September 20, 2010 Issue

There are two fascinating profiles in the magazine this week, each describing how an American male became (or is close to becoming) a self-made billionaire. Beyond that they are, in form and matter, very different pieces. Jose Antonio Vargas’s "The Face of Facebook" is about Mark Zuckerberg, the twenty-six year old founder and C.E.O. of Facebook. According to Vargas, Zuckerberg is “a strange mixture of shy and cocky.” Vargas also describes him as “wary and private.” The tag-line of the piece – “Mark Zuckerberg opens up” – strikes me as misleading. It seems to me that Zuckerberg rarely opened up, and that Vargas's portrait of him is somewhat of a feat, constructed from close examination and ingenious interpretation of seemingly low-yield, innocuous evidentiary scintilla. For example, in ordinary circumstances, a host offering his guest a glass of water would be a very minor action that is, you would think, hardly worth reporting; but in “The Face of Facebook,” it forms part of the portrait (“Standing in his kitchen, leaning over a sink, he offered me a glass of water”), and a telling one, too, because it illustrates Zuckerberg’s minimalist approach to life: he didn’t offer wine or juice or even bottled water; he offered tap water – it doesn’t get more basic than that. Another example is Vargas’s observation of Zuckerberg and his girlfriend, Chan, interacting (“She touched his right hand and smiled”). Again, no detail is too small to be grist to Varga’s mill, and he mills very fine in deed. Both the aforementioned quotes come from my favorite section of “The Face of Facebook” – the part that begins, “On a recent Thursday afternoon, Zuckerberg took me for a stroll around the neighborhood in Palo Alto where he both lives and works.” Most of the rest of “The Face of Facebook” is artfully created from secondary sources – Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile, transcripts of Instant Messages from litigation documents, interviews with people who know Zuckerberg, news stories, a phone interview with Zuckerberg, etc. “The Face of Facebook” goes like a streak. I devoured it in twenty minutes. When I was finished, I immediately e-mailed a link to it to four people I know who are Facebook members (there’s an electronic version of the article freely available at the New Yorker website). Vargas writes in plain, point-and-shoot prose. There are no vivid metaphors or similes. As far as I know, this is his first New Yorker piece. It’s difficult to predict whether he will become a regular contributor to the magazine. His writing style may be a bit too spare for a magazine in which the texture and beauty of the writing is as important as the content. But in “The Face of Facebook,” Vargas may have had to pare down his style to accommodate the minimalist lifestyle of his subject. What I like about his writing is his unhesitating use of “I” – a prerequisite, in my opinion, of great literary journalism. Regardless of what Vargas produces in the future, his “Face of Facebook” stands as an inspired model of how to make something savoury out of very few ingredients.

Turning now to the other “billionaire” profile in this week’s issue – Nick Paumgarten’s "The Merchant" – I relish the opportunity it presents to express my appreciation of a master New Yorker writer in full possession of all the requisite journalistic tools, currently writing at the top of his ability. Whereas Vargas, in his piece, was faced with a guarded, reticent subject, Paumgarten, in “The Merchant,” found himself immersed in a superabundance of rich detail. “The Merchant” profiles sixty-six year old Millard Drexler, former C.E.O. of the Gap, and current C.E.O. of J. Crew. Unlike Zuckerberg, Drexler is a talker and, as Paumgarten says, “an avid interviewer.” Paumgarten has a great ear and he catches wonderful swatches of Drexler’s dialogue, pinning it perfectly to his narrative. Here, for example, is Paumgarten describing Drexler talking to a room full of J. Crew’s merchants:

The first hour finalized nothing, however, and was instead a free-ranging discussion, with stretches of soliloquy, that circumscribed a point Drexler wanted to make about the perception of J. Crew, in the room and in the marketplace. "Every day, I feel I can’t keep up," Drexler began. "But then I start to feel, Am I keeping up? Is it important to keep up? I live my life and I can’t read every blog. But, O.K., so I hear about Essie nail polish. How many of you wear Essie nail polish? By the way, I’m supposed to get my first manicure on Saturday." He looked at me with embarrassment. "I don’t know if I’m gonna do it." This led him to asides about the low cost of pedicures and manicures ("the best deal in America"), the fact that other companies were now copying J. Crew’s designs ("It’s O.K., that’s the world"), the implications of the film version of "Freakonomics" ("I thought it was gimmicky"), the integrity of the actress Catherine Keener (a roomful of women exclaiming, "Oh, she’s great!"), and the integrity of J. Crew’s goods ("What the customers are paying for is the perception of value. Stitch by stitch, fabric by fabric, we offer the most value"), all by way of advancing the idea that, as he put it, "our name is worth more than we internally think. Clothes can talk, you know what I mean?"

I like the way the above passage is structured, particularly Paumgarten’s use of parenthesis to contain the samples of quotation. It enables Paumgarten to pick his way through Drexler’s long speech, re-creating its effect, without having to resort to lengthy quotation. “The Merchant” brims with bright, sharp, original description. Examples: “He stepped away for Blackberry hiatuses that were sure to set off recriminating e-mail tangents”; “Sometimes, little brushfires of conversation erupt, and Drexler snaps his fingers and extinguishes them.” And consider this all-most-over-the-top Cormac McCarthy-like zinger: “The ceaseless merchant murmur – the conversation between want and need, aspiration and means, product and price – that runs like a river through the heavily tilled plains and alluvial flats of American commerce pours through the thundering gorge of his mind.” I’ll bet the magazine’s editorial staff, ever watchful for the dreadful sin of overwriting, looked at that last quote long and hard before letting it in. Of course, great writing consists of more than just description. Perception is an ingredient, as well. And Paumgarten is an inspired perceiver. For instance, at one point, he says, “To the extent that any man’s emphasis on his genuinely humble beginnings can acquire a veneer of affectation, you might say that Drexler prizes the signaling implications of the Bronx; his embrace of its lessons and privations, as a basis for his approach to life and business, is as vigorous as his urge to escape them was.” Sometimes Paumgarten’s perceptions are so neatly stated, they have the sparkle of aphorism, e.g., “The top echelon of American business is a Rushmore of unhappy childhoods.” I like the way Paumgarten gets around. He goes to the scene, and he takes his readers with him. In “The Merchant,” he’s in the Manhattan offices of J. Crew; he visits Drexler at his house in Sag Pond; he travels with Drexler and his team on Drexler’s jet; he’s present for an in-store meeting in Minneapolis; he attends a tour of a boot-making shop in Lewiston, Maine. It’s the same with most of his other New Yorker pieces, and I love it. Motion, motion, the Paumgartian narcotic. When he says, in his marvelous "The Mannahatta Project" (The New Yorker, October 1, 2007), “One day, I went to visit Sanderson in the W.C.S. offices, which occupy a cluster of trailers in a parking lot in the Bronx Zoo,” I’m right there with him (vicariously, of course), thrilled to be in on the excursion, avid for the experience. If Paumgarten has a weakness, it’s an overfondness for the affluent crowd. I don’t expect he will ever write a piece like, say, Joseph Mitchell’s great “Professor Seagull” (The New Yorker, December 12, 1942) about the Greenwich Village bohemian and flophouse denizen, Joseph Ferdinand Gould. But you never know with Paumgarten. He’s phenomenally talented; you get the feeling no subject is beyond his reach if he wants to write about it.