My life in magazines

 

Magazines are going the way of the dodo. As advertising dries up, they have a choice between going bankrupt or going digital. It also means that reporting staff and freelance writers have less work.

I'm torn. Part of me loves reading stuff online. Half of me likes paper that I can read while curled up on the couch or take with me for lengthy visits in the bathroom. These are places where my tablet just isn't the same as paper.

Still there are certain magazines that I remember fondly.

Jack and Jill

Started in 1938, the magazine had fiction, non-fiction stories for children. The writers were top notch including Pearl Buck, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature among others.

I would wait for each issue and read it cover to cover.

Started in 1938 it has been sold and resold and is now published by the Children's Better Health Institute and directed to kids between six and 12.

Seventeen

As a teenager I awaited each new issue of Seventeen. I loved looking at the clothes and the latest lipstick color. Started in 1944, it was targeted to 13 and 19-year-old girls.

I just checked their website and the articles today seem vacuous at best, but I'm no longer in their target group. And then again wondering what the new lipstick color would be "in" was not a sign of great intellectual pursuit but normal for a teenager.

Playboy

My husband was a reader, and I found a lot of the articles interesting. The women shown had bodies that bore little resemblance to mine. 

It was monthly from 1953 until 2020 when it became bimonthly then quarterly and now it is just digital.

It was a joke that men read it for the articles and it did have some great articles. I did read the famous Jimmy Carter quote about "lusting in his heart" when it came out. 

Ladies Home Journal (1883-2016)

I read it as a teenager, loving the "Can This Marriage be Saved?" feature. What was most fascinating was the contrasting points of view. I preferred it to the others my mother subscribed to such as Good Housekeeping and Woman's Day.

Other Magazines of My Youth

There were Life, Colliers, Reader's Digest, The National Geographic and Saturday Evening Post. 

As for Reader's Digest, my mother could always beat me at the vocabulary quiz. When I can find a copy where I live in Switzerland, I always get them all right, but then again, I'm far more experienced and educated than when I was an 8th grader at the Parker Junior High.

The New Yorker

Even though I live in Europe, a year's subscription was one of my Christmas presents for several years. I loved it, although I found some of the articles over long. 

One of my problems was the magazines arrived to our French address and we were often in Switzerland and would return to find at least eight issues awaiting us. Had we changed the address, the problem would be the same.

Yes, I could read it online, but there was something about the paper. I'd read almost cover to cover, enjoying the articles, the cartoons, the funny little drawings. I'd finish it and put it the bathroom for my husband to read. 

When finished, he'd pass it on to a French friend who had spent years in the States. She loved that I would write notes to her in the margins. In turn she'd pass it onto another friend, a former New Yorker.

The Atlantic

Another bathroom magazine.

Some of the great literary figures of their time were supporters of its founding. including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne and the standard throughout the decades hasn't diminished since 1857 even though it was sold and resold.

Their articles tend to be shorter than that of The New Yorker but still in depth. It has continued with a paper copy.

Politically it is liberal and has been since endorsing Abraham Lincoln for President.

At the moment it is the only subscription we have.

Paris Match and other French/Swiss Magazines

I tend to buy Paris Match which is combination current events, celebrity publication. I learn about French culture and sometimes American and English. I was impressed with the article about John Irving, whom I did my Masters thesis but also Amélie Nothomb, who was one of the first French authors I read regularly.

France has a wonderful selection of history magazines. I used to buy one for my frequent train trips between Geneva and Argelès-sur-Mer near the Spanish border.

I hope publishers of not just magazines but news publications find a way to make paper profitable, but I’m not holding my breath. Sigh.

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