Nick Paumgarten remembers the New Yorker editor John Bennet, whose “rare mix of taste, judgment, candor, composure, selflessness, and insubordination” earned the trust, respect, and gratitude of his writers.
, and what became known as the Impossible Sentence, which he composed, with Nancy Franklin, in the eighties, made up of words that were effectively banned from the magazine: “Intrigued by the massive smarts of the balding, feisty, prestigious workaholic, Tom Wolfe promptly spat on the quality photo located above the urinal.”, in 1975, in the copy department, and worked as a collator—he copied out each reader’s edits onto a master proof.
One traded Bennetisms: “Only shitty writers need transitions.” “A writer is a guy in the hospital wearing one of those gowns that’s open in the back. An editor is walking behind, making sure that nobody can see his ass.” One of his writers, John McPhee, said last week, “John was a protector of writers, a protector of writers’ time.” The master collator fielded the incoming paper and swatted away unwelcome meddlers.
Bennet edited, among so many others, Elizabeth Kolbert, Connie Bruck, Seymour Hersh, Oliver Sacks, and William Finnegan, and mentored generations of young people, whose opinions and incipient talents he cared for deeply. Another Bennetism: “Here, take a look at this.” When he thought a young writer had promise, he’d say, “There’s film in the camera.”
He was more sophisticated and guileful than he let on, but he perpetually aspired, with better results than most, to utter non-pretension. Kolbert still regrets overruling Bennet’s insistence, fourteen years ago, that she remove the phrase “mutatis mutandis” from a story about Rudy Giuliani. He thought it sounded pompous. Above my desk I have a galley tacked to the wall.
I once made a reporting visit to the home of a subject who I suspected might be dangerous, and John—less than a year away from his retirement—stood guard just down the road in his pickup truck, in case things went sour. Making sure. If they had, what would he have done? I doubt he knew. But it would have been the right thing. ♦New Yorker Favorites
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