Recently, over 100 writers at the Washington Post accepted early retirement/buyouts. Peter Carlson’s farewell Magazine Reader column on Tuesday reminded me how much we’re losing:
“Looking at 12 Years Between the Covers”
Last week, the cover of Us Weekly screamed in big yellow type “The Plot to Destroy Lauren,” and my first reaction was, ‘Oh, no, they can’t destroy Lauren.”
My second reaction was, “Who the hell is Lauren?”
It wasn’t the first time I was utterly baffled by a magazine cover since I started writing this column, but it turned out to be the last. That’s because this is my final Magazine Reader column. I’m taking The Post’s early retirement buyout and heading off to pursue other interests, such as sloth and gin.
For nearly 12 years, I’ve been paid real American money to read magazines and write about them. During those years I’ve pondered the glories of magazines ranging from Life to Sounds of Death, from Reason to Paranoia, from George to Jane, from Spy to Sly, from Good Dog! to Murder Dog, from New Beauty to New Witch, from Modern Maturity to Modern Ferret to Modern Drunkard.
And let’s not forget Wrapped in Plastic, a magazine devoted to David Lynch’s long-dead TV show “Twin Peaks.”
Such are the fruits of the First Amendment, God bless it.
Many strange things happened in magazines in those 12 years. The National Review published a story called “Is Sex Still Sexy?” McCall’s published a story called “My Boy Built a Bomb! Trouble Signs No Mom Should Miss!” Glamour posed the question “Is your hair making you look fat?” Fitness asked, “Is Your Body Toxic?'” Reader’s Digest asked, “Are you normal or nuts?”
Go read the whole thing, you’ll want to go back and look up all of his old columns.
Few have captured the utterly earnest absurdity of the magazine publishing world as well as Carlson, possibly because he always seemed game to read anything once, to delve into the pages with an open mind, and to describe the results of his forays in ways that were witty and, more often than not, much more entertaining than his source material.