An American blogging from Sweden at MemeFirst
writes:
Yet another belated New Yorker, delivered to Sweden on donkeyback, I’m sure it was, and yet again I couldn’t shake the feeling this institution is going through a spate of mediocre issues: A 34-year old student collects lost gloves on the Upper West Side? The diary of a neurotic webstalker with a boring target? A Shouts & Murmurs that is spectacularly unfunny in its exploration of “Instructions to everything”?
These stories wouldn’t make it into the blogs I read, I thought. Wow. Maybe it’s not that The New Yorker is getting much worse, but that New York blogs are getting much better. Eurotrash
is far funnier than Shouts and Murmurs; Gothamist
and Gawker
are better at trendspotting than Talk of the Town; Maud Newton‘s got her finger on the literary world’s pulse like none other; Felix, Terry Teachout
and Michael at 2 Blowhards
have got the New York arts scene covered — to name just a very few of the stars in the New York blog firmament. The New Yorker still holds the crown for long articles and fiction, but for much longer?
Can New York bloggers please all just stand back for a minute, look at what you have wrought, and pat yourselves collectively on the back? This has got to be New York’s most impressive literary renaissance since the Beat writers, and the snarkiest since the Algonquin Round Table held sway (and begat The New Yorker). Have there ever been so many New Yorkers writing as well as today, within a community that approaches a meritocracy?
For expat New Yorkers everywhere, you are a godsend. I kiss you.
Well, shucks. Glad to be of service. You can save the kiss for Our Girl, though….