Ruth Reichl on David Foster Wallace and Magazines
Yesterday Condé Nast shocked the media world with the announcement it would be closing Gourmet Magazine. In 2006 I interviewed editor-in-chief, Ruth Reichl. While we were talking about “Consider The Lobster” the famous essay she commissioned from David Foster Wallace, she made a haunting point about the importance of magazines.
Juliet Waters: How much did you edit the essay David Foster Wallace wrote for Gourmet?
Ruth Reichl: Oh barely. Barely at all.
JW: Really? Because I found it so much more reined in than the rest of his writing, so I’m curious.
RR: Well he seemed to feel that it was edited a lot. We had one enormous fight, he and I, about something that I just wouldn’t put in the magazine, which he hasn’t forgiven me for. But, I mean, it was really long. It ran at 7,000 words and the original might have been, uh, 10,000 words. So we did have to take some out. And he wasn’t happy about it. On the other hand, he was happy enough about it to call his entire collection Consider The Lobster.
JW: It definitely seemed to me the most disciplined essay he’s ever written.
RR: Well, it was one of those things. I think he’s just used to having his stuff run as is. But he argues over every comma. I mean—literally—every comma. But to me one of the great things about a magazine—and magazines everywhere—is that it is the last bastion of serious editing. Books don’t get edited the way magazines do. It’s the kind of thing where a group of us will sit around in a room and argue. And I have to tell you, when that piece of David Foster Wallace’s came in, I truly was terrified. I mean, in retrospect, we were stupid not having thought about what he was going to find when he went to the Maine Lobster Festival. But it hadn’t occurred to me that we were going to get a piece on bioethics. And I truly was prepared for people to cancel their subscriptions in droves and say, you know, “I don’t buy Gourmet magazine to read about what lobsters feel when they get plunked into boiling water.” On the other hand, being faced with it, I mean that’s the thing about being an editor. You send this terrific writer out to do something and he gives you something that is better than anything you had any right to expect, and more important—truly heartfelt—and then you have to run it, even though you know it’s going to be really controversial.
JW: But you’ve always been pretty sensitive to the politics of food, so I’d be surprised if your core readers would dump you.
RR: We got hundreds, literally hundreds of letters and they were 10–1, “Thank you for writing this” and then every 10th letter was, “Are you insane to do this to your readers?” But yeah, one of the things I feel really good about since I’ve been at Gourmet is that we’ve taken a magazine that never, ever thought about the politics of food and we have something in just about every issue that deals with issues of hunger and genetic modification and the politics of food—you know, it’s my really strong-held belief that today, if you’re a passionate cook, you really have to know what’s going on in the food system. It’s just something that we can’t really ignore anymore. And it felt really good that readers have come with us.
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Comments
Now I can't remember the last time I bought one from a newsstand. Change in me or change in them ... I don't know.
Anyway, an insightful piece, JW -- and you are to be complimented on your interview technique.
Rated
I've actually interviewed Reichl twice. Once when she was the restaurant critic for the New York Times. She'd just published her first memoir, Tender at The Bone. There is a harrowing scene where her manic depressive mother brings her on a weekend trip to Montreal. Then informes her that SURPRISE she'd enrolled her in a private french boarding school, and will be seeing her in a few months.
Reichl's claims her mother was a dangerous cook, and that she never tasted anything good until she discovered Montreal smoked meat. So, despite the trauma, she's always had a soft spot for our city.
But, yes, re-reading that made me really sad, for DFW, and Gourmet, and magazines. Not so much for Ruth. She'll keep doing great stuff, I'm sure. And I really enjoy her books. And now she gets to write the big tell all about Condé Nast! We talked about that, and I sensed she was itching a little.
Hopeful
That said, Wallace wasn't exactly a pithy writer, was he?
She says she barely edited his writing at all. Editors say this constantly, while making HUGE changes. From 10,000 to 7,000 words--that's roughly 1/3 of what he wrote. But she makes it sound like it was nothing. Oh, editors.
OK, sorry, I'm an editorial geek!
The problem I always have reading him is that he doesn't leave much space for the reader to do her own thinking. He's brilliant, but sometimes oppressive.
Personally, I enjoy working with good editors. Especially at national magazines, they do know what they're doing. They have more time than newspaper editors, but there's more pressure to be clear, concise and engaging in an article than with a book manuscript. So you learn a lot.
I highly recommend that everyone re-read Wallace's collection. There's an elegance and focus to that essay that just gives it an edge over the other ones, I think.
I've never read "Consider the Lobster", but now I'm going to track it down and read it because I'd love to see what DRW + a decent editor might be like - and I feel like I'm owed it after having suffered through Infinite Jest, which should have just been called, "The Infinite Novel".
