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Article: The evil of banality. (The New Yorker periodical)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- October 4, 1985
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1985 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE NEW YORKER has been with us for sixty years, 34 of them under the direction of Mr. Williams Shawn. That makes Mr. Shawn (who never appears in print without his honorific) America's longest-tenured editor-in-chief. He is also America's most-respected editor-in-chief, for reasons that are widely known, even legendary. When Mr. Shawn receives a manuscript, he is back to h is writer, with his comments, the next day. He is thorough, solicitous, unfailingly polite. Mr. Shawn's writers don't produce stories, as if they were factories; they are encouraged to nurture them, as if they were ewes. Why then does his magazine stink?
The stories that greeted The New ...