Saul Survivor

This week's New Yorker has a story by Roger Angell about the Red Sox winning the World Series. The accompanying illustration is a colored-pencil drawing of a fanciful, physics-defying ballpark. As the work of Saul Steinberg goes, I actually like this piece. And the fact that Steinberg has been dead for five years doesn't change how I feel about the drawing--at least that fact on its own doesn't.

But the late Saul Steinberg may very well be the most frequent contributor to the New Yorker. A couple of weeks ago, he even had a drawing on the cover. Some of these primitivist drawings work for me; some don't. But I'm sick of seeing them.

Steinberg is probably most famous for a cover drawing he did, with Manhattan in the foreground, and everything east of the Hudson river reduced to insignificant specks. While that may accurately reflect my worldview, I don't think it's grounds for continuing to run the man's works approximately every two weeks. And I don't think I'm exaggerating. I find more of the drawings downright bad than good enough to be running in the country's best magazine.

So to the art department of the New Yorker: let's give some living artists a try. I know there are some good ones out there.

Howl, howl, oh Howell!

My class and I have been discussing Howell Raines, Jayson Blair, and that whole fiasco this week. And since it's verging on a month since I've posted anything to this blog, I thought it appropriate to share this parody I wrote of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl."


Howell

By Kevin Lerner, with appropriate apologies

I.
I saw the best writers of a new generation destroy with plagiarism, borrowing
hysterical faking
dragging the gray lady through the negro—not that it mattered that he was negro—streets
at dawn
who passed through the University of Maryland without degree,
who cowered in apartment in Brooklyn, cell phone expense report
West Virginia claimed
who described tobacco fields and interviews never had, cell phone to photographer
lied I’m coming
who racked up corrections, setting A2 records, earning weeks off for mental health,
warnings from Landman
who despite said warnings earns promotion to National, sniper coverage,
Maryland officials exclusive source ghosts
who read avidly the San Antonio Express-News
who told the Observer idiot editors couldn’t catch fabrications and borrowings,
anonymous sources from whole cloth
who refused to fade silently, feeding Pappu Romanesko chatrooms
pundits for weeks
who fueled Jay’s jokes, laugh lines from Letterman, a town hall meeting of those who
strive to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose
who brought down the Raines from heaven and Boyd who stand before you speechless
and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul.

II.
What Sphinx of talent and burnout and too many second chances bashed open our skulls
and brought ignominy to the mighty Ochs and Sulzberger trust, and yet could still
Bragg about his wiles?
Jayson! Jayson whose mind is pure machinery! Whose fingers are ten armies destroying
the Power and the Glory!
Jayson! Jayson! Jayson of Brooklyn, whose mind is running book deals!
Jayson! The low point of 152 years of history!