Friday, June 8, 2007

Breaking the unwritten law...

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...of all Newsbreaks all the time, but occasionally something must be said. I plan to break this rule a couple more times in the next few weeks, as the relentless tides of my obsessions have thrown up an gnarled, weed-strewn essay or two.

Friend and fellow Record alum Mollie Wilson is in the midst of an iKerfuffle (sorry Apple) over The New Yorker's recent profile of Paul McCartney. The backstory can be read here at HuffPo.

Was the commenter "John" on Mollie's blog truly the author of the piece? If so, didn't anybody tell him never to drink-and-comment? Jon Schwarz thoughtfully addresses the psychological fissures of the old-media writer here, but I don't care about that. I'm not interested in feeling anybody's pain over being disrespected by the peons. True talent forbears and wannabes complain; we all do it once in a while to dull some sting, but hiding behind a credential is a always a punk move.

As a Beatle head (bona fides here), you might expect that I'd have an opinion about the article itself. But I haven't read it, and probably won't. This is what made me stop reading The New Yorker: whenever I'd read an article that touched on something I knew about, I would come away from the experience frothing with rage. Semi-informed at best, the articles were invariably smug, trite, and managed to leave the object of their subtly malign attention a dull and lifeless thing.

But I could live with that--after all, this is magazine journalism we're talking about, just filler between Cartier ads. What pushed me over the edge was how every author in The New Yorker radiated self-satisfaction. You could tell they thought they'd reached the mountaintop, and insisted you agree. Particularly on cultural issues, this imbued the writing with an arm's-length ex cathedra that is actively opposed to appreciation, and perhaps even understanding. In other words, precisely the snotty mindset shown by the poster on Mollie's blog. So if he's not writing for The New Yorker, he should be. That's quite a gift for parody.

My wife likes the fiction, and the cartoons are always good for a wan laugh, but I'm done with it--poor Kate has to steal the occasional issue from the "who wants it" basket down the hall. The New Yorker is like The New York Yankees. They assume they are synonymous with the sport. When they're good, they assume everyone agrees that all is once again right with the world; when they're bad, they get petulant and defensive. Spoiled, entitled, coasting on the past, generally unworthy of the attention that they get, both are a collection of high-priced names assembled by an impossibly rich jerk. Both are trying to dominate a dying sport, and confuse snapping up more of less with authentic excellence. Bonds will break Hank Aaron's record--The New Yorker will still launch stars--but it will never matter, not like it once did. And that's okay, because the alternative is stagnation and death. But then, those have always been a New Yorker specialty: cue "Tiny Mummies."

Whatever The New Yorker was, it's not that anymore, and hasn't been for decades. What it did under Ross and Shawn--the pieces we all read in high school--has nothing to do with what it is now. The New Yorker's relentless branding of itself as some way to commune with The American Century is as ersatz and self-serving as any other piece of marketing. Accept the fantasy if it pleases you, make money off it, even, if you're a writer. But don't confuse it with reality. Warts and all, the web is the greatest explosion of written communication in the history of homo sapiens. Asserting the primacy of any one collection of talent, especially one assembled by the corrupt and intellectually hamstrung mag biz, seems absurd. I don't need The New Yorker or John Colapinto to tell me what to think about Paul McCartney, and that magazine's wrongness about stuff I know about makes me skeptical about everything else.

Understand: I, too, grew up with the idea that The New Yorker was Valhalla on 43rd Street. And, after lots of struggle, reached the mountaintop. But I remember exactly when I realized that the mountain was a lot shorter than it used to be. It was the day that Jon's and my editor there told me she was leaving for a job at WWD. Or was it W? My point is, it didn't matter.

[UPDATE: The New Yorker has confirmed that the poster "John" is indeed the author of the piece. Wow. I mean, we all Google ourselves when something comes out, but...wow.]

6 comments For This Post I'd Love to Hear Yours!

Little Miss Nomad
says:

I'm in an irritable mood, so I probably shouldn't write this. But, honestly? The New Yorker blows. Dana Goodyear publishes herself, the smug moron, even though it has been pointed out, time and again, that this is in excruciatingly bad taste. The other poems she chooses are never good, and the fiction is often smug commissioned trash from "name" authors that never sustains anyone's attention. It IS very much like the Yankees. Good comparison. The problem is they care more about image than substance. It's a hideous waste of trees and otherwise intelligent people's times. Though, occasionally, I do like the cartoons.


patience
says:

Hey Mike,

I always thought the smug insiderism was just the inherent tone of the city, which the magazine tried to replicate.

Why don't you produce that piece on the beatles for us (the internet audience)? Or several for that matter.

You love them. You know them. Share.

I posted over on Johnathan's blog.

"Who gives a shit about Paul McCartney?"

Having grown up well after the era I find little of interest in the music. However it's very possible I'm missing something. So why not evangelize some.

You know you want to...

come on. It'll make you feel good.

