I'm staying up way past my bedtime because I can't stop perusing the
Complete New Yorker, which arrived this morning. Right now I'm pretty much in browsing mode--other than a couple of brief Talks, I haven't really
read anything, I've just been wowed by all the amazing stuff I could stop and read--but I have noticed some odd little quirks.
For instance, I was just flipping through Janet Malcolm's fabulous piece about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in the Aug. 23 & 30, 1993, issue, when I noticed some scribbles on Page 87--alongside a cartoon showing a woman taking an odd phone call while her lumpish husband sits next to the phone (she says, "I'd love to, Barbara, but I'll have to check with the Bundesbank"), someone has scribbled the words, "Invitations," "Husbands," and "Bundesbank. Then on Page 88, underneath a cartoon of a bunch of seals on a rock (one says to his neighbor, "In a former life, I used to go to Palm Beach"), the words "Reincarnation," "Palm Beach," "Seals," and "Walruses" in the same hand. It carries on throughout. No prizes for guessing that it's the indexers' work--but it doesn't strike me as annoyance, more of a charming feature of the collection.
Labels: new yorker
