Hooking Up (31 page)
“Excuse me. I’m sorry.” And then he leaned right across Snackerman and said to his wife, “I’m sorry, honey. There’s been an accident on the FDR Drive. An eleven-year-old girl—corneal-scleral laceration with effusion of the vitreous humor.”
Then he bolted from the room. This big, square-jawed, graythatched, pompous piece of lumber—he literally ran out of the room and toward the elevator. Everybody, Snackerman, Rusty Mumford, Martin Adder, every last one of them, wives, Jennifer Love-Robin—all,
that is, except for Mary Cary—they all craned their noggins away from the Sony TV screen and stopped listening to his, Irv’s, stirring prose pouring from the mouth of Her Smugness—and stared at the galloping surgeon. A medical emergency! A brave doctor! Fearless savior!
that is, except for Mary Cary—they all craned their noggins away from the Sony TV screen and stopped listening to his, Irv’s, stirring prose pouring from the mouth of Her Smugness—and stared at the galloping surgeon. A medical emergency! A brave doctor! Fearless savior!
Irritably, Snackerman turned toward Mary Cary and said, “What’d he say?”
Mary Cary never for a moment took her eyes off herself on the screen as she replied, “An eleven-year-old girl’s had her eye sliced practically in two, and the insides are gushing out.”
That did it. Irv sat bolt upright. His heart was still hammering away, but no longer with fear. Now—clean, old-fashioned hate, in normal sinus rhythm. That son of a bitch! Him and his Dr. Daring stage whisper!
Corneal-scleral laceration—meeeeeyah!
Probably beeped himself and then faked the call! A pathetic failure at the dinner table who couldn’t even pick up, much less carry, his end of the conversation—and so now he has to try to steal the scene by playing Emergency Medical Hero during the very climax of his own wife’s triumph—as orchestrated by me, Irv Durtscher! Why, that ice-sculptured
son—of—a—bitch
!
Corneal-scleral laceration—meeeeeyah!
Probably beeped himself and then faked the call! A pathetic failure at the dinner table who couldn’t even pick up, much less carry, his end of the conversation—and so now he has to try to steal the scene by playing Emergency Medical Hero during the very climax of his own wife’s triumph—as orchestrated by me, Irv Durtscher! Why, that ice-sculptured
son—of—a—bitch
!
“ … what we know it to be, in our hearts: a wake-up call for America.”
It was over. The last of Irv’s words had passed through the lips of the blond and Tiffany-blue goddess on the huge screen.
Now they were on their feet, Snackerman and all his assembled hotshots. They had all turned toward Mary Cary, and they were grinning and applauding. Mary Cary herself stood up, a modest, almost misty little smile on her famous face, as if the whole subject was too serious for her to break into the big donkey-toothed bray of triumph she’d obviously like to cut loose with.
Snackerman grabbed her around the shoulders and grinned down at her and hugged her, and the whole mob started applauding all over again. Even Cale Bigger, who knew exactly how these shows were put together, was over there in the Mary Cary/Snackerman huddle, giving them both his best lifetime-lackey’s shit-eating grin. Irv found himself
standing alone. He was
damned
if he was going to walk the subservient eight feet it would take for him to join in the après-triumph pile-on.
standing alone. He was
damned
if he was going to walk the subservient eight feet it would take for him to join in the après-triumph pile-on.
Presently Cale walked away from the chattering, laughing, exulting hive and came over to Irv and stuck out his hand and said, “Great job, Irv! Great job!” Then he smiled and cast his eyes down and shook his big florid head and then looked up at Irv and said, “Jesus Christ. That girl’s got
some balls,
hunh?”
some balls,
hunh?”
M
ay I offer you, here at the end, something on the order of those two gold foil—wrapped, silver dollar—sized, chocolate-covered peppermint coins the franchise hotels put on your pillow when they turn down your bed at night?
ay I offer you, here at the end, something on the order of those two gold foil—wrapped, silver dollar—sized, chocolate-covered peppermint coins the franchise hotels put on your pillow when they turn down your bed at night?
