Interesting Emendations: Ian Frazier's "Paradise Bronx"

Sometimes a New Yorker piece appears that's been carved out of a larger work. Ian Frazier’s wonderful “Paradise Bronx” (The New Yorker, July 22, 2024) is such a piece. It comes from his recent book of the same name. Comparing the two versions, I found a number of interesting differences – some minor, some more substantive. For example, in the New Yorker piece, Frazier writes, 

Walking on Bruckner Boulevard one morning, I was stunned by the loudness of the trucks. (No other borough has truck traffic like the Bronx’s, partly because its Hunts Point market, for produce, meat, and fish, is the largest food-distribution depot in the world.) I also heard cars, vans, motorcycles, an Amtrak train, airplanes, and, on the lower Bronx River nearby, the horn of a tugboat pushing a barge. 

In the book version, Frazier combines the three sentences into one:

Walking on Bruckner Boulevard one morning, stunned by the loudness of the trucks (no other borough has truck traffic like the Bronx’s, partly because its Hunts Point market, for produce, meat, and fish, is the largest food-distribution depot in the world), I also heard cars, vans, motorcycles, an Amtrak train, airplanes, and, on the lower Bronx River nearby, the horn of a tugboat pushing a barge. 

Which do you prefer? The New Yorker version is more concise, less rambling. Nevertheless, the book version appeals to me. It’s less honed, more spontaneous. 

Here’s another example. In the New Yorker version, Frazier writes,

On the heights above the Hudson River, in Riverdale, I found the white stucco Moorish-Dutch-style mansion, empty and in disrepair, that John F. Kennedy moved into with his family in 1927, when he was ten. 

Here's the book version:

On the heights above the Hudson River, in Riverdale, I found the white stucco Moorish-Dutch-style mansion, now empty and in disrepair, which John F. Kennedy moved into with his family in 1927, when he was eleven.

The New Yorker version deletes “now” and substitutes “that” for “which.” It seems slightly smoother. But what I find startling is the change in Kennedy’s age – ten in The New Yorker, eleven in the book. Which is correct? I’m betting on the New Yorker version. It’s had the benefit of the magazine’s vaunted fact-checking.

Here's another example. In the New Yorker version, Frazier writes,

From the former Kennedy mansion, one can walk 4.7 miles to 825 East 179th Street, in the East Tremont neighborhood, where a thirteen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald lived with his mother in 1953. The building that Oswald lived in no longer exists, and there is no historic marker.

Here's the book version:

From the former Kennedy mansion, one can walk 4.7 miles to 815 East 179th Street, in the East Tremont neighborhood, where a twelve-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald lived with his mother in 1952. Not only is there no historic marker, but the building that Oswald lived in no longer exists, and the address itself seems to have been abolished.

Again, the New Yorker version is smoother and more concise – more Strunk-and-White-compliant. But the book version’s extra “and the address itself seems to have been abolished” serves to emphasize the total vanishing of the Oswald address. What’s startling are the factual discrepancies: “825 East 179th Street” in the New Yorker version; “815 East 179th Street” in the book; “thirteen-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald” in The New Yorker; “twelve-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald” in the book; “1953” in The New Yorker; “1952” in the book. 

One more example. In the New Yorker version, Frazier writes,

You could swim in the Bronx River and in the East River, climb the beech trees in Van Cortlandt Park, sit on your fire escape and hear your neighbors’ different accents and languages, smell five different culinary traditions wafting through your building’s stairwell at suppertime: Paradise.

It's one of my favorite sentences in the piece. Checking the book version, I find it’s been lengthened to include additional details:

You could see the zoo animals over and over until you knew them by heart, swim in the Bronx River or the East River, climb the beech trees in Van Cortlandt Park, spend afternoons in a branch of the New York Public Library, sit on your fire escape and hear your neighbors’ different accents and languages coming from nearby apartments, smell five different culinary traditions wafting through your building’s stairwell at suppertime: Paradise.

Both versions are delightful. I relish the extra details in the book version. 

There are at least a dozen differences between the two texts. The New Yorker version reflects the style of New Yorker editing, with its emphasis on concision. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The New Yorker version is probably more accurate, too, due to the magazine’s rigorous fact-checking. But I also like the book version. It might be closer to Frazier’s actual voice – the singular way he thinks and expresses himself. Both versions are superb. It’s fascinating to compare them. 

Interesting Emendations: Burkhard Bilger's "Fatherland"

I’m currently reading Burkhard Bilger’s absorbing family memoir Fatherland (2023). I’ve just finished chapter 8, called “Ghost.” It’s about Bilger’s participation in a Familienaufstellung. Reading it, I recall that Bilger wrote about this experience before in a New Yorker piece titled “Ghost Stories” (September 12, 2016). Comparing the two versions, I see a number of interesting changes. For example, both versions define a Familienaufstellung as “part theatre, part therapy, part séance—a measure of just how far Germans will go to come to terms with their past.” Both versions compare it to “family sculpting, in which patients take turns posing one another in groups to depict key moments in their lives.” Both versions note that a Familienaufstellung is “both more impersonal and more weirdly intimate” than family sculpting. Where the two versions differ is that the New Yorker piece is more detailed about the origins of the Familienaufstellung. Bilger notes that it “grew out of the work of Bert Hellinger, a German psychotherapist and former Catholic priest.” He writes,

Hellinger’s method is reminiscent of psychodrama—an early form of Viennese psychotherapy in which patients act out traumatic memories, often on stage or with props. But it’s closest to family sculpting, a type of group therapy developed by the psychologist Virginia Satir in the early nineteen-sixties. In Satir’s method, patients take turns posing one another in groups to depict key moments in their lives. How and where people stand—whether a wife faces her husband or has her back to him, or a son is alone in a corner or encircled by siblings—embodies their relationship. Sometimes it helps people see that relationship clearly for the first time.

