February 25, 2008 - "Shelf Life," by Adrian Tomine
In this issue, following the Anniversary Issue of The New Yorker, we have a cover depicting a young writer, hard at work writing a novel. She gets approval from some sort of editor and her book goes to the press. Soon after, a young man purchases the book, reads it, and discards it. Upon discarding it, a homeless man picks the book up from the pile of trash that the reader has put out and takes it with him. The homeless man uses the book as a source of warmth by burning it.
The story depicted in this piece forces us to contemplate how much our efforts really matter in this world. Obviously, the author has put a large amount of work into this work. As you can see in the upper left panel, as the author of the book works, it is snowing outside. We can tell that she took a long amount of time to write her book. In the top right panel, you can see that the editor finishes reading the manuscript and approves it as he is sitting in front of a window in which a tree's leaves are green and growing. Thus, a substantial amount of time has passed.
Now, as an observer of this cover, we can only make assumptions as to why the author is writing this book. Given the fact that the young man reading the book throws it away soon after he finishes reading it, we can assume that it was written for entertainment purposes. As a young and aspiring writer, the author probably hopes that her book would be a big hit and sell many copies. She wouldn't want readers to throw away the novel, but maybe pass it on to new readers. Her hope, however, may be in vain, because the reader disposes of the book so fast. We can question, however, whether or not the homeless person read the book. As seen in the changing panels, the homeless man does not burn the book until it is snowing out. It's possible that the homeless guy read the book before he decided to burn, but we won't be able to determine what really happened.
Now, in a time when our lives are so hectic in this huge city, you may sometimes become overwhelmed at what you have on your plate. At times, you come across people that may question how they could make a difference in, let's say, limiting global warming. People may say that no matter what you do, you can't make a difference. I think, however, that despite this hopeless and helpless feeling, your little bit of effort can still make a difference. In this issue's cover, you can see that, even though the homeless person is burning the author's hard work and it's not being used as she intended it to be used, she is helping the homeless person stay warm on that day. This can be compared to our efforts to make differences in today's world. Even though what we do may seem useless and in vain, it can ultimately have an effect on someone's life in the future.
If we were to all to our little parts, then maybe, change can be brought about and our world may just become a more tolerable place for everyone.
