Genius in Disguise Read online

  There was also the simple fact that big names never mattered a thing to Ross. He said so himself many times and made it plain in his magazine. New Yorker articles were signed at the end, rather than the beginning, to play up the writing and play down the writer. A spare indexsteered readers to standing departments but gave no clue about what they said, and it didn’t mention the issue’s fiction at all. The cover offered no promotional come-ons or gave any other hint as to what was inside. In this way the editor cultivated a sense of weekly discovery among his readers, letting them stroll through the magazine as if through an inviting wood, to come across their own pleasant finds—a Perelman here, a Steig there, a Thurber seemingly everywhere.

  Ross had nothing per se against marquee names—if they could write—but out of necessity The New Yorker’s editors for years had been discovering and developing their own authors, and they liked it that way. Once he decided that fiction did have a place in the magazine, in fact, Ross insisted that Mrs. White, and later her successor, Gustave Lobrano, not only keep lists of promising young writers but stay in touch with them, read their developing work, and encourage them. In the process, Ross’s New Yorker, more than any other magazine at the time, managed to incubate and sustain a whole generation of American writers. This was not necessarily the editors’ intent, merely a happy by-product of their tastes and passion for cultivating talent.

  Another thing that must be remembered about early New Yorker fiction is that it wasn’t “New Yorker fiction” at all—or at least the kind of story that came to be the stereotype. For well over a decade, New Yorker short stories were almost without exception brief, humorous, and/or carefree enough to waft away on a decent breeze. They were White and Gibbs stories. More notably they were Thurber stories: already by 1933 the Columbus expatriate had rendered his hometown so memorably in such stories as “The Night the Bed Fell” and “The Night the Ghost Got In” that when he collected them in My Life and Hard Times, the book was considered a masterwork, and still is. But plenty of other humorists were working alongside Ross’s Big Three, including Benchley, Parker, Sullivan, Joel Sayre, and, beginning in 1930, the virtuosic S. J. Perelman. Meanwhile, some of their contemporaries were turning out highly successful serials. Clarence Day’s father first turned up in 1933, and Arthur Kober’s Bronx family, the Grosses, followed in 1934. There were the Mr. Pan pieces of Emily Hahn, Richard Lockridge’s Mr. and Mrs. North, and Leo Rosten’s memorable H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, working hard to master night-school English with his fellow immigrants. Outside this mold, certainly, were the stories of Kay Boyle and John O’Hara, yet even O’Hara’s early fiction was lighter and extremely brief—a column and a half at most—fitting nicely into Ross’s “casual” concept. It was the Harold Ross of these formative years whom Katharine White was referring to when, rejecting a submission from Gertrude Stein, she told Alice B. Toklas that she was not allowed to buy anything her boss didn’t understand.

  However, anyone who ever doubted Ross’s capacity to grow need look no further than the dramatic evolution of New Yorker fiction. Not that Ross was looking for change, exactly; he might have been content to publish “Life with Father” stories until the day he died. But he didn’t have the chance. As the Depression wore on, as Communism and Fascism spread and another European war began to look inevitable, the world became less amusing to the Thurbers, Parkers and Sullivans. They wondered whether their funny little stories weren’t trivial, even impertinent, in light of the pestilential times. As a friend, Ross could appreciate their reticence and understand their waning enthusiasm, but as an editor, he found the situation maddening. He would repeat his conviction that anxious times are when people need humor most, but he simply received less and less of it. This dearth provided the first real opening for a new kind of writer, one keen to convey cultural angst, especially as seen through the urban and suburban experience. Mrs. White was intrigued by this emerging work, and if Ross had his qualms, he wasn’t interfering, either.

  So it was only in the late Thirties that what would become known as “the New Yorker short story” was actually starting to turn up in the magazine with any regularity. This was the relatively plot-free, mood-intense, character-driven story—or as Jerome Weidman once heard a sarcastic Somerset Maugham describe it, “Ah yes, those wonderful New Yorker stories which always end when the hero goes away, but he doesn’t really go away, does he?” Years later Maugham told Weidman that he had moderated his contempt for such stories; it seemed that after inexplicable years of rejection, The New Yorker had actually purchased one of his. (Maugham probably never knew why, but his “breakthrough” resulted chiefly from lucky timing. For some reason Gus Lobrano had an aversion to Maugham and had rejected his every submission. However, Lobrano was away on vacation when Maugham sent in “The Romantic Young Lady.” All the other editors liked the story, so they bought it and ran it. Lobrano was not pleased, and it was the only Maugham story The New Yorker ever ran.)

