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Backstage, some of his staffers called their new editor "the Iron Mouse" because of his self-deprecating manner and his irresistible whim. Slowly, meticulously, that whim widened The New Yorker's concerns and investigations. The world that the reader now entered became far more real and gritty, far less trivial and debonair. To the untutored eye, The New Yorker was the fixture as before; the magazine's makeup remained unaltered. The glittering Van-Cleef & Arpels brooches, the Boehm porcelains, the Rolls-Royces and Mercedes still whispered their seductions from the sidelines. But, incongruously, in the columns that threaded between these celebrations of richesse were books that would permanently alter their audience: Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, Carson's Silent Spring, Commoner's The Closing Circle, Arendt's Eichmann in
Jerusalem and scores of others. The weekly invitation was no longer to a par ty but to a symposium. The change was not without its dangers.
If Ross's liability was a firmly shut mind, Shawn's has been one that some times remains too charitably open. The Greening of America, with its pot-scent ed praise of youth (who in turn greeted the book with the immortal tribute "Oh, wow!"), made many readers wonder if the magazine had suffered a touch of sclerosis. The frontispiece, "Talk of the Town," turned suddenly from boutique prattle to sometimes perceptive, some times ponderous essays about Nixon, Watergate, Cambodia, Agnew or poli tics in general. The New Yorker's sol emn discovery of causes was often over bearing and relentless. Indeed, Critic Philip Nobile, in his journalistic study Intellectual Skywriting, found the mag azine a prime exemplar of radical chic.
Still, these are relatively minor blemishes — perhaps the result of any enterprise that seeks, as Shawn has put it, "to create 52 works of art per year." It is unsurprising that errors are commit ted; it is astonishing that so many of those issues were — and are — art works.
In the late '60s, in the midst of sup posedly affluent times, The New Yorker fell upon bitter days: tumbling circula tion, reduced advertising. Reluctantly, Eustace Tilley wiped off his smirk and rolled up his sleeves. For the first time in its history, the magazine printed a table of contents. Soon afterward, a bold pro motional campaign was launched, an nouncing that The New Yorker, yes, The New Yorker — which in palmier days had had a waiting list of advertisers — was actually soliciting business. Fortunately, the enterprise had accumulated enough wealth — and enough loyal writers, art ists and subscribers — to weather hard times. Today, in a recession period, The New Yorker enjoys much, if not all, of its old stature. Circulation (487,000) has never been larger. Yet full restoration of the old magazine is, happily, impossible.
The cartoons are no longer classics — but oddly enough, they are funnier. The younger contributors, from John Updike to Woody Allen, have tended to displace rather than replace their predecessors.