Chicago owes much to New York. We don\u2019t often admit it, but it\u2019s true. This place was pretty much started by New York land speculators. Our first mayor, William B. Ogden, was a New York lawyer checking on his brother\u2019s real estate holdings. We still use nicknames New Yorkers gave us, like \u201cWindy City,\u201d describing, not our icy gales, but the blasts of ballyhoo trying to snag the 1893 World\u2019s Columbian Exposition.<\/p>\n
And \u201cSecond City\u201d \u2014 the title of a three-part backhand that A. J. Liebling published in The New Yorker in 1952, a gleeful vivisection of Chicago as a dreary cultural backwater. Not a proper metropolis at all, but \u201ca theater backdrop with a city painted on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chicago rolled with the criticism. One of the many improv comedy groups sprouting in the 1950s took \u201cSecond City\u201d as its proud moniker. And to far less renown I took an angry line scribbled on a postcard to Liebling, \u201cYou were never in Chicago,\u201d and used it in the title of my city memoir.<\/p>\n
The New Yorker celebrates its 100th anniversary this month, thriving still in a hellscape of blasted mainstream publications. While it is off-brand for a Chicago newspaper columnist to note the occasion, so what? We defy parochialism. Credit where due. What started as an arch romp for Manhattan sophisticates turned into an engine driving liberal American culture, from John Hersey\u2019s \u201cHiroshima\u201d to Ronan Farrow helping spark the Me Too movement with his 2017 expose on Harvey Weinstein.<\/p>\n
Too many to cite. Rachel Carson\u2019s \u201cSilent Spring.\u201d Busloads of masterful writers: Joseph Mitchell. J.D. Salinger. Humorists from Robert Benchley and Woody Allen to Ian Frazier and Simon Rich. Genius artists \u2014 from Saul Steinberg, no relation, alas, and Charles Addams, Bruce McCall and Roz Chast.<\/p>\n
The New Yorker certainly was a polestar for me \u2014 I\u2019ve lived in a house that subscribed to the magazine for my entire life. My father, a product of the Bronx, always subscribed. As a teen, I wanted to be James Thurber, and modeled myself on him so much that when college ended I didn\u2019t bother applying for a job. Somebody would introduce me to my E.B. White and I\u2019d be set. As a career strategy, that worked about as well as you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n
Writing my first book, a history of college pranks, the question arose whether to cover Caltech\u2019s Ditch Day using available published articles, or spend a chunk of my advance getting to Pasadena. \u201cWhat would John McPhee do?\u201d I asked, then booked a flight.<\/p>\n
At least that got published. Battering myself against the barred door of The New Yorker was the same futile effort for me that it was for most writers who fall short of the mark. Except for one short story, \u201cMascots Reign at Fall Show,\u201d a parody of trade shows at McCormick Place. The British quarterly Granta had accepted, then rejected, it. Which emboldened me to dare send it to The New Yorker.<\/p>\n
An editor, Dan Menaker, phoned. The story, he said, is terrific \u2014 it reminded him of Donald Barthelme. I hung up the phone and let out a scream. We worked together, improving it. But in the end, editor Tina Brown didn\u2019t like it. I kept sending in new work, not realizing that I\u2019d already had my Moonlight Graham moment. The rest of the submissions got increasingly formal rejections. But that one story. \u201cIt was like coming this close to your dreams, then having them brush past you, like a stranger in a crowd,\u201d as Burt Lancaster says in \u201cField of Dreams.\u201d \u201cI thought, \u2018There\u2019ll be other days.\u2019 I didn\u2019t realize, that was the only day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not quite true. I did have two sentences published in The New Yorker \u2014 cartoon captions. I went to school with ace New Yorker cartoonist Robert Leighton, and gave him a couple of set-ups and captions that he kindly submitted, and were printed. The most recent shows two mice pressed against the glass wall of a boa constrictor tank. \u201cHey!\u201d says one. \u201cHow come our names aren\u2019t on the plaque?\u201d<\/p>\n
That pretty well sums up my life \u2014 maybe all writers\u2019 lives. There was one other New Yorker moment I cherish. The magazine\u2019s longtime fixture, Adam Gopnik, was visiting Chicago. The first time we met was in a cab going to the Berghoff so I could introduce him to the joys of Thuringer sausage and lager at the stand-up bar.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo … a newspaper columnist in Chicago,\u201d he ventured. \u201cThat\u2019s sort of the writer\u2019s dream, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEh,\u201d I said, dismissively. \u201cYou know how it is.\u201d I pointed at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you! The New Yorker\u2019s man in Paris. Now that\u2019s the writer\u2019s dream!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEh,\u201d he replied. \u201cYou know how it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New Yorker has had a profound impact on American culture, and its influence will likely continue for many years to come. As a writer, I am grateful for the opportunity to have been a part of it, even if only briefly.<\/p>\n
* What is The New Yorker?
\nThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reporting, analysis, and culture.
\n* How old is The New Yorker?
\nThe New Yorker is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month.
\n* What are some notable writers associated with The New Yorker?
\nSome notable writers associated with The New Yorker include John Hersey, J.D. Salinger, Robert Benchley, Woody Allen, Ian Frazier, and Simon Rich.
\n* What is the significance of The New Yorker in American culture?
\nThe New Yorker has been a driving force in American culture, publishing influential works of fiction, nonfiction, and criticism that have shaped the country’s cultural landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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