BOOKS
SMILE AND GRIN , RELAX AND COLLAP SE
55 SHORT STORIES FROM THE NEW YORKER. Simon and Schuster.
$5.00.
It
is easy to make fun of
The New Yorker,
especially since
T he New Yorker
has taught us how to make fun of anything and every–
thing. At the same time it is just as easy and just as wrong to dismiss
The New Yorker
as merely a weekly periodical which pretends to be
nothing more than amusing, and intends to divert the reader, while he
glances and grins at the cartoons, and becomes acquisitive, looking at
the luscious or luxurious advertisements.
T he New Yorker
propagates
a definite set of values, it has an enormous influence, and it certainly
stands for something important and full of consequences. For most of its
devoted readers, it provides a weekly lesson in how to be sophisticated
and civilized in one's thoughts, in one's conversation, and in one's at–
titudes toward all of the possibilities and actualities of existence. Al–
though
The New Yorker
obviously has no political views, its pages are
paved with good intentions, the good intentions of that kind of well–
meaning liberalism which cannot tell the difference between a Socialist
and a Stalinist, or between a genuine defense of civil liberties and a
conspiratorial exploitation of democratic rights.
However, its politics do not matter very much since no one seems
to be dissuaded or persuaded, but merely confirmed in his views, or
indifferent or oblivious.
It
is the effect of
T he New Yorker
upon litera–
ture (of which the present selection of short stories published between
1940 and 1950 is a good sample) which is powerful and p ernicious.
The effect can be overestimated, no doubt, but perhaps overestimation
would be preferable to underestimation, an underestimation based on
the misleading truth that the deliberate intention of
The New Yorker
is solely to be amusing.
Thus there can be no doubt that
The New Yorker
does set up
a model of what the short story ought to be and just what a good
prose style is. The fact that writers cooperate and collaborate with edi–
torial standards does not lessen but rather illustrates the extent of
Th e
New Yorker's
power. There are exceptions, but as usual they merely
probe the rule and prove the tendency, just as the book reviews of
Edmund Wilson, by their very appearance, make clear the philistine
uneasiness, ignorance, and arrogance which prevails in most of the
other efforts at literary criticism. The chief recent tendency, so far as
