Up on the bulletin boards in The New Yorker's drab Manhattan office last week went a notice: "William Shawn has accepted the position of editor of The New Yorker, effective today." The announcement, signed by Raoul Fleischmann, the publishing company's president and largest stockholder, came as no surprise. As second in command under the late editor, Harold Ross, 44-year-old Shawn was his natural successor, although outwardly he is as different from Ross as The New Yorker is from the National Geographic.
A small (5 ft. 5½ in.), pink-cheeked man who wears a button-front sweater with his Brooks Brothers suit, Shawn has a...
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