About the Man Behind Old New Yorker

Three weeks ago, the New Yorker, under controversial new editor Tina Brown, ran an attention-grabbing cartoon.

In it, a man stands in line at the gates of heaven and mumbles, “I’d like to go back and change my shirt.”

His shirt is adorned with a popular scatological slogan (inappropriate for a family newspaper), which the magazine spelled out in full.

Some wags have suggested that legendary New Yorker editor William Shawn’s death the following week was no coincidence.

There is, in fact, much in the new New Yorker to which Shawn might have objected. That includes “Remembering Mr. Shawn” in the current issue.

Ironically, though, this tribute demonstrates both Shawn’s extraordinary commitment to excellence, and--with such anti-Shawn touches as photographs--the fact that magazines are a medium in which excellence cannot be maintained without continual change.

In another publication, this obituary by committee might have been an embarrassing snooze.

But the fine writers Shawn nurtured offer glimpses not only into their editor but also into the soul of magazine publishing and writing at its best.

“Every encounter with William Shawn,” says Janet Malcolm, “was a somewhat mystifyingly intense experience.”

Why? The anecdotes explain.

Shawn once put a bed in the office of a writer experiencing a difficult pregnancy.

Calvin Trillin reveals how he would occasionally file a story with a sloppy sentence, “handed in as imperfect beasts in the secret hope that they might get lost in the herd.” Shawn invariably spotted the weakling and culled it.

John McPhee writes of Shawn’s editorial integrity in the face of personal quirks, such as squeamishness.

In a story on Alaska, for example, McPhee discussed a range of unsavory cuisine. He then posed the rhetorical question: Would a Martian or other being with an unbiased palate prefer “a pink-icinged Pop Tart with raspberry filling (cold) or the fat gob behind a caribou’s eye?”

In the margin Shawn wrote: “The Pop Tart.”

John Updike calls Shawn a mental swashbuckler:

“In pursuit of what he called ‘the real thing’ he would go with a writer as far as the writer dared to go, and turned cool only when the writer played it safe, or false.”

Mark Singer, whom Shawn gave his big break, says he often had to keep himself from blurting out “Mr. Shawn, I love you.”

In his parting letter to the New Yorker in 1987, also reprinted in the current issue, Shawn revealed the feeling was mutual:

“What matters most is that you and I, working together . . . have tried constantly to find and say what is true. . . . I love all of you and will love you as long as I live.”

He meant it, Jonathan Schell writes: “This unlimited fellow-feeling, this love, was of a piece with his genius as an editor, and perhaps, was at the heart of it.”

REQUIRED READING

Santa isn’t the only one making a list these days. ‘Tis the season for summaries and predictions.

Entertainment Weekly has checked in with its Best and Worst of 1992, an astonishingly comprehensive package, nicely executed with cool graphics.

Not to spoil the suspense, here are some second places: Whoopi Goldberg is named No. 2 entertainer of the year. “Glengarry Glen Ross” is the second-best movie. “The Larry Sanders Show” is the second-best TV entry. Toni Morrison’s “Jazz” is the second-best book. Arrested Development’s “3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of” is second-best album. And bungee jumping is the second thing skewered by Jim Mullen’s Hot Sheet.

Also, here are the high- and low-lights of EW’s “Hits and Pits” of ‘92, as evaluated by celebrities:

Hit--Jerry Seinfeld: “It’s nice to see the comedy boom coming to an end. I was afraid I was going to have to get out of the business, just to thin it out.”

Pit--Dr. Joyce Brothers, waxing hip about an HBO special: “Michael Jackson in concert blew me out of my seat. He crossed all boundaries and reached to the pleasure centers of the brain.”

In a similar vein, People Weekly offers its “25 Most Intriguing People of 1992.”

Most are predictable: Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ross Perot, Denzel Washington, Princess Diana . . .

More surprising are some of the magazine’s “picks and pans” for the year, including naming dumped talk-show host Dennis Miller as the best thing on television.

In a more esoteric niche, D--the Magazine of Dallas, does its own best and worst thing. There’s a whole section on Perot. The magazine reminds us, for example, of Perot’s pre-pullout slogan: “Never, never, never give up.”

And leading the prognostication parade, U.S. News & World Report offers its Top 10, including:

1. Clinton will help the economy but growth will still plod along.

2. It’ll be another bad year for banks.

3. Clinton will offer a long term economic plan (see prediction 1).

4. Hillary Clinton will launch a sweeping “Children’s Crusade.”

5. Regulation will make a comeback.

RETURN FIRE

Two articles recently mentioned here continue to reverberate.

Under new editor-in-chief Jeffrey Klein (who helped launch the magazine 17 years ago, then left), the January Mother Jones offers a new department titled “Backtalk,” which will present the views of “a harsh critic who will scrutinize our ideas, forcing us to examine ourselves.”

Klein says that “during its years in honest, honorable, lonely opposition, Mother Jones didn’t feel it could afford the luxury of self-examination.”

Which explains why much in the magazine seems 17 years stale.

The first exchange, however, is a good one, giving the provocative Shelby Steele a shot at the old-school rhetoric Roger Wilkins used in the magazine’s last issue, when he confronted the underlying problems of racism and black poverty posed by a homeless woman he met.

“The first thing I would say to this woman is: Get out of D.C., get out of the ghetto,” says Steele, who, like Wilkins, is black.

“Two-thirds of black Americans are not in the underclass. If you look at blacks who are in the upper class or working class, the first thing that most of them have done is left situations where their children have to dodge bullets, where the schools are bad, where there are drug dealers on every corner, where there is no family life, where most families are single-parent, where everyone is on welfare.”

The weakness of most magazine exchanges of this sort is that the original writer gets in the last word. With faxes and modems, though, there’s no reason why editors can’t let such debates Ping-Pong a bit before fixing them in print.

This fight might have been waged on an electronic bulletin board, for instance, drawing in readers, too, before being typeset for posterity.

As it is, Wilkins comes off as defensive; his counterpoints insufficiently sharp.

Klein says that subsequent issues will debate what it means to be “a progressive.”

Steele says he’s one, and now that self-examination is officially OK again, MoJo readers may find themselves pausing before they sneer and brand him with the handy crypto-fascist label.

In another battle over the same issues--and similar orthodoxies--the January Atlantic Monthly lets seven readers with disparate arguments loose on its October issue’s “Black vs. Brown,” Jack Miles’ examination of immigration, jobs, and the Los Angeles riots.

MAGAZINE VS.MAGAZINE

Newsweek’s popular “Conventional Wisdom Watch” evaluates British editors who have invaded American magazine publishing. Tina Brown (New Yorker) gets an upward-pointing arrow. Anna Wintour (Vogue), Anthea Disney (TV Guide) and Andrew Sullivan (The New Republic) get sideways arrows; the “Pseudo Brit” (whom they don’t name) at the National Review and N.Y. Review gets the downward arrow of damnation.

“Can the phony accents,” CWW advises.