At times, the behavior in these sessions is bizarre. Bilger says,

By the end of the second day, I’d been a brother, a grandfather, Restlessness, and the country of Germany. I’d watched people burst into tears, climb into one another’s laps, and pretend to be God. I’d heard a woman scream that she was bleeding from her vagina and that crows had eaten her baby. At times, the sobs and shouting rose to such a pitch that I worried that the police might come. 

Bilger is skeptical of the process, but not dismissive. He says, “The very act of empathizing so deeply could help people understand themselves.” But in the magazine version, he also says,

Whether it’s true, I can’t say. I never found any trace of those victims in German or French archives. Like a lot of the revelations in Baring’s sessions, this one struck me as a little too convenient. When you’re haunted by an ancestor’s past, you want nothing more than to hear him confess his sins—to condemn or forgive him once and for all, and then banish his ghost to history. But it’s rarely that simple.

Bilger’s “Ghost Stories” is one of the most personal pieces he’s ever written, and one of his best. It’s great to see a version of it preserved between hard covers. 

Interesting Emendations: Ben McGrath's "Riverman"

I’ve just finished reading Ben McGrath’s Riverman (2022). What an extraordinary reconstruction of a remarkable life! It’s a moving portrait of a strange voyager, solo canoeist Dick Conant, who, over the course of twenty years, paddled thousands of miles of American rivers, and then in 2014 disappeared near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. McGrath first wrote about Conant in a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” story called “Southbound” (September 22, 2014). Then, after Conant went missing, McGrath wrote a much longer profile of him, “The Wayfarer” (The New Yorker, December 14, 2015) - one of the best New Yorker pieces of the last twenty years, in my opinion: (see my “Best of the Decade #6: Ben McGrath’s ‘The Wayfarer,’ ” July 1, 2020). But McGrath wasn’t done. Conant’s story so obsessed him, he wrote Riverman - a book-length account of Conant’s life and travels. 

Riverman deserves a detailed review. But I’m not ready to do that just yet. I want to go back and read it again, this time more slowly, paying attention to its intricate structure. What I’ll do today is focus on one of my favourite passages in the New Yorker piece and compare it with the version in the book.

Here’s the passage:

While preparing to leave town, Conant discovered that one of his backpacks, containing months’ worth of reserve medication, had been stolen. Trying not to panic, he paddled on, toward Trenton. A few of the bridges over the canal were so low that he had to lean back and retract his chin, sliding underneath, as though into an MRI scanner, while cars rolled overhead. Then, eight or nine miles north of the city, he encountered some differences between the canal as it flowed and the map in his mind, formed from advance Google satellite scouting. He spied a corrugated culvert pipe, off to the left, through which water was leaking down into a creek—the Assunpink Creek, he presumed—and he decided to have a little fun, paddling into the rusty chute. Down he went, into the dark, gaining speed as he bumped along for thirty or forty feet. He was briefly airborne before splashing out at the bottom and taking on about a gallon of water, a small price for the experience of canoeing “like a ski jumper!,” as he put it. The canal runoff provided the creek with some helpful momentum, and for the next several hours he negotiated snags and shoals and descended minor rapids, all while looking for a plausibly private campsite. 

Comparing this passage with the book version, I see five changes: 

1. In the first sentence, “stolen” is now “stolen or misplaced.”

2. In the fourth sentence, “he encountered some differences between the canal as it flowed and the map in his mind, formed from advance Google satellite scouting” is now “he encountered some differences between the canal as it flowed and the map in his mind.”

3. In the fifth sentence, “the Assunpink Creek, he presumed” is now “the Assunpink Creek, he presumed, recalling his reading, in Austin, about the Second Battle of Trenton.”

4. In the sixth sentence, “as he bumped along for thirty or forty feet” is now “as he bumped along for thirty feet.”

5. In the seventh sentence, “canoeing ‘like a ski jumper!,’ as he put it” is now “canoeing ‘like a ski jumper!’ as he put it” (the comma is deleted).

None of these changes are major. But, to me, they’re fascinating. They show the fine-tuning that goes into a great piece of writing. I was relieved to see that the third sentence - one of the most inspired lines in the piece - is unchanged. It’s so beautiful, I want to quote it again: “A few of the bridges over the canal were so low that he had to lean back and retract his chin, sliding underneath, as though into an MRI scanner, while cars rolled overhead.” 

Interesting Emendations: Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Illustration by Sam Alden, from Ann Patchett's "Flight Plan"

Ann Patchett’s “Flight Plan” (The New Yorker, August 2, 2021) is one of my favorite pieces of 2021. It has a wonderful opening sentence: “The three of us were in a 1957 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” 

Recently, reading the piece again, this time in Patchett’s new essay collection These Precious Days, I was surprised to find the first line altered. It now reads, “Three of us were in a 1947 de Havilland Beaver, floating in the middle of a crater lake in the southwest quadrant of Alaska.” Two revisions, both interesting: “the” is deleted, and “1957” is changed to “1947.” Normally, I relish the use of zero pronouns, but in this case, “the three of us” seems more precise. As for the change in the de Havilland Beaver’s model year, I’m curious; which is it? Does it matter? Not if it’s fiction. But this is a personal history piece, so, yes, accuracy matters. 

I suspect what happened is that Patchett submitted her manuscript to The New Yorker. The magazine fact-checked it, found that “1947 de Havilland Beaver” should be “1957 de Havilland Beaver” and changed it. But when Patchett collected the piece in These Precious Days, she used her original text, ignoring the fact-checked New Yorker version. That’s just my theory; I could be wrong. Whatever the explanation, it’s an unfortunate discrepancy in a piece that seems destined for classic status. 

