Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross (Modern Library) - Hardcover

Ross, Harold Wallace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375503978 ISBN 13: 9780375503979

Verlag: Random House Inc, 2000

Inhaltsangabe

A collection of letters by the editor of the New Yorker details the birth of the magazine and its early days.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thomas Kunkel is the author of a biography of Ross, Genius in Disguise, and Enormous Prayers. He works at the University of Maryland College of Journalism and lives in Burtonsville, Maryland.

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rating letters--selected and introduced by Thomas Kunkel, who wrote Genius in Disguise, the distinguished Ross biography--tell the dramatic story of the birth of The New Yorker and its precarious early days and years. Ross worries about everything from keeping track of office typewriters to the magazine's role in wartime to the exact questions to be asked for a "Talk of the Town" piece on the song "Happy Birthday." We find Ross, in Kunkel's words, "scolding Henry Luce, lecturing Orson Welles, baiting J. Edgar Hoover, inviting Noel Coward and Ginger Rogers to the circus, wheedling Ernest Hemingway-- offering to sell Harpo Marx a used car and James Cagney a used tractor, and explaining to restaurateur-to-the-stars Dave Chasen, step by step, how to smoke a turkey." These letters from a supreme editor tell in his own words the story of the fierce, lively man who launched the world's most prestigious magazine.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Excerpt

To Ralph Barton
The New Yorker
June 27, 1928

Dear Ralph:

I was on the brink of writing you when your letter came?this morning?tellingme about your latest predicament. I knew, of course, that you had reached somesuch conclusion as this. You are a creative soul and therefore a restless soul;therefore, a damn fool. I would leave this to any fair-minded banker. I wish Iwere a banker. I also wish I were Henry Ford or anybody who can accept thechurch, the government, conventions, and all those things.

I also had house trouble. I am thinking of burning the damn thing down. Theinsurance would net a tidy bit of cash and would enable me to get a roomsomewhere and fit up what I really ought to have. I am not competent to managemore space than this. I would be if I were a fairy. Fairies are the happiestpeople there are. All editors ought to be fairies. I fuss around with commas,semi-colons, dictionaries, and wordings, and it drives me crazy. I am toovirile. I ought to be building subways. I was thinking of going to the SouthPole with the Byrd expedition but that would take a year or two and I can spare,at most, only two months. It probably would be a bore anyhow. All life is a boreif you think at all. . . .

As ever,

Ross

To E.B. White
[Spring 1939]

Dear White:

. . . When you are in town Bennett Cerf of Random House and the Modern Librarywants to see you. I spent much of last evening with Cerf and he has a plan forputting you in the Modern Library, which, it seems, needs light stuff. It has nolight stuff and apparently has no hopes of any unless they take you orHuckleberry Finn, when the copyright expires next year, or both. Cerf doesn'tthink your last book would make a Modern Library volume. He speaks of some kindof omnibus volume. I told him to write you about it, but no, he wants to see youand me to tell you so. Publishers always seem peculiar to me in theirapproaches. So I tell you so. I think it's a good idea all around, a damned goodidea. The Modern Library has a big sale all over and inclusion of you in itwould be important recognition of some sort. I don't know whether they pay aroyalty, lump sum, or what, but think it's catch-as-catch-can in arrangements.Mostly their authors are dead and the copyright expired so the question doesn'tcome up much. I will undertake to get you together with Cerf when you come, ifyou want. Of all the publishers I know, I think I'd rather talk to him. A quitenice and sane fellow.

Ross

To Robert Frost
The New Yorker
September 4, 1944

Dear Mr. Frost:

I have received a disturbing letter from E. J. Kahn, who worked in this officefor several years and is now in the Army, stationed in Washington. It containeda paragraph which I quote below:

"One other matter: Colonel Ulmer, of the Infantry Journal, was at the BreadloafWriters Conference, and says that there was a fairy up there, by name of TrumanCapoti or something like that, who claimed to write the Talk of the Town, andwho created a scene by walking conspicuously out of an auditorium where RobertFrost was reading a poem. Capoti (the spelling is phonetic) had been loudlyidentifying himself as a New Yorker staff member (is he? I've never heard ofhim), and Frost was accordingly prompted to say that 'Well, if that's the wayThe New Yorker feels about my poetry, I'll just stop reading.' Whereupon hestopped. It was, says Colonel Ulmer, a highly embarrassing situation for allconcerned, and did not improve The New Yorker's standing at the conference onewhit. Did you know anything about this? If you didn't, I think you should,because I know how sensitive you are about what people do as representatives ofthe magazine."