Just for the flavor of it, come with me back to the 1960s, to a time when the newspaper wars still raged in New York City; to 1963, when the struggling New York
Herald Tribune
completely transfused its Sunday supplement and changed its name from
Today’s Living
to
New York.
In due course
New York
had a new editor, a young man named Clay Felker, who had come to the
Trib
from
Esquire
magazine. As editor of
New York,
Clay had one full-time assistant editor, Walt Stovall, and two part-time staff writers: Jimmy Breslin, whose main task was turning out a column for the
Trib
five days a week, a column based entirely on reporting (and probably the greatest column in New York newspaper history), and me. Five days a week I worked at the beck and call of the city desk as a general assignment reporter. In our so-called
spare time, Jimmy and I were supposed to turn out a story apiece each week for this new Sunday supplement,
New York
. I’d heard of skeleton staffs before, but this one was bones.
Herald Tribune
completely transfused its Sunday supplement and changed its name from
Today’s Living
to
New York.
In due course
New York
had a new editor, a young man named Clay Felker, who had come to the
Trib
from
Esquire
magazine. As editor of
New York,
Clay had one full-time assistant editor, Walt Stovall, and two part-time staff writers: Jimmy Breslin, whose main task was turning out a column for the
Trib
five days a week, a column based entirely on reporting (and probably the greatest column in New York newspaper history), and me. Five days a week I worked at the beck and call of the city desk as a general assignment reporter. In our so-called
spare time, Jimmy and I were supposed to turn out a story apiece each week for this new Sunday supplement,
New York
. I’d heard of skeleton staffs before, but this one was bones.
Nevertheless, one day Clay, Walt, Jimmy, and I were crowded into the little bullpen of a cubicle that served as
New York
’s office, when Clay said, “Look … we’re coming out once a week, right? And
The New Yorker
comes out once a week. And we start out the week the same way they do, with blank paper and a supply of ink. Is there any reason why we can’t be as good as
The New Yorker
? Or better. They’re so damned dull.”
New York
’s office, when Clay said, “Look … we’re coming out once a week, right? And
The New Yorker
comes out once a week. And we start out the week the same way they do, with blank paper and a supply of ink. Is there any reason why we can’t be as good as
The New Yorker
? Or better. They’re so damned dull.”
At that moment, I must say it seemed like nothing but talk. Dull or not,
The New Yorker
was one of the two or three most eminent weekly magazines in the country, certainly in terms of prestige. But Clay meant business, and thanks to his
Esquire
days he managed to persuade some great outside contributors to join Jimmy and me in our brave ride on Rosinante, writers the likes of Peter Maas, Richard Condon, Robert Benton, and David Newman, along with the
Trib’
s own outstanding critics, Walter Kerr, Judith Crist, and Walter Terry. Sure enough, by mid-1964 our little Sunday supplement,
New York,
had started making the town take notice. You know the current expression, “the buzz”? Well, by late 1964 the Buzz buzzed not for
The New Yorker
but for us, so much so that
The New Yorker
began paying us the left-handed compliment of making fun of us, first in items in their Talk of the Town column and then in a full-blown parody that went after Jimmy and me specifically.
The New Yorker
was one of the two or three most eminent weekly magazines in the country, certainly in terms of prestige. But Clay meant business, and thanks to his
Esquire
days he managed to persuade some great outside contributors to join Jimmy and me in our brave ride on Rosinante, writers the likes of Peter Maas, Richard Condon, Robert Benton, and David Newman, along with the
Trib’
s own outstanding critics, Walter Kerr, Judith Crist, and Walter Terry. Sure enough, by mid-1964 our little Sunday supplement,
New York,
had started making the town take notice. You know the current expression, “the buzz”? Well, by late 1964 the Buzz buzzed not for
The New Yorker
but for us, so much so that
The New Yorker
began paying us the left-handed compliment of making fun of us, first in items in their Talk of the Town column and then in a full-blown parody that went after Jimmy and me specifically.
