Gone: The Last Days of the New Yorker [Hardcover]

I certainly must have missed many nuances which would have been caught by those more in-the-know about the American magazine business and its personalities. It is for these people, and not for me, an ordinary reader of the New Yorker, for whom this book was written. What was left out, therefore, was the story of why anyone who does not know Adam Gopnik should care.

Renata Adler's book strikes this semiconductor salesman as part rudimentary memoir, part sophisticated, almost sublime, hatchet job on those who she believes tripped the New Yorker, and part tenuous rumination on fate which shows a breathtaking lack of depth even after her 30+ years of writing and contemplation. The book ends with an inscrutable admission of ineffectiveness and a sad page-and-a-half of Ms. Adler's rationalizations about her own choices in life that seem to have very little to do with the New Yorker itself but underline why she cannot seem to make much sense of her experience there.

After reading about so many people I have never heard of, described only in terse yet 'knowing' terms such as "a fine writer" or "the owner", I was left with the impression that automatons ruled on "the 19th floor" (of which building she does not say). What kind of lives these people lead, whether they were married and had kids and believed in anything besides seeing their names in print, is made almost irrelevant. There is almost no real psychological or mythological insight applied to the whole business of a group of 100 or so very talented people putting together the most famous literary weekly in American history.

These people were not robots, surely, but they are systematically relegated to a state of being fixed to their tethers by some indomitable hand of fate, a dubious literary crutch that necessarily goes no where. Along the way, we are lowered into the Kafkaesque world of office politics -- complete with "office wives" and gossip about who will be promoted, who is out and in, etc.. It is the story of every office no matter the enterprise. Its presentation here as so much uncomprehended dross, by so esteemed a writer of our contemporary world as the book's jacket professes Ms. Adler to be, is startling. How can such thoroughly uninteresting people as here described by Renata Adler have created the unity and essence of the wonderful New Yorker?

I would direct the reader to a book by William McGuire, Bollingen, written about another American literary enterprise, which shows a far more insightful and satisfying balance between a good story and the personalities that made it so. Ms. Adler's reportage about the fall of the New Yorker shows a journalist's touch for detail, certainly, but misses the storyteller's touch for making anyone who doesn't already know the story, care about all those people who came and went.

I suppose since I do not agree with the basic premise of this work, I might be considered a poor reviewer. There are several good things in this piece, I found the portraits of the figures of the New Yorker and its workings interesting. However, the writing is not as compelling or revealing as "The Years with Ross" or even "Here at the New Yorker" and "Genius in Disguise" (all of which I prefered, though the period and subject matter are vastly different). I would agree with other writers that I think that the prose is underedited and could have benefited with the severe blue pencil.

It is interesting, for a magazine of its limited circulation and appeal, there is far more material about the workings of the New Yorker than any magazine. This is probably a measure of its influence. I hope that this magazine which is is so necessary to fostering new literary talent continues to evolve and hopefully prosper.