Years ago, when I was flirting with the rather ridiculous notion of pursuing an MFA in creative writing, I came across the advice of a writer whose work I admired. “You want to learn how to write?” he asked. “Read every back issue of the New Yorker.”
It was not only a lot cheaper than graduate school, he argued—at the time, you could purchase the entire archive on CD-ROM for around $500—but also a far more effective teacher.
Since then, political hackery, artistic predictability, and everything ever written by the criminally unfunny Andy Borowitz have made me doubt the veracity of the claim. But every so often I’m reminded of the magazine’s greatness. This week, it’s “The Obsessive Search for the Tasmanian Tiger,” which you can read here.
I should probably re-up my subscription.