Interesting Emendations: Bill Buford's "Good Bread"

Bill Buford’s "Good Bread" (April 13, 2020) is one of the most absorbing, entertaining, and beautifully written New Yorker pieces of the last ten years. It’s about his apprenticeship to a Lyon baker identified simply as “Bob.” There’s a version of it in Buford’s recent memoir Dirt (2020). It's interesting to compare them.

In “Good Bread,” Buford writes,

On Sundays, the baker, Bob, worked without sleep. Late-night carousers started appearing at three in the morning to ask for a hot baguette, swaying on tiptoe at a high ventilation window by the oven room, a hand outstretched with a euro coin. By nine, a line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people and from music being played at high volume. Everyone shouted to be heard—the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands. Everyone left with an armful and with the same look, suspended between appetite and the prospect of an appetite satisfied. It was a lesson in the appeal of good bread—handmade, aromatically yeasty, with a just-out-of-the-oven texture of crunchy air. This was their breakfast. It completed the week. This was Sunday in Lyon. 

In Dirt, this passage is longer and consists of two paragraphs:

On Sundays, the boulangerie belonged to Lyon, and Bob worked without sleep to feed it. Late-night carousers appeared at two in the morning to ask for a hot baguette, swaying on tiptoe at a high window by le fournil, the oven room, an arm outstretched, holding out a euro coin. By nine, there were so many people going in and out of the door that it never closed, the line extended down the street, and the shop, when you finally got inside, was loud from people, and from music (usually salsa) being played at high volume. (Bob fell in love with salsa, and then with Cuba, and then with a Cuban, his wife, Jacqueline.) Everyone shouted to be heard – the cacophonous hustle, oven doors banging, people waving and trying to get noticed, too-hot-to-touch baguettes arriving in baskets, money changing hands, all cash.

The crowd fascinated me, all strangers, everyone leaving with an armful and with the same look – suspended between appetite and the prospect of an appetite satisfied. I learned something, I got it, the appeal of a good bread – as I was able to find it here, just across the street from our apartment: handmade, aromatically yeasty, with a just-out-of-the-oven texture of crunchy air. No one lingered. This was their breakfast. It completed the week. This was Sunday.

The differences between these two passages fascinate me. Note the change from “three in the morning” to “two in the morning.” They both can’t be correct. Which one is accurate? I vote for the New Yorker version, because I know it’s undergone the magazine’s vaunted fact-checking process. Note also the extra detail in the New Yorker version about the window: it's a ventilation window. Note the additional “le fournil” in the Dirt passage. Note the change from “hand outstretched with a euro coin” to “arm outstretched, holding out a euro coin.” And then there’s the additional “there were so many people going in and out of the door that it never closed,” the parenthetical “Bob fell in love with salsa, and then with Cuba, and then with a Cuban, his wife, Jacqueline,” the “all in cash,” the “The crowd fascinated me, all strangers,” the “I learned something, I got it,” and the “as I was able to find it here, just across the street from our apartment” – all in Dirt. 

One of my favorite passages in “Good Bread” is the description of Bob and Buford making deliveries:

Bob drove fast, he talked fast, he parked badly. The first stop was L’Harmonie des Vins, on the Presqu’île, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said). Two owners were in the back, busy preparing for the lunch service but delighted by the sight of their bread guy, even though he came by every day at exactly this time. I was introduced, Bob’s new student, quick-quick, bag drop, kisses, out. Next: La Quintessence, a new restaurant (“Really good food,” Bob said, pumping his fist), husband and wife, one prep cook, frantic, but spontaneous smiles, the introduction, the bag drop, kisses, out. We crossed the Rhône, rolled up onto a sidewalk, and rushed out, Bob with one sack of bread, me with another, trying to keep up: Les Oliviers (“Exceptional food”—a double pump—“Michelin-listed but not pretentious”), young chef, tough-guy shoulders, an affectionate face, bag drop, high-fives, out.

Here’s the Dirt version:

He drove fast, he talked fast, he parked badly. The car, by force of habit, reminded him that he was late and put him in an instant accelerating delivery mode. L’Harmonie des Vins was the first stop , on the Presqu’ile, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said). Two owners were in the back, busy, preparing the lunch service, but delighted by the sight of their bread guy, as if a friend had popped by unexpectedly, even though he came by every day at exactly this time. I was introduced (“a journalist who is writing about me”), quick-quick, bag drop, kisses, out.

Next: La Quintessence, near the Rhône (narrow street, no place to park, so he hadn’t, cars backing up behind him, none of them honking), a new restaurant (“Really good food,” Bob said, pumping his fist), husband and wife, one prep cook, frantic, but spontaneous smiles, the introduction (“writing about me”), the bag drop, kisses, out. 

We crossed the Rhône, rolled up on to a sidewalk, and rushed out, Bob with one sack of bread, me with another, holding it between two arms like a hug, trying to keep up: L’Olivier (“Exceptional food – a double pump – “Michelin listed but not pretentious”), young chef, tough-guy shoulders, an affectionate face, even if too busy to smile, bag drop, high-fives, out.

Again, the Dirt version is longer, this time divided in three paragraphs. It contains eight additions: “The car, by force of habit, reminded him that he was late and put him in an instant accelerating delivery mode”; “as if a friend had popped by unexpectedly”; “(‘a journalist who is writing about me’)”; “near the Rhône (narrow street, no place to park, so he hadn’t, cars backing up behind him, none of them honking)”; “(‘writing about me’)”; “holding it between two arms like a hug”; and “even if too busy to smile.” 