  This new kind of short story was a backlash against its ornate, artificially plotted ancestor. Relying heavily on dialogue, it was more naturalistic, more slice-of-life, and like the world itself, it was more somber, enigmatic, and sometimes violent. Its writers had come of age during the Depression, experiencing little or none of the postwar gaiety of Ross’s generation, and their struggle just to survive was often palpable in their prose.

  One of those in the vanguard of the new New Yorker fiction was a boyish John Cheever, who was nearly starving to death in a three-dollar-a-week Greenwich Village flat when Malcolm Cowley, then a subeditor at The New Republic, took an interest in him. He encouraged Cheever to try his hand at short stories and then sent a batch of them to Katharine White. The New Yorker started running them in 1935. Another new voice belonged to Irwin Shaw, who considered his startling three-thousand-word “Sailor Off the Bremen,” published in 1939, the first long and politically serious piece of fiction to appear in The New Yorker. At about this same time O’Hara was producing his entertaining letters from that wise guy “Pal Joey” (a particular favorite of Ross’s), and John McNulty was beginning his classic, darkly comic Third Avenue sketches. Edward Newhouse started appearing after he was plucked from the magazine’s slush pile. Dorothy Parker’s tales turned darker and more overtly political. And Jerome Weidman could move from the amiable Lower East Side color of Harry Bogen and I Can Get It for You Wholesale to a 1938 piece, “I Thought About This Girl,” a troubling, affecting tale of a Polish emigrée who must suddenly give up the bakery job that has given her so much satisfaction because “my mother wrote me it isn’t right … to work for Jews.”

  This last, as it happened, was that rare New Yorker story that even brushed up against what was internally referred to as “the Jewish question.” This was one of a handful of themes that in general Ross considered unsuitable for The New Yorker. Homosexuality was another taboo, as was cancer, and other subjects, like promiscuity, had to be treated with supreme delicacy if they were discussed at all. Wolcott Gibbs conveyed a sense of the ground rules in an illuminating and droll tract that he called “Theory and Practice of Editing New Yorker Articles.” Written sometime around 1937 at the behest of Katharine White, who was constantly trying out new editors, “Theory” is a specific enumeration of New Yorker do’s and don’ts and was a working document. (See Appendix II, this page.) In point nineteen, Gibbs counsels, “Drunkenness and adultery present problems. As far as I can tell, writers must not be allowed to imply that they admire either of these things, or have enjoyed them personally, although they are legitimate enough when pointing a moral or adorning a sufficiently grim story. They are nothing to be light-hearted about. ‘The New Yorker cannot endorse adultery.’ Harold Ross vs. Sally Benson. Don’t bother about this one. In the end it is a matter between Mr. Ross and his God. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is definitely out as humor, and dubious, in any case.”

  John Cheever. (UPI/Bettmann)

  Ross was squeamish on these subjects less on personal or moral grounds than
on those of taste and general New Yorker propriety, in much the same way that he was always on patrol against sexual double entendres (which, in fairness, pranksters like Thurber and O’Hara constantly tried to slip by him). When Frank Sullivan wanted to call a story “The Lay of the Land,” Ross balked on the grounds that it sounded faintly obscene, and Sullivan reproved him thusly: “All I can say is that any man who can read a double meaning into the word ‘land’ is a fit subject for a psychoanalyst.”

  The final entry on Gibbs’s list contained this observation: “Try to preserve an author’s style if he is an author and has a style.” Gibbs the editor heeded his own advice, and as a parodist he was expert at fixing up lame copy in a voice identical with the writer’s. He could not fall back on some New Yorker house style or sound, even had he wanted to, because such a concept did not exist in the way it did at Time. For the fiction editors, the integrity of the individual writer’s voice was paramount, and whenever critics chided the magazine for somehow imposing a “New Yorker style” on writers, Ross, Mrs. White, and Gibbs invariably bridled. They pointed out, reasonably enough, that a magazine managing to accommodate writers as diverse as Clarence Day and J. D. Salinger, or Sally Benson and Mary McCarthy, or Shirley Jackson and Ruth McKenney, could not be guilty of perpetuating any one type of story.

