A STATELY DAME IN FLUX
The press: Paul Johnson argues that a change at the New Yorker is overdue
`GOVERNMENTS are born to die,' Lord Beaverbrook once observed cheerfully. He might have added, so are newspapers; and certainly magazines. Who, in their days of strength, could have imagined that such giants as Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, the Strand and Picture Post would sicken and die? Yet in retrospect their demise looks inevitable — ineluctable logic, as the Marxists say. The time for a magazine to change is when it is still going strong and in charge of events, instead of desperately reacting to them. So when the Newhouse chain bought the New Yorker two years ago, paying a handsome $142 million, I assumed the editorial regime would be replaced quickly.
In fact Newhouse, which has done well revitalising such old-stagers as Vogue and Vanity Fair, hesitated to push out the ancient William Shawn, in the editor's chair for 35 years and now almost 80. With the founder-editor Harold Ross, Shawn had preserved an almost geological stabil- ity over 60 years. No doubt the Newhouse people feared a row. But there was bound to be one, however and whenever they acted; and it duly came last week, when Shawn failed in a bid to nominate the paper's fiction editor, Charles McGrath, as his successor, and Robert Gottlieb, of the publishing house Knopf, was moved in.
This perfectly legitimate and long- overdue management move was described by one angry contributor as a coup d'etat. Don't they respect words any more on the paper? Not so much as one would like. Some 160 staff and contributors were persuaded to sign a reproachful letter to Gottlieb, which contained expressions like `cognizant of your expressed deep admira- tion and affection for this magazine', and urged him to withdraw. Not surprisingly, he rejected the contention that 'only an editor who has been a longstanding mem- ber of the staff' was eligible for the apostolic succession.
The New Yorker was founded in 1925 in the age of Coolidge prosperity, and exer- cised a bitter-sweet appeal to affluent people who both enjoyed the sophisticated delights of a commercial metropolis and also yearned for something better. It de- veloped the talents of two outstanding humorists, James Thurber and Charles Addams, each of whom invented a new way of making people laugh. It provided the perfect vehicle for the greatest literary journalist of his time, Edmund Wilson. Not least, it was a premium market for the leading short-story writers in the Chekhov tradition, such as V. S. Pritchett. The collective achievement was formidable. There was a time, 30 years ago, when the New Yorker was usually the best read of the week. I rather doubt, however, whether it was ever quite the bastion of literature its supporters now claim. Its readers were and are mostly well-off, busy people and even in its greatest days I suspect they bought it chiefly for the cartoons (always its best feature), the brilliantly funny column-fillers culled from the press, and the small display-ads.
The advertisements are a bit of a give- away. With their heavy stress on British and Continental imports, traditional clothes, flavours and gewgaws, and their hint of class condescension, they point to a readership constituency closely identified `According to lago, Moor means worse.' with the New York and the New England of the old Wasp ascendancy. This made a lot of sense for a very long time, for until recently New York itself was a notably old-fashioned city. But the Wasps no lon- ger run American government or Congress or Wall Street or even New England academia; indeed, it is hard to point to any leading sector of American life they do run these days, at any rate in the comprehen- sive manner of old. Nor, when it comes to average earning-power, are the Wasps particular high in the ethnic table. From a commercial viewpoint, and indeed in a much deeper cultural sense, a magazine temperamentally adjusted to a Wasp view of the world is trading in a diminishing asset.
Then too the magazine has been showing other signs of age. It is hard to remember when it last introduced, or even consoli- dated or refined, a major talent. Its famous, profiles tend to suffer from elephantiasis and the choice of subjects, once intelligent" ly eccentric, now sometimes seems merely fey. Much of the prose lacks spontaneliY. Writers work best against fierce deadlines and under pressure of unpaid bills. T°° much material in the paper seems over- researched, over-checked and over-edited, homogenised into a characteristic tone Of voice which is no longer spontaneous but affected. There is an over-supply of nostal- gia, always a danger sign in a culturaJ institution drawing to the close of its silver age. The New Yorker has become a Cult- object to itself, encouraging staff and contributors to worship at its own shrine,: so that its impulses become incestuous an the paper seeks to perpetuate itself by 8 kind of literary parthenogenesis. So changes must come and they are bound to be painful. Whether Gottlieb can make them successful too I have no idea. Publishers rarely turn into good magazine or newspaper editors (or vice versa) be' cause they are adjusted to different dole' scales. The man who runs a weekly paper' even a stately old dame like the New Yorker, must get excited at the whiff of ink and the hurry-hurry of tapping machines' Such emotions were missing during the final decades of the Shawn era; the awns" phere was monastic. It is a mistake to treat a mere magazine article as a work of art t and judge it sub specie aeternitatis. the New Yorker needs is not the manage- ment style of a ritzy publishing house, vath one eye on Madison Avenue, but a stronig injection of contemporary Grub Street. t should forget about the table at the Algt- quin, which is now a literary museum-Pie' anyway, and forge links with whatever deplorable hostelries young writers patr,_°- nise to argue and misbehave. It should air find itself, as quickly as possible, one Tea°, funny cartoonist. In the end literature always looks after itself but what the P0°', , readers need, in a darkling world .°1. balance of payments and budget deficits' are a few new laughs.
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