One sentence in the “Good Bread” passage – “The first stop was L’Harmonie des Vins, on the Presqu’île, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said)” – is restructured in Dirt: “L’Harmonie des Vins was the first stop, on the Presqu’ile, a wine bar with food (“But good food,” Bob said).”

“Les Oliviers,” in “Good Bread,” is “L’Olivier” in Dirt. “Michelin-listed,” in “Good Bread” is “Michelin listed” in Dirt.

I find all these variations fascinating. Why? Because it shows that nothing in writing is absolute. There’s no one way to say anything. The writer is faced with dozens of choices every word of the way. Contrasting these two versions affords a glimpse of the writing process, or, perhaps more accurately, of the editorial process. My guess is that the Dirt version actually came first (even though it was published after “Good Bread” appeared in The New Yorker). The New Yorker’s editors took the Dirt version and subtly trimmed it. I confess I slightly prefer the more compact New Yorker piece. But I relish Dirt’s extra details, too. For example, that “holding it between two arms like a hug” is very fine, creating a vivid picture of the way Buford carried the sack of bread into L’Olivier. Or is it Les Oliviers? 

Interesting Emendations: Calvin Trillin's "Breaux Bridge, Louisiana"

Photo by Peter Frank Edwards, from Calvin Trillin's "Breaux Bridge, Louisiana"

If you read Calvin Trillin’s classic “Breaux Bridge, Louisiana,” in last week’s “Archival Issue,” and were curious about who won the crawfish-eating contest, check out Trillin’s American Fried (1974). Its version of the piece ends with two additional paragraphs, the first of which contains this wonderful description of the eating champ:

The winner, Chester McGear, looked like one of the fraternity boys everyone had been so worried about, although he had actually graduated a couple of years before. He wore a sweatshirt emblematic of having consumed ten pitchers of beer in some tavern in Chicago, and he had a small rooting section that chanted “Go, Chester, Go!” or “Allons, Chester, Allons! or “Come on, Chester, Eat That Meat!” He was on his twenty-second pound of crawfish when his final opponent dropped out. I was pleased to see that McGear acted the part of a traditional eating champ. They never admit to being full. My father always used to tell me about a boy who won a pie-eating contest in St. Joe by eating thirty-three pies and then said, “I wooda ate more but my ma was calling me for supper.” When the reporters went up on the stand to interview McGear, he remained at his place, and as he answered the questions he absently reached toward the platter in front of him and peeled crawfish and popped them into his mouth, like a man working on the peanut bowl during a cocktail party.

Interesting Emendations: Anne Boyer's "The Undying"

Here are two versions of the same passage:

1. We are supposed to be legible as patients while navigating hospitals and getting treatment, and illegible as our actual, sick selves while going to work and taking care of others. Our actual selves must now wear the false heroics of disease: every patient a celebrity survivor, smiling before the surgery and smiling after it, too. 

2. We are supposed to be legible as patients and illegible as our actual selves while going to work and taking care of others as our actual selves now with the extra work of the false heroics of legibility as a disease: every patient a celebrity survivor, smiling before the surgery, and smiling after, too, bald and radiant and funny and productively exposed.

The first version is from Anne Boyer’s great personal essay “The Undying” (The New Yorker, April 15, 2019); the second is from her Pulitzer-prize-winning book of the same name. Which is more effective? To me, it’s no contest. The New Yorker version is much clearer.

The same applies to other passages in Boyer’s book; the New Yorker versions appear superior. Here are three more examples:

New Yorker	Book
In the week before chemotherapy begins, it is like preparing for a winter storm, or a winter storm and a house guest, or a winter storm, a house guest, and the birth of a child.	In the week before chemotherapy begins, it is like preparing for a winter storm, or a winter storm and a houseguest, or a winter storm, a houseguest, and the birth of a child; also, maybe it is as if preparing for all three of these and a holiday, a virus, and a brief but intense episode of depression, all while also suffering the effects of the previous storm, houseguest, birth, holiday, virus, and depression.
The day before chemotherapy, a friend arrives from someplace I would rather be—California or Vermont or two different towns named Athens. I do everything to look healthy so that my friend will praise the skillfulness of my camouflage, its materials purchased at Wigs.com, CVS, and Sephora. We don’t speak of chemotherapy except for the practical exchange of information, like what time to set the alarm for and the best route to the pavilion. We pass our time as friends would, roasting vegetables and listening to music and speaking excitedly of other friends or ideas or political events.	The day before chemotherapy, a friend arrives from someplace I would rather be—California or Vermont or two different towns named Athens or New York or Chicago. Then it is exactly as it is: as if a friend has arrived from far away. On that day, I do everything to look healthy so that my friend will praise the skillfulness of my camouflage, its materials purchased at Wigs.com, CVS, and Sephora. On the day before chemotherapy, we don’t speak of chemotherapy any more than is necessary for the practical exchange of information, like what time to set the alarm and the best route to the pavilion. We pass our time as friends would, roasting vegetables and listening to music and speaking excitedly of other friends or ideas or political events.
The day of chemotherapy, we wake up early and arrive at least fifteen minutes late. We predict how well the treatment will go by what song is playing on the car radio: “Bohemian Rhapsody” (not so good), TLC’s “Waterfalls” (better). Chemotherapy, like most medical treatments, is boring. Like death, it is a lot of waiting for your name to be called. It is also waiting while the potential for panic and pain hangs around, too.	The day of chemotherapy, we wake up early and arrive at least fifteen minutes late. We predict how well the treatment will go by what song is playing on the car radio: “Bohemian Rhapsody” (not so good), TLC’s “Waterfalls” (better). Chemotherapy, like most medical treatments, is boring. Like death, it is a lot of waiting for your name to be called. It is also waiting while the potential for panic and pain hangs around, too, waiting for its name to be called. In this it is like war. The aesthetics of chemotherapy appear to have been decided by no one. That makes them like everything ideological. Later we begin to understand the costumes, machines, sounds, rituals, and architectures.

