I have been an intermittent subscriber to Geist. Early on, in your long birthing years, I was a loyal subscriber, sticking with you through some of the tedious and dull stuff to gain some of the bright, usually short, usually freshly humorous stuff. I would drop my subscription and then, after a year or so, come back. This is my notice to you that I will not be renewing my subscsription, and I don’t have any intention of coming back, due to Stephen Osborne’s smarmy Letter to Subscribers. You should know immediately that I am not an aggrieved fiction writer, nor another magazine editor, nor associated in any way with the magazine, book or publishing industry.
I am an avid reader. Of books, magazines and other publications. I read regularly The New Yorker, The Walrus, Harper’s, Vanity Fair and Canadian Living—all of which publish more frequently than you do. Your letter to me—a subscriber—was insulting, fatuous, condescending, patronizing and, perhaps most damning, ignorant. How stupid and silly you seem to think we subscribers are, who read fiction, and maybe even read more fiction in summer.
I consider Geist a good magazine—on occasion, it has contained really, really good writing, with moments of brilliance. For you to think you have to put down another very good magazine, The New Yorker, who strives to put out quality writing on a more or less weekly basis while you grapple with the challenges of publishing four times a year—is the height of arrogance.
