The New Yorker Magazine

February 21, 1994, the complete issue in magnificent shape, as-new, with no mailing label or label remnants because it never had a label, AND no UPC bar code, the combination of which is extremely hard to find.

This is The New Yorker’s annual anniversary issue, with a particularly historic cover: Robert Crumb’s first cover for The New Yorker, and the first parody of the magazine’s traditional anniversary cover featuring its mascot, Eustace Tilley. Crumb replaces the elegant top-hatted Tilley with a decidedly 1990s downtown type—a scruffy young man in a backwards baseball cap, earrings, and T-shirt, solemnly examining a handbill advertising “Adult XXX Video — The Playpen,” illustrated with a nude woman, while other similarly dressed New Yorkers mill about against the Manhattan skyline. It is a wonderfully irreverent transformation of one of the most famous images in magazine history.

Here are a few highlights from this issue, with the entirety of the contents detailed further down:

Susan Orlean visits Tonya Harding’s home territory in Clackamas County, Oregon, meeting members of the Tonya Harding Fan Club and exploring the class and cultural world surrounding the suddenly notorious figure skater.

Fredric Dannen contributes an extensive Annals of Law examination of brilliant criminal defense lawyer Gerald Shargel, his work for organized-crime figures, and his extraordinary relationship with John Gotti.

Julian Barnes reports from London on Salman Rushdie, five years after the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa, considering Rushdie’s continuing life under protection and the British government’s response to his ordeal.

John Updike contributes the fiction “Grandparenting,” returning to Richard and Joan Maple as their daughter gives birth; Nicholas Dawidoff visits Ken Burns while Burns is mixing the soundtrack for his monumental Baseball documentary; and Roger Angell invents the splendidly improbable Verdi opera La Forza Del Alpo, inspired by successive evenings at the Westminster Kennel Club Show and the Metropolitan Opera.

The Complete and Utter Contents of This Issue

with grateful acknowledgment to Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

Comment

David Rieff — “This Is War” — A forceful Comment on the war in Bosnia, the shelling of Sarajevo, NATO’s deadline for the removal or control of Serb heavy weapons, and the question of whether the West is finally prepared to act rather than merely declare “safe areas.”

The Talk of the Town

Rebecca Johnson — “Time Wounds All Heels” — The trial of Chuck Jones, Marla Maples’s former public-relations representative, accused of stealing dozens of her shoes and other footwear for purposes of foot fetishism, with testimony on the value of the shoes and discussion of paraphilia.

James Traub — “Minister Muhammad Is At Peace, Thank You, With Minister Farrakhan” — An interview with Conrad Muhammad of Muhammad’s Mosque No. 7 following the controversy over Khalid Abdul Muhammad’s speech at Kean College and Louis Farrakhan’s response to it.

Kim Deitch — “The Coney Island Circus Side-Show Winters in SoHo!” — A color comic-strip report on a sideshow occupying a SoHo performance space, complete with glass-eater, sword-swallower, and reactions from its patrons.

Nicholas Dawidoff — “The Sounds of Summer” — Dawidoff visits the Brill Building and Sound One, where director Ken Burns is mixing the soundtrack for Baseball, his twenty-hour history of the game scheduled to be broadcast over nine evenings. Burns discusses baseball, history, and how profoundly different his new subject is from The Civil War.

Greg Cerio — “Bum-Bum” — A visit to the Verde e Rosa Carnival Ball at the Grand Hyatt, where the great Brazilian singer Jamelão, accompanied by the Mangueira band and dancers, brings a little Brazilian Carnival to a bitter New York February.

Around City Hall

Andy Logan — “In the Spirit of LaGuardia” — An extensive look at the transition from Mayor David Dinkins to Rudolph Giuliani, the abrupt changes at City Hall, tensions between the new administration and New York’s Black community, and Dinkins’s life after leaving office.

Popular Chronicles

Susan Orlean — “Figures in a Mall” — Orlean travels to Tonya Harding’s home territory in Clackamas County, Oregon, visiting her practice rink in the Clackamas Town Center and meeting members of the Tonya Harding Fan Club. The piece examines the place, people, class divisions, and fierce local loyalty surrounding Harding at the height of the Harding–Kerrigan saga.

Annals of Law

Fredric Dannen — “Defending the Mafia” — An extensive portrait of criminal trial lawyer Gerald Shargel, an exceptionally skilled attorney whose clientele includes organized-crime figures. Dannen examines Shargel’s career, his work and courtroom personality, his connections with John Gotti and the Gambino crime family, FBI surveillance of the Ravenite Social Club, and the legal peril facing lawyers accused of crossing the boundary between representing mobsters and serving the mob itself.

Poetry

A. R. Ammons — “Sentiment.”

Muriel Spark — “The Dark Music of the Rue du Cherche-Midi.”

Artist’s Sketchbook

Ever Meulen — “Riva Bella” — A marvelous full-page Alpine fantasy: an artist paints a tropical seaside mural, complete with a bikini-clad woman at the doorway of a hut and ocean beyond, on a wall in a wintry mountain village, while a snowman walks past, a drunk leans against the wall, and a keg-carrying dog contemplates the incongruous scene.

Fiction

John Updike — “Grandparenting” — Richard and Joan Maple, divorced for years and both remarried, converge on a Hartford hospital as their daughter Judith prepares to give birth. On a cold Super Bowl Sunday, Richard waits with Joan’s husband Andy, watches football, remembers Judith’s birth and childhood, reflects on his former marriage, and confronts the curious emotional territory of becoming a grandfather.

