What Mark Schlueb and other fired or resigned journalists wrote to their bosses on the way out.

"And from around the stacks of review copies that lie everywhere like a graveyard of writers' aspirations."

"I'd get back on the Times Square sidewalk after a visit and feel I needed to flap my arms."

"Turns out, though, magazines have personalities—especially a magazine like The New Yorker, with such a long history.

"Had I been working in the New York office, I might have picked up on this, and adapted to it."

"[T]he real reason [David] Remnick fired me was that he took a personal dislike to me after our conversations.

"I was pretty bitter for a while."

"Maybe The New Yorker can't run like a collective.

"Maybe it has to run like an aircraft carrier, with one captain in absolute control and everybody else on bended knee."

"The biggest disappointment was learning that, after all, it's not only about the work on the page.

"That the writing life is not a pure meritocracy, or a refuge from office politics. All that crap still matters.