publication, which is regarded (along with "The Atlantic Monthly" and "The New York Times Magazine") as one of the few truly journalistic magazines left.

The Bottom Line: The New Yorker is the Real Deal, the Art Tatum of magazines, the NPR of the literary realm. When you want quality journalism that doesn't skimp on depth or word count, but still maintains a healthy sense of humor, this is your magazine. And don't be surprised if you find yourself tempted to cut out more than one cartoon.