Who says the social novel is an endangered species? Well, Jonathan Franzen says it, and even though he’s a smartypants in most other ways, we think he’s a little deluded on this point. Consider Jane Smiley—maybe not the hippest ribbon on the May pole, but certainly an unparalleled novelist and social critic (this is her 12th book, Jon). Good Faith is set in the go-go 80s and charts the rise and fall of a regular Joe in small-town USA getting in way over his head in various get-rich-quick schemes—certainly a stand-in for the same type of good intentions that eventually played out in Enron and WorldCom.
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Kurt Andersen: the Rakish Interview
[From the May 2003 issue of THE RAKE]
Kurt Andersen seems to be a man of moderation in all things–with the possible exceptions of coffee and work. As we sit in an elegant anteroom of the Minneapolis Club, he is brimming with creative energy, seeing and making connections across vast intellectual territory. One Italian loafer bounces jauntily beneath the Georgian coffee table for almost an hour.
Andersen is best known as the founding co-editor (along with Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter) of the celebrated humor magazine Spy. But that was just one chapter in a charmed media life. Andersen got his start writing for film critic Gene Shalit in the 70s. From there, he went to Time magazine, where he met Carter. The two left in 1986 to found Spy. After they sold the magazine in 1991, Andersen became editor of New York magazine. He eventually got the sack for being too tough on Wall Street, then worked in television, and as a staff writer at the New Yorker. By the late 1990s, he finally decided to attempt a novel. The result, Turn of the Century, was a bestseller. For his next act, he founded Inside.com, a respected web-based publication dealing with the media trade. Now, he’s jumped careers again, taking the host’s stool of the popular new PRI radio show Studio 360. The other day, Andersen came to the Twin Cities to defend his life, crediting his successes to “the amateur spirit.”
HANS EISENBEIS: You’d never been an editor before Spy, never a novelist before Turn of the Century, never a radio host before Studio 360, never a new media mogul before Inside.com. How do you distinguish the amateur from the dilettante?
KURT ANDERSEN: At any moment along this zigzag path, it requires being fully invested, fully focused on the things at hand. It only looks like jumping around and only turns out to be jumping around when you look back at what you’ve done. At the moment, you know, it’s I’m doing this thing with all my energy and heart. I believe that, but it’s also a way to self-justify how my life has turned out so far. I have been lucky. Even though I don’t love managing people, particularly, and I’m not managing anybody now, thank God, I think I did it pretty well, in that sense of seeing when someone has the combination of talent and gumption and hunger and all those things, to see this is a good person. The things I ran, I was always pretty careful to hire people that I wanted to hang out with. With Spy magazine and all the entities I’ve been involved in, part of the fun is having a club–a group of like-minded people to hang out with and have fun. If I had any management theories, which I don’t, that would be part of it. Also, in terms of managing people, the thing that drove me crazy always, and I tried to avoid or quash, was people who are at a place and they’re whining and grumbling. Obviously there’s always grousing at the job, but ultimately either be there and be happy, or don’t be there.
So you did a lot of hiring based on chemistry?
Absolutely. And mostly that worked out. And mostly I stay friends with people I’ve worked with, if that’s a measure of anything.
A lot of talent came out of Spy. For example, Susan Morrison was your executive editor at Spy for all those years, and now she’s one of the great pillars at the New Yorker.
When Graydon and I were starting Spy, we’d been in the Time Inc. bubble, where you don’t necessarily meet lots of other writers and editors at other magazines. I met Susan through a friend. She was like 26, she was working at Vanity Fair as an associate editor, and she seemed great, so we hired her. In retrospect, we were able to hire her and other people away from good jobs to do this nutty lark of a thing, it’s kind of amazing. Again, I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind it reinforces my new doctrine of amateurism. The kind of interlocking trails of the media world in New York, Graydon left Spy to become editor of the New York Observer, he left the New York Observer to become editor of Vanity Fair. Susan followed him as editor of the New York Observer, then got fired, then went to Vogue. I was, by that time, at the New Yorker and said to Tina Brown, “You should hire Susan Morrison,” and she did and she became my editor.
The amateur spirit is one thing, but not everybody gets asked to write about their vacation in the NYTimes magazine, or to host a national radio show. Obviously, a person has to earn his stripes first. Would you say you earned your stripes at Time magazine?
I’d say I earned my stripes in three ways. The first job I had writing for Gene Shalit was a great job, dues-paying, daily work. He then very generously got me this book contract for this little book I wrote. And so at 26, I had that kind of young writer hunger to have a book out of my system a little bit. That probably helped me get the job at Time, so yeah–the first ten years of my stripes-earning life, ending with Time, were kind of the proving-myself period. Even if you find yourself at a place that isn’t maybe your favorite magazine, or isn’t in absolute sync with your sensibility–like Time was for me–I had a great time at Time, because they liked what I did, and let me do a lot of things, and I worked with great people. But it was the daily, weekly work of, OK, I will try to make this thing I’m doing this week or this month as good as it can be, and be proud of it, even if Time magazine isn’t where I want to spend my career. And then my lucky stumble into doing Spy was some kind of graduation into personal, orbital velocity or something, I guess.
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Mad Love for Lou
Thank you! I was absolutely thrilled when I saw your interview with Louise Erdrich [“The Novelist at Rest,” March]. I’ve been a long time fan of hers, but had no idea that she had a bookstore right in my old stomping grounds. I cannot wait to go there and spend an entire afternoon shopping and reading. I haven’t ever seen your mag before, but will definitely look for it from now on. It’s fabulous, and I look forward to reading it for years to come.
Melinda (Lin) Galarneau, Farmington -
Morbid Fascination
One day at college, in New York City, we were discussing getting smacked by a cab or a bus. What would they do with you if you were not identified [Hidden Treasures, April]? I was told you would be brought to Potter’s Field—taken across the river and buried standing up, after they took a snapshot of your face. So one fine Saturday in May, we went to the old Potter’s Field in New York City, burial site of the unwanted and unknown. I could not believe the files and files and files of photos, some dating way back, many children (of the streets) and others who were just found and not claimed. It was fascinating. There are no markers, just land. They did, indeed, bury you standing up and on top of one another. Kind of creepy and mostly sad. We intended to stop a few hours, and spent nearly eight looking through these files of men, women, children, and some with both woman and child—nameless photos of people buried over the period of a century. This was way back in 60s. I never thought of Minnesota as having any potter’s fields—I thought that name was just for New York City’s.
Joy Kangas, Hamel -
Sooner or Later?
Thanks for your article on global warming. We are not hearing much about it in this country from the corporate press. My opinion is that Minnesota will be a “warm Nebraska” much sooner than 50 years from now. One of the factors that is not taken into account in some of the computerized models is the diminishing snow cover that will reflect less infrared radiation back into space. Another factor is that obsolete technologies, such as the internal combustion engine, are growing faster than the world’s population. In Beijing, the streets were once clogged with bicycles. Now they are clogged with automobiles. When the nations of the world should be scrambling to build renewable energy technology that doesn’t create greenhouse gases, and when we should be taking emergency action to deploy a national and worldwide conservation program, our oil-friendly leaders are carrying on with a war that will spew megatons of unnecessary toxins and gases into the world’s atmosphere. Even if most of the scientists around the world are wrong about global warming, is it still OK to fill our air with cancerous filth? I don’t think so.
Don Johnson, Minneapolis -
Busted by the First Law of Thermodynamics
In reading Mr. Singer’s letter [Letters, April], I couldn’t help but notice the absence of any mention on his part of the fossil fuel emissions/greenhouse gases that would be produced by the increased demand for electricity from the existing infrastructure—as to whether or not the air quality of the city would be improved by mass-transit’s conversion to electricity. This seems to me to be contingent on where the power plants are located and what fuel is being used. But something tells me that Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics might be of use in this discussion.
Robert Carter, Eagan -
Stephanie March: Babe-Alicious Crime-Fighter, Food Writer
When a publication goes national and even international, steps have to be taken to make sure that local writers are not confused with national and international figures. The March edition presents an article entitled “Taters” [Down the Hatch]. The author is Stephanie March. The failure by your editors to include a brief note on the author Stephanie March, indicating she is not Stephanie March, the lead actress in Law and Order SVU, is an oversight that should be corrected. Many fans of Stephanie March the actress know that she has an interest in food, so an article about potatoes with Stephanie March’s byline unreasonably suggests that the actress wrote the article. This misconception is reinforced by Google searches which list Stephanie March, the author of “Taters,” in the same results as for Stephanie March, the actress. The only upside is that many of Ms. March’s (the actress) fans read the article by Ms. March (the food writer) and quite enjoyed it. However, given the national and international popularity of Stephanie March the actress, posting a clarification would be considerate to both Stephanie March’s fans and a sign that this is a professional publication.
Malcolm J. Scully, Quebec -
That Awful Pri-NPR Mix-Up, Again
In the most recent issue of The Rake [April], there is an article entitled “Smashing, Glass” in which reference is made to “NPR’s ‘This American Life.’” This is incorrect. National Public Radio (NPR) has nothing to do with either the production or distribution of this very popular program. “This American Life” is produced by WBEZ/Chicago Public Radio and distributed to public radio stations nationwide by Public Radio International (PRI), located right here in Minneapolis. Public Radio International and National Public Radio are the two major distribution services for public radio. Individual public radio stations can be affiliates of both PRI and NPR, selecting programming offered by each. Public radio is a generic term, while Public Radio International and National Public Radio refer to specific distributors.
Linda Sue Anderson, PRI Executive Assistant, Minneapolis -
Former President Alive, Well, Opinionated in St. Paul?
You bet, the Twin Cities area had a great transit system before Green and Ossanna got in and wrecked the streetcar empire in less than three years time, 1951–1954 [“Get Rail!,” March]. Twin City Lines did have buses to augment the streetcars and a fair amount of private right of way. The vast majority of the train cars were built right here in the Twin Cities. They were high-speed machines, capable of 50 mph. The TCL home-built tanks were comfortable and efficient. One TCL “standard car” could hold a “crush crowd” of 150 bodies. A bus can only do about half that many. Electric traction has quicker acceleration than the noisy, two-speed “slushbox” transmissions on most buses. Electric traction vehicles can be coupled into multiple unit trains. The Twin City area needs many more LRT lines, and commuter rail too. Rip out the “insane lane” of I-394, and put in LRT all the way from Long Lake to Hudson, Wisconsin. Minnesota needs to get into the 21st century.
John Kennedy, St. Paul -
Krusing for a Bruising
To point out hypocrisy is often to belittle or ignore the larger argument. Colleen Kruse points out that her friend, Megan the Vegan Pagan, eats only organic food in an effort to be healthier, yet she smokes [Motley Krüse, April]. A clear hypocrisy, even if they are American Spirits. President Bush promotes the building of hydrogen-powered cars, yet in the same week offers a big tax break to businesses that buy SUVs and pickups. Hypocrisy? Yes. It doesn’t follow, however, that organic is pointless or that hydrogen-powered cars are bad. The Environmental Protection Agency, surely the president’s most beloved organization, just released stricter guidelines for evaluating the risks of certain chemicals used in pesticides, having discovered the greater likelihood that children will get cancer from exposure to pesticides than adults. To explain all the reasons why it is better to avoid pesticides would be just as trite as the incongruity Kruse points out in her stereotypical depiction of someone who buys organic foods. Colleen Kruse and her ill-used friend can keep their cancer, and I will keep a wary eye on hypocrisy.
Steffan Hruby, Minneapolis