  On the other hand, there is no question that even allowing for this laudable multiplicity of voices, Ross’s magazine did propagate something that can fairly, if ambiguously, be called New Yorker style—a phenomenon marked by similarities not only in theme but in internal cadence and form. Various New Yorker writers agree about this, and they offer various reasons for it. Taken together, these help explain what should have been, on its face, a contradiction—different writers, yet similar sounds.

  Much of it had to do with what New Yorker stories weren’t. As indicated above, they tended not to be about sex, and especially not about promiscuity or what was considered sexual deviance. They weren’t profanity-ridden. They weren’t elliptical or overly impressionistic; under Ross’s firm influence, fiction editors preferred that stories be straightforward in the telling. Nor were they ambiguous, at least in terms of the action. Ross did not want to be tricked or make his readers labor too hard to understand what was going on.

  Almost invariably the stories were briskly paced. Because New Yorker fiction under Ross was relatively brief, they moved ahead sentence by sentence rather than paragraph by paragraph, and long passages devoted to mood or setting, much less to secondary action, were excised as waste motion. In William Maxwell’s phrase, this “elimination of superfluities” naturally accounted for a similarity in pace. Also, regardless of the author, these stories, in their subtleties and understatement, somehow maintained that consistent New Yorker attitude to the world. Finally, of course, the popularity of the genre fed on itself; after watching the proliferation for years, Katharine White herself began to be wary of what she came to characterize as the “slight, tiny, mood story.” Hundreds of the stories were anthologized, many by the magazine itself, eventually helping to cement in the public mind the “New Yorker story” as a literary category.

  Whether the label is fair or not is beside the point. What matters is that this naturalistic fiction marked a major turning point in the development of the form—the difference, as it were, between rhymed verse and blank verse. It also made possible the even more original voices that would emerge in the magazine under Shawn’s liberalizing influence—McCarthy, Updike, Barthelme, and many more.

  No one, including Ross, planned all this to happen at The New Yorker, but neither was it an accident. At Ross’s insistence and following Mrs. White’s lead, the magazine’s fiction editors maintained deep and long-standing relationships with their writers that transcended the work. They paid attention to the seemingly little things that matter so much to writers—quick responses to their stories, for example, and even more important, prompt payment (definitely not the industry norm). They made it their business to keep up with authors’ families, their health problems, their drinking (if they drank to excess, as far too many did), and their writing blocks. The editors solicited stories on the one hand, and yet at least every other letter to a writer was a rejection, but usually one couched in yet another solicitation, and as much encouragement as the editors could muster.

  This kind of shepherding was an art form in itself, and over the years Katharine White proved a master at it. For one thing, while she was capable of great tact, she was tough-minded and not someone to be underestimated or patronized. When she nearly died from complications giving birth to her and Andy’s son Joel, a nurse whispered in her ear, “Do you want to say a little prayer, dearie?” Katharine roused herself to reply, “Certainly not.” She could be just as blunt with Ross, especially in situations where she found him mulish and wrongheaded, as in his sporadic forays against serious poetry in the magazine. (Ross sometimes had days when he woke up and simply couldn’t believe that he was printing deliberately ambiguous material in The New Yorker.) If he didn’t try to eliminate poetry altogether, he might try to dismiss his marvelous critic, Louise Bogan, or propose to pay poets based on how wide their verse happened to be set. In such cases, Katharine, who almost singlehandedly had built up serious poetry in the magazine, would passionately argue to Ross why it was important, remind him how lucky he was to have Bogan, and deride his pay proposals as “absurd” gestures designed to make The New Yorker a “laughingstock” in literary circles. That was usually enough to get Ross to back down—until the next time.