I think the Beatles are much less relevant to people who didn't live through the era, precisely because the people who did have for some reason deferred to a mandarin class to record and transmit the history of the era, and the surviving Beatles themselves have fostered this situation with regard to their own narrow niche for what they think of as good monetary reasons.

It's a shame. Consider the fan culture of Star Trek, a much inferior entertainment phenomena of about the same time that has blossomed and flourished, precisely because they did not create a priesthood, but let anyone who wanted to participate in keeping the dream alive.

patience
us@them.com


atheist
says:

I don't yet feel ready to completely dismiss the New Yorker. So they employ some guy named Colapinto who has a head that's a couple of sizes too large. They also publish Sy Hersh. That, to me, makes up for a whole lot of bullshit.


Michael says:

Strong agree on the cartoons, Nomad, although that's as much about TNY being the only game in town. I'm sure if Esquire/Atlantic/Harper's ran one-panels, some of them would be just as funny, and the overall health of the art would be much greater.

Patience, believe it or not, I didn't experience the Beatles first-hand either--both Jon S. and I were born in 1969. My love of the Beatles is interwoven into several facts of my life, so I can't say much that's meaningful about them without adding in elements of a memoir. I'm already working on one based in a slightly different period in my life, so it's a natural for me to just slop over and do a little Beatling while I'm at it.

Is your question, "Why are the Beatles relevant?" Because I think I could answer that. (At the moment I'm trying to answer the question, "Why is the JFK assassination relevant?") But could you give me a little more on how they "have fostered this situation with regard to their own narrow niche for what they think of as good monetary reasons"?

It's always so encouraging to get comments like these. I really appreciate everyone's attention and thoughts, and sincerely hope what I do always rewards it.


Michael says:

Atheist, I don't know whether you read my insano-huge reply to Nell in the comments section of ATR, but since it addresses your point, I've reposted it below.

Sorry it's so freakin' long.

"Nell, I'm certainly not dissing the reportage in The New Yorker. It's not even the magazine I dislike, it's the fetishization--and my personal experiences with New Yorker snark. If I read [TNY], I naturally think of writing for it, and that's been a nightmare. Everything I/we ever had published there has turned out LESS funny. That is maddening.

Jon and I were just starting out in the pre-Tina Brown years, and he had more direct contact with them than I did at that time, but I think he would agree that dealing with The New Yorker even in the late 80s was a much different experience than it was just a few years later, after Brown had "transformed" it. Pre-Brown it was Olympian, but there was a sense that space was made on the ship for oddballs, mad geniuses, people who couldn't fit in anywhere else but had something valuable to give. This was a Ross-Shawn holdover; TNY had resisted the intellectual and cultural power-down that magazines had in the 1970s and 80s, in large part by defining itself against the larger industry. Its culture had remained unique, and while that culture had its share of flaws, it was at least an alternative. TNY produced something different, something they thought was necessary and valuable, and if you agreed, you were welcome to read. If you didn't, fine, they made plenty of money without having to pander.

That culture died the moment Si Newhouse bought it. After Tina came along in 199-whatever, The New Yorker became simply the high-end of current NY magazine culture; watch "Ugly Betty," it's probably close enough: obsessed with image, and fashion, and a type of other-defined, strangely narrow currency; really bitchy, and image-conscious, and hyper-political, and all about "the magazine-as-brand." After Brown, the difference between The New Yorker and every other magazine became one of degree, not of kind.

Which is fine, except that TNY relentlessly promotes itself as something special, playing on the affection a certain type of person (okay, me) has for a misty Golden Age of American Letters, when publishing was a genteel profession, and Parker and Benchley held court at the Algonquin...This fantasy is harmless, except that TNY uses it to justify the rude and, yes, classless behavior of its mostly run-of-the-mill staff. If Roger Angell wants to be rude to me or dis a humor piece Jon and I wrote, fair enough. He's Roger Angell, he's earned the right. If someone I went to school with does the same thing, I get pissed, especially when their accomplishments outside TNY's protected confines don't justify the dismissive attitude.

Since she's left The New Yorker, Tina Brown's been exposed for what she (apparently) is: precisely the type of style-over-substance person that rises to the top of the NY publishing game. That's not her fault, but I'm not really interested in people like that. That doesn't describe every writer or staffer, but it's a lot of 'em. I have nothing but respect for the people there who can "bring it," and my limited interactions with those people--like Remnick--have been uniformly pleasant. But then there are all the others, who acted just like John Colapinto did towards Mollie.

So I let them stew in their own juice, and when somebody tells me there's a good article, I go read it at the library. Somebody has to pay for good reportage, true, but until Si Newhouse decides to put his money someplace else, I choose to take the good and leave the bad.


patrick says:

I have to echo Atheist on the recognition of Sy Hersh's contributions to the world and let me also say "The New Yorker pays Sasha's rent, and that's a good, good thing.

Other than that, as a practicing ruralist and non-NYer, I find most of the magazine either baffling or irrelevant to me. But, like my desperate aversion to Pavement, I suspect this may have more to do with me than the subject of my loathing.


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