“Omit needless words!” cried William Strunk in his classic The Elements of Style (1972). The New Yorker followed this injunction when it edited Boyer’s manuscript. Yet, when Boyer published her book, she put those words back in. Why? The obvious answer is that she doesn’t consider them needless. Those additional words mean something to her. Sometimes concision isn’t the only aim. Artist’s necessity plays a role, too – fidelity to his or her own consciousness. And if that means breaking Professor Strunk’s rules, so be it. 

Interesting Emendations: Stanley Crouch's Great "The Duke's Blues"

Stanley Crouch (Photo by Martine Bisagni)

Stanley Crouch, who died September 16, 2020, wrote a great New Yorker piece called “The Duke’s Blues” (April 29 & May 6, 1996). It’s a celebration of Duke Ellington’s music. Crouch said,

Ellington maintained such a commanding touch with his art and the world that his fifty years of development constitute what just might be the most impressive evolution in the American arts. The blues was the key, and Ellington was surely the greatest manipulator of blues form and blues feeling that jazz has ever known. He understood the blues as both music and mood. He knew that those who thought of the blues as merely a vehicle for primitive complaint had their drawers or their brassieres on backward. The blues knows its way around. It can stretch from the backwoods to the space shuttle, from the bloody floor of a dive to the neurotic confusion of beautifully clothed woman in a Manhattan penthouse. The blues – happy, sad, or neither – plays no favorites.

That “He knew that those who thought of the blues as merely a vehicle for primitive complaint had their drawers or their brassieres on backward” is pure Crouch; it makes me smile every time I read it. 

An interesting variation on “The Duke’s Blues,” called “Duke Ellington: Transcontinental Swing,” appears in Crouch’s wonderful 2006 essay collection Considering Genius. In this piece, the above-quoted New Yorker passage reads as follows:

Considering himself “the world’s greatest listener,” Ellington maintained such commanding touch with his craft and the culture of the world at large that his fifty years of development constitute what is perhaps the single most comprehensive evolution in all of American art. Much of this has to do with something as American as the bandleading composer himself. Ellington was the greatest manipulator of blues form and blues feeling. He understood it as music and as mood. He knew that those who thought of the blues as merely a vehicle for primitive complaint had their drawers or brassieres on backward. The blues always knows its way around. It can stretch from the backwoods to the space shuttle, from wet blood on the floor of a dive to the neurotic confusion of a beautifully clothed woman in a penthouse overlooking the very best view of Manhattan. The blues, happy or sad or neither, plays no favorites.

The New Yorker version seems tighter, but the book version strikes me as slightly bluesier. Both pieces swing, enacting the rhythm of the music they describe. 

Interesting Emendations: Peter Schjeldahl's "Shapes of Things"

Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Vertical-Horizontal Composition (1916)

Reading Johanna Fateman’s recent “Goings On About Town” note on Sophie Taeuber-Arp, I recalled Peter Schjeldahl’s wonderful “Shapes of Things” (The New Yorker, January 7, 2013), and decided to look it up. Its first paragraph is a beauty:

In “Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art,” a splendid historical survey at the Museum of Modern Art, the most beautiful work, for me, is “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” (1916), a small, framed wool needlepoint tapestry by Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture. The work bespeaks a subtle eye, a sober mind, and an ardent heart. If you could make something like that, you would drop everything else and do it. You wouldn’t need any great reason. I was mildly shocked by how unshocking Taeuber-Arp’s work is, amid rooms of strenuous sensations from the epoch of abstract art’s big bang. But, in a show that raises the question “Why?” at every turn, I kept coming back to it.

I think that’s one of my favorite art-review beginnings. The instant focus on a particular work – Taeuber-Arp’s “Vertical-Horizontal Composition”; the beautiful description of that work; the equally beautiful appreciation of it (“If you could make something like that, you would drop everything else and do it. You wouldn’t need any great reason”) – all these elements are delightful.

Schjeldahl included “Shapes of Things” in his splendid 2019 collection Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light under the title “Abstraction.” Comparing the book version with the New Yorker version, I notice that the description of Taeuber-Arp’s “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” is slightly different. Here’s the New Yorker version:

Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the tapestry’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture.

And here’s the book version:

An irregular grid of rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, generate a slightly dissonant, gently jazzy visual harmony that is pleasantly at odds with the fabric’s’s matter-of-fact, nubbly texture.

Notice that “arranged” and “pleasantly” have been dropped, “tapestry” has been changed to “fabric,” and the phrase “an irregular grid” has been moved to the front of the sentence. Both versions are lovely, but I think I prefer the New Yorker version slightly more. Its use of zero article (“Rectangles and squares in black, white, red, blue, gray, and two browns, arranged on an irregular grid …”) enacts the abstraction it describes.

Postscript: I had difficulty finding online the “Vertical-Horizontal Composition” described by Schjeldahl. Taeuber-Arp created at least two in 1916, neither of which appear to fit his description. To illustrate my post, I chose the one that appeared to be the most “matter-of-fact, nubbly.”

