The New Yorker

      I love The New Yorker. I bought my first copy on a whim when I was 22. I was at the airport travelling maybe to Boston. Maybe the cover intrigued me, more likely I was curious about the magical mystical place that New York was. Upon settling on the plane, I thumbed through the magazine and, like most at first glance of the venerable magazine, I was taken with the clever cartoons. Then I noticed an article with the words Armenians in it. I went to the beginning of the article to find that it was Passage to Ararat by Michael Arlen. I was getting all set to read the article on when I noticed that it was part 3 of 3. Dang.
     Upon returning to Detroit, I contacted my friend Patty whose family ran a news and sundries shop in an office building in Dearborn. I asked if she might be able to get the past two issues so I could read all three parts. She said she would try. I suppose I could have gone to a library but that thought never occurred to me. A week or so later, Patty called me and said she had the magazines.
     On a Saturday in March 1975, a coldish dank sleety Saturday morning, I sat down to read the articles. I quickly realized how long articles in The New Yorker could be. It took me all day to read the three articles and I couldn’t put them down until I finished. I had no idea who Michael Arlen was. But, I realized immediately, what a gifted writer he was. I came to learn later that he was the TV critic for the magazine and The New Yorker published his entire book in their pages before it was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
     Michael Arlen was a junior. His father Michael Arlen Sr. was Armenian, and his mother was English. His father became English. In fact, he became an English writer of some renown with his novel, The Green Hat, being his best-known work. The younger Michael was unaware of his Armenian heritage because his father turned away from it after 1915 Genocide. The book explores junior seeking out to learn about what it meant to be Armenian. The quest took him to Turkey and Soviet Armenia. It is a fascinating book any Armenian should read.
     Reading Passage to Ararat made me subscribe to The New Yorker. I was a devoted browser of the magazine until I moved to New York (duh!) and let the subscription lapse for a short period. I also took a hiatus during the dismal years of The Great Recession. My wife renewed it for me this past fall and I have enjoyed browsing it again.
      Browse? Yes, I should read it cover-to-cover as the writing is that good. But instead, I browse. I read a gem of an article here, a poem there, or a review of a film or play. I always look at every cartoon.
     I was looking for something to read during finals week this past December. I picked up

Frank McCourt

the December 8 issue of the magazine, sat down, and browsed. I settled on an article titled New in Town. I was impressed at how engaging the story of this young Irish lad who just immigrated to New York, getting a menial job, and started to come alive in a city where many go to do just that. Who wrote this I asked myself? I looked, it was on Frank McCourt and it was first published in the February and March 1, 1999 issues of the magazine. I was getting the magazine back then and apparently browsed right past this exquisitely written personal history. The issue I was reading was a best of issue of The New Yorker. I read a just as brilliant piece by James Baldwin in the same issue later that week.
     Frank McCourt? I had no idea who he was until I read this article. A google search quickly educated me that he was an Irish-American author and teacher who won a Pulitzer Prize for Angela’s Ashes.
     I was a bit amazed by my lack of knowledge. More so, I felt fortunate for having stumbled upon this lovely memoir having already missed it back in 1999. I may just have to read Angela’s Ashes.