A friend of mine once said that The New Yorker is a weekly magazine that contains a week and a half’s worth of reading. I’ve always remembered this because it’s true. We get The New Yorker every week, and they wind up piling up in the bathroom, along with New York magazine and Time Out New York. (Sensing a trend? We never actually subscribed to Time Out New York; it just started showing up one day, and it has followed us from apartment to apartment even though we’ve never officially given the magazine our new address.)
There’s too much to read. I don’t really read Time Out, but I do like New York. I read most of it on Monday nights while Matt watches Chuck or Castle. As for The New Yorker — although Matt reads most of it, I find that I don’t read very much of it anymore. I like the political articles and the arts criticism at the back of the magazine, but I’m kind of over Malcolm Gladwell’s too-clever-by-half overturnings of conventional wisdom, and I don’t need to read a long article about pear farmers in East Fredonia. And as for the articles I’m interested in, I could read them in the bathroom, but… those articles are long, and it’s kind of a longer commitment than I’m willing to make in, uh, those circumstances. I usually find some time to read the one or two articles I definitely want to read, but the rest of the magazine sits there, unread by my eyes. The unread magazines haunt me, because I know they’re filled with information that could make me a more informed person, and I’m an information junkie.
We also get the New York Times on the weekend, and I feel compelled to read most of that, too.
Now all my weekly reading would be manageable, except I’m usually reading a book as well. And the book is usually my top reading priority. If I’m really into a book, I don’t have time for lengthy New Yorker articles.
What’s even worse is that now we have the internet, where there’s tons of stuff to read.
Our society puts great value on the act of reading. It really is a great thing — it’s more active than watching TV. But I think I remember reading somewhere (haha) that Ralph Waldo Emerson was critical of some types of reading, because it took people away from the real world. (Maybe I’m making that up.)
Every so often you just need to declare reader’s bankruptcy and throw out the magazines you’re never going to get to. And really, none of it is crucial stuff. We went overseas a couple of years ago for a week, and I avoided all American news during that time, and I wound up not missing anything.
There’s a surfeit of information out there, and we can avoid most of it without detriment.