Heavy Traffic is a radical new take on the literary magazine

There are no images. Instead, the cover star of New York magazine Heavy Traffic is a barrage of text gleaming against a black void, the words chopped up and winding around its edges. “She no longer had the language to describe what was happening,” it reads. “She murmured loudly to herself now, becoming increasingly lost not in thought, but in nothing.” 

The literary magazine’s language, described by editor Patrick McGraw as “gibberish”, becomes increasingly haphazard and deranged as the pages turn (“Hard limit. Scarr-ed. sssh. whoAMiTALKingTO”). It almost feels like an IRL version of the infinite scroll, the words cascading through our brains like they do when flicking between feeds, tabs or messaging apps. We are a population that is becoming “increasingly illiterate”, McGraw writes in his editor’s letter. The new issue’s central occupation – not that the magazine officially has any themes – is to explore how language today has become detached from any meaning, beyond comprehension. “The more people see,” he writes, “the less they read.”

To read the full article on dazeddigital.com, click here