D. T. Max, staff writer at The New Yorker and author of several books including The Family that Couldn’t Sleep (2006) and Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (2012), came to WashU this past week for a luncheon with a select group of public-humanities-curious individuals. After our discussion, a few things occurred to me: 1) The New Yorker is a real institution with real people working for them; 2) tho their chief export in nonfiction is journalism, that loosely defined genre can easily be expanded to something along the lines of public-facing scholarship; and 3) they do accept submissions, but even the most established figures in their fields must decide for themselves how much time they’re willing to spend waiting for the magazine to get back to them in re a story pitch.
A note on the first point: The magazine is as much a leading voice in culture and politics as they are a specific style and a niche undertaking. In other words, they’re ‘real’ because they’re a thing rather than the thing. A note on the second point: Max explained to us that many of the stories that get published do so after the fact - that is, The New Yorker doesn’t deal with breaking news as much as they elaborate and deepen our sense of what’s already out there. That sounds like humanities research, does it not? I think so. A note on the final point: this doesn’t mean don’t try, and it certainly doesn’t mean don’t trust that your work is worthy of the magazine. But it does mean having an honest conversation with yourself regarding what you’re doing, who you’re writing for, why ‘going public’ matters to you, and which public-facing avenues best integrate your perspectives and objectives. That could very well be The New Yorker. But it also may not be. Trite but tested and true: do what’s best for you.
For submissions: https://www.newyorker.com/about/contact