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The Mixed-Up Files of Mr. Basil E. Remnick
Filed under: Eds. Tagged: A. J. Liebling, David Remnick, E.B. White, Roger Angell, sports
Jon Friedman talked to David Remnick about lots of things we care about. For instance:
"I'm not a great fan of nostalgia," Remnick says thoughtfully in his quiet but emphatic way. "If you want those things, you can find them in a library."
I heard say something very similar about nostalgia when I met him a few months ago as we stood in front of a lounge TV watching the Red Sox game after an A.J. Liebling event. (I wish Liebling could know there were still A.J. Liebling events! There wasn't nearly enough cheese to have pleased him, though.) A very old man approached him, his very old wife encouraging him to speak up. The old man had original copies of letters E.B. White had written to his father and wanted to know if they the magazine might be interested in printing them. Remnick was deeply civil but not interested. He said much the same thing about how the magazine isn't a dancing graveyard but a living forest. (At least that was the gist of it.) As he told Friedman, "You don't want to sit in a museum of your own magazine. You want to be about finding the next great thing." Nevertheless, it's quite clear that as long as Remnick is at the helm the tipsy specters will never lie down and be good for long; there are too many "P.K."s in the movie listings for that, and speaking of E.B. "Andy" White, there's a tall Dagwood sandwich of a memoir-essay about him by his stepson Roger Angell this week. Nostalgia is what it used to be, it seems, and for that I'm grateful.
Friedman also reports major news: There will be a DVD of the magazine's first 80 years available soon. Do I have enough takeout menus? Yes, I have them right here. As if that weren't enough excitement,
Remnick is looking forward to boosting the magazine's "sense of ambition" by publishing a number of three-part series. In fact, Remnick hints at the kind of writing we may soon be seeing in his magazine's pages. The book he'd love to read, he says, would be a "nonfiction 'Vanity Fair' of Washington, D.C."
Well, fiction types, you know your project now.
I'll be away from modems—even dial-up!—all weekend under several feet of snow, but look for me on Sunday night. The double issue should keep you busy till then.
The New Yorker Looks Ahead at 80 [MarketWatch]
Personal History: Andy [New Yorker]
David Remnick and Roger Angell at the 2003 New Yorker Festival [New Yorker, audio Q&A]
Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at One Hundred [David Remnick, New Yorker]
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Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
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Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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Comments
Speaking of A.J. Liebling, there's a fascinating little bit about him in the January 31 Nation magazine "Letters" column. James Munves, who as a young man did "leg work" for Liebling—Joe—remembers him with affection. My favorite part is his conclusion, which says, "We occasionally dined with Joe's mother, a small woman who closely resembled him and called him 'Abbott'."