It so happened that 1965 was
The New Yorker’s
fortieth anniversary. The magazine was, in fact, so eminent that the usual, predictable tributes to its illustrious traditions and its thises and its thats began effusing in print, like gas inflating a balloon, when the simple truth was that Clay was right.
The New Yorker
had become dull, dull, dull—dull and self-important—under William Shawn, who had succeeded the magazine’s founder, Harold Ross, as editor. So … what better time to pop the balloon?
The New Yorker’s
fortieth anniversary. The magazine was, in fact, so eminent that the usual, predictable tributes to its illustrious traditions and its thises and its thats began effusing in print, like gas inflating a balloon, when the simple truth was that Clay was right.
The New Yorker
had become dull, dull, dull—dull and self-important—under William Shawn, who had succeeded the magazine’s founder, Harold Ross, as editor. So … what better time to pop the balloon?
Our idea was to take a page from
The New Yorker’s
early days, back when Ross was running the show and the sheet was alive, and do a parody in the form of a profile of Shawn. One of
The New Yorker’
s greatest coups, under Ross, had been a parody of
Time
magazine in 1936 in the form of a profile by Wolcott Gibbs of
Time
’s founder and editor, Henry Luce. The town, or the part of the town that buzzes, had dined out on that one for a year. Not only was Gibbs’s parody of
Time
’s famous breathless style gorgeous stuff (“Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind” … “Where it will all end, knows God!”), but the personal details got under Luce’s skin … At Yale he had adopted the mucker pose of going around unshaven and not wearing garters but was actually a puritanical “conformist” … he talked jerkily, stuttered, and avoided people’s eyes … wore baggy clothes … seethed secretly over all the visiting Asians who looked him up in New York because he had been born in China, where his parents had been missionaries … Ross sent Luce an advance copy of Gibbs’s story, and Luce got so angry he confronted Ross in Ross’s apartment and, the way the story was always told, threatened to throw him out the window.
The New Yorker’s
early days, back when Ross was running the show and the sheet was alive, and do a parody in the form of a profile of Shawn. One of
The New Yorker’
s greatest coups, under Ross, had been a parody of
Time
magazine in 1936 in the form of a profile by Wolcott Gibbs of
Time
’s founder and editor, Henry Luce. The town, or the part of the town that buzzes, had dined out on that one for a year. Not only was Gibbs’s parody of
Time
’s famous breathless style gorgeous stuff (“Backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind” … “Where it will all end, knows God!”), but the personal details got under Luce’s skin … At Yale he had adopted the mucker pose of going around unshaven and not wearing garters but was actually a puritanical “conformist” … he talked jerkily, stuttered, and avoided people’s eyes … wore baggy clothes … seethed secretly over all the visiting Asians who looked him up in New York because he had been born in China, where his parents had been missionaries … Ross sent Luce an advance copy of Gibbs’s story, and Luce got so angry he confronted Ross in Ross’s apartment and, the way the story was always told, threatened to throw him out the window.
So a parody profile of Shawn it would be. The very form, “the profile,” the very term itself, was a
New Yorker
invention. And in this case there was a news peg that went beyond the fact that this was
The New Yorker’s
fortieth: there had never been a profile of Shawn anywhere. Despite the fact that he was one of the most prominent figures in American journalism, he never showed his face to outside journalists. “Intensely private” was apparently putting it mildly. There was
only one known photograph
of the man, the official
New Yorker
portrait, which he had commissioned, paid for, and controlled.
New Yorker
invention. And in this case there was a news peg that went beyond the fact that this was
The New Yorker’s
fortieth: there had never been a profile of Shawn anywhere. Despite the fact that he was one of the most prominent figures in American journalism, he never showed his face to outside journalists. “Intensely private” was apparently putting it mildly. There was
only one known photograph
of the man, the official
New Yorker
portrait, which he had commissioned, paid for, and controlled.
The first thing I did was ring up Shawn at his office to ask him for an interview. By and by he came to the telephone and, in his quiet voice, said:
“Here at
The New Yorker,
if we tell someone we want to do a profile and that person doesn’t want to cooperate, we don’t do the profile. We would expect you to extend us the same courtesy.”