Letter from London

Julian Barnes — “Staying Alive” — An extensive report on Salman Rushdie at the fifth anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa. Barnes examines Rushdie’s continuing existence under extraordinary security, the responses of British and European governments, British Airways’ refusal to carry him, and the strange mixture of political calculation, indifference, sympathy, and courage surrounding his case.

The Critics

The Theatre — John Lahr, “Laughing It Off” — Reviews What the Butler Saw, Hello Again, Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead, and Three Birds Alighting on a Field.

The Current Cinema — Terrence Rafferty, “Take the Money and Run” — Reviews The Getaway, The Accompanist, Gunmen, and Hallelujah!.

Musical Events — Paul Griffiths — A survey of Latin American music and the Sonidos de las Américas festival, encompassing composers and performers including Silvestre Revueltas, Carlos Chávez, Conlon Nancarrow, Manuel Ponce, Mario Lavista, Federico Ibarra, and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano.

Books — George Steiner — Discusses works including Louis Althusser’s The Future Lasts Forever, Anchee Min’s Red Azalea, Nicholson Baker’s The Fermata, and other contemporary books.

Shouts & Murmurs

Roger Angell — “La Forza Del Alpo” — A wonderfully straight-faced synopsis of a fictitious four-act Verdi opera inspired by consecutive evenings at the Westminster Kennel Club Show and the Metropolitan Opera. Canine anti-clericalism, Labradors, a traditional Sicilian grooming cavatina, the barkarole “I Have Lost My Leash,” a Best of Opposite Sex award, and the aria “Sono maschio” all figure in the proceedings before the lovers contemplate retirement to a cut-rate puppy mill in the Garden State Mall.

Cartoons and Drawings

Robert Weber — “Michele, do you mind if I walk you home? It’s the hormones in the milk.” A schoolboy speaks to a girl on a wintry city street.

Bruce Eric Kaplan — “I want you to have this. It belonged to my mother.” A man presents his father, whom he is carrying in his arms, to his wife.

Victoria Roberts — “I dreamed Lucian Freud was coming to paint us.” A woman speaks to her husband in bed.

Sam Gross — “I’m trying to forget a pussycat.” An owl in Foreign Legion garb confides in another soldier in the desert.

Leo Cullum — “Wait, I think he’s just come in. I hear his theme music.” A secretary speaks into her telephone.

Warren Miller — Two new fathers peer through a maternity-ward observation window at newborn babies whose cribs have television sets attached.

Robert Mankoff — “How would you like to be queen for a day?” A crown-wearing man makes his proposition to a woman at a bar.

Robert Weber — “I say it’s seaweed, and I say the hell with it.” A Japanese boy speaks to his parents during a traditional meal, in a variation on a famous earlier New Yorker cartoon.

Mick Stevens — “Just a damned minute!” A man protests as a street-window washer uses his squeegee on the screen of the man’s television set.

Peter Steiner — “And one other thing—from now on, we’re the James Group.” A cowboy outlaw addresses his gang.

John O’Brien — “END THE WINTER BLUES” — A spectacular color spread depicting “Kevorky Park,” a grotesquely cheerful amusement park whose attractions offer various routes to self-destruction, a black-comedy reference to Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

Roz Chast — “How Not to Remember Names” — A woman at a party desperately constructs increasingly absurd mnemonic devices in an unsuccessful attempt to remember a man’s name.

Mike Twohy — “I’ll be honest with you, Jeannette, I’m looking for a no-load relationship.” A man explains his romantic investment strategy over dinner.

Carol Lay — A color strip in which a woman walks a pack of dogs through a park on skis, using a wind-up rabbit to keep the dogs pulling her along.

George Booth — “I feed the cat nothing but veggies.” An unsuspecting dog is about to discover the effect of that dietary regimen as a crazed cat comes flying toward it.

J. B. Handelsman — “You’ll have to proceed without Mr. Larson. He looked back at the Reagan years and turned into a pillar of salt.” Executives receive an unfortunate update at a meeting.

Bernard Schoenbaum — A crash-test-dummy angel appears in Heaven.

Michael Crawford — “Sandro! What a relief to see you up and smoldering again.” A woman greets an extravagantly five-o’clock-shadowed man at a cocktail party.

Charles Barsotti — “The bunny did not get the job because the bunny is cute. The bunny got the job because the bunny knows WordPerfect.” An employer explains matters to a large, displeased hippopotamus in a necktie.

W. B. Park — “Health Plan: The Movie” — A doctor in surgical garb joins the line at a movie box office.

Richard Cline — “Yes, they are rich. Well, Wisconsin rich.” A man and woman assess fellow guests at a party.

Fascinating Vintage Advertisements

A vintage print ad for Bombay Sapphire gin presents “The Bombay Sapphire Martini. As Envisioned by Michael Graves,” with a striking architectural martini glass designed by Michael Graves.

An unforgettable full-page advertisement for Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult features Leslie Nielsen, apparently enormously pregnant and nude, under the line “Due This March.”

A handsome Rolex advertisement features abstract-expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler in her studio beside one of her enormous canvases, with the quotation, “Every canvas is a journey all its own,” and a gold Lady Datejust below.

An elaborate multi-page Switzerland tourism advertisement combines a mosaic of Swiss scenery, culture, food, skiing, mountains, museums and nightlife with promotions for the Swiss National Tourist Office, Swissair, and American Express, concluding “Look no further. Switzerland.”

A wonderfully colorful European Travel Commission advertisement, illustrated and signed by Rombola, proclaims “EUROPE — BE A PART OF IT,” surrounding the word Europe with a exuberant fantasy of travelers, artists, architecture, food, fashion and European characters; the promotion also features American Express, Rail Europe, and British Airways.

And much more throughout this wonderfully characteristic early-1990s issue.