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I just started a graduate program in creative writing and there’s a lot of talk about The New Yorker. All my professors are either current or former editors of the magazine, or their very good friend is an editor, or they just manage to name drop someone from the publication during the first class.
I subscribe to the magazine, mostly because I feel like as a young writer, I’m supposed to read it. When I do read it, I happily stumble upon some gem by Gary Shteyngart or Ian Frazier. But honestly, most of the issues go unread.
Apparently every writer is trying to get in there, and if you’re in, you’re it.
Well the holy grail just lost a little bit of its shine.
Check out this article by Dan Baum about his short-lived career at The New Yorker. He released this piece as a series of 140 character tweets in May of this year — so I’m a little late picking it up, but it’s worth a read. Baum begins:
People often ask why I left the New Yorker. After all, I had a staff writer job. Isn’t that the best job in journalism? Yes. Nobody leaves a New Yorker job voluntarily. I was fired. And over the next few days, I’ll tell that story here, in 140 Character chunks. First, a little about the job of New Yorker staff writer. “Staff writer” is a bit of a misnomer, as you’re not an employee, But rather a contractor. So there’s no health insurance, no 401K, and most of all, no guarantee of a job beyond one year.
In a blog post about the controversy his article stirred, Baum also hints at the general secrecy of the place:
This just in: the New Yorker, while a very good magazine, is just a magazine. It is neither an organ of state security nor an order of sacred monks. Yet it wraps itself in a cloak of genteel secrecy that is pretentious to the point of dishonesty.
HuffPo calls Baum’s piece “one long surrealist tone poem,” so definitely check it out.
I think “The New Yorker” is the Holy Grail of literary magazines because it was founded by members of the most famous writing click of the 20th Century. Its beginnings captured a time in America and New York when good writing was every where and real talented writers were best sellers.
I loved Dorothy Parker from the moment I read, “One Perfect Rose” and when I think of “The New Yorker” it is her I think of. I can just picture her grabbing lunch with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, et. al. and just tossing her cut throat witty quips at them.
But is the magazine still that way today? To be honest, I only pick up the fiction issues. I do feel that it has lost some of its intended founding purpose.