|
Selected letters offer insider look at The New Yorker's
first years
Sunday, April 2,
2000
Letters from the Editor: The New
Yorker's Harold Ross
edited by Thomas Kunkel. Modern Library (Random House). 428
pages. $26.95.
Among several recent "New Yorker"
books, founding editor Harold Ross' selected letters provide
glimpses behind the scenes of the 75-year-old magazine's
first 25 years. "New Yorker" devotees need not read beyond
this sentence; the book's historical interest speaks for
itself. The rest of you may be enticed by the implicit
voyeurism of reading someone else's mail, a pleasure
enhanced when the correspondents are powerful, famous, or
notorious.
Ross teases J. Edgar Hoover,
refusing to divulge a source. He apologizes to President
Truman for the business office's failure to deliver the
magazine promptly. He writes playfully, even flirtatiously
to Ginger Rogers (no, she and Ross were never romantically
involved). To Hemingway in 1948, he cajoles, "Are you ever
going to write short stories again? My God."
Despite his claim that "a
journalist is entitled to no friends," Ross carries on
epistolary conversations with a surprisingly diverse group
of people -- John Hersey, Harpo Marx, E. B. White, in
addition to the above-mentioned -- revealing different
facets of his personality to each.
Though he calls the "New Yorker" a
"pure accident from start to finish," his notes to "New
Yorker" contributors show Ross as a perfectionist, haggling
with writers over commas, tone, diction. As he wryly
observes, "There are a vast number of writers around who
can't write."
Given that Ross' use of language
holds at least as much interest as his famous recipients,
one wishes that Thomas Kunkel's index included subjects,
too. Then we might look up bureaucracy, and turn to page
313; or lawyers, 222, 313; editors, 39, 282; and so on. Save
for this minor lapse, Kunkel's collection has done a great
service to journalists, readers of the "New Yorker," and
students of twentieth-century literature.
PHIL NEL
(Phil
Nel is a visiting instructor of English at the College
of Charleston.)
|
|