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571
is held in higher esteem, approached with more discerning apprecia–
tion, and looked up to with a more bewildering mixture of excitement,
fear, trembling, and respectful reverence.
It is not easy to account for these sentiments; but it is likely that
the magic of expensive luxury goods decorating the pages of
The New
Yorker-by
which Hollywood sets its standard of
material
success-is
only a surface phenomenon. Underneath the surface there are deeper
roots. New York is (or was) not only the physical home of many who
have made the long trek West to dig the gold of Hollywood (and claim
to have regretted it ever since-a pardonable form of human self-de–
ception) ; but New York was, is, and perhaps always will be the spirit–
ual home, the level of the highest aspirations, for the "better part" of
Hollywood. And
The New Yorker
is the symbol for this spiritual home.
Thus to write for
The New Yorker
is to have risen above "Holly–
wood" into a different world, to an intellectual level on and for which
The New Yorker
is believed to be written; in short, it is
to
have re–
deemed oneself from all the power, glory-and failure which is the bet–
ter part of Hollywood. Any producers wife can drive a Jaguar or wear a
blue mink stole (but what is that, alas, when anybody else can do so,
too?); anybody can peddle (yes, that's the word for it in Hollywood)
a story for the movies if he drinks cocktails with the right people, hangs
around long enough, has the right manners at gin rummy, and possibly
a knack for dialogue; but it is given only to a few-ah, so few-to ap–
pear in the pages of
The New Yorker.
This is more than just to place
a story in a respectable magazine, much more: it is an act of self-reali–
zation.
Next to writing for
The New Yorker
ranks being written up by
The
New Yorker;
for without some such theory as this, I submit, it
is
diffi–
cult
to
explain why and how Hollywood responded to the challenge of
the girl from
The New Yorker
as it did. Arriving with the
imprimatur
of
The New Yorker
she had all the credentials she would ever need to
"crash" Hollywood.
She came, looked, and listened-and for weeks and months she
was the center of attraction and worship. She was a careful observer;
she took copious notes; she remembered my first name after one casual
meeting. But she never seemed to say anything herself-except to ask
questions.
These questions, however, were something else again. They were
quite deceptive in their sophomoric simplicity. Listening intently, and
with an air of an innocent child looking in wonderment and rapture at a
lighted Christmas tree, she would occasionally interrupt the speaker to
