An essay in Tweets about working at the New Yorker

I seem to be on a New Yorker kick. Here's an interesting article by Dan Baum about his experience writing for the New Yorker, which ran as a series of Tweets (which is a medium I have yet to understand the point of, but that's a topic for another post). I love hearing about writers' lives and experiences, and I was especially interested since the New Yorker is, of course, the creme de la creme. Baum also very generously posts on his web sites the article queries that got him into the New Yorker and other mags, and the ones that got rejected. What a model of helping aspiring writers!

David Foster Wallce

If you haven't read the posthumous profile of David Foster Wallace in the New Yorker, you must. It is so beautiful and touching, and it really captures just how crazy-making it can be like to be a writer. I was scared to see how much I related and empathized to his struggles.

My favorite line of the article:
“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being,” he once said. Good writing should help readers to “become less alone inside.”

That's exactly why I read--and write.

RIP, DFW.