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The New Yorker

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File:New Yorker cover.jpg
A 2004 cover with dandy Eustace Tilly, who debuted on the first cover and reappears on anniversary issues.

The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry, and fiction. Formerly weekly, the magazine is now published weekly 40 times per year with an additional six (usually more expansive) issues covering two-week spans.

Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the cultural life of New York City, The New Yorker has a wide audience outside of New York. It is well-known for its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric Americana; its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of short stories and literary reviews; its rigorously fact-checked, copyedited journalism about world politics and social issues; and its famous, single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue.

History

The New Yorker debuted on February 17, 1925, with the February 21 issue. It was founded by Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, a New York Times reporter. Ross wanted to create a sophisticated humor magazine—in contrast to the corniness of other humor publications such as Judge, where he had worked, or Life. Ross partnered with entrepreneur Raoul H. Fleischman to establish the F-R Publishing Company and established the magazine's first offices at 25 West 45th Street in Manhattan. Ross would continue to edit the magazine until his death in 1951. For the first, occasionally precarious, years of its existence, the magazine prided itself on its cosmopolitan sophistication. The New Yorker famously declared in the debut issue: "It has announced that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque."

While the magazine never lost its touches of humor, The New Yorker soon established itself as a preeminent forum for serious journalism and fiction. Shortly after the end of World War II, John Hersey's essay Hiroshima filled an entire issue. In subsequent decades the magazine published short stories by many of the most respected writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Ann Beattie, J.D. Salinger, Haruki Murakami, Alice Munro, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth and John Updike.

Shirley Jackson's The Lottery received more mail after publication than any other story in the New Yorker's history. In its early decades, the magazine sometimes published two or even three short stories a week, but in recent years the pace has remained steady at one story per issue. While some styles and themes recur more often than others in New Yorker fiction, the magazine's stories are marked less by uniformity than by their variety, and they have ranged from Updike's introspective domestic narratives to the surrealism of Donald Barthelme and from parochial accounts of the lives of neurotic New Yorkers to stories set in a wide range of locations and eras and translated from many languages.

The non-fiction feature articles (which usually make up the bulk of the magazine's content) are known for covering an eclectic array of topics. Recent subjects have included eccentric evangelist Creflo Dollar, the different ways in which humans perceive the passage of time, and Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

Ross was succeeded by William Shawn (1951-1987), followed by Robert Gottlieb (1987-1992) and Tina Brown (1992-1998). Brown's nearly six-year tenure attracted the most controversy, thanks to her high profile (a marked contrast to that of the retiring Shawn) and changes she made to the magazine's format — the introduction of photography, increased focus on current events and more coverage of hot topics such as celebrities and business tycoons. The current editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick, who took over in 1998 from Brown. The magazine was acquired by Advance Publications in 1985, the media company owned by S.I. Newhouse.

Since the late 1990s, The New Yorker has taken advantage of computer and Internet technologies for the release of current and archival material. The New Yorker maintains a website with some content from the current issue (plus exclusive web-only content) at www.newyorker.com. As well, The New Yorker's cartoons are available for purchase at www.cartoonbank.com. The complete cartoons of The New Yorker (all 68,647 cartoons) were published on two CD-ROMs (with an oversized book of 2,004 cartoons). The complete back issues from 1925 to 2005 (4,109 issues, half a million pages) were published on eight DVD-ROMs.

A New Yorker look-alike, Novy Ochevidets (The New Eyewitness), was launched in Russia in 2004. It folded in January, 2005 after five months of circulation.

Eustace Tilley

The magazine's first cover, of a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Rea Irvin, who also designed the typeface the magazine uses for its nameplate and headlines. The gentleman on the original cover is referred to as "Eustace Tilley," a character created for The New Yorker by Corey Ford. Eustace Tilley was the hero of a series entitled "The Making of a Magazine," which began on the inside front cover of the issue of August 8, that first summer. He was a younger man than the figure of the original cover. His top hat was of a newer style, without the curved brim. He wore a morning coat and striped trousers. Ford borrowed Eustace Tilley's last name from an aunt—he had always found it vaguely humorous. "Eustace" was selected for euphony. Tilley was always busy, and, in the illustrations by Johann Bull, always poised. He might be in Mexico, supervising the vast farms that grew the cactus for binding the magazine's pages together. The Punctuation Farm, where commas were grown in profusion, because Ross had developed a love of them, was naturally in a more fertile region. Tilley might be inspecting the Initial Department, where letters were sent to be capitalized. Or he might be superintending the Emphasis Department, where letters were placed in a vise and forced sideways, for the creation of italics. He would jump to the Sargasso Sea, where by insulting squids he got ink for the printing presses, which were powered by a horse turning a pole. It was told how in the great paper shortage of 1882 he had saved the magazine by getting society matrons to contribute their finery. Thereafter dresses were made at a special factory and girls employed to wear them out, after which the cloth was used for manufacturing paper. Raoul Fleischmann, who had moved into the offices to protect his venture with Ross, gathered the Tilley series into a promotion booklet. Later Ross took a listing for Eustace Tilley in the Manhattan telephone directory.

Traditionally, the Tilley cover illustrated here is reused every year on the issue closest to the anniversary date of February 21, though on several occasions a newly drawn variation has been substituted.