  But if she was fearless, Katharine White found it much less easy to be openly warm. With her austere manner and her influential position as one of the original disciples, she was an intimidating figure to many subordinates. Helen Stark, who came to The New Yorker in 1945 as an assistant librarian (and stayed forty-seven years, the last twenty-two as head librarian), at first considered Mrs. White aloof and was somewhat cowed by her. Then one day, shortly after she had given birth to her son, Mrs. Stark was pleasantly surprised to receive “the most beautiful letter” of congratulations from Mrs. White. The gesture forever changed her opinion of the editor.

  The incident is significant, not only for its sentiment but for the manner in which it was conveyed. Perhaps fittingly for an editor, Katharine White best related to others through the written word. Emotions and feelings she was uncomfortable expressing face-to-face came quite naturally in her letters, which were warm, passionate, concerned, and nurturing. Her collected papers are full of examples, from four decades of long-distance relationships with writers from James Thurber to John Updike. Not every New Yorker writer found her easy to work with, preferring Gibbs or Maxwell or, later, Gus Lobrano or Robert Henderson, but those who did were devoted to her.

  This excerpt from a letter to Clarence Day is typical of Mrs. White’s approach in that it manages to transmit concern, rejection, and affection—not to mention a dash of personal news, and the company line—all at once:

  You are one of the people that I want to see the most of all, both as a friend and as a contributor, and I promise to be there by hook or crook before very long to discuss the whole plan for the Father series.…

  In the meantime I have to tell you the bad news that the final decision on “Father Expects Every Tree to Do Its Duty” is a “no” just because the theme of this story is really too much like “Father and Old Mother Earth.” The essential idea of both of them is Father disciplining nature. As you know, I had thought the two might be combined and we could pay you for the extra work so that you would not suffer, but you didn’t want that and the scheme fell by the boards.… I do feel that the first page of “Father Expects Every Tree …” could be part of another Father piece for us.… Do think it over in the midst of your wrath. If you are too cross with me I shall weep, so don’t be. As an editor, one has to steel one’s self in sending unpleasant news to contributors, especially after three months of country calm and a month of illness when no such tasks came up.

 
Much love to you and I will see you soon.

  When it became apparent that the Whites would be leaving New York for good, Katharine began the melancholy search for her replacement. As it turned out, she didn’t have to look far, finding him in Lobrano, one of her husband’s closest friends. Lobrano came to The New Yorker around the end of 1937 from Town and Country, where he had been an assistant editor and unhappy. Katharine tried him out on fiction, and he demonstrated quickly that he was a natural, blessed with impeccable taste, a strong sense of style, and a sharp but guarded wit. Lobrano took on more responsibility as Katharine withdrew, and in 1941 Ross formally named him to succeed her as managing editor for fiction.

  Born in 1902, Gustave Stubbs Lobrano came from an old New Orleans family—he could trace his lineage back five generations to a pirate confederate of Jean Laffite’s—and in the Southern manner he was gracious and soft-spoken, a man whose placid demeanor belied an inner intensity. He went to Cornell, where he studied liberal arts and law simultaneously. He trailed White there by several years but got to know him by working on the campus newspaper, and after college they shared a Greenwich Village apartment. They also shared a love of writing, and the two quiet men became lifelong friends. After his marriage, however, Lobrano moved upstate and worked for seven years at his in-laws’ travel agency. Eventually, with White’s help, he got back to New York, first at Town and Country, then at The New Yorker, where he would at last be doing what he considered serious editing.

  Lobrano’s way of relating to his writers was precisely the opposite of Mrs. White’s. He was great personal friends with many of them, including Cheever, Shaw, Newhouse, Perelman, and Salinger, and he often had them to his suburban Westchester home for dinner, or to play tennis or badminton. (Tall, graceful, and that rarity at The New Yorker, a staff member who was even remotely athletic, Lobrano enjoyed sports and outdoors activity of all kinds, especially golf and fishing.) What few letters he wrote to his contributors were most perfunctory; unlike Mrs. White, he tended to convey more intimate concerns in person. It was his habit, for instance, to get writers together in groups for lunch. In such settings Lobrano, less a talker than a practiced listener, not only learned what might be bothering his contributors but at the same time inculcated in them a sense of The New Yorker as an extended family. This approach also demonstrated what an effective buffer he was for Ross, whose aggressive queries and gruff demeanor now and again were known to put off a writer.