The Breakfast Table

As the New Yorker Turns

“Context” is our watchword! According to today’s USA Today (quoting, I think, the London Sunday Telegraph), Tina Brown says the New Yorker’s fiction editor rejected a short story by Jamaica Kincaid, and “she has not got over it.” Also, Kincaid is daughter-in-law to the late Mr. Shawn; therefore, one surmises, not favorably disposed to any of his successors.

USA Today also quotes some nasty stuff a “veteran” New Yorker writer named James Trow said about Brown when he resigned from the magazine, and some nasty stuff Brown said in reply. Not clear when the resignation occurred. But pray tell, who is James Trow? Do they mean James Traub, who writes very smart stuff about New York City and urban affairs generally? Or do they mean George W.S. Trow, author of Within the Context of No Context, a widely admired but very pretentious-seeming book that I’ve thumbed in bookstores once or twice? (And if it’s Trow, what’s he doing with four first names?)

Doesn’t it kill you that the New York Observer came out too early this week to catch this story? If ever an occasion warranted printing an Extra! edition, this is it.

As long as we’re dumping New Yorker trivia, allow me to pass on the most-alluring-but-not-picked-up-on fact from Lillian Ross’s egregiously bad memoir, Here But Not Here. Namely, that her real name is Lillian Rosovsky! And that she’s cousin to Henry Rosovsky, the former Harvard dean! Further proof that everyone–the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Louis Auchincloss– should just be assumed to be Jewish! (Note to readers: I am Jewish.)

There! Now I can say reading it wasn’t a complete waste….

I actually liked the Al Hunt column today. I thought it was brave of him to say, in effect, “I’m tired of George W. Bush and he hasn’t even started running yet.” My sentiments exactly. But I suppose George W. still has time to make himself more interesting, and stage a comeback before the Iowa caucuses.

Cynically,

Tim