Interesting Emendations: Lawrence Joseph's "A Fable"

Lawrence Joseph’s "A Fable" is one of my favorite New Yorker poems of the last decade. I remember reading it when it originally appeared in the January 25, 2016 issue. Like a great jazz solo heard for the first time – Coleman Hawkins’ “The Man I Love,” say, or Gerry Mulligan’s “Lonely Town” – it blew me away. It’s like a gorgeous double helix – a strand of city beauty (“a bench in the shadows / on a pier in the Hudson”) wrapped around a strand of abstract dystopia (“the flow of data / since the attacks has surged”). And the colors – “great bronze doors of Trinity Church,” “a red / tugboat pushes a red-and-gold barge / into the narrows” – are exquisite, right down to that final inspired, delightful touch (“Gauguin / puts a final green on the canvas // of the Self-Portrait with Yellow / Christ, to complicate the idea”), so surprising that it makes me smile every time I read it.

Interestingly, the “A Fable” included in Joseph’s 2017 collection So Where Are We? (2017) subtly differs from the version that appeared in The New Yorker. For example, the comma after “now” in the lovely “The café / on Cornelia Street, the music, / now, whose voice might that be?” is deleted from the later version, slightly changing its rhythm and meaning. In fact, a total of seven commas are deleted from the second version. I like it slightly better without all the commas.

Another notable change is the dropping of “the” from “The future, the past, cosmogonies, // the void, are in whose vision?” The line now reads, “Future, past, cosmogonies, // the void, are in whose vision?”

I find such changes fascinating – a glimpse into Joseph’s compositional process. To my eye (and ear), the rhythm of the So Where Are We? version is a shade more free-flowing. Both versions are brilliant!

Interesting Emendations: James Wood's "Job Existed: Primo Levi"

James Wood’s brilliant “Job Existed: Primo Levi,” included in his new collection Serious Noticing, originally appeared in The New Yorker (September 28, 2015), under the title “The Art of Witness.” Comparing the two versions, I see many differences: 

