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I was asked by one of the art editors, Françoise Mouly, Art Spiegelman's wife, to submit both covers and comic strips to them. I don't remember how it came about that all the strips ended up being collaborations with Aline. I guess maybe, probably, it was that I didn't feel comfortable doing solo strips for The New Yorker because of all the obvious restrictions and limitations–no explicit sex, etcetera–but, hell, the pay was good, and it's easy to do those strips with Aline without feeling too terribly confined. But I began to feel compromised after an editor there rejected a cover I did for them and would give me no explanation, and so I'm through working for The New Yorker. I refuse to work for anyone under those circumstances, no matter how much they pay. I saw what that did to Harvey Kurtzman's confidence as an artist, and resolved when I was still in my twenties to never let myself get into a trap like that.

I kind of love that.

There is lots of other great stuff in the issue! Including short stories by Colum McCann, Ann Beattie and Geek Love author Katherine Dunn, poems by Jorie Graham and Cynthia Zarin, and amazing photos of Haiti by Jeff Antebi. You may purchase it at your finer local booksellers or on the magazine's website.

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Choire Sicha: So you have just seen a truly hair-raising thing, I take it!

Tom Scocca: The pages are a little loose in this issue, because I flung it away from me and it hit the wall. I am not a satisfied customer.

Choire Sicha: The McKinsey consultants aren't going to like hearing that.

Tom Scocca: On page 61 of this issue there is a tiny bit of type. A photo credit. The photo credit reads "MATT NETTHEIM / WARNER BROS."

Choire Sicha: Is it a still from a forthcoming film?

Tom Scocca: Or is it the illustration for the week's short fiction? Why, it is both. The New Yorker is running a publicity still advertising a motion picture, as if it were content.

Choire Sicha: Wow, who's Renata Adler now?

Tom Scocca: No one is Renata Adler there, it seems. Remember when the question about the integrity of the New Yorker's editorial content was whether it would stoop to running photographs as illustrations at all? Me neither. What a boring thing to argue about.

Choire Sicha: I remember that, a little!

Tom Scocca: Now it can be argued–more now than ever!–that from a certain critical perspective, publishing a photograph by Annie Liebovitz is one kind of marketing proposition, and that it represents a degree of engagement with commerce.

Choire Sicha: I would argue that!

Tom Scocca: The same kind of critic could argue that the fiction section of the New Yorker is not unfamiliar with a kind of product placement, in that Literary Events are not infrequently preceded and heralded on their way to the commercial marketplace by the publication of an excerpt in the New Yorker in the form (or guise) of a short story. But this is not an example of the funny symbiosis between the purposes of the New Yorker and the purposes of the publishing industry.

Tom Scocca: This is actual marketing: a marketing-department image which is part of the marketing campaign for a mass-market movie, occupying most of a page in the editorial hole of the New Yorker.

Tom Scocca: And the next nine pages, not counting the cartoons, are devoted to a piece of "short fiction" by one of the Warner Bros. movie's screenwriters, which is a novelization of the Warner Bros. movie's story.

Tom Scocca: This is a big, long step beyond using the fiction space to give everyone a preview of the new Jhumpa Lahiri. It is a step that carries the New Yorker off the sidewalk and into a deep ditch bubbling with raw sewage.

Choire Sicha: That's not a very nice thing to say about Hollywood.

Tom Scocca: Hollywood, or Hollywood marketing departments?

Choire Sicha: Like there's a difference!

Tom Scocca: Anyway, we have not gotten to the particular substance of the story, yet, because I am trying to keep these issues separate. For the moment, it is only worth stipulating that it is a lousy story.

Tom Scocca: It is an adaptation of an adapted screenplay–a derivative work of a derivative work–and is completely without the sort of artistic merit that would allow someone to rationalize the marketing package on literary grounds. At least, the pages I read before hurling the magazine against the wall were clearly worthless, and someone who read the whole thing confirmed that it just kept on going that way.

Choire Sicha: I'll report back to those that are concerned about stapling that the magazine only holds up so-so against hurtling.

Tom Scocca: So let's pause here and finish with the magazine: this package, particularly the publicity photo, represents a gross lapse of ethics and taste by the fiction department of the New Yorker, and the magazine owes the readers an apology for printing it. And an editor might think long and hard about why he employs a fiction editor who would think this was an OK thing to put in the magazine.

