The universal village

In a land where geography has meant that news journalism tends to be strictly parochial - though in the best sense of the word - New York's Village Voice is not so much a newspaper as a national institution.  To be sure, it is claimed first and foremost by Manhattanites and dwellers in the surrounding suburbs; but its strengths and qualities ensure that its significance transcends local, and even international, boundaries.

For New Yorkers, it is a guide and gadfly to that feisty city.  It reflects the inhabitants' amazing multifariousness, their cultural and ethnic diversity.  While its chunky format suggests the plenitude of NY, and the snappy layout the pizzazz, its carefully structured contents map and match the daily pre-occupations of its yuppie readers. 

Aptly enough for a city built on ruthless commerce, almost half of the paper is given over to classified ads. They present a distillation of the essence of New York, with all its hopes and fears, aspirations and trepidation.  There are the endless courses offering self-improvement; the dizzyingly priced mid-town condos; the vacations to distant but English-speaking lands; and there are the personal ads.  As you might expect from a monitor of one of the brashest societies on earth, these are open and unembarrassed in their demands.  Every permutation is sought or offered, though in the end this richness begins to look like surfeit.

The editorial is a mix of culture, politics - and style: Village Voice is one of its handbooks.  Culture means television and video, as you might expect in this switched-on and wired-up society, followed by cinema, and trailed rather distantly by music, theatre and the other visual arts.  Politics comes after the 'funnies' at the front, but its grim-faced reports of scandals, corruption and abuses in the city set the tone for the whole magazine, which is studiedly right-on.

This is partly what endears it to the thousands of non-New Yorkers who subscribe.  It presents them with a heterodox viewpoint almost unique in America; it is the nearest thing that country has to a respectable left-wing journal.  A more escapist reason for reading it is that it offers a glimpse of life at the sharp end, from the sharp end.  Socially and culturally, if it happens, it happens in New York first, and reading the Voice gives many exiles in the backwoods a delicious and safely vicarious frisson from the avantgarde, together with a smug glow of prescience. 

I too read it for this element of watching the future, though given London's own cultural richness, it forms a counterpoint rather than a substitute.  And as non-American, I find it provides an interesting if distorted view onto the whole transatlantic world.  But mostly I read it because Village Voice offers some of the best journalism in the English language.  Each writer is an individual, every article is meticulously researched and immaculately crafted.  I know that however surprising its contents, an issue will always be passionate and urbane; witty and moving; dazzling and lucid.  In the last analysis, I read Village Voice because opening its coarse, rough pages each week and entering its special world is one of the most intellectually exciting experiences I know.

(5.8.87)

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