Does that sound too harsh? I’m sorry about Gourmet closing and what that says about the state of the magazine industry. But Wallace was a genius; Reichl’s a good writer, but not in his class. She should have stood back and let Wallace do his thing.
It's his best essay, I think, because his numerous digressions don't distract from the power of his research and his beliefs. (As they do in too many of his essays.) And there are those who might say if he wanted to do a 10,000 word piece on the bioethics of lobster eating, why would he think Gourmet was the magazine for that? I think they both made a compromise, and it worked out for the best. And as Reichl pointed out he named the entire collection after that essay. So he wasn't THAT disappointed with it.
Anyways my point here is to mourn what looks like the inevitable death of magazines not compare Reichl and Wallace as writers, which is ridiculous comparison. She's an editor and light memoirist. He was a literary genius. The thing we remember about that essay is its unlikely home. I wonder if we'd even remember it if it had been published in Harper's.
See? Even my COMMENT needed editing!
Somewhere Maxwell Perkins is smiling.
Thank you for this.
My son was working as a judge with RR for a National Magazine Awards category. He lost the magazines he published/edited not long after. And now she did too.
And lots of us consider the lobster nowadays. DFW was ahead of his time.
And thanks Chicago Guy and Lea. Glad you enjoyed it.
I keep hoping we'll see this translate into online magazine writing and blogs, and often I'm inspired and my hope is met. There are a lot of great writers out there, generating their own content and fiercely loyal to each comma a la David Foster Wallace.
Yet the space and time for editing...can we maintain that, somehow? The proof is in the final result, but the process is invisible in a good print feature. I think far too few readers really understand what editors do.
Commas are important; they define the rhythm. Semicolons too. I sometimes put in commas where they "don't belong," simply because I want the sentence to have a different rhythm. I understand the comma thing, honestly.
Hillarious, as was DFW's essay. 1 perfunctory page on the Festival itself, and 6 more describing lobster anatomy, biological categorization, the metaphysical implementations of torturing lobsters - and even a grisly description of lobsters desperately trying to escape the boiling water!
The essay is both shocking and hillarious, given its context. And equally shocking is that Gourmet published it. I'm guessing that the Maine Lobster Festival may have boiled DFW in effigy the next year.
As for whatever editing was done (since we can't know exactly what was taken out), it did seem to detract strangely from his voice a little bit. I kept expecting him to go on a two-page tangent describing the motion of a lobster's feelers. But to be fair, they did allow him 20 footnotes, the removal of which would probably have been a show-stopper for DFW.
But now I find myself more curious than ever about this quote: "We had one enormous fight, he and I, about something that I just wouldn’t put in the magazine, which he hasn’t forgiven me for."
What, pray tell, was it? Was it a more direct indictment of home cooks as torturers? Or was it a two-page treatment comparing lobsters to victims of the holocaust?
Anyway, funny essay, great interview.
If I had to guess where she cut, however, it was probably a description of the lobster festival folk. Knowing those people the way I do, it bordered on mean. And there are probably a lot Gourmet subscribers with summer homes in Maine...But that's just a guess.
You're probably right (me, slapping forehead).
Yes, that was notably absent from the article, and I'm sure if allowed to he could have metaphorically boiled them alive. Just the absence of much description of the event itself (except for the clinical overview of it and the recurring references to the big lobster cooker) was funny in itself.
She seriously damaged her credibility, though, when she told the bold-faced lie of "Oh barely. Barely at all." and then admitted to cutting 30%.
I don't think any of us can judge whether the cuts made it better or worse without reading both, but I'm curious why she would lie. Did you get a sense of that, Juliet?
Still, it was very interesting, even if I didn't trust her after that.
I'm amazed that they're shutting that mag down. I thought it was a cash cow--I guess I have not been watching in awhile.
I'm not sure I agree with her on editing. I have some great mag editors (Joan Walsh always made my stories better, and never changed the voice), but some mags make all their writers sound the same. Who needs that? I think that's part of the reason for their demise.
A writer friend who'd done a ton of mag work, as writer and editor, once said to me, "Magazines are such an editor's medium." I think that's true, and not healthy.
She's right, from what I hear, about books not getting edited so much by editors anymore. But a lot of agents picked up that work about a decade ago (along with an increase in the standard commission from 10 to 15%). Some do, some don't, so the trick is finding an agent who is a great and willing editor.
If you get lucky, you get great editors in your editor and your agent, and get two good rounds.
First she gave the polite answer most editors give about their writers. No sensitive editor is going to initially say "tons." But I'm a book critic. I'd read enough Foster Wallace to sense that he'd been pared down, so I pushed...and as it turns out I was right.
