Print Will Save You

"Without bodily touch, no ties can emerge."

Yesterday, there was a viral article that wasn’t online.

Like, literally. Went viral on X while only available in print.

Bookforum published a scathing review of Lauren Oyler’s new book of essays and people were taking photos of the print article and scanning it¹ and posting them online so they could talk about it.

Lake Micah captures the vibe.

You weren’t a print subscriber? Tough! You had to wait until Bookforum got around to posting the review online, if they were going to at all. Or go buy the damn thing from a bookstore or wherever you can get words on paper.

What a world! Bookforum was actually trending on X. TRENDING. For something that you could only read in print!

I was delighted, but not surprised—even though it’s truly bad form to consider oneself a bellwether of trends—because when a consulting payment cleared last month, I had already earmarked the discretionary dollars for a revived obsession: print media.

Briefly flush, I went to The New York Review of Books website, digitally handed over almost $100, and in turn am getting 20 issues of a very large² biweekly magazine with book-anchored articles and the most charming classifieds in the back.

This wasn’t even the first time. Last fall, I paid for a whole year of n+1.³ I am now routinely spending money for things I can get for free online, some kind of sick fetish growing in my mind. I have a whole list of print media I want to arrive at my house ready to be smudged by my fingers and crumpled in my bag.⁴

I had never really read the The New York Review of Books until I found it in the way one used to find print media: someone left it for others to find. At Topos Too, at the coffee bar in the back of the shop, there was a shop copy. A shop copy! Of a publication! Just out there for anyone to read.

It was such a little treat. I had brought a book and some work. Instead I read The New York Review of Books with my coffee. I considered placing a classified myself, perhaps find a climbing buddy who wants to talk about Merve Emre between attempts.

The encounter reminded of how serendipitous print media can be, how we were pulled out of our personal worlds into a shared experience by fighting over sections of the paper that were left behind on the train, how magazines would linger at diner tables for the day’s guests, how The L Magazine—and its progenitors, Village Voice and New York Press—could be grabbed on the way into the subway or found on a seat or under a seat or under a crumpled coffee cup just about anywhere in the city, how I promoted the magazine I ran in high school by leaving issues in the bushes around campus.

I’ve never related to the concept of nostalgia. I am not someone with a cohesive view of myself over time, and don’t think fondly of better days nestled in a gentle glow. But my relationship to things, the material of this world, is getting dangerously close to nostalgic. I am now someone in her late 30s who talks about how much better life was when we had physical objects. Back in the day, you see, there were these things you held and that changed as you held them and that changed you! It was pretty great. Sorry you missed it.

In Non-Things, Byung-Chul Han⁵ writes: “E-books are faceless and without history. They may be read without the use of the hands. There is a tactile element in the turning of a book’s pages that is constitutive of every relationship. Without bodily touch, no ties can emerge.”⁶

So I spent my money on a magazine.

But it feels expensive, doesn’t it? The print edition of The New Yorker, which publishes weekly most of the year, is $169.99. Not cheap! Netflix, though, is now $15.49 per month, or $173.88 per year. Is that the difference? Is this just poor marketing on the part of print media? The yearly feels like too big of a chunk?

We need the SaaS pricing display that shows monthly pricing for yearly rates. We have the technology to trick people into buying things for an entire year while their brain focuses on the cost-per-month.

This one at least shows the yearly price below, but it’s still a bit confusing! There are three numbers here! Which one is the price? Doesn’t matter your brain can’t keep track and is now overwhelmed enough to buy thank you for your business.

And the argument that you get so much more value through Netflix or another streaming platform than a great magazine is in such bad faith. I reject the argument. Is there more value in watching Grey’s Anatomy for the 10th time? Is there more value in following the machinations of fake real estate agents in California?⁷ It takes many hours to read an issue of a text-based magazine in full; the time exchange is fairly similar for the amount of money spent.

Consumers compare the cost of books and magazines and newspapers to “free,” when they should be compared to the cost of streaming and movies in which case print media comes out ahead. It’s actually pretty cheap for what it entails, it’s an experience you get to have, YOU ACTUALLY OWN A THING WHEN YOU PAY FOR IT unlike every other media you engage with.

I do kind of believe that print media will save us.

Print media:

1. Forces us to slow down.

2. Forces us to spend money on our media or talk to other people in order to get them to give us their media instead of trading our time and attention for our media.

3. Forces us to engage with a physical object.

4. Can give us a little paper cut that reminds us that we’re alive.

5. Helps our eyes hurt less.

6. Maybe sends us a little tote bag.

7. Throws parties when no one else will.

8. Helps us look cool on the subway, which in turn will…

9. Helps us know who we want to hit on/helps us be hit on by the right people. How can you know if that person is actually hot if they’re reading a phone or their kindle? It’s too high risk! That person could be happily absorbed Ayn Rand! Or Lauren Oyler! I think this is why sex rates are down. Bring back print! We need the semiotics of covers to save sex!

I’m a little sad that the Bookforum review is online now. I loved the idea that in order to read this I would have to shlep to McNally Jackson and actually find the thing, the object, and engage with it. I want to be asked to put in the time just a little more often. According to Han, “Everything that stabilizes human life is time-consuming.”

But I still read the review on my phone.

1. someday I’ll write about working at InStyle but my first job there as an intern was cutting out and then scanning the daily gossip columns on a janky old scanner that barely worked and emailing them to the editors and if one wasn’t lined up perfectly Ariel Foxman would make me do it again. And, like, we had the internet. The columns were online. This was just for fun.

2. literally, it’s a broadsheet. so charming!

3. I have n+1 trauma related to an ex and their early parties but it’s been 15 years and the mag is somehow still alive so I’m ready to read it again if only because I’m in awe of its staying power

4. New York Review of Architecture! Logic(s)! London Review of Books! The Drift! MIT Technology Review! Strange Matters, which I keep buying one-by-one and should really just subscribe to! So many!

5. I know I know BCH has been my primary reference for a while now but he is prolific and on-point and and speaks to my soul and I still have like five books of his to read. Someday I’ll move on. Or not.

6. I’m not giving up my kindle but man the shame I felt reading those words on my kindle

7. ok I do love The Parisian Agency which was specifically designed for snobs like me to get in on reality tv I’m such a mark