Choire Sicha: To her credit, she did publish a wonderful Chris Adrian story–a sometime McSweeney's author, by the way–back in April! But.

Tom Scocca: Now, this story (now: this story!)–this story does have a name-brand literary figure attached to it. Actually, it has two, but the second one doesn't get his name on it. The name on it is "Dave Eggers." One of the nice things that the semi-commercial publishing-promotion excerpt tradition of the New Yorker did do for me, long ago, was it allowed me to read enough of A Supposedly Fun Work of Heartbreaking Genius that I didn't have to go read the whole book.

Choire Sicha: I read the whole book.

Tom Scocca: How was it? I didn't mind the excerpt.

Choire Sicha: Capsule review: it had its ups and downs?

Tom Scocca: We are brave. Brave are we. We are going to hide in the hills, like desperadoes, and take Tiger Mountain by strategy. Etc. But Dave Eggers is not the real literary brand being monetized here, although his literary brand is being used to add value in an extremely irritating way.

Tom Scocca: The story is called "Max at Sea," and the "Max" of the title is the character Max–or Dave Eggers' and Warner Bros.' commercial reconceptualization of the character Max–from Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak.

Tom Scocca: Where the Wild Things Are is a masterpiece. I have read it many, many, many times in the past two years and two months.

Choire Sicha: It is a masterpiece!

Tom Scocca: It is a masterpiece of children's literature. What Dave Eggers and Warner Bros. have done is turned the plot of a masterpiece of children's literature into a creepy, idiotic piece of Young Adult Fiction.

Tom Scocca: When I read it, I was literally ready to punch Dave Eggers in the face, except he was nowhere around. Now that I have simmered down, it remains possible that if I ever do find myself in a room with Dave Eggers, I may throw a drink in his face, probably including the glass or bottle.

Choire Sicha: You know, violence is never the answer.

Tom Scocca: That's more or less what an editor told me many years ago when I wanted to review a Soul Asylum album by, rather than listening to it, borrowing my neighbor's shotgun and blasting it to bits and writing about the aesthetic experience.

Choire Sicha: Well that's not violence. It's a terrible capitalist construction that violence against objects is actually violence.

Tom Scocca: I don't hate writers anywhere near as passionately as I hate what they write. But, you know, we all have a dark streak. Unless we are characters written about by Dave Eggers. His innovation in this story is to supply Max, who "wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind / and another," with a sad Back Story just full of Problems. According to the oily world view of Dave Eggers, he has a broken home. Father gone.

Tom Scocca: Mother tired.... no, wait, that's Curtis Mayfield. Max Eggers is only a child of the EMOTIONAL ghetto. Would you believe his mother has a boyfriend he doesn't like? Would you believe his older sister is mean to him?

Choire Sicha: Oh boy.

Tom Scocca: If you ever read any of the books in your middle-school library, you probably could believe that. So Max Eggers is angry. He acts out. Dave Eggers is the voice from the world in which "acting up" has been replaced by "acting out."

Tom Scocca: Maurice Sendak's Max is from a stable, loving home. He is allowed to run around in a wolf suit, which belongs to him. He is sent to bed without any dinner, but in the end dinner is waiting for him.

Tom Scocca: But then why does Max go wild? Why does he chase the dog with a fork? Why does his nice tidy bedroom have a wild forest grow up through it, as he laughs?

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"Do people in the media crit game really think editors are supposed to be desk jockeys who never go get a sense of the story? (When I was a correspondent I had visits from Max Frankel and Joe Lelyveld, among others, and welcomed them as a chance to share my enthusiasm for the beats I covered.) Or is the idea that when a big, exhausting news breaks visiting editors should hole up in the hotel and let the reporters do all the work? Weird."

