As you will have noticed, everyone desperately needs ‘ to speak their truth’ these days, me included, and we dogs can rely on The New Yorker to speak our truth.
For example, there was Alex Gregory’s famous cartoon of a retriever, having just delivered a stick to its owner, lamenting that “It’s always “good dog,’ never “great dog.”
Then there was Peter Steiner’s cartoon back in 1993, just as the World Wide Web was getting going; it showed a hound pounding away on a keyboard at a desktop, announcing gleefully to his terrier pal “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
It’s the most reprinted of any New Yorker cartoon ever, and of course it’s close to my heart!
The Boss tells me the magazine is celebrating its 100th birthday this month and he has been a subscriber for well over half that time.
When he first tried his hand at a typewriter, a crusty old sub-editor insisted he start reading The New Yorker if he wanted “to write concisely and eloquently and make his meaning clear.” And he’s been reading it ever since, although he recalls first seeing it in the dentist’s waiting room when he was a teenager, and he read the cartoons to stave off terror.
He says the magazine’s attachment to dogs started with the writer James Thurber, who filled a book with his drawings of melancholy hounds; he was joined by E.B.White, the author of Charlotte’s Web, who used his grumpy old dachshund, Fred as a foil.
It was Fred who loudly cast aspersions on the Russians sending a dog into the first space orbit, without any intention of bringing him home. Can you believe the Russians would do such a thing?
Mr White wrote of a dozen of his canine companions in poems, essays, letters and sketches, enabling his granddaughter Martha to compile E.B.White on Dogs after he died.
Then came The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs in 2012, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell and contributions from the likes of Roald Dahl, Arthur Miller, Victoria Roberts, John Updike and Roddy Doyle. And all the best dog cartoons.
But The Boss insists The New Yorker is more than about dogs - and a lot more than about New York. When it started off in 1925, its founding editor, Harold Ross, promised a magazine of wit, reporting, fiction, art and criticism. It has stayed true to its roots and, while continuing to reflect New York’s metropolitan life, it took on a global perspective after World War II and is admired and valued for its balanced and accurate reportage, its talented writers and incisive commentary.
It’s formidable fact-checking department and eagle-eyed grammar czars have aided its editors (just five since 1925) in producing a remarkable account of our tumultous world, while keeping its sense of humour. Their birthday offer is a digital subscription for $1 a week for a year. Try it out, if only for your dog. Woof!