New Yorker	Serious Noticing
How could it be anything but heroic to have entered Hell and not been swallowed up?	How could it be anything but heroic to have entered hellmouth and not been swallowed up?
To have witnessed it with such delicate lucidity, such reserves of irony and even equanimity?	To have witnessed it with such lucidity, such reserves of irony and even equanimity?
That edition praises the text as “a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit,” though Levi often emphasized how quickly and efficiently the camps could destroy the human spirit.	That same edition praises the text as “a lasting testament to the indestructibility of the human spirit,” though Levi often emphasized how quickly and efficiently the camps could destroy the human spirit.
Another survivor, the writer Jean Améry, mistaking comprehension for concession, disapprovingly called Levi “the pardoner,” though Levi repeatedly argued that he was interested in justice, not in indiscriminate forgiveness.	A fellow survivor, the writer Jean Améry, mistaking comprehension for concession, disapprovingly called Levi “the pardoner,” though Levi repeatedly argued that he was interested in justice, not in indiscriminate forgiveness.
A German official who had encountered Levi in the camp laboratory found in “If This Is a Man” an “overcoming of Judaism, a fulfillment of the Christian precept to love one’s enemies, and a testimony of faith in Man.”	A German correspondent, an official who had encountered Levi in the camp, applauded If This Is Man, and found in it“an “overcoming of Judaism, a fulfillment of the Christian precept to love one’s enemies, and a testimony of faith in Man.”
He married a woman, Lucia Morpurgo, from his own class and background, and died in the same Turin apartment building in which he had been born.	He married a woman, Lucia Morpurgo, from the same class and background he was born into, and died in the same Turin apartment building in which he had been born.
The publication of “The Complete Works of Primo Levi” (Liveright), in three volumes, represents a monumental and noble endeavor on the part of its publisher, its general editor, Ann Goldstein, and the many translators who have produced new versions of Levi’s work. Although his best-known work has already benefitted from fine English translation, it’s a gift to have nearly all his writing gathered together, along with work that has not before been published in English (notably, a cache of uncollected essays, written between 1949 and 1987).	[Deleted]
Levi gives ebullient life to this comfortable, sometimes eccentric world in “The Periodic Table”—a memoir, a history, an essay in elegy, and the best example of his variousliterary talents.	Levi gives ebullient life to this comfortable, sometimes eccentric world in “The Periodic Table”—a memoir, a history, an essay in elegy, and the best example of his different literary talents.
From an early age, Levi appears to have possessed many of the qualities of his later prose—meticulousness, curiosity, furious discretion, orderliness to the point of priggishness. In primary school, he was top of his class (his schoolmates cheered him on with “Primo Levi Primo!”). As a teen-ager at the Liceo D’Azeglio, Turin’s leading classical academy, he stood out for his cleverness, his smallness, and his Jewishness. He was bullied, and his health deteriorated. His English biographer Ian Thomson suggests that Levi developed a sense of himself as physically and sexually inadequate, and that his subsequent devotion to robust athletic pursuits, such as mountaineering and skiing, represented a self-improvement project. Thomson notes that, in later life, he recalled his mistreatment at school as “uniquely anti-Semitic,” and adds, “How far this impression was coloured by Levi’s eventual persecution is hard to tell.” But perhaps Thomson has it the wrong way round. Perhaps Levi’s extraordinary resilience in Auschwitz had something to do with a hardened determination not to be persecuted again.	[Deleted and replaced by a completely new paragraph that begins, “But even in this first, light-hearted chapter, Levi announces his theme....”]
On the basis of the first chapter of “The Periodic Table” alone, you know that you are in the hands of a true writer, someone equipped with an avaricious and indexical memory, who knows how to animate his details, stage his scenes, and ration his anecdotes.	If you had not read anything else by Primo Levi, you would know,on the basis of the first chapter of The Periodic Table, that you are in the hands of a true writer, someone equipped with an avaricious and indexical memory, who knows how to animate his details, stage his scenes, and ration his anecdotes.
Throughout, there are wittily pragmatic, original descriptions of minerals, gases, and metals, as in this description of zinc: “Zinc, zinco, Zink: laundry tubs are made of it, it’s an element that doesn’t say much to the imagination, it’s gray and its salts are colorless, it’s not toxic, it doesn’t provide gaudy chromatic reactions—in other words, it’s a boring element.”	Throughout, there are wittily pragmatic, cleverly original descriptions of minerals, gases, and metals, as in this description of zinc: “Zinc, zinco, Zink: laundry tubs are made of it, it’s an element that doesn’t say much to the imagination, it’s gray and its salts are colorless, it’s not toxic, it doesn’t provide gaudy chromatic reactions—in other words, it’s a boring element.”
Repeatedly, Levi tolls his bell of departure: these vivid human beings existed, and then they were gone. But,above all, they existed.	Repeatedly, Levi tolls his bell of departure: they existed, and then they disappeared. But above all, they existed.
Pagis’s poem means: “Job did exist, because Job was in the death camps. Suffering is not the most terrible thing; worse is to have the reality of one’s suffering erased.” In just this way, Levi’s writing insists that Job existed and was not a parable. His clarity is ontological and moral: these things happened, a victim witnessed them, and they must never be erased or forgotten. There are many such facts in Levi’s books of testament. The reader is quickly introduced to the principle of scarcity, in which everything—every detail, object, and fact—becomes essential, for everything will be stolen: wire, rags, paper, bowl, a spoon, bread.	I think that Pagis’s poem defiantly means: “Job did exist, because Job was in the death camps. The most terrible thing is not suffering: it is to have the reality of one’s suffering erased.” In just this way, Levi’s writing insists that Job existed and was not a parable. His famous clarity is ontological and moral: these things happened, a victim witnessed them, and they must never be erased or forgotten. There are many such facts in Levi’s books of testament. The reader is quickly introduced to the principle of scarcity, in which everything,every detail, object, and fact, becomes essential, for everything will be stolen – wire, rags, paper, bowl, a spoon, bread.
Many of these horrifying facts can be found in testimony by other witnesses.  What is different about Levi’s work is bound up with his uncommon ability to tell a story. It is striking how much writing by survivors does not quitetell a story; it has often been poetic (Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Yehiel De-Nur), or analytical, reportorial, anthropological, philosophical (Jean Améry, Germaine Tillion, Eugen Kogon, Viktor Frankl).	Yet many of these horrifying facts can be found in testimony by other witnesses of the horror. What is different about Levi’s work is bound up with his uncommon ability to tell a story. It is striking how much writing by survivors does not tell a story, quite; it has often been poetic (Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Yehiel De-Nur), or analytic, reportorial, anthropological, philosophical (Jean Améry, Germaine Tillion, Eugen Kogon, Viktor Frankl).
Along with this scientific mastering of the information comes something like a wariness of narrative naïveté	Along with this scientific mastering of the information comes something like a wariness of narrative naivety
Levi’s prose has a tone of similar command, and in his last book, “The Drowned and the Saved,” he became such an analyst, grouping material by theme rather than telling stories. Nor did he always tell his stories in conventional sequential fashion. But “If This Is a Man” and “The Truce” are powerful because they do not disdain story.	Levi’s prose has a tone of similar command (its composure, its reticence, its order), and in his last book, The Drowned and the Saved, he became such an analyst, grouping material by theme rather than by telling stories about it. Nor did he always tell his stories in conventional sequential fashion. But at the simplest level, If This Is a Man and The Truce are powerful because they do not disdain story.
He introduces thirst like this: “Will they give us something to drink? No, they line us up again, lead us to a huge square.” He first mentions the now infamous refrain “The only way out is through the chimney” thus: “What does it mean? We’ll soon learn very well what it means.” To register his discoveries, he often breaks from thepast tense into a diaristic present.	Unlike Frankl, for instance, Leviintroduces thirst like this: “Will they give us something to drink? No, they line us up again, lead us to a huge square.” He first mentions the now infamous refrain “The only way out is through the chimney” thus: “What does it mean? We’ll soon learn very well what it means.” To register his ghastly novelties, he often breaks from past tense into a diaristic present.
