One Good Move has video of George Saunders’s September 6 appearance on Letterman. I thought he was very entertaining. (The commenters at One Good Move seem a bit crabby, though.) You can assure yourself of precisely that manner of tomfoolery if you attend one of the many Saunders events in the coming weeks.
I love David Letterman, but I would never accuse him of being in the least highbrow. Perhaps Saunders will spark a trend! I’m sensing a good opportunity for a little reader participation.
Question: Steve Martin aside (he’s always the big outlier in such matters), can anyone think of other “serious” writers appearing on the show? I’m pondering who the least likely literary guest Letterman ever had might have been. (My brain just concocted a fleeting image of Beckett grimacing at Paul Shaffer.) Is there a good resource for checking past Letterman guests? If not, I’m sure our readers have plenty of mind-blowing anecdotal evidence to share.
As far as I’m concerned, we can consider the NBC show as part of this too. (Hat tip: The Millions and Paper Cuts.) —Martin Schneider

The 9th annual Parkerfest is upon us! (Note that it’s been around one year longer than the New Yorker Festival, with which it shares a weekend this year.) The Dorothy Parker Society celebrates its eponym with a speakeasy night, a walking tour, a Round Table lunch, music, readings, and more. Sign up for the Society’s newsletter, and you will be constantly up to date on all matters Parker-related.
Parkerfest 2007 will be held on October 4, 5, and 6, and will be joined by the Robert Benchley Society for a double-whammy party.
Thursday, Oct. 4
Dorothy Parker Reading, Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction, 7-9 p.m.
Titled “The Potable Dorothy Parker” and co-produced by Celia Bressack and Stephanie Sellars, this is the second year in a row that this unique ensemble has presented Mrs. Parker’s work in the East Village. The address is 34 Avenue A, admission is a suggested $5.
Friday, Oct. 5
Cocktails at the Algonquin Hotel. 6-8 p.m. Meet in lobby. Cash bar.
Saturday, Oct. 6
Dorothy Parker-Robert Benchley Walking Tour. 11 a.m. meet in lobby. $15.
Lunch at the Round Table. 1:15 p.m. meet in lobby. Cash only.
Dorothy Parker-Robert Benchley Banquet. 6:30 p.m. Pete’s Tavern. 2-hour open bar and dinner. $50 per person. Cash only. RSVP
here (limited space available).
Dorothy Parker Bathtub Gin Ball. 10:00 p.m. The Bridge Cafe. 2-hour open bar and party. Ticket TBD per person. Cash only. RSVP
here (limited space available).
My father once attended a birthday party for Marcel Proust hosted by the Proust Society, and that was awfully festive, but this sounds like even more fun.
—Martin Schneider

Does anyone know when James Wood’s first New Yorker review will run? Those who haven’t read The Broken Estate or The Irresponsible Self lately might welcome Garth Risk Hallberg’s refresher course on Wood’s approach in the form of a thoughtful critique of Wood’s takedown of DeLillo’s ambitious novel Underworld. Hallberg insists that Wood’s just not getting it. I found the book a little starchy, but I expected that going in. None of which is to say that it failed to meet its goals, exactly. I remain agnostic on the subject. How did Underworld go over out there?
Either way, I find it cheering to see such fervent advocacy for an admittedly difficult novel. Hallberg clearly loves the big ambitious fiction of DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace, references “Jonathans Franzen and Lethem” (endearing him to us, anyway), and treats his adversary (Wood) with due respect: “The essays on Chekhov and Mann in The Broken Estate should be required reading for any novelist.” I really like the flow chart Hallberg provides of “Literary/Critical Conflicts of the Past Two Decades,” with its droll “Darts of Disapproval” and “Rings of Harmony.” How refreshing to see (for instance) n+1, Dale Peck, and Cynthia Ozick diagrammed so saucily and succinctly! —Martin Schneider

The Millions kindly reminds us that New Yorker regular George Saunders is spending the week blogging at the Powell’s site. (We can even see where it all started; so much for the worry that the small moments of literary history may be lost in the digital age.) Judging from the first post, it should be a hoot.
Saunders is promoting his new book, The Braindead Megaphone; he’s doing a whole bunch of readings this month, some of which are listed in our Google Calendar. If you haven’t signed up for the jam-packed calendar yet, check it out here. —Martin Schneider

Emily asked me to write this post yesterday. By chance, a few hours earlier, I had been watching a recent movie about a magazine editor. You know which one I mean: The Devil Wears Prada, with the delightful Meryl Streep portraying Miranda Priestly, the undelightful editor of Runway. She’s tyrannical, perverse, charming, disdainful, and petulant—a fine movie villain, all the more potent for our knowledge that, as is not the case with Darth Vader, something very much like her is actually out there.
The movie (can’t speak for the book) largely accepts Priestly’s view of the world. Stanley Tucci’s Nigel intones some fol-de-rol about the superiority of fashion over art. Indeed, there’s only one force external to Priestly in the entire world that the movie posits as unquestionably superior to the values of Miranda Priestly: The New Yorker. (We know this because it is the ambition of Anne Hathaway’s beleaguered assistant, Andy, to work there. She is putting up with Miranda Priestly to work there.)
William Shawn was the anti-Miranda Priestly. I can’t think of anybody who tried harder to make The New Yorker a magazine to provide solace and comfort in a world too often dominated by the values of, ah, Runway—than William Shawn.
William Shawn was born one hundred years ago today. His name was Chon then.
I sometimes find Shawn a difficult literary-historical figure to like. (You know you’re in trouble when they hire Bob Balaban to play you.) Obviously intelligent and discerning, Shawn was also reportedly highly phobic and fussy. He was the kind of person, I suspect, who used excessive diffidence as a means to get his way. In accounts of him, he comes off as prudish and secretive as well. I point out these traits because—I mean, what goes into a great magazine editor? Who are the great magazine editors-in-chief in this country, anyway? The New Yorker aside for a moment, it’s a fun parlor game. Clay Felker? Kurt Andersen? I.F. Stone? Harold Hayes? Hugh Hefner? Ben Sonnenberg? George Plimpton? (We can expand the field a bit to include Henry Luce.)
It’s interesting to me that in among all these outsize figures is this small, mousy fusspot, and he just might be the best of the bunch. You have a picture in your head of what constitutes a brilliant magazine editor, and Shawn’s there to prove that it might be totally wrong.
The most economical way to express Shawn’s expansive cast of mind is to present a simple list, the Profile subjects for a single year. Here’s 1975. There are 34 other years like it.
Erskine Hamilton Childers, president of Ireland
Henri Langlois, film historian and collector
Jim Hall, jazz guitarist
Shirley Verrett, opera singer
Nam June Paik, a pioneer in video art
Rev. Edward Thomas Hougen, Orange, Mass. (pop. 6,188)
Betty Parsons, N.Y. art dealer
Cary Grant, movie actor
Michel Guerard, French chef
John Crosby, founder, Santa Fe Opera
apples
Jess Stacy, jazz pianist
Philip Barry, popular playwright
House of Baedeker, German travel-book publishers
Carmen Santana (fictitious name), a welfare mother
Robert Freitas, official, baseball minor leagues
I.I. Rabi, physicist (two parts)
Harvey Phillips, virtuoso tubist
Clarence “Ducky” Nash, voice of Donald Duck
To the least parochial editor who ever lived, on his hundredth birthday, here’s to you.
(January magazine also has a tribute to Shawn today.)
—Martin Schneider