A Subscription Deferred

It was while transcribing audio of a long, business-fueled meeting last Saturday night for a Santa Clarita-based journalist who still throws me work after all these years that I started thinking about it again.

Having moved 17 times in my life, with no real solid sense of home, I started looking for one in print, something that changes with each issue, but comes from a foundation that has always been just that way in its aims. I've been reading since I was 2 and haunting libraries about as long, so surely there must be something.

Toward the end of this past summer, I found the July/August issue of The Atlantic sitting in the magazine section of my local Ralphs supermarket, directly facing plastic spoons, forks, knives, and paper plates, with napkins just a little further down.

The left-side flap glued to the cover intrigued me: "On the Nature of Complicity: Trump's enablers and the judgment of history" by Anne Applebaum." "The Looming Bank Collapse" by Frank Partnoy." "The Miracle of the Supermarket" by Bianca Bosker." "Can an Unloved Child Learn to Love?" by Melissa Fay Greene."

This magazine seemed to be a printed representation of how my mind runs. It jumps around like this issue does, but it seeks deeper insight than just the click-of-the-minute on Facebook and Twitter. I always want to know more than just what CNN blares on the front page of its site.

$9.99 is a little steep for one magazine, but it was my first time with it. I bought it, and dug into it right when I got home from Ralphs. And in those first minutes with it, I immediately found home.

There was a profile of Kevin Kwan and his supersonic fame from Crazy Rich Asians. Amanda Mull wrote a piece about it not being so criminal nowadays to have a cluttered house. James Hamblin wrote about the dangers of overvigilant hygiene. And that was even before the main pieces listed on the cover, which were not only exactly what had caught my interest by their titles alone, but they went far more in depth than I could have imagined, including Bianca Bosker writing about the formerly glorious Fairway Market in New York City, and Melissa Fay Greene discovering what has become of "tens of thousands of children warehoused in Romanian orphanages" thirty years ago.

Out of all the magazines I've read this year, this issue of The Atlantic is the only one I've kept, the beginning of a new home for me. 

It may well be the latest (and hopefully last) stretch of the process that apparently started for me in 2007, when I worked under John Boston at The Signal newspaper in Santa Clarita, as associate editor of the weekend Escape section. John had worked at The Signal for 30 years, arriving in Santa Clarita in the mid-1950s and finding such a welcoming home for himself that was never present before that. He became Santa Clarita. He knew all of the valley's history, and what he didn't know just hadn't happened yet. I was deeply impressed by that, what with my fierce passion for, and love of, history. But he was also enormously kind, with time enough for anyone who wanted it.

When I wrote what was at first to him an underwhelming humor column for Escape, he sat with me in the paper's conference room and went over it with me, suggesting how I could strengthen it. He liked the concept, but thought it could be even better. As a young writer in his early 20s, I was devastated that he didn't like it from the get-go, and I listened to his suggestions through that dark veil of disappointment. He told me to rewrite it at home that night and email it to him by the morning. When I got home, I didn't care what would become of the column. I rewrote as he suggested, moved some sentences around, deleted others, but I don't actually remember what I did or how I did it. I just did it, and paid no attention while I did it. The next morning, I found an email from him that began "JIMINY CHRISTMAS, RORY!" and went on to say how, when he first went over the column, he honestly thought there wasn't a whole lot else to my column, but the rewrite I submitted propelled it into the stratosphere.

Is it any wonder I wanted to be like him as a writer and as a man? He subscribed to The New Yorker, so I asked him if I could have the issues he was done with so I could read The New Yorker, too. He swore by Tootsie Roll Pops, so I had my own bouquet of them, too. It was similiar to how, when I was 11, I read Andy Rooney's books (I had seen him on 60 Minutes over the years, but didn't pay close attention) and was amazed that one could write about woodworking and restaurants and tools in the garage. I wanted to write exactly like Andy Rooney, and I tried, but then found I couldn't write exactly like him because I wasn't him. But John Boston was right in front of me, and even though I knew I couldn't write like him, I just wanted to be influenced by his sure sense of time and place that made him the true embodiment of Santa Clarita back then. I could strive to be the great good, gentle soul that he was and still is (that reminds me that I should call him this week).

Perhaps The New Yorker through John Boston was my first attempt to find a home in print. Both my parents were native New Yorkers, so it made sense, but I never latched onto The New Yorker. Many great articles individually, but to me, it felt too rigidly-produced. A certain time and a certain place seen only through this lens. I needed an expansion of exploration and the human spirit, even and especially in its struggle toward, and sometimes against, the light.

I read The New Yorker here and there for a year or two after John Boston left The Signal (Eventually I did, too), but then I fell away from it. Another move. And then another, and still more, which comprised five years in Las Vegas, where all that matters is trying to survive the summers and winters there (even autumn is starkly bitter in the desert), and sometimes just the day to day.

