THE COMPLETE NEW YORKER, Introduction by David Remnick, Random House, Eight DVDs with 4,109 issues and book, 123 pages, $100.

Literary fanatics and hoarders are about to receive a gift of incalculable proportions reduced to eight discs of text, containing the New Yorker's entire history, from Feb. 21, 1925, to Feb. 14 and 21, 2005, the magazine's 80th anniversary.

It is 80 years of every word and every page — including every cover painting, cartoon, illustration and advertisement, comprising 4,109 issues. It is readable and printable in full color and includes an easily searchable index.

The search archive includes step-by-step instructions of how to browse the collection and call up a favorite cartoon, poem, article, cover — and read any of it on full-screen — and if you desire, take notes that will also become part of the collection.

This amazing collection, which appears like a single oversize book, is unprecedented in both its literary and technological achievement. David Remnick, current editor of the New Yorker, provides an interesting and helpful introduction to the 123-page book that accompanies the eight discs. He notes that microfilm as a vehicle for providing access to something as huge as the New Yorker is no longer viable.

"Students who rely on Google as a turbo-charged Library of Alexandria feel no more eager to use microfilm than they do to pick up a protractor and a needle-nosed compass," writes Remnick. The editors arrived at the formula for the new collection "after much editorial chin-rubbing and wide-eyed technology sampling" — which provides nearly a half-million pages of the magazine that are now easily accessible.

Remnick is proud that the finished product "is no thicker than the grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich at your neighborhood diner." Harold Ross, the first editor of the magazine, wrote a "manifesto" prophesying that the new publication would be called "sophisticated, in that it will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. It will hate bunk."

View Comments

Yet Louis Menand asserted that "The New Yorker started as a hectic book of gossip, cartoons, and facetiae." That is accurate — because it still carries little bits of news about "the comings and goings" of interesting people, humorous drawings, small profiles and reviews.

James Thurber called the new magazine "the outstanding flop of 1925." Circulation peaked at 15,000 then dived to 2,700. Before closing the magazine down, the editors decided to add serious fiction and in-depth reporting to the mix. A little later, James Thurber and E.B. White were also added. The result was a dramatic increase in circulation, and an institution was on its way to becoming permanent.

Now all the people who have kept secret stacks of The New Yorker in strange corners of the house can throw them out and read any issue online with great facility. It is even possible in this venue to flip page after page as you did the original magazine. If all you ever wanted were the cartoons, you can enjoy them to your heart's content.


E-mail: dennis@desnews.com

Join the Conversation
Looking for comments?
Find comments in their new home! Click the buttons at the top or within the article to view them — or use the button below for quick access.