When I recently returned from Winter Break, a colleague asked how I had spent my vacation. I replied: “Stayed home, hung out with my family, and read sixteen back issues of The New Yorker”. The last item raised an eyebrow, so I explained: “I love the magazine but have gotten so busy teaching, tutoring, and raising kids that I can’t keep up with its weekly arrival. So, when a block of free time comes up, I kick back and read through three or four months of articles that cover everything from our current political climate to what’s playing on Broadway. It is one of my most coveted pleasures”.
To fully understand my long-standing love affair with The New Yorker, you have to go back to September 1978. I had just moved to New York to begin graduate school. I was fascinated with the city, so I did everything I could to get acquainted with my new home. That included buying a subscription to The New Yorker. I thought of it as an owner’s manual, something I could consult weekly for things to do and see. And so it was, especially the “Goings on Around Town” section, which introduced me to countless restaurants, bars, museums, and galleries across the five boroughs. Among other sites, I visited the grave of Herman Melville in the Bronx, the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Terminal, and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Of course, finding these destinations gave me a quick and invaluable familiarity with the city’s sprawling transit system, both above and below ground. By the end of my first semester, I was still an out-of-towner, but at least I started to feel like the city was a place where I belonged.
Over time, the magazine became so much more than just a guidebook; it was my gateway to all the things I loved to read about and discuss: art, politics, religion, history, culture, travel, and sports. In the years that followed, I read countless pieces on too many subjects to mention here, both fiction and nonfiction. This didn’t come out of nowhere; after all, it was The New Yorker that had published John Hersey’s Hiroshima, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. But I read countless other authors as well, especially John Cheever, John Updike, and Joan Didion (all staff writers at some point). I read just as many critics, too: Pauline Kael (film), Brendan Gill (theater), and Peter Schjeldahl (art). Those critics sent me to all kinds of venues—the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Angelica Film Center, and The Joyce Theater, just to name a few. Some of them were sublime. I saw a performance by saxophonist Jan Garbarek at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that was the most spiritual experience I have ever had. Others were ridiculous, like the time I took a date to La MaMa Experimental Theater Company to see an avant-garde performance of Agamemnon. The character Aegisthus walked on stage wrapped in a six-foot (live) boa constrictor, whereupon my friend jumped from her seat with a blood-curdling scream and sprinted from the theater. So much for taking a date to see a tragedy by Aeschylus.
I was a strong student in high school and in college, but it was when I got to New York that I really began to take the life of the mind seriously. Columbia certainly had a lot to do with that. I had eminent professors like Alice Fredman and Edward Said. I also had great classmates who really encouraged me to grow as an intellectual. I gained confidence in classroom settings; I began to really work on becoming a better writer; and I discovered that my ambition in life was to become an English teacher. But I also had The New Yorker. It came every week, and it accompanied me everywhere I went. I read it in the two great literary salons of Morningside Heights: the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue, and Tom’s Diner on Broadway (no relation). I also read it between shifts as a waiter at Tavern on the Green. I didn’t read every article, but I read enough to gain an appreciation for architects like Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, painters like Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler, and athletes like Sandy Koufax and Martina Navratilova. All this reading formed a foundation on which I have built my interests and passions for the past forty-six years. Across that span, it has made me more open to the world in which we live; it has also made me a better teacher.
My twin brother, a trial lawyer, once said that every action has an ulterior motive. For writing this article, I have two. The first is to thank my mom, who always saw my folded New Yorker protruding from my back pocket when I came home to visit. She saw how much that magazine meant to me, so she paid for my subscription, starting in 1980 and continuing up through 1997 when she passed away. That’s a magazine per week for seventeen years, or 884 issues, the best gift I have ever received. My other motive is to recognize a former student, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Class of 1998, whose piece on declining birth rates around the world made The New Yorker list of top twenty-five stories of 2025. You can well imagine the pride a teacher feels when a student goes on to succeed as an adult, regardless of the endeavor. But for me, there is something really special about what Mr. Lewis-Kraus has achieved. As a writer, editor, and teacher, he has brought attention to a wide range of issues in ways that are both compelling and entertaining. And he’s doing it at The New Yorker, an institution that has enlivened and inspired readers around the world for over a hundred years. May his success continue, and may copies of my beloved magazine keep piling up in my study.
***
Author photo by Anthony "Truncs" Truncale '26
To contact the author: Mr. Keating