Tonight I read a piece at an excellent literary event called Letters You Never Sent. In it, writers write fictional letters that they…er, have never sent. Each night has a theme. This one was ‘Letters to Corporations’. Here’s mine.
Dear Conde Nast International Limited,
I am writing to you with regards to my subscription to the New Yorker.
You see, it’s because I enjoyed the New Yorker for so many years that I fell in love at first sight with Frank. He was sitting on a bench outside Tate Modern reading an issue, and of course I just thought a match made in heaven! For I, too, turned the pages of my copies of the New Yorker with the kind of special smart flick of the wrist that Frank was using to slide one page of the New Yorker against the next page of the New Yorker, to produce the quiet but distinctive whoosh that informs people who matter that you are reading the New Yorker. Who are, of course, other people who read the New Yorker.
You’d be justified in thinking that I was really bold if I just spotted Frank on the bench and picked him up then and there, sidled up and said I see that you are enjoying the latest issue of the New Yorker. But the truth is that I knew that he was going to be waiting for me on a bench outside Tate Modern and he knew that I was going to sidle up to him. We were on a blind date, you see, arranged by a mutual friend who thought we might be a match made in heaven. So I approached Frank and said, You must be Frank. I see you are enjoying the latest issue of the New Yorker. And Frank said, It’s great to meet you. And I said, I have a subscription, and Frank said, me too! And that seemed like the beginning of something beautiful.
Frank and I started seeing a lot of each other. We discovered that we had so much in common, like we both enjoyed reading books by Philip Roth and watching Woody Allen films and admiring Barack Obama and shopping at American Apparel. Frank was pretty pretentious, but that was cool, because I was also pretty pretentious.
Let me describe for you a typical romantic evening for me and Frank. Usually, I’d go over to Frank’s flat in Dalston and he’d cook dinner, using an organic Jerusalem artichoke that he’d picked up at Broadway Market. I picked up this organic Jerusalem artichoke at Broadway Market, Frank would say, and I would say, what an excellent source of organic Jerusalem artichokes.
Over dinner I’d say, please pass the cheese, and Frank would say, that reminds me of a story I heard once about a comical turf war between local cheese producers in a Tuscan village and what I would think was: yes, I read that article in last week’s New Yorker too. But what I would say was: oh really? and smile and laugh as if it was new to me.
That was how much I liked Frank!
So that was me and Frank. Until one evening Frank called me and he said, I need to talk to you, and I thought to myself is this the moment I have dared hoped for? Is Frank is finally going to utter those three little words: Share my subscription?
But instead Frank came over and sat in the living room of my flat and cast a cool gaze me across the coffee table on which I had decorously fanned three issues of the New Yorker, like it was the dentist’s waiting room of my dreams. And what Frank said was not share my subscription but rather I am still in love with my ex-girlfriend. And what I said was I wanted you to be the Calvin Trillin to my Alice, the Hendrik Hertzberg of my heart! And then Frank said I’m sorry, and then I said This is more painful than the time the New Yorker rejected the best poem I ever wrote with a form letter. And then I swept the three fanned issues of the New Yorker on to the floor with an angry flourish, and then Frank left.
I never saw Frank again. But sometimes when I am reading the New Yorker and there’s a poem that is definitely not as good as the best poem I ever wrote, but you published it anyway, it reminds me of Frank’s ex-girlfriend.
Anyway, please find enclosed the cheque for my subscription renewal.
