For some of us the New Yorker’s fiction issue is our favorite issue of the year because a) it’s a double, so you don’t have to worry about adding to the pile for another 14 days and b) who gives a shit about fiction, particularly now, when all of reality seems so (badly) made up. You don’t have to read anything! It’s like they’re giving you two weeks off! That said, there is an actual work of reportage in the current issue that you should make time for: Margaret Talbot’s piece on the drug crisis in West Virginia. If you’ve read any of the thousands of “addiction comes to real America” pieces that have poured forth in the last five years you won’t learn anything new here, but this is a great encapsulation of all of them and a good way to catch up if you’ve been skipping the other ones because they seem so bleak.
