Teen Ink

For the past three years nothing in my life has remained the same for long; hair grows and then is cut to a new style, girls come and go, seasons change, my ever-fluctuating math and science grades keep me busy, and people die. The only thing that has not changed is a hundred or so pages of highly critical film reviews, literary excerpts, and ostensibly esoteric world news.

I am talking, of course, about The New Yorker. Over the years it has provided me with a great and intangible inner warmth that remains throughout the week and kisses the following Monday’s arrival of the next issue. But The New Yorker provides me with much more than intellectual solace and general comfort; it grounds me as a person and provides a door to the world.

I have lived in the same mundane suburb my whole life. It reeks of a sweeping uniformity of bourgeois, bored housewives, hedge-fund CEOs, and preppy, wealthy children. It is stifling and numbing. I live in a society where details of Britney Spears’ latest breakdown are held in greater regard than, say, the knowledge of the oeuvres of Magritte and Camus.

So then, put yourself in my position; you come home from a day filled with the challenges of high school, compounded by a dual curriculum and hard work. You find the sleek New Yorker lying on your desk with a monocled nineteenth century aristocrat in a top hat on the cover. You open to the table of contents and discover an excerpt of Ha Jin’s new novel, an article on Godard’s relationship with Truffaut, and an op-ed on Russia’s current political climate. Your universe of BlackBerrys and Gucci handbags dissipates like smoke and you enter a world of culture, knowledge, and comfort.

The New Yorker to me is more than a magazine to pass the time between the SAT tutor and some other tedious but necessary activity. Slowly over the years, it has ingrained itself into my everyday schedule, influencing the way I think and perceive. The world around me has increased tenfold. It takes me from the cultural purgatory that is my habitat to a cultural nexus of world politics and a potpourri of interesting things.

Above all, The New Yorker gives me a feeling that I am part of a group of clandestine intelligentsia (without any intention of elitism) that takes me away from my uninspired and tepid twenty-first century suburban environment.