2/3/2023
All I wanted to do was view one article by Harold Brodkey.
https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1994-02-07/
Each time I try I am directed to login. Once I log in I am sent to the magazine section which only goes back to the year 2008. I’m trying to get back to the year 1994. Inside the small section for the years 2008 to the current year there are no articles of interest that I want to read. So I go back to the article and try and log in each time I’m redirected to the mind numbingly dull current New Yorker which hasn’t been good since the 1999. If I wanted to read the current issues I would find that this subscription is great. Since I don’t want to read them I only want to read the archives this subscription to The New Yorker is the most horrible rip-off. Finally, I am able to open the article on my desktop and I found the text is unreadable.
See the image below. I took a screen capture. I still can not read the article.
The article was called “Dying An Update” and I know that I could go on Amazon and buy this article. I think it would cost me $4.95 for one article on the Kindle format but that’s not the point. The point is that I got the subscription to The New Yorker so I do not have to go and pay $4.95 for an article which I may or may not even want to read. I would have to start reading this article to decide that if it’s worth reading all of it because it’s a very long article but it’s very interesting that a heterosexual man dies of Aids. Harold Brodkey caught my attention when I read his story in The New Yorker called “What I Do for Money” in which he brought forward the concept of Tussling with Achilles who was his mortal foe. I would have been able to take a closer look at Harold Brodkey and give a more thorough analysis of his body of work if The New Yorker would fix their archives subscription.
Bonus Story: In the New Yorker Fiction Podcast Jeffrey Eugenides reads Harold Brodkey‘s short story “Spring Fugue,” and discusses it with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. One does not need a New Yorker Subscription to listen to the Fiction Podcast.
In this story after the main character accidentally cuts his hand trying to slice a tomato. He refers to his wife as a “Nietzschean Florence Nightingale.” This puzzled me because it wasn’t evident if he meant this as some kind of an insult or just an honest assessment of praise for her. I got the feeling from the story that it was written late in his life when he had already been diagnosed with Aids, so he depended on his wife to help him through. I would like the article “Dying an Update” because I did notice some photos of him and his wife throughout the article.” But I’m not entirely sure I would be interested in reading it more than once. It’s going to be a very depressing article because it’s dealing with HIV. I believe now HIV is not to be a death sentence. I just wonder why so many people died in the 90s from HIV? All the best writers use content from their real lives in their fiction. Anytime a writer attempts to write about something fictional that he/she/they has not experienced the story will always fall short and not ring true. Perhaps the reason that I really want to read it is due to a morbid fascination with disasters that happen to other people?
Jeffrey Eugenides wrote The Virgin Suicides. I was frustrated with the movie The Virgin Suicides that was pretty visually, but no reason given for these girls to have all committed suicide. This bothered my sense of order so severely that I actually went and read The Virgin Suicides because I was wondering if the book would give the reason. Perhaps the movie omitted the reason due to some omission created by the novel’s adaptation to the screen?
Here’s a Spoiler for the Virgin Suicides there was absolutely no reason for those girls to commit suicide whatsoever. I am determined to never read anything else by Jeffrey Eugenides because he wasted all my time with material and fiction that was not interesting or substantial.
Macy Makes Magic 