What I didn’t realize at the time is just how devoted the magazine is to its writing. I suppose that technically all publications are in some way devoted to good writing—even this humble blog attempts to produce at least a semblance of something readable—but The New Yorker takes it to an art.

It is probably more accurate to say, in fact, that The New Yorker is devoted to the art of writing rather than just to writing well. It does not just inform you about the subject, or persuade you, or entertain you. Instead, the authors seek to build a picture out of words for you. It may be true that a picture is worth a thousand words, but then how do we value a picture built from words?

This idea of pictures built from words occurred to me while I was reading Ian Frazier’s “Travels in Siberia“. As Frazier was describing the vast Russian hinterlands and the eclectic people whom he encountered along his “ultimate road trip”, I kept thinking that the trip would have been perfect fodder for one of those National Geographic articles filled with amazing pictures of foreign places and things. Then I realized that such pictures would be redundant; Frazier’s words were the images.

Not to say that pictures are unnecessary. National Geographic just wouldn’t be itself without its incredible images (though there has been a sad decline in the amount of informative writing accompanying them in recent years). But in this case the images would have hindered the telling of the tale.

Frazier paints with his words as a painter puts oil on a canvas. Or, from a different point of view, he uses them as a chisel like a sculptor; he begins with the stereotype of Siberia and whittles it away until all that remains is the essence of the land. Reading his account draws you into his travels as much as gazing at the horizon of the steppes in a picture could ever pull you in.

My attempts at painting a picture with words of Frazier’s picture with words, for that is what I am quickly falling into, will inevitably fail. So I’ll leave you with simply an emphatic recommendation that you read Travels in Siberia, parts one and two.

That said, I will allow myself to indulge in a post about posting, for the purposes of, well, self-indulgence.  And also because there are a few good ideas to be had from the endeavor.

Having not posted a substantial piece of writing in quite a while, I realized I was starting to yearn for the chance to choose a topic, order my thoughts about it, craft my words, and polish the piece to perfection.*  While I am not a particularly literary person (few would call my writing the height of literary accomplishment, and those who do are probably just trying to flatter me), I am informed that I have a knack for clarity.  One of the best compliments I ever received came from a friend who told me, “James, you have a way of just taking words out of the air and putting them together and saying ‘there you go.’”

Without drifting into self-flattery as well as self-indulgence (it is my professional opinion that blog posts should be limited to only one subject which includes the prefix “self-”), I think I can safely note that there is something very satisfying about a good piece of writing.  First, it has the helpful characteristic, like all other human tasks, that when it is done well it makes us feel good.  We can look back on it and say, “Hey, I did that!”  Or, in the words of our own Creator, “It is good.”

Second, a good piece of writing has a sense of order to it.  As humans seem constantly intent on fighting the entropy of the world around us, order is soothing to our minds.  If you took all the words in a good  blog post, jumbled them up in a bag, and dumped them out again, you would have… a mess.  But when that mess is arranged into a well-ordered post you have something enjoyable to read.  Perhaps this is why we all  like magnetic poetry so much.

In addition to the satisfaction derived from the actual piece of writing itself, the long-term process of learning to write is enjoyable in and of itself.  (I actually believe this, even though I could be accused of simply pandering to the “it’s the journey that matters” people with that comment)  Nothing illustrates this to me quite like em dashes.

There is something wondrous about a well-placed em dash.  (Just like the magic of a correctly used semicolon!)  Consider the following paragraph from a paper I wrote:

The largest difficulty facing modern democratic government is no longer external aggressors or internal tyrants. Instead, the most pressing problem modern government must  confront and conquer today is itself. At the core of this problem lies the issue of bureaucracy. While bureaucracy is the brunt of many jokes, Albert Einstein is said to have quipped that “bureaucracy is the death of all sound work,” the fact remains that a well functioning bureaucracy is necessary for the existence of the state.

Now take the same paragraph, but use the em dash carefully:

The largest difficulty facing modern democratic government is no longer external aggressors or internal tyrants. Instead, the most pressing problem modern government must  confront and conquer today is itself. At the core of this problem lies the issue of bureaucracy. While bureaucracy is the brunt of many jokes—Albert Einstein is said to have quipped that “bureaucracy is the death of all sound work”—the fact remains that a well functioning bureaucracy is necessary for the existence of the state.

It may seem like a subtle change, but the addition of the em dashes makes a world of difference in how the sentence reads.  When the clause is set off by commas, it remains part of the sentence.  But when the mighty em dash is employed, our mind pulls out of the sentence momentarily to ponder the brilliance of Einstein.  While we remain on the same topic, the em dash allows us to interject an only semi-related thought without destroying the flow of the writing.

It took me many years, and much reading, to appreciate the usefulness of the em dash.  I admit to being somewhat biased against it in the past.  (I won’t try to justify this; we must learn to put childish things behind us.  Can I justify why I didn’t like cheese when I was young?  No.  Neither can I justify my dislike of em dashes, other than to say that I was misguided.)  Now, however, it is an integral tool in my writing arsenal.

This is what I mean by the process of learning to write: developing new tools. Blogging facilitates this process.  While my older posts may not be the most marvelous things in the world, I can look back over them and trace the evolution of my thought, style, and maturity in their words.

There are many more ideas in the realm of meta-writing which I didn’t touch on here: the joys of editing, the logical learning of a good outline, and others.  Even the quiet satisfaction of spell-check could be the subject for a post.  But let us conclude there, before we venture too far into the realm of the pataphysical in our blogging, and our blogging about our blogging, and—horror of horrors!—our blogging about our blogging about our blogging.  If we do, we may never come out again.  Let “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” be a warning to us all:

Joan was quizzical; Studied pataphysical
Science in the home.
Late nights all alone with a test tube.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.

Maxwell Edison, majoring in medicine,
Calls her on the phone.
“Can I take you out to the pictures,
Joa, oa, oa, oan?”

But as she’s getting ready to go,
A knock comes on the door.

Bang! Bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer
Came down upon her head.
Bang! Bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer
Made sure that she was dead.

Perhaps I’m tradition-bound, but this is one quirk of Times style that I would go to some lengths to defend. We strive for a tone that is literate, civil and serious: not fussy or old-fashioned, but also not chatty or self-consciously hip. It’s not an easy balance, and we don’t always get it right. But I think the simple use of courtesy titles — whether it’s “Mr. Bush,” “Mrs. Clinton” or “Ms. Rivera, a teacher from Queens” — injects a note of thoughtfulness and civility into our pages. Amid the daily cacophony, that seems a worthy effort. 

Incidentally, a reader’s question in that section also used the word “bailiwick”. I figure it has to be a good question if it correctly uses “bailiwick”. So, go enjoy a talk with the newsroom.