Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976 Read Online Free PDF Page A

I think) romantically minded, and who tend to incorporate sex into the body of the romance.
    Then we come to the Earl’s remark that “if a man and woman choose to live together, that should be nobody’s business but their own.” If the Bishop were smart, he would simply point out to students that the word to watch out for in that sentence is the word “should.” Of course it should be nobody’s business but their own. But it usually turns out to be the business of the darnedest, most unexpected people, including a young man in the same building who has been secretly in love with the girl for three years, has sublimated his passion by tearing telephone books in two, and now seizes the opportunity to hang himself with a rope made out of dozens of college pennants. Students should certainly be informed that no man, since the beginning of time, has lived with a woman without it turning out sooner or later to be somebody else’s business.
    Finally, there is the Earl’s little essay on the psychology of adultery. “Suppose,” writes Earl Russell eagerly, “a man has to be away from home on business for a number of months. If he is physically vigorous, he will find it difficult to remain continent throughout this time, however fond he may be of his wife.” I think Bishop Manning should just tell the students that the matter of continence during a business trip has very little to do with physical vigor. An exceptionally vigorous man almost invariably spends himself in rather forthright, athletic ways—leaping up stairs three steps at a time, pounding on other men’s desks, and putting in long-distance calls from clients’ offices. It is the tired little fellow on his way home from a basal-metabolism test who is most likely to become hopelessly involved in some adulterous and unhappy circumstance quite beyond his puny control. In my professional life (I am a doctor), I have enjoyed the confidence of hundreds of adulterous per-sons; rarely have they shown evidences of any special vigor. As a group, they are on the anemic side.
    These are only a few of the points which the Bishop has been worried about. I merely wished to suggest to him that if he wants to spike Russell’s guns, he is going about it the hard way.
    Yours faithfully,
    WALTE R TITHRIDGE, M.D. *
    EDITORIAL WRITERS
    3/4/44
    GEORGE SELDES , in the Saturday Review, says he has never known of an editorial writer who wrote as he pleased. This makes us a kept man. We often wonder about our life in our bordello, whether such an existence erodes one’s character or builds it. An editorial page is a fuzzy performance, any way you look at it, since it affects a composite personality with an editorial “we” for a front. Once in a while we think of ourself as “we,” but not often. The word “ourself’ is the giveaway—the plural “our,” the singular “self,” united in a common cause. “Ourself’ is real. It means “over-self,” which reminds us that we should try to dig up a writer named Emerson for this page.
    At any rate, we have evolved (and this may interest Mr. Seldes) a system for the smooth operation of a literary bordello. The system is this: We write as we please, and the magazine publishes as it pleases. When the two pleasures coincide, some-thing gets into print. When they don’t, the reader draws a blank. It is a system we recommend—the only one, in fact, under which we are willing to be kept. Mr. Seldes can undoubtedly prove that it comes to the same, in the end, as if we deliberately shaped our ideas to a prescribed pattern, but in order to do that he will have to write another article, so at least we’ve made work for somebody and are not entirely frivolous and useless. Of course, a good deal depends on the aims of a publication. The more devious the motives of his employer, the more difficult for a writer to write as he