The New Yorker,
if we tell someone we want to do a profile and that person doesn’t want to cooperate, we don’t do the profile. We would expect you to extend us the same courtesy.”
“But, Mr. Shawn,” I said, “we’re a newspaper, and we consider you and your magazine’s fortieth anniversary news.”
That argument got me exactly nowhere. Obviously I would have to get my material from present and former
New Yorker
employees and others who knew Shawn and the magazine. That very night, or soon after, I was having dinner with a group of people down in Greenwich Village, and at the table was a young woman named Renata Adler. It was she, not I—I had no idea who she was—who brought up the fact that she was a staff writer for
The New Yorker
. I will admit I encouraged her to dilate upon the subject, however. I can’t remember anything particularly riveting or revealing that she divulged, but she never forgot the conversation, as it would turn out. Anyway, it must have been shortly after my telephone call to Shawn, because soon the word was out at
The New Yorker
that nobody was to talk to anybody from the
Herald Tribune.
New Yorker
employees and others who knew Shawn and the magazine. That very night, or soon after, I was having dinner with a group of people down in Greenwich Village, and at the table was a young woman named Renata Adler. It was she, not I—I had no idea who she was—who brought up the fact that she was a staff writer for
The New Yorker
. I will admit I encouraged her to dilate upon the subject, however. I can’t remember anything particularly riveting or revealing that she divulged, but she never forgot the conversation, as it would turn out. Anyway, it must have been shortly after my telephone call to Shawn, because soon the word was out at
The New Yorker
that nobody was to talk to anybody from the
Herald Tribune.
Nevertheless, I found my sources, and I managed to observe, from the wings, as it were,
The New Yorker’
s fortieth birthday celebration at the St. Regis Hotel. Then I started writing the parody, and I ran into something I hadn’t counted on. Wolcott Gibbs’s parody of
Time
back in 1936 had been hilarious precisely because it was a caricature of an original, lively, radical departure in journalistic writing, the already famous
Time
style. But a parody of a style as dull as
The New Yorker’
s could be funny for about half a page, which is to say, only until you got the joke. After that, due to parody’s law of hypertrophy, it would become literally duller than dull. The
New Yorker
style was one of leisurely meandering understatement, droll when in the humorous mode, tautological and litotical when in the serious mode, constantly amplified, qualified, adumbrated upon, nuanced and renuanced, until the magazine’s palegray pages became High Baroque triumphs of the relative clause and the appository modifier. The only solution, it seemed to me, was to turn all that upside down, shake it out, get rid of the dust, and come up with a counter-parody, a style that was everything
The New Yorker
wasn’t: urgent, insistent, exclamatory, overstated—and fun.
The New Yorker’
s fortieth birthday celebration at the St. Regis Hotel. Then I started writing the parody, and I ran into something I hadn’t counted on. Wolcott Gibbs’s parody of
Time
back in 1936 had been hilarious precisely because it was a caricature of an original, lively, radical departure in journalistic writing, the already famous
Time
style. But a parody of a style as dull as
The New Yorker’
s could be funny for about half a page, which is to say, only until you got the joke. After that, due to parody’s law of hypertrophy, it would become literally duller than dull. The
New Yorker
style was one of leisurely meandering understatement, droll when in the humorous mode, tautological and litotical when in the serious mode, constantly amplified, qualified, adumbrated upon, nuanced and renuanced, until the magazine’s palegray pages became High Baroque triumphs of the relative clause and the appository modifier. The only solution, it seemed to me, was to turn all that upside down, shake it out, get rid of the dust, and come up with a counter-parody, a style that was everything
The New Yorker
wasn’t: urgent, insistent, exclamatory, overstated—and fun.
