A Guardian reviewer once wrote that one could probably get a Masters degree in New Yorker lit, i.e., books about the legendary New Yorker and its dramatis personae. I’ve been dipping into that canon recently, though I have a way to go before earning a degree.
I started a few weeks ago with The World She Edited: Katharine White at The New Yorker, a recent biography by Amy Reading. Like a lot of women, Katharine White is known to many based on her relationships; her husband was novelist and humorist E.B. White, and her son, Roger Angell, was a writer and another legendary New Yorker editor. And, as with a lot of women, her accomplishments merit more recognition than she usually gets. She worked tirelessly as a fiction editor at the magazine from 1925 (starting merely six months after its founding) to 1960, when she retired. She nurtured and edited such writers as Jean Stafford, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Nadine Gordimer, Marianne Moore, William Maxwell, Ogden Nash, and John Cheever. She also pretty much kept the magazine going.
Reading presents a complex and sympathetic portrait. If you’re interested but don’t feel like tackling 500 pages, check out this graceful 1996 portrait by New Yorker writer Nancy Franklin.
I moved on to her son Roger Angell’s 2007 collection of autobiographical essays, delightfully titled Let Me Finish. Known in later years as a peerless baseball writer, Angell took over his mother’s office as an editor at The New Yorker in the 1950s. (Katharine worked from home after she and E.B. White had moved to Maine.) Angell provides witty, affectionate, graceful anecdotes about all the usual New Yorker characters, including Harold Ross and E.B. White, as well as his father, Ernest Angell, Katharine’s first husband. These pieces appeared in the magazine in the early 2000s. Angell died in 2020 at the age of 101.
Lastly, at Roger Angell’s recommendation, I read Gardner Botsford‘s memoir A Life of Privilege, Mostly. I’d never heard of Botsford, who died in 2004 at the age of eighty-seven, and who, it turns out, was one of the stalwart characters in those hallowed offices.
He led a remarkable life, growing up in remarkable wealth, especially after his mother married Raoul Fleischmann, heir to the yeast company and, as it happens, a longtime funder of The New Yorker. After graduating from Yale, Botsford was drafted in 1942 and took part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944, which he describes vividly. He was wounded and received combat medals for his service. After the war, he bummed around the world with a buddy, romanced many women, slammed down gallons of alcohol, and tried newspaper reporting after he was fired from The New Yorker the first time around.
He eventually returned to the magazine and spent forty years editing such nonfiction luminaries as A.J. Liebling, Janet Malcolm (who became his wife), and Roger Angell. Handsome, witty, and charming, Botsford produced a worthy, beautifully written memoir.
As a footnote, I’ve read a few other New Yorker books over the years, including James Thurber’s My Years with Ross and Brendan Gill’s Here at the New Yorker. Up until now, they provided my view of the magazine’s inner workings. I learned in The World She Edited that Gill’s catty book almost did Katharine White in, and everyone seems to agree that Thurber’s portrait of editor Harold Ross is an inaccurate caricature. The three writers above give fairer (I think) and more nuanced views.
Bruce–I realized that maybe I’m appreciating the wit and wisdom of some of the cartoons that are not actually funny :–) You were specifically talking about funniness, and I’ll keep that in mind as I’m reading my New Yorkers.
Kathy,
Thank you for defending the cartoons.
Humor is always a subjective thing and New Yorker cartoons have a long history of “what the heck is going on here?” responses (and meriting a mention on an episode of Seinfeld (“The Cartoon” – Season 9 Episode 13)
I must also share my fondness for the Golden Age of Mad Magazine, so there’s that.
Bruce–I don’t agree. I find most New Yorker cartoons funny. Looking at our newly delivered, Feb. 3 issue (sorry about the delay in approving and replying to your comment!), I especially liked the forlorn couple (p 53) with the guy saying, “Just like the last time, it’s unprecedented.” Okay, not exactly funny, but trenchant. I liked the whimsical cowboy lasso that looks like a mountain range. I really liked the parting words from one couple to another about “changing up” the conversation next time by reversing the great meals with the great TV shows (p. 41). We have way too many conversations on those two topics. Like you, I’d very much like to read other people’s thoughts. And thanks for commenting!
I have been a happy subscriber to The New Yorker for over 40 years even when the eventual loss of advertising raised the annual cost above $100/yr. Not only does it continue to provide great fiction, investigative reporting, cultural reviews and truth to power editorializing but adds a treasure trove of excellent audio podcasts. I still don’t know how David Remnick does it all.
Which leads me to my main query: When did the cartoons (Roz Chast excepted) stop being funny? I blame social media for ruining films, literature and civility in general and have noticed impact on the weekly contributions. When the winners of the caption contest produce more laughter than the regular artists, there is cause for concern. What do you and your blog site readers think?
Kathy, What a lovely piece There at the New Yorker is – many thanks for a few minutes of thoughtful commentary and reading suggestions. My ‘English major’ son recommended the New Yorker to me a dozen years ago when I retired, and I read CPL’s digital copy often. The reporting on social justice issues especially, is often breathtaking.
Best,
Tim Musser
Note from a (retired) librarian: your public library has a subscription to every magazine imaginable, some in print, and often online, so you don’t even have to leave your couch!
Reminds me of Robert Gottlieb’s Avid Reader, highly recommended memoir of this astonishing editor of his years at Knopf, Simon and Schuster, and the New Yorker.
Roger: “There she was, calmly plotting the resurrection.”
OK, you hooked me. After we moved to New York, I figured I could justify the expense of a subscription. Before that, I followed it in doctor’s and dentist’s offices — if I got through the cartoons, they were running very late.
E. B. White paints a lovely picture of Katherine fighting cancer in her last year. This is a quotation from memory, “There she was out in the garden with a bucket of bulbs she would never see grow into flowers planting the resurrection.”
If I could write a sentence as good as that, my life would be fulfilled.