Patricia Marx’s “Me, Reading”

From The New Yorker's archive: a short humor piece about a woman attempting to take in "Anna Karenina" on her Kindle while riding in a crowded subway car.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   View in browser | Update your preferences     Shouts & Murmurs Me, Reading No! How can this be?! I've read only fifty-two per cent of this damn book? By Patricia Marx The humorist Patricia Marx is known for her satirical takes on popular tastes and trends. The first woman elected to the Harvard Lampoon, she joined the writing staff of "Saturday Night Live" for a brief spell, in the early eighties, and since 1989 has contributed more than a hundred pieces to The New Yorker. In addition to her Shouts & Murmurs and Talk of the Town stories, Marx has brought her sly wit to On and Off the Avenue essays about fashion and shopping, including humorous reports on New York's food megastores and rental designer clothing. A piece on hidden gems of Brooklyn retail, from 2010, succinctly skewers Park Slope as "the neighborhood where parents recently won the right to bring kids in strollers into a local bar." Another essay, "Pets Allowed," considers the proliferation of emotional-support animals in public spaces. Marx has also published more than ten books; her latest, "You Can Only Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time: Rules for Couples," was illustrated by the New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. Marx has described herself as "temperamentally terse," and much of her work reflects this gift for concision. In 2012, she published "Me, Reading," a short humor piece about a woman attempting to take in "Anna Karenina" on her Kindle while riding in a crowded subway car, where her focus on Tolstoy's novel keeps getting interrupted. "Can you get knee damage from crossing your legs?" she wonders, before returning to the page: " 'When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, 'I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on any longer without seeing you.' If I start uncrossing now, is it too late? I should skip the squats in Zumba class. Do wedding registries ever include knee replacements?" Marx has a canny way of finding the idiosyncratic notes in the quiet (or bustling) and commonplace. As the commuter's thoughts roam, she realizes that she has completely lost the thread of the novel. By juxtaposing the profundity of Tolstoy with the prosaic grind of the subway, Marx expertly lampoons the contradictions of our busy pre-pandemic lives. Life may have slowed down for some of us, but her work neatly captures the droll, singular nature of those lost moments—offering us a genial (and much needed) reminder of the farce of so-called normalcy.   —Erin Overbey, archive editor More from the Archive     Our Local Correspondents Pets Allowed From 2014: Why are so many animals now in places where they shouldn't be? By Patricia Marx     Shouts & Murmurs Stylish New York Couples From 1982: One couple may prefer an eclectic style, another retro-amalgam or mixed-soupçon, yet each couple stands on their own as a single, unique personality. By Veronica Geng You're receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up.   Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our privacy policy    Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.