But, second, different kinds editors mean different things by "editing.| Food and travel editors usually have to push their writers for more color, more sensual detail, more stylistic changes, more voice. They cut huge chunks of essays without giving it a second thought, mostly out of space consideration. So when I asked her about the editing, her mind might have originally interpreted the question of what kind of stylist changes she'd made.
While a journalism editor would consider cutting a huge chunk writer real editing since they may be cutting out essential political information. They don't usually make as many stylistic changes as a travel/food editor might.
At least that's my experience having done both kinds of writing. So I'm willing to cut her some slack on that.
"The following pieces were originally published in edited, heavily edited, or (in at least one instance) bowdlerized form in the following books and periodicals. N.B In those cases where the fact that the author was writing for a particular organ is important to the essay itself--i.e., where the commissioning magazine's name keeps popping up in ways that can't now be changed without screwing up the whole piece--the entry is marked with an asterisk."
There are three pieces marked with an asterisk: "Big Red" a 48 pg essay on the AVN awards written for Premiere. Given how many 48 page essays usually run in Premiere, I'm going to guess it was chiseled at most. "Host" which ran in The Atlantic. But it has a subscript next to the asterisk which reads "at least a little bit." And finally "Consider The Lobster." Clearly DFW has not worked hard to disguise which essay he considered "bowdlerized."
Still, I maintain it's the best one. He did choose it as the title piece of the collection. And his argument for why he didn't re-write it more to his liking sounds a little flimsy to me. So the debate for or against the importance of magazine editing rages on.
By the way, I just want to mention the excellent piece on Ruth Reichl today in Big Salon. I personally know a couple of young Montreal writers she mentored. And I always found her the total antithesis to elitism. She brought a lot to that magazine, and frankly the whole world of food writing. She loved the gritty side of the true foodie life. She was Anthony Bourdain before he existed. And I really hope someone is smart enough to give her another magazine. I almost wonder if that isn't Conde's secret plan. To let the dust settle and then start a fresh new title that reflects the changes in the industry. If not, it should be somebody's plan.
However, Gourmet seemed a little bit different these past few years. Edgy, and a little more political. Not a bad thing, but not why I bought it. I loved the food, the photos, the deconstructing of the food. I loved hearing from chefs, bakers, and people in the industry more than I enjoyed the politics of food. I wanted to love their television show but after the first few episodes, it got old. But Gourmet is as much as institution as anything. I will miss it. And I hope Reichl writes some more. I miss her books.
It is a grand fall day here and I am thinking that it is late in the season for all print journalism. The best stuff today is probably the best ever and unfortunately may be the best we see in our lifetimes.
Savor the New York Times. In 2 years, it may seem like a luxury that you will be glad that you didn't miss.
Or whatever you love today in paper and print. Love it or lose it or love it and lose it, but history doesn't always follow our ideas of progress.
That aside, who's going to pay for good writers like David Foster Wallace to research a piece like that without magazines?
We had one enormous fight, he and I, about something that I just wouldn’t put in the magazine, which he hasn’t forgiven me for.
That, and only that, is what I walked away with from your post. How, oh how, could someone interview someone else who said those words and NOT ask, "Well, what was it that you just wouldn't put in the magazine?" I mean, really: did you actually not ask that? Because the stuff you're guessing was left out doesn't quite square with the precise wording of the foregoing quote. It feels to me more like a content issue.
I'm sorry if I sound harsh. I so don't mean to, but I can't help myself. I, like others here, am a DFWofile. Which is not to say I didn't enjoy Reichl's two memoirs. But, yeah, apples and oranges.
I appreciate, by the way, both the proprietary nature of one's writing--wanting to feed, clothe, and educate every punctuation mark that I choose to include in my writing--and the punch of that same writing when it's been edited just right. And that editing often comes from someone else, who I start out thinking "just doesn't get it" but who I end up seeing as prophetic.
I thought her comments on magazines and editing were especially interesting and insightful. Magazines feature some of the best writing of the most celebrated writers. LImited space demands that kind of discipline.
rated:)
Were you paid to write this for Salon? Was I? Of course not. Neither should Stephen King be paid a freaking dime. The only reason for writing should be personal pride in having crafted an article or book. There is no financial reward for writing things that are available free on the Internet, which today means everything. And for you to charge fees for lying to impoverished people with pipe dreams of financial solvency by authorship is a criminal offense.
Sadly, and as you know, Caprices de Nicholas shut down after many chefs who tried to emulate the tragic Jongleux and failed (as he himself did: he should have stayed on Drummond Street). I am away until the spring (I am blogging my trip to Turkey in Open Salon, you can check it out), but when I return let's have a coffee or a Pernod and chat. Cheers to you.