What is the New Yorker's problem?Feb. 1, 2001
The following sentence never appeared in the New Yorker:
Sitting on a recent afternoon not far from the cafe in Brussels where noted novelist Jean-Jaque Tosseau once ordered a buttered scone, I observed that spring was arriving rather early this year, an observation that would have passed away with the other flotsam and jetsam of my conscious mind--remembering to pick up opera tickets, idle ruminations on a recent conversation with noted jazz pianist Billy Hunter (upon whose acerbically exuberant flights of verbal fancy I would again soon have occasion to reflect), a phrase from an Italian poem I was translating that was causing a not unpleasant consternation--were it not for a experience I had last fall with French telephone directories, those whimsically yellow- and green-striped tomes so lovingly abused by the great mass of the French telephone-using public, not to mention their dogs and children.
But it could have. It has many of the elements of the lousy writing that frequently appears in the New Yorker: run-on sentence structure, meaningless asides, references most readers will not understand, authorial self-importance, overuse of adjectives and adverbs, and a fixation on even the most banal aspects of European culture. But the basic problem is a lack of self-restraint. Blame for this lies mainly with editors, not the writers, who, like all writers, are narcissistic blowhards. It is the editor's job to shrink the infinity that is the writer's ego. This sentence, which really did appear in the New Yorker, is free from the slightest wisp of editorial control:
More than half of the hundred and nineteen numbers in a new Mosaic reissue ("The Complete Django Reinhardt and Quintet of the Hot Club of France Swing/HMV Sessions 1936-1948") are by the quintet or its variations and are full of such beauties as the spaces between Django's notes on 'Solitude,' and his rustling tremolos behind sweet Grapelli (who finally found his strength and fervor in the sixties, when he began playing world-wide to great acclaim); his delicate, barely audible opening chorus on 'When Day Is Done'; the astounding train piece 'Mystery Pacific,' which has roaring staccato chords, played at blinding tempo by three low-register guitars; his four exquisite choruses on 'I'll See You in My Dreams,' accompanied only by a bass, and the wild, elbowy up-tempo 'You Rascal You,' again done with just a bass; and the almost atonal notes in 'Little White Lies,' with the clarinetist Hubert Rostaing's lifting 'organ' chords behind Reinhardt.
(Whitney Balliett, "Seeing Music," 9/11/00)
The premise behind such a hopelessly unwieldy sentence is that the writer is so richly endowed with insight and erudition that he must be forgiven if the expression of these riches bursts the bounds of readability. That we not be deprived of even one of Balliett's observations is reckoned to be worth the danger that an unwary reader will wander into one of his sentences and never be heard from again. Yet eager as he is to communicate his critical acuity, Balliett has no faith in the simple power of words to carry meaning. So we get redundant pile-ups of adjectives ("wild, elbowy up-tempo"), and multiple abstract nouns ("strength and fervor") where one would do.
Some of the excesses are a result of the tone of erudite chattiness that Balliett is striving for. It's not that this tone is itself a bad idea--the magazine made its name back in the day with the sophisticated informality of writers such as E.B. White and James Thurber. But when it comes out wrong, as it does most of the time these days, it sounds smug, and results in a clutter of conversational asides:
After stopping for a maximum-cholesterol late breakfast--buttered hot-cakes and sunny-side ups--at a place called Hobo Joe's, in the blink-and-you-miss-it town of Madvill, I traveled ten more miles, until I came upon a gymnasium-size building, with a cream-colored metal exterior, set back about a hundred yards from the highway.
(Mark Singer, "The Chicken Warriors," 1/29/01)
Of all the current writers who strive for the classic New Yorker attitude of regarding the world from a medium distance, with a gentle irony borne of superior insight, John Updike is the only one who can still pull it off. This attitude comes to him naturally; he really is brilliant and funny, and almost anything that passes through his honeyed head is worthy of record. But even world-champion prose stylist Updike suffers from the New Yorker's lack of editorial discretion. This is from his review of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin:
In the book's spacious terrain of incidents, inventions, and moments, three areas stand out as heartfelt: the disconsolate solidarity of two sisters growing up in a big house with a dead mother and a non-communicative father; the wary, at times hostile dialogue of impassioned lovers hemmed into a narrow, secret space and prevented from making full self-bestowals; and the brave, humorous tenacity of an elderly woman moving doggedly through her memories, the changing streets of her hometown, and a succession of ironically beautiful, eternally youthful days, toward the imminent end.
The reader coming to the period is likely to feel like a restaurant patron whose waiter has just recited a lengthy list of daily specials ("What was that second one again?"). The editor has failed to clear away the unnecessary words and Updike's insights are left to choke under an avalanche of verbiage.
The lack of editorial control is acute in the magazine's leads. New Yorker writers, apparently believing themselves too sophisticated for such an obvious approach as beginning with something that might interest a reader, are instead prone to begin on a tediously autobiographical note:
About four years ago, in a men's store called Camouflage, in Chelsea, I tried on some trousers.
(John Seabrook, "The Invisible Designer," 9/18/00)
I recently bought a compass that slips over the band of my wristwatch. It's the size of a dime, cost less than ten dollars, and was designed for people who ride mountain bikes into the wilderness. I don't own a mountain bike, but I do own many compasses.
(Michael Specter, "No Place to Hide," 11/27/00)
Then there is that oblique breed of New Yorker leads I have dubbed the Weather Report. The Weather Report is intended as a meditative introduction to the article's topic, and a wide-angle shot from which the author will cinematically zoom in on the main point. The result is merely ponderous:
May, in Carpentras, is the month the rain stops, the fruit trees flower, and the air turns balmy and seductive. People who live there say May belongs to them, by which they mean that they have one good month before the sun turns punishing and the fields begin to parch and the only people on the streets are Parisians with summer houses.
(Jane Kramer, "The Carpentras Affair," 11/6/00)
In some cases, a New Yorker author will begin with some bit of abstract pontification and not even arrive at the Weather Report until several paragraphs later. When an article begins, as one did recently, with the words, "Metaphors sustain us," it is a very bad sign indeed. It means we won't even get to the Weather Report for several paragraphs, and are unlikely to arrive at the subject proper before dinnertime.
One of the secret pleasures of reading the New Yorker is that you, the reader, are presumed to share with the writers a high degree of knowledge and cultural acumen. Sometimes we-the-readers and they-the-writers so enjoy our cozy circle of knowledge that spelling things out clearly would only be vulgar. This leads to a style of writing so abbreviated as to become a kind of telepathy.
Take, for example, the "Goings On About Town" description of Andy Summers' new album. The album, a tribute to Charles Mingus, is said to "come replete with any number of postmodern gestures that one might expect from a rock star approaching hallowed jazz material." Now, there is not a man, woman, or child on God's green earth who has the faintest idea what this means. But no matter. The reader sighs wearily, ah yes, one might expect postmodern gestures in a case like this. And, just as one might expect, the album comes replete with any number of such gestures. What has taken place here is not the transference of any actual information, but a secret handshake between Those Who Know.
But help is at hand. Knowing that the Blue Hammer wields considerable influence among the New Yorker's staff, I offer the following suggestions:
- Less pontification, more reporting.
- While the reporter's part in a story can engage the reader's interest, a little bit of autobiography goes a long way.
- Some sentences that are fun to write are not fun to read.
- Don't think literature, think storytelling.
- Editors, save your writers from themselves.
- And could you stop screwing up my subscription? I really would be bummed out to miss an issue.
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