Daily Blague

Apparently, it has happened before: single advertisers have taken entire issues of national magazines, pre-empting all other advertisers. But The New Yorker? Oh, well, another notch on the list of changes that one has witnessed at this publication, which has long managed to seem august without even having passed its centenary.

When I started reading The New Yorker regularly - as distinct from poring over the 25th Anniversary cartoon album at my friend Johnny's house - writers' names appeared at the end of their pieces; that was how you knew you'd read the whole thing. There was no table of contents. There were never, ever any photographs, and color was confined to the cover and to the ads. Now that I think of it, though, that's a list of changes that would be impressive only to someone paying too much attention. The drawings, given changes in fashion, have remained remarkably true since before 1930 (The New Yorker was launched in February 1925), and the writing has always been of the best. Topicality had little place at the magazine until William Shawn, who had been editor since before I was born, retired in 1986; the covers never used to reflect anything actually going on in the world, except for the passage of the seasons. Needless to say, the covers never had titles, either. But in the end I think the magazine has changed very little over time. By that I mean that it has always struck the same note of sophistication: worldly but never cynical, ironic but never sarcastic, learned but never pedantic. That sophistication should have several different looks over an eighty-year period shouldn't mislead one into thinking that The New Yorker has changed in any important way.

Now, Target takes the issue of August 22, 2005. Even the cover, in a sneaky way. The cover, by Ian Falconer, is a series of frames showing two boys playing with a gigantic beach ball. Entitled "Please Hold," the drawing's humor lies in one boy's having to hold on to the ball while the other takes a cell phone call. But you can't help keeping your eye on the ball, which is segmented in bright red and white, Target's colors. I take the cover to be a meta-joke on the Target plunge.

According to Gothamist, Target paid $1.1 million for its occupation of the territory. Ms NOLA had mentioned this figure at dinner, but Kathleen and I, who admittedly don't know anything about ad prices, thought a digit must have been dropped somewhere. Was this a premium for the New Yorker, or a discount? We will probably never know; Advance Publications does not release that kind of information. (Another thing: I remember when The New Yorker was funded by a Fleischmann's Yeast heir.) As Gothamist points out, it would have been nicer if Target, which really does disprove the maxim that cheap things have to be senselessly ugly, had opened a branch in Manhattan. That would get me up to 125th Street, say.

My favorite ads are on or near the covers. The inside cover, by Stina Persson, and the facing page, by Lisa Zacks, work together very well, forming a virtual diptych. And, on the outside back cover, with its collection of New York's vertical "street furniture," Ruben Toledo conjures the wit of Saul Steinberg without actually ripping anything off. But the bright red in all of these drawings has a way of making the accompanying black, white and grey look very deprived and anemic, like the sort of intriguing but deadly diseases that carried off Victorian heroines. I will welcome, next week or soon thereafter, the return of the Poke Boat, the Fearrington Estate, and Upton Tea Imports to the magazine's back pages.

Actually, Target was probably the ideal outfit to break the ice; like the magazine, it's cool and affordable. But perhaps you can think of an appealing alternative. I know that I can: an issue whose full-page ads showed beautiful stones from Tiffany & Co would be quite alluring. Prices upon request.