About Editing and Writing

Tuesday’s New York Times headline on President Trump’s address to the nation: “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism.” After criticism, the Times changed it to “Assailing Guns But Not Hate.”

Among the attacks on the Times unity vs. racism headline: “Let this front page serve as a reminder of how white supremacy is aided by–and often relies upon–the cowardice of mainstream institutions,” tweeted Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

How did the Times do today after President Trump left Washington to visit the wounded cities of Dayton and El Paso?

TRUMP USES A DAY OF HEALING TO STOKE DISCORD

For about 30 years, the editors of the biggest city magazines got together once a year for a long weekend to talk about what we were doing and how we could do it better. We all were different but there was one split that persisted: Some of us were talkers, some of us listeners.

During the discussions a talker sometimes would go on and on and we’d look at one another and silently communicate. During the coffee breaks the listeners usually gravitated toward one another to talk about what we’d learned.

Word-work is sublime … because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference – the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

—Toni Morrison in her 1993 Nobel Prize lecture.

Which writers—novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets—working today do you admire most?

This is an odd answer, but when I think about writers I “admire,” it has almost nothing to do with their books. It has more to do with how they manage their life. Writing seems to attract a lot of psychologically unhinged people, so I’m always impressed with authors who are able to view their career accurately, who are able to reconcile the inherent dissonance between commercial and critical success, and who seem to enjoy the process of writing without cannibalizing every other aspect of their existence in order to get it done. Jonathan Lethem seems like this kind of guy. George Saunders. Maria Semple. It’s possible, of course, that these writers aren’t the way they appear on the surface, and maybe if I knew them intimately I’d conclude they were all crazy. But then again, not seeming like a self-absorbed sociopath is 75 percent of the way to actually being a normal person.

By Jack Limpert

The cover of the Washingtonian magazine in February 1970 had a picture of Maryland Senator Joseph Tydings with a target on him and the headline:

Will the Gun Lobby Get Joe Tydings?

The story, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Washington bureau chief of the Baltimore Sun, looked ahead to the November 1970 election. Democratic incumbent Joseph Tydings had been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964 with a 63-37 percent margin over J. Glenn Beall, the Republican incumbent. In 1970 Tydings’ opponent turned out to be J. Glenn Beall Jr.

When you were younger, you worked as a nanny in the household of Mary-Kay Wilmers, the legendary editor of The London Review of Books. To what extent did she influence your reading life?

Mary-Kay Wilmers is all for books, and all for women. . . .And, actually, more than my reading she influenced my writing. I once said to her I wasn’t sure I’d ever make it as a novelist. “I just don’t have a fancy enough vocabulary,” I told her.

“That’s why you’ll make it as a novelist,” she said.

I found out who I was when I was 13 — I was a genius, which nobody else knew but I went off to college to channel my teen angst into poetic prose and after a couple years, I got a writing teacher named Bob Lindsay, a former Marine, whose rule was: one misspelling and your paper gets an automatic F, no ekseptions. After your brilliant writing got a couple of flunks, you learned a basic skill: reading your own elegant prose, word by word. And that made you a copy editor, a skill that lasts a lifetime, one that people are willing to pay money for.

Graham Holdings, the family company that owned the Washington Post for 80 years before selling it to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2013, has bought the Clyde’s Restaurant Group, a chain of popular Washington restaurants that has its own interesting history. It was started some 50 years ago by Stuart Davidson—his first restaurant was Clyde’s in Georgetown, a trendy, slightly upscale restaurant that was very popular with the hipper newcomers to the nation’s capital. From the original Clyde’s, Davidson expanded to more than 10 restaurants, including the Old Ebbitt Grill, a restaurant near the White House that’s popular with tourists—it’s the highest grossing restaurant in the nation’s capital.

“This is very good,” Robin breathed as she handed me the thickly embossed invitation. “The only other editors invited to Si’s birthday are AnnaGraydonDavidPaige.” She ran the names of Condé Nast’s most important editors together, seeming to consider my elevation into this exalted group a point of personal pride. “The invitation says no gifts, but what are you doing to wear?”

I couldn’t imagine.

Headline on a July 30 story, by NYU professor Tim Naftali, on theatlantic.com: “Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation with Richard Nixon.” That conversation happened in October 1971. The story’s lede:

The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.