By the time I had finished it, it was so long it would have to run in
two parts. Clay showed them to the
Herald Tribune’s
editor, Jim Bellows. Bellows read them, rubbed his palms together, and smacked his lips. Jim Bellows, although young, was a newspaperman of the old school. A month that went by without a good brawl was a pretty dull month. It so happened that the Sunday supplement,
New York,
was printed each Wednesday for insertion in the Sunday
Trib
four days later. So on Wednesday, as soon as my first installment was off the presses, Bellows had two copies delivered to Shawn at
The New Yorker,
whose offices were on West Forty-third Street, about four blocks from the
Trib’
s. The piece was entitled “Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43
rd
Street’s Land of the Walking Dead.” With the two copies Bellows included a card on which he had written, “With my compliments.”
two parts. Clay showed them to the
Herald Tribune’s
editor, Jim Bellows. Bellows read them, rubbed his palms together, and smacked his lips. Jim Bellows, although young, was a newspaperman of the old school. A month that went by without a good brawl was a pretty dull month. It so happened that the Sunday supplement,
New York,
was printed each Wednesday for insertion in the Sunday
Trib
four days later. So on Wednesday, as soon as my first installment was off the presses, Bellows had two copies delivered to Shawn at
The New Yorker,
whose offices were on West Forty-third Street, about four blocks from the
Trib’
s. The piece was entitled “Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43
rd
Street’s Land of the Walking Dead.” With the two copies Bellows included a card on which he had written, “With my compliments.”
Shawn’s reaction was too good to be true. In his own minimomaniacal way—Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that the world was full of megalomaniacs but that William Shawn was the only minimomaniac he had ever met—in his own way Shawn outdid Henry Luce of three decades earlier when it came to overreacting to a profile. Bango! He had a letter hand-delivered those same four blocks to the
Trib.
Trib.
The letter was not addressed to Bellows, however, much less to Clay Felker or to me. It was addressed to the
Trib’
s owner and publisher, Jock Whitney, who was not only a very rich man but also a very distinguished gentleman, lately, in fact, United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. It was at the distinguished gentleman in Jock Whitney that Shawn’s letter seemed to be aimed. He called “Tiny Mummies” libelous, to be sure, but also worse than libelous. It was “murderous.” Not only that, this single reckless, heedless, needless collapse of judgment—the publication of this pointless article—would forever consign the
Herald Tribune
and its long and honorable heritage, dating back to the great Horace Greeley, to “the gutter” along with the worst yellow journalism of the 1920s. He beseeched Whitney to withhold it from publication, to keep the magazine out of the
Herald Tribune
on Sunday.
Trib’
s owner and publisher, Jock Whitney, who was not only a very rich man but also a very distinguished gentleman, lately, in fact, United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. It was at the distinguished gentleman in Jock Whitney that Shawn’s letter seemed to be aimed. He called “Tiny Mummies” libelous, to be sure, but also worse than libelous. It was “murderous.” Not only that, this single reckless, heedless, needless collapse of judgment—the publication of this pointless article—would forever consign the
Herald Tribune
and its long and honorable heritage, dating back to the great Horace Greeley, to “the gutter” along with the worst yellow journalism of the 1920s. He beseeched Whitney to withhold it from publication, to keep the magazine out of the
Herald Tribune
on Sunday.
A stunned Jock Whitney brought the letter in to Bellows, whose office was right next door, and said, “What do we do, Jim?”
Bellows read the letter and chuckled and said, “I’ll show you what we do, Jock.”
With that, while Whitney stared, Bellows got on the telephone and called up
Time
and read them the letter. Then he called up
Newsweek
and read them the letter. “Tiny Mummies” was published, as scheduled, on Sunday. On Monday accounts of the article and Shawn’s letter were all over the Press sections of
Time
and
Newsweek
, and a perfect storm broke. It reached all the way into Lyndon Johnson’s White House.
Time
and read them the letter. Then he called up
Newsweek
and read them the letter. “Tiny Mummies” was published, as scheduled, on Sunday. On Monday accounts of the article and Shawn’s letter were all over the Press sections of
Time
and
Newsweek
, and a perfect storm broke. It reached all the way into Lyndon Johnson’s White House.
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