Cartoons

The New Yorker's cartoons have a reputation for being slightly surreal and occasionally inscrutable. The notion that the cartoons have punchlines so non sequitur that they are impossible to understand is a belief that became a subplot in the final season of Seinfeld. However, certain contemporary New Yorker cartoonists such as Roz Chast break this mold, using humor that almost any reader would find accessible.

The New Yorker's stable of cartoonists has included many important talents in American humor, including Charles Addams, Charles Barsotti, George Booth, Roz Chast, Robert Crumb, Lee Lorenz, Robert Mankoff, P. S. Mueller, Saul Steinberg, James Thurber and Gahan Wilson.

Politics

Traditionally, the magazine's politics have been essentially liberal and non-partisan. However, in recent years, the editorial staff has been taking a somewhat more partisan stance. Coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, led by editorial writer Hendrik Hertzberg and then-political correspondent Philip Gourevitch, strongly favored Democratic candidate John Kerry. In its November 1, 2004 issue, the magazine broke with 80 years of precedent and issued a formal endorsement of Kerry in an unsigned lead editorial.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, cartoonist and cover artist, Art Spiegelman (who is married to the magazine's art editor, Françoise Mouly) created, for the September 24, 2001 issue, a memorable black-on-black cover with the dark silhouette of the buildings visible only when held in a certain light or angle. He later resigned in protest of what he saw as the magazine's self-censorship in its political coverage. The magazine hired investigative journalist Seymour Hersh to report on military and security issues, and he has produced a number of widely-reported articles on the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation by US forces. His revelations in The New Yorker about abuses in the Abu Ghraib prison and The Pentagon contingency plans for invading Iran were reported around the world.

Style

One uncommonly formal feature of the magazine's in-house style is the placement of diaeresis marks in words with repeating vowels—such as reëlected and coöperate—in which the two vowel letters indicate different vowel sounds.

The magazine does not put the titles of plays or books in italics but simply sets them off with quotation marks. When referring to other publications that include locations in their names, it uses italics only for the "non-location" portion of the name, such as the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribune.

File:New Yorker 1980 10 27 p194.jpg
Example of former semicolon usage from issue of October 27, 1980. On the third line, the semicolon after "cormorants" appears before the closing quotation mark.

Formerly, when a word or phrase in quotation marks came at the end of a phrase or clause that ended with a semicolon, the semicolon would be put before the trailing quotation mark; now, however, the magazine follows the usual American punctuation style and puts the semicolon after the second quotation mark.

In the television series Seinfeld, an episode entitled "The Cartoon" refers to a cartoon in the New Yorker. In this episode, Elaine shows the cartoon to the rest of the cast to see if they understand the joke. When none of them do, she gets a meeting with an editor at the magazine, who eventually admits that he doesn't get the joke either.

In an episode of Family Guy, entitled "Screwed the Pooch", Peter Griffin reads an issue of the New Yorker so as to increase his cultural awareness in order get along with Lois' father. He spends days looking at a cartoon (which reads "I'd be more apathetic if I weren't so lethargic") and trying to get the joke. In the episode Brian Goes Back to College, Brian is invited to work at the New Yorker, and is introduced to a number of (fictitious) contributors, including Fielding Wellingtonsworth, Livingstone Winsterford, Amelia Bedford-Furthington-Chesterhill, and James-William Bottomtooth, whose mandible is severely deformed and is only capable of producing indiscernible laryngeal noises.

The magazine has also been the source and the subject of many movies. Such films as Adaptation., Brokeback Mountain, Casualties of War, and Capote all refer to short stories or articles from The New Yorker. The magazine's former editor, William Shawn, is a character in Capote.

Contributors

Well-known contributors have included:

Trivia

In its July 31, 2006, issue The New Yorker magazine ran a lengthy article about Wikipedia by Stacy Schiff entitled "Know It All -- Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?"[1] The article discusses the history of Wikipedia, its peer review process and consequent subjectivity, hotly debated entries, robots, administration, and rules. It also compares Wikipedia to the Encyclopædia Britannica and other historical encylopedias.

See also

Books

  • Ross and the New Yorker by Dale Kramer (1951)
  • The Years with Ross by James Thurber (1959)
  • Ross, the New Yorker and Me by Jane Grant (1968)
  • Here at the New Yorker by Brendan Gill (1975)
  • About the New Yorker and Me by E.J. Kahn (1979)
  • Onward and Upward: A Biography of Katharine S. White by Linda H. Davis (1987)
  • At Seventy: More about the New Yorker and Me by E.J. Kahn (1988)
  • Katharine and E.B. White: An Affectionate Memoir by Isabel Russell (1988)
  • The Last Day of New York by Gigi Mahon (1989)
  • Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker by Thomas Kunkel (1997)
  • Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker: The Invisible Art of Editing by Ved Mehta (1998)
  • Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and the New Yorker by Lillian Ross (1998)
  • The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury by Mary F. Corey (1999)
  • Gone: The Last Days of the New Yorker, by Renata Adler (2000)
  • Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross edited by Thomas Kunkel (2000; letters covering the years 1917 to 1951)
  • Defining New Yorker Humor by Judith Yaross Lee (2000)
  • NoBrow: The Culture of Marketing - the Marketing of Culture by John Seabrook (2000)
  • New Yorker Profiles 1925-1992: A Bibliography compiled by Gail Shivel (2000)
  • About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made by Ben Yagoda (2000)
  • A Life of Privilege, Mostly by Gardner Botsford (2003)
  • Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art (2003)
  • Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker by Angela Bourke (2004)

Blogs connected to the New Yorker

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