You will see why the letter distressed me. The facts are that this fellow,Truman Capote (not Capoti), was employed here for a while as an office boy. Hewouldn't have been employed here ever as that probably, if it hadn't been forthe man- and boy-power shortage. We have checked up and found that he did attendthe Breadloaf Conference?so that much is true at least. I am told that he wassent there by some publisher for whom he has contracted to do a book. Amazingthings are happening in publishing circles these days.

I will very much appreciate if you will tell me how much of Mr. Kahn's hearsayreport is accurate, what did happen, and supply me with the name of someofficial of the conference to whom I might write in explanation. I was going tosay apology, but the fact is I don't feel any responsibility for this youth. Weget into something like this every once in a while, though, and when we can, wetry to make a disavowal on behalf of the organization.

Sincerely yours,

Ross

To H. L. Mencken
The New Yorker
July 27th [circa 1946]

Dear Mencken:

It's a small world. The attached unanswerable question has reached my desk. Iforget exactly when the Algonquin Round Table started, which I take it is whatyou innocently are getting at. Sam Adams has the right date in his book onWoollcott. I refer you to that. I am pretty certain it is the right date. Thatis about all he has right about that round table. I was there a lot and I neverheard any literary discussion or any discussion of any other art?just the usualpersonalities of some people getting together, and a lot of wisecracks andquoting of further wisecracks. It was always about the same as a dinner withyou, [George Jean] Nathan, and a couple of more?Grant Rice and Paul Patterson,say?at "21." No cosmic problems settled; merely laughs.

Come to think of it, I can more or less fix the date of the starting. As Irecall, Woollcott always said the table started when he made a date with MurdockPemberton and someone else to eat there and they agreed to eat there again thenext day, and that must have been sometime in the summer of 1919, for Aleck andI got back from Europe and the war in June of that year. I trust I am useful.

Best regards,

Ross

Memo to William Shawn
June 21, 1949

Mr. Shawn:

You said you would consider adding a thing or two to the Talk piece beingprepared on the whisk broom that umpires use. At a ball game at the YankeeStadium the other night, I noticed that the umpire seems to have a page boy athis call, a lad in a red coat (with some gilt on it, as I recall) who seemed todeliver messages to him and accept messages from him. These were oral, Ibelieve, except in one instance possibly; I thought I saw the umpire write out amessage. Nobody around me could explain the page boy; he is an innovation,evidently. Also, I think we could have something about how many baseballs anumpire's pockets will hold. They are apparently capacious. I have heardcriticism of the fact that umpires are required to wear a coat all through thehot weather. Maybe they wear coats because they wouldn't have any place to keepthe balls otherwise. Come to think of it, maybe that page boy delivered the newballs to the umpire, although I'm not sure; maybe was the batboy. How manybaseballs are used in a game, on the average? Is a ball ever used more thanonce, or, to state the question more comprehensively: When a ball is hit foul,another ball is immediately put in play by the umpire; the ball that went foul,if retrieved (as opposed to going over or into the stands) seems to go to thehome team's dugout. Then, later, a quantity of balls are delivered to theumpire, who puts them in his pocket. Are these brand new balls, or are theyballs that have been played with some, and been knocked foul?

H. W. Ross

To Lillian Ross
The New Yorker
August 11, 1950

Dear Lillian:

The trouble with that photograph may lie with the subject. Neither my coat normy pants seem to be hanging right. Even discounting the wind that was blowingagainst me, my appearance is shocking. One in my calling should, of course, lookhard-pressed, harassed, and careless, but not that disorderly. I'll...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Inc
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2000
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0375503978
• ISBN 13: 9780375503979
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 428
• Herausgeber: Kunkel Thomas
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar