“You better let me take this. They’d never believe it coming from you.” That’s legendary New York Times editor R.W. Apple at the end of a particularly expensive dinner with Times colleague Joseph Lelyveld. Though Lelyveld had extended the dinner invitation to Apple, and had chosen the venue, Apple’s spending resume that included “the world’s single-trip expense-account record.” Only he could submit such a receipt.
The quotes and anecdotes come from Calvin Trillin’s 2024 book/memoir of sorts (review here), The Lede. Trillin’s stories of print media and how things used to be came to mind a great deal while reading Graydon Carter’s unputdownable new memoir, When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines. Reading Carter’s book I found myself wishing, as with Trillin’s, that he’d tripled the length. I similarly found myself wanting to get Carter’s take on Trillin’s memoir, Trillin’s take on Carter’s, and most of all I found myself wanting to watch a podcast or television show featuring both trading stories about how things used to be.
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