Thursday, May 20, 2004

I originally wanted to share with you the story of Blane Nordahl, sterling silver thief extraordinaire, but the New Yorker apparently buries its links like a boring suburban woman her Precious Moments dolls. Instead I’ll proffer another link to a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri. She wrote Interpreter of Maladies, a fine book I read while on my reading kick.

You may wonder, gentle reader, why I frequently link to the New Yorker. As far as snooty magazines go, I actually prefer The Atlantic Monthly simply because of its glossy cover and alluring font. Believe me, I’d like to tell you how I appreciate one magazine’s moderate liberalism or another magazine’s star contributor, but I’m actually a packaging whore through and through. The first thing I notice after tearing out those annoying postcard ads–and I’m sure some of you will agree with me–is how the ghetto ink transfers itself right onto my fingers. You could argue that the New Yorker publishes on a weekly basis, effectively preventing it from coating itself in unnecessary shine. Truth is, they want their fiction and their points of view to seep into my skin, enter my bloodstream, and assault my brain. Too bad they didn’t anticipate my frequent handwashing.

I’m not saying that The Atlantic is as dry as a housebroken puppy. It’s just that the magazine leaks far less, making it a semi-housebroken puppy. Compare this to the New Yorker, which is more like the puppy that pisses all over your parquet kitchen floor. All told, however, this is the Internet. We don’t have to worry about inanimate objects dirtying our good selves. We just have to worry about unseen stalkers who want to dirty our good selves.