Well, the first reason that The New Yorker is my bible is because of Andy Borowitz who is, without a doubt, one of the funniest men alive and writing. Here is his latest offering.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it a “scandal bigger than Watergate,” the Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused President Biden of “thoroughly faking mental sharpness” for more than an hour during his press conference on Thursday.“Doing everything he could to give the appearance of mental acuity, he answered questions in detail, stayed on point, and uttered suspiciously complete sentences,” Carlson alleged. “I’ve seen some shameless stunts in my time, but this one takes the cake.” And, of course, he goes on and becomes even funnier: Carlson said that Biden’s “desperate charade” extended to “accomplishing concrete things to make himself seem competent.”“When he said that he would double the number of vaccinations in his first hundred days, my jaw dropped,” he said. “President Trump would never have tried to pull something like that.” My goodness, that is so true – President Trump would never have doubled the number of vaccines in the first hundred days, that is for sure.
But the other reason that the New Yorker is my bible is because of the language and ideas of their writers. This is particularly true of David Remnick whose most recent gift to the world is a book review of the life of Phillip Roth. The title is When He Was Good.The focus is the biography and I am, of course, writing a biography of my uncle, Dave Dryburgh, a sports writer who slaved over a hot typewriter (before computers) for the Regina Leader-Post. I quote from Remnick’s profound work of art. In “The Silent Woman,” Janet Malcolm, confronting a raft of Plath biographies, writes that the biographer is all too often like a burglar, “breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away.” John Updike was gentler in his appraisal of the form.” But here is what Updike went onto say – he was not exactly welcoming to biographers. “A fiction writer’s life is his treasure, his ore, his savings account, his jungle gym,” he wrote. “As long as I am alive, I don’t want somebody else playing on my jungle gym—disturbing my children, quizzing my ex-wife, bugging my present wife, seeking for Judases among my friends, rummaging through yellowing old clippings, quoting in extenso bad reviews I would rather forget, and getting everything slightly wrong.” The review then examines Phillip Roth’s solution to the problem of his biography – he appoints Blake Bailey to author his biography – Bailey outdoes himself by writing a “eight-hundred-page opus.” Roth gave Bailey total access to the inner workings of his mind revealing his “rages, resentments and cruelties.”
One cannot help but love Roth when he declares that after his medical discharge from the Army he “proceeded almost immediately to fuck up my life for the next ten years.” That is certainly something I can identify with particularly with my third marriage – I can say with certainty that I proceeded almost immediately to fuck up my life for the next eighteen years (the duration of that ill-fated union). But let the record reflect that I did get myself out of the marriage. Fearing yet another screaming match I awoke one Sunday morning and in stealthy fashion left a note announcing my departure which began, as I recall, “I cannot go on living like this.” By the way stealthy has great synonyms: furtive, secretive, secret, surreptitious, sneaking, sly, skulking, slinking, clandestine, hidden, covert, cloaked, conspiratorial, under the table. I had leased an apartment, furnished it and removed all necessary possessions from the ‘community property” home in Peacock Gap, San Rafael, California. It does indicate the amount of attention husband #3 was showing his wife. He slept to at least noon, would wake up, read the paper and then promptly at the stroke of five begin consuming vast quantities of gin.We would dine late in the evening – meal of course prepared by Alexis McBride who would go to bed at a rather sane hour. He would stay up consuming more liquor, coming to bed around three or four. He would wake me up and begin snoring (probably sleep apnea). I would get out of bed and go sleep in the spare room getting up early and exercising, leading a rather sane existence – extensive volunteer work after retirement. Husband #3 never quite got it. He would ask everyone, including me.
He: Why did you leave me?
Me: I told you, it is all in the note I left.
He never got over me, did not date just met an alcoholic bunch of men at a nearby bar every evening. Of course, I lost track of him altogether when I left for London in 2014. He died when I was living in Vancouver, so probably in 2017. His ‘obituary’ is in the blog – discovered that he had died from my physician – not the family and there was no published obituary at the time.so I posted one on my blog. His death was a protracted horror for the family – took over a year apparently and he was demented. My physician (also his) said that I was so fortunate to be living elsewhere. I am rather big-hearted and probably would have tried to assist the family in his final hours.
What have I just done??? Written by own biography. No Alexis, that is an autobiography. Hahahaha.. An autobiography is an account of a person’s life written by that person. Its synonyms are: life story, account of one’s life, personal history; diary, journal, memoir. Come to think of it this blog is an account of my life, a journal and a memoir. More people read it then would ever read a book about my life.
Another reason that The New Yorker is my bible is their funny cartoons. Just look at this one, you shall definitely laugh – I did!!! I am off today for a mani and a pedi. It’s a great life if you do not weaken.
