5 ms·
The New Yorker does come off a bit odd because it's a middle-brow publication aimed at a mass audience and sold as 'what high society reads', hence it's motivat
by MichaelZuo 4y ago
The New Yorker does come off a bit odd because it's a middle-brow publication aimed at a mass audience and sold as 'what high society reads', hence it's motivated to try to look 'intellectual' while being as unsophisticated as possible to maintain a high school, or nowadays middle school, reading level. Since people are most comfortable at a few grades below their actual reading level.
It's a common paradigm for many 'intellectual' publications
Actual high-brow literature, such as the Physical Review Letters or the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, have no need to pretend but then they assume a bare minimum of a college graduate reading level, plus specialized knowledge on top of that for their niche. Hence they're impenetrable for the vast majority.
- throwawaypapaya 4y agoPhysical Review Letters is not "high brow"... "High brow" is work intended for public consumption by well educated and perhaps a bit snobby laymen. Scholarly journals by contrast are intended for specialist audiences and are considered "academic", not "high brow".
- MichaelZuo 4y agoYour thinking of middle-brow. High-brow is aimed at a much smaller audience, typically implied as 'high society' or 'the elites' but not necessarily. I chose the two examples because they are publicly accessible and high-brow not because they are the most representative of the class.
- twelve40 4y agoboth seem straight-up scientific journals ("the world’s first and longest-running scientific journal") for specific disciplines. Calling them "high-brow literature" and comparing them with The New Yorker (and its essays on random topics) seems... strange?
- MichaelZuo 4y agoI don't care much if comments on HN seem strange, I care more about if they are correct.
- sometimes_all 4y agoFYI: The New Yorker != The New York Review of Books, which your parent talks about. NYRB is totally different: https://www.nybooks.com/ https://www.nybooks.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Review_of_Books https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Review_of_Books
- MichaelZuo 4y ago> They have world-class writers, yet they never seem full of themselves the way some other "liberal intellectual" publications (The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Monocle, etc.) do. Did you not see this part?
- sometimes_all 4y agoOof my bad; thanks for pointing it out. I got a bit confused about what you were referring to, since I believe that GP didn't think of New Yorker as highbrow, given the quotes on "liberal intellectual". But yes, sorry about the mistake.