Tom Scocca: Um, there's a difference between dropping in on the bureau and commandeering the Page One news analysis hole.
Choire Sicha: Also? Isn't he actually holed up in a hotel? Didn't he write a whole thing about that?
Tom Scocca: The one about how Google didn't work?
Tom Scocca: "I think they welcomed having an extra pair of hands. Among other things, it meant that while Nazila and Bobby (and Roger) followed the main event in Tehran, I could go check out conditions somewhere else (Isfahan), which other news organizations lacked the resources to do."
Tom Scocca: I mean, look, more reporting is a good thing.
Choire Sicha: Yes, I want more reporting!
Tom Scocca: But if we can acknowledge up front that there are many problematic elements of cultural politics and professional envy in the use of the term "danger slut," he's still a danger slut, or something related, but with cap-H History in place of danger.
Choire Sicha: Lots of reporters are built that way, though.
Tom Scocca: And perhaps one of them would have been eager to go to Isfahan.
Choire Sicha: I think that if I were the executive editor, I would send myself out on a story like this once a year. I also think I would do a bad rusty job of it however.
Tom Scocca: And who would edit you?
Choire Sicha: No one! WHO WOULD DARE. Nah. Some total bitch who works for me would do it.
Tom Scocca: That is the other problem when these warhorse reporter-editors, Keller and Remnick, hear the rumble of History's cannon in the distance and feel their blood quickening with the memory of what it was like to Be There as the Soviet Union fell. Who's going to say, actually, let's get the News Analysis piece written by one of the guys who was working the capital?
Tom Scocca: "Isfahan is nice color, Bill, but it doesn't feel right out in front like that."
Tom Scocca: "Actually, David, I'm not sure we need another big piece on Obama and race, reported off Inauguration Day-it might feel a little stale and redundant, at this point."
Choire Sicha: I'm not sure Bill Keller brought that much (anything? Did he ever file?) home from Des Moines, back in 2007, either, that the folks who were out there weren't getting.
Tom Scocca: I'm sure they have people they think they trust to make editorial judgment calls about their reportorial work. I bet Kim Jong-Il asks people for feedback on his screenwriting, too.
Choire Sicha: Well they are very good reporters!
Tom Scocca: They have proud records of accomplishment. And Mao was a good poet, when he was young.
Choire Sicha: I have never read the early works of Mao.
Tom Scocca:

Alone I stand in the autumn cold
On the tip of Orange Island,
The Hsiang flowing northward;
I see a thousand hills crimsoned through
By their serried woods deep-dyed,
And a hundred barges vying
Over crystal blue waters.
Eagles cleave the air,
Fish glide in the limpid deep;
Under freezing skies a million creatures contend in freedom.
Brooding over this immensity,
I ask, on this boundless land
Who rules over man's destiny?

Choire Sicha: Oh! That is pretty damn good.

Tom Scocca: But then he wrote stuff like this:

On this tiny globe
A few flies dash themselves against the wall,
Humming without cease,
Sometimes shrilling,
Sometimes moaning.
Ants on the locust tree assume a great-nation swagger
And mayflies lightly plot to topple the giant tree.
The west wind scatters leaves over Changan,
And the arrows are flying, twanging.
So many deeds cry out to be done,
And always urgently;
The world rolls on,
Time presses.
Ten thousand years are too long,
Seize the day, seize the hour!
The Four Seas are rising, clouds and waters raging,
The Five Continents are rocking, wind and thunder roaring.
Our force is irresistible,
Away with all pests!

Choire Sicha: Eep. Well, you know, sometimes our ideas change as we age.
Tom Scocca: Yes. And sometimes the quality of feedback we get changes.
Choire Sicha: Although I don't know if regimes of terror are quite the right analogy!
Choire Sicha: Although I have heard not dissimilar terms from inside both headquarters!
Tom Scocca: Nevertheless, it's not possible for people to treat the top boss as a normal reporter. So the reason that Bill Keller may be feeling "bizarre vibes" is that this littlefoot/bigfoot dance makes people feel weird.
Tom Scocca: "I'm just a regular reporter! Who assigned myself to the story!"
Choire Sicha: Sure! Never not awkward!
Tom Scocca: And I am personally quite strongly against making writing and editing into mutually exclusive career tracks.
Choire Sicha: That's because you're an opportunist. Oh no wait: because you're poor.
Tom Scocca: Yes. It's because it's never clear to me which one of those two things, if either, I'm more able to make a living at.
Choire Sicha: Also editors I think forget something about how to write. They have work lives where they say things like "Well that won't play in Nassau county!" Their job is to make reporting, in a way, less specific. Which is the opposite of the writer's job.
Tom Scocca: Maybe Keller should have sent A.G. Sulzberger to cover Iran.

Previously: Matt Taibbi Has A Bad Pottymouth

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See more posts by Tom Scocca

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