58 Comments

I love this, please be the public editor of various publications more often.

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Jan 26Liked by Max Read

LOL, I see the tone of "furious editor pretending that the unworkable draft has merit and personally captured their interest" is a shared cross-cultural language

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I teach American Dirt in conjunction with the Groff, Gurba, and Sehgal reviews. It's fascinating to see how college students, nearly all of them studying outside the humanities, have a firmer grasp of the text and its surrounding controversy than the former editor of the New York Times Book Review.

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Jan 27·edited Jan 27Liked by Max Read

Funny that she almost-but-never-quite lands on what we’ve really learned about the phenomenon of “cancellation”: when it happens, it is primarily institutional and/or clique-based (you might not be welcome at public functions for a PR-approved amount of time; you might have to have an uncomfy meeting with earnestly aggrieved employees; audiences do not, however, evaporate), and it’s also a result of New York arts/media people obsessing way out of proportion over what’s happening on Twitter.

“Cancel culture is real” and “no one is ever really canceled” are both true statements, though one’s telephoto and the other’s wide angle. She’s probably too ideologically invested in the former, and too ensconced in the business, to zoom out, but even the most stridently-SJW Gen Y and Zs I know are able to toggle between the two.

As you said, it’d be great to read such a central figure genuinely wrestling with that distinction — hope these edits land on *someone’s* desk :)

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now this is blogging, baby!

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congrats to max read, new public editor for nyt

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Jan 26Liked by Max Read

Free idea for a timely peg:

Oscar nominations came out this week; Crash (2004) and Green Book (2018) won Best Picture despite similar "liberal pieties" hype and corresponding lines of criticism.

Frank Bruni might not appreciate the straying onto his turf, though.

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Jan 28Liked by Max Read

Tactfully editing a piece of crap is an almost impossible job. Kudos for showing how it is done! But then again, I wasn't an "editor" dealing with "writers;" I was a "senior lawyer" with juniors. If time was short, I always had the option of re-doing it myself.

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Jan 26Liked by Max Read

Who is your favorite editor as depicted in fiction?

Also, please know that no premise is too stupid for us, your inexplicably loyal readership.

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Jan 29Liked by Max Read

Besides my comment below about how fantastic this is (and I've been in the biz for a LONG time) a possible typo-related nit to pick: I don't mean to be that person but I don't know how to message you privately with this. I'm doing it because I can see that you care about getting things right.Did you mean to write "Cummins" in this sentence: "Maybe I’m misunderstanding some of the anger about it, but I don’t think WOODSON was writing a “conservative” book, or even a, for lack of a better phrase, politically ambiguous one." You're referring to "American Dirt here, right?" My apologies if I'm misreading.

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This should get at least two Pulitzers

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I love that you haven't thoroughly edited this piece, thus giving us the opportunity to be editors ourselves! This newsletter truly is the whole package.

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Jan 30Liked by Max Read

This piece is terrific, but I do have one editing question, since it's been a while since I had to edit editorial copy: Did AP Style update its guidelines re "presently," as in your opening sentence? Last I remember, it was OK to use "presently" to mean "soon" but not "currently." Did that change?

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Jan 29Liked by Max Read

Such savvy suggestions for adding timely relevance and, especially, "behind-the-scenes editorial decision-making."

I'd have been "absolutely fascinated to hear more about [her] feelings about the book, those reviews, and your memories of how people in publishing were reacting."

I read the op-ed when posted a day before it appeared in print, and definitely would've appreciated your approach more than the version "simply recounting the events passively/neutrally." A missed opportunity , certainly.

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Brutal! Wonderful and brutal!

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Oh, I adore this as an analysis tool in general. Would love to see editors notes on every article / op-ed / etc I read, if they’re anything like this! It’s fascinating on a few different levels. very cool! I’m broke but still subscribed haha

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