Living in Ventura, and especially the present hard year, brought back all these memories and made me think about seeking a home, even in print, that I could rely on. I felt it so completely with that July/August issue of The Atlantic, and I also felt like I had John Boston back as a regular presence in my life through those pages because he was always that interested in so many facets of life, always that engaged. I'm long done with journalism, preferring to focus on the books I want to write, but if John ever decided beyond the novels he likely wants to make the swan song of his life that he wanted to start another journalistic venture of his own (at least two didn't pan out), I'd join him. I would gladly go back into the sharp-bladed grind of deadlines for the chance to work with him again, to learn still more from him.

There's very little room in my reading habits for surprises. I know what interests me, and I know what I want to read. The Atlantic is the last platform for me that can provide those surprises, every page I turn to possibly containing something I either knew nothing about, or something I know about examined in a way completely new to me. It also helps with my attention span of late, because there are always very long articles and essays in The Atlantic, and sitting on the computer, on Facebook, on the Internet entirely as I have over the past few months has not helped. In fact, there's an anthology from The Atlantic called The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover. that the Ventura County Library system finally got tired of me bugging them to buy and they finally bought it and had it sent to me through Zipbooks, where patrons can request titles and very possibly, it's sent to you directly through Amazon. When you're done with it, you bring it to your library of choice and they'll eventually enter it into the system and put it into circulation. 

Many of the articles featured in the anthology were abridged since the articles as they had appeared in the magazine were originally so long, and that anthology had a lot of ground to cover. It was the first time in quite a long time that I had not flinched at the sheer length of those articles and essays. I was so absorbed in all they had to say, all they had to explain, that I didn't even notice the page numbers fluttering by, as I sometimes do. That's also how I know I need more of The Atlantic in my life.

The audio of that business meeting ran a smidge over an hour, and I was about halfway through it last Saturday night when I stopped yet again. Parts of it bored me, so there was a perfect right to take a break here and there. And it was then that I decided to wander over to The Atlantic website, where I became curious about that big red "Subscribe" button at the top right of the front page.

$59.99 for a 1-year print and digital subscription. Admittedly, a few weeks ago, I paid $54.99 for a two-year subscription on ItsYourTurn.com, where I play Battleship, which is called Battleboats there. But with that subscription, and the year I still had on my current subscription to ItsYourTurn, that extended me to November 29, 2023. And I go there every day, playing nothing but Battleship, so $54.99 stretches infinitely.

But $59.99? I could do it for ItsYourTurn, but I'm also still only working a part-time job while trying my hardest to land a full-time one. The price includes access to the digital side of The Atlantic, including the archives, but if I spend hours on a computer beyond my job search, my book reviews, the transcriptions, and my own writing, it's usually because I've discovered a web comic that I want to read all the way through from the beginning. This time, it's Terminal Lance, the Marine Corps comic. I did the same with Girls With Slingshots many years ago, and even bought the entire run in print. And I also did the same with Questionable Content, around the same time as Girls With Slingshots, which I still read today.

But The Atlantic's archives? It's tempting for a few topics here and there, but not extensive screen time. It reminds me of when I bought The New Yorker's entire archive in the late 2000s, which came on a hard drive that you hook up to the computer. I was that interested back then, but ultimately, I couldn't do it. Reading is more comfortable to me in my recliner than on this computer chair. 

So $59.99 for 10 print issues for one year, and the archive of which I might use only a little bit. I wasn't sure. But then I saw the Academic Rate option: "Students and Educators save 50% on an Atlantic subscription." Well now! I work for Ventura College! I have a college email address! I'll use that!

I clicked on the Academic Rate ($29.99 for one year) and then I left it in that tab on my Chrome browser and got back to the transcript. A little while later, I thought again about The Atlantic subscription, but wondered about something in the Ventura County Library system, and I went to the catalog. 

Before the pandemic, magazines were readily available at all libraries, including the weekly issues of People that my sister swore by, and which she hasn't had since early March, as the libraries were first closed down entirely and then opened up only for patrons to walk up to the entrance to pick up holds brought out to them by library employees. What about the magazines?

I looked up People first, because my sister would have a lot more to catch up on than I would, as she had been checking out every weekly issue before the pandemic. And there it was at different libraries: All the issues that she had missed, and even ones stretching back to 2008 if she so wanted. But more importantly, I noticed that there were many issues checked out. They're letting patrons check out magazines! Put them on hold like books, like DVDs, and you can have them too! I wasn't sure they were, what with magazines taken out of doctors' waiting rooms and such with the risk of transmission through the magazines. I didn't know if it would be the same with libraries, but apparently not.

So I put the latest two issues of People on hold on her card to get her started (we'll probably pick them up this coming Saturday), and then I went to look for The Atlantic.

