Because It's There

I have failed in my heroic attempt to conquer the infamous typeface of the New Yorker, that cold, unforgiving mass of impenetrable tedium. Base camp was comfortably established at "Talk of the Town," and I even managed to abseil across a nearby cartoon, but my first ascent eventually stalled after ten pages of treacherous, inch-by-inch negotiation of one of the larger articles. A punishing trek through fifteen glacial paragraphs of Hendrik Hertzberg took its inevitable toll and I simply couldn't go on any further. But I feel no sense of defeat nor blow to my ego. Many great readers have tried and failed to conquer the New Yorker before me; notably everybody else in the dentist's waiting room.