Same thing! I can read all the issues available thus far, and then decide if I want to go for the academic subscription, or just wait for the library to bring in each issue. I have a comparatively minor interest in Harper's Magazine because Edmund G. Love published his article "Subways are for Sleeping" there, which became the full-length book of the same title that I spent $34 to claim lost at the Valencia Library, back when it was part of the L.A. County library system. I wanted it for myself, having read that particular copy from the Norwalk branch often as a student at College of the Canyons, usually in lieu of doing my math homework in the cafeteria there. And I found that the Ventura County library system has Harper's, as well as The New Yorker. So I have my magazine subscriptions now, freer than I thought it would be, and I can exhaust those first. The New Yorker doesn't have an academic rate, and is way too expensive besides (best to stick with the library system's holdings in this case), and neither does Harper's, though they're more reasonable for a subscription if it ever came to that. But as it will take time to go through all these holdings in the system, I'll see what transpires in my magazine reading over the next few months, also if the library system continues to get these magazines or they give them up. Then I'll see what I might do about The Atlantic. I'm just happy to have the chance to read them freely, and really, it would be more appropriate to consider a subscription after I land substantial work.

Magazines Hunt Me

I always know exactly what books I want to read. I allow for some surprises, like bumping into actor Danny Aiello's memoir at the Green Valley Library yesterday, but like reviewing Empire of Sin by Gary Krist for BookBrowse, which I waited months to read, there's very little I don't know about books either coming out or that have come out that I want.

It's different with magazines. Back in Southern California, I subscribed to The New Yorker because John Boston, the historical face of The Signal newspaper in the Santa Clarita Valley, where I interned, subscribed to it. I considered him a friend and mentor, and still do, and so I wanted to read what he read. But I let that subscription expire this past September because it didn't fit me anymore. I wanted writing that encompassed all 50 states, not just everything from a New York City perspective. I wanted to read writers from Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, varied perspectives that I could get to know.

On my 30th birthday, my family and I went to McCarran International so I could walk through the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum there, a small set of exhibits spread throughout the airport, accessible by all except for those exhibits in the gate areas of the airport.

I walked through the exhibits, reading all the historical information about the formation of aviation in Las Vegas, but what interested me more were the shops in the airport, including a stunningly detailed newsstand, with magazines from everywhere. I looked at them all, glancing over the glossy fashion magazines, and honing in on the ones about travel, particularly National Geographic Traveler, which truly spans the world. I'm interested in Japan and Sweden and China, I want to visit all the presidential libraries in the nation (save for Reagan's and Nixon's, both of which I went to when I lived in Southern California, Reagan's numerous times for the gently mountainous view from the replica of the South Lawn of the White House), I want to visit Florida to see how my old haunts have changed, to travel throughout New Mexico, and to visit New Orleans. So a magazine that lets me see the sights of the world from my beloved reading recliner without having to spend hours on the Internet is my kind of magazine.

However, I haven't subscribed to it yet because I haven't found new issues anywhere I usually go, including Target, where I last found it, and Smith's supermarket, where I think I once found it. I want to read one or two more before I decide whether to subscribe, but so far it's hard to do that. It's easier with The Sondheim Review, a quarterly magazine devoted to one of my heroes, quite possibly the Zeus of the musical theater, which I've been eyeing for some time. There are two archival issues, one from Spring 1999 about Kelsey Grammer and Christine Baranski starring in an L.A. concert production of Sweeney Todd, and another from Fall 1998 with Carol Burnett and director Eric D. Schaeffer discussing the revised version of Putting It Together, which was also staged in L.A. I'll use those to decide whether to subscribe to The Sondheim Review, though chances are I might very well do so anyway after reading both issues, since the entire magazine is devoted to Sondheim, after all.

For others, I'm not yet sure. Saveur magazine changed editors-in-chiefs and I worry that the quality will decline dramatically. New Mexico Magazine might very well stay with me, but I hope that they cover the same yearly events in different ways. Of course, considering that it's been around since 1923, they've figured out different ways, but I just hope that the same high quality I've been getting so far remains.

Generally, outside of these experiences, I like to let the magazines hunt me. I know what I like to read, I have some ideas of what I want to read, but I'm not as dogged as I am with books. That's why, at Target today while the dogs were being groomed, my disappointment in not finding the latest issue of National Geographic Traveler mostly faded when I found a quarterly magazine called American Road, all about America's two-lane highways and the sights and sounds and experiences they offer. Trains and planes, sure. That's what National Geographic Traveler is for. While I haven't read all of the Autumn 2014 issue of American Road yet, I get the sense that it goes deep into the United States, what I've hoped to find in some magazine. I can't travel widely right now, but I can certainly read about it and it feels like this might be my gateway into learning so much more about the entire United States, beyond the books I check out, because no doubt American Road keeps track of what's happening today. I might subscribe.

Never too many magazines, though. I don't need Time or Newsweek or anything else with news that seems to change by the hour but pretends that it changes by the week. I want magazines with articles to really consider, and these feel like the greatest possibilities. I wouldn't be surprised if another one hunts me down at another Target or even at that airport newsstand whenever we visit again. I'd consider it just like these ones.