The result is a kind of ethics, when the writer is constantly registering the moral (which is to say, in this case, the immoral) novelty of the details he encounters. That is why every reader who has opened “If This Is a Man” feels impelled to continue reading it, despite the horror of the material. Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment and a moral astonishment. The victims’ ignorance of the name “Auschwitz” tells us everything, actually and symbolically. For Levi, “Auschwitz” had not, until this moment, existed. It had to be invented, and it had to be introduced into his life. Evil is not the absence of the good, as theology and philosophy have sometimes maintained. It is the invention of the bad: Job existed and was not a parable. Levi registers the same astonishment when first hit by a German officer—“a profound amazement: how can one strike a man without anger?” Or when, driven by thirst, he breaks off an icicle only to have it snatched away by a guard. “Why?” Levi asks. To which comes the answer “Hier ist kein warum” (“Here there is no why”). Or when Alex the Kapo, a professional criminal who has been given limited power over other prisoners, wipes his greasy hand on Levi’s shoulder, as if the other man were not a man. Or when Levi, who was fortunate enough to be chosen to work as a chemist, in the Buna laboratory, comes face to face with his chemistry examiner, Dr. Pannwitz, who raises his eyes to glance at his victim: “That look did not pass between two men; and if I knew how to explain fully the nature of that look, exchanged as if through the glass wall of an aquarium between two beings who inhabit different worlds, I would also be able to explain the essence of the great insanity of the Third Reich.”	On its own, Levi’s talent for narrative might amount to little more than a trivial literary preference. But a charged relation to novelty becomes important, becomes a kind of ethics, when the writer is constantly registering the moral (which is to say, in this case, the immoral)novelty of the details he encounters. That is why every reader who has opened If This Is a Manfeels impelled to continue reading it, despite the horror of the material. Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment – how is this possible? what horror is next? –  and a moral astonishment: not just at the existence of evil, but at the fact that such evil has been made new, introduced into the writer’s world. Levi’s writing thus has the form of continuous moral introduction. It is why the victims’ ignorance of the name “Auschwitz” is not a small detail. On the contrary, it tells us everything, actually and symbolically. For Levi, “Auschwitz” had not, until this moment, existed. It had to be invented, and it had to be introduced into his life. Evil is not the absence of the good, as theology and philosophy have sometimes maintained. It is the invention of the bad: Job existed and was not a parable. Levi registers the same astonishment when first hit by a German officer—“a profound amazement: how can one strike a man without anger?” It had never happened before. This moral astonishment is felt in some of the book’s more celebrated moments, too– when, driven by thirst, he breaks off an icicle only to have it snatched away by a guard, and asks “Why?” To which comes the answer “Hier ist kein warum” (“Here there is no why”). Or when Alex the Kapo, a common criminal, but given limited power over other prisoners, thoughtlessly wipes his greasy hand on Levi’s shoulder, as if the other man were not a man. Or when Levi, who was fortunate enough to be chosen to work as a chemist, in the Buna laboratory, comes face to face with his German examiner, Dr. Pannwitz, a cold official who raises his eyes to glance at his victim. It is just that, a glance, but Levi has not experienced its like before: “That look did not pass between two men; and if I knew how to explain fully the nature of that look, exchanged as if through the glass wall of an aquarium between two beings who inhabit different worlds, I would also be able to explain the essence of the great insanity of the Third Reich.”
Both “If This Is a Man” and “The Truce” contain beautiful portraits of goodness and charity, and it is not the punishers and sadists but the life-givers—the fortifiers, the endurers, the men and women who sustained Levi in his struggle to survive—who burst out of these pages.	Both “If This Is a Man” and “The Truce” contain beautiful portraits of goodness and charity, and it is not the punishers and sadists but the life-givers, the fortifiers, the endurers, the men and women who sustained Levi in his struggle to survive,who burst out of these pages.
You can feel this emphasis on moral resistance in every sentence Levi wrote: his prose is a form of keeping his boots shined and his posture proudly upright. It is a style that seems at first windowpane clear but is actually full of undulating strategies.	You can feel this emphasis on moral resistance in every sentence Levi wrote: his prose is a form of keeping his boots shined and his posture proudly upright. It is a style that seems at first to be as lucid as glass – an Orwellian windowpane – but which is actually full of undulating strategies.
For surely the power of these impeccable words, as so often in Levi, is moral. First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that; it must be described as an “ordeal”); and then they dryly repel that contamination (no, we will insist on calling the experience, with full ironic power, an “adventure”).	For surely the power of these impeccable words is moral. First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that, it should be described as an “ordeal”); and then they gloriously repel that contamination (no, we will insist in calling the experience, with full ironic power, an “adventure”).
On the morning of April 11, 1987, this healthily humane man, age sixty-seven, walked out of his fourth-floor apartment and either fell or threw himself over the bannister of the building’s staircase. The act, if suicide, appeared to undo the suture of his survival. Some people were outraged; others refused to see it as suicide. The implication, not quite spoken, was uncomfortably close to dismay that the Nazis had won after all. “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later,” Elie Wiesel said. Yet Levi was a survivor who committed suicide, not a suicide who failed to survive. He himself had seemed to argue against such morbidity, in his chapter on Jean Améry in “The Drowned and the Saved.” Améry, who killed himself at the age of sixty-five, said that in Auschwitz he thought a great deal about dying; rathertartly, Levi replied that in the camp he was too busy for such perturbation. “The business of living is the best defense against death, and not only in the camps.”	Yet on the morning of 11 April 1987, this healthily humane man walked out of his third-floorapartment and either fell or threw himself over the bannister of the building’s staircase. The act, if suicide, appeared to undo the suture of his survival. Some people were outraged, others refused to see it as suicide. The implication, not quite spoken, was uncomfortably close to dismay that the Nazis had won after all. “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later,” said Elie Wiesel. Wiesel must, in one essential way, be right. But to lament that the Nazis have won every time a survivor of the Holocaust commits suicide is truly a concession that the Nazis have won. Yet Levi was a survivor who committed suicide, not a suicide who failed to survive. He himself had seemed to argue against such morbidity, in his chapter on Jean Améry in The Drowned and the Saved. Améry, who killed himself at the age of sixty-seven, said that in Auschwitz he thought a great deal about dying; tartly, and with characteristic irony, Levi replied that in the camp he was too busy for such perturbation. “The aims of life are the best defence against death: and not only in the Lager.”
For, above all, Job existed and was not a parable.	For above all, Job existed and was not a parable.

You can see from the above table that most of the differences are stylistic. But there are a few substantive discrepancies, too. I find the formal changes fascinating. Obviously, Wood is not a follower of William Strunk’s famous “Omit needless words” principle of composition (see Strunk and White, The Elements of Style, 1972). And why should we be surprised at that? In his wonderful “The Fun Stuff: Homage to Keith Moon” (included in Serious Noticing), he defines an “ideal sentence” as “a long, passionate onrush, formally controlled and joyously messy, propulsive but digressively self-interrupted, attired but dishevelled, careful and lawless, right and wrong.” Wood’s sentences in “Job Existed: Primo Levi” aren’t like that, but many of them could be more concise. For example, in the Serious Noticing version, he writes, 

Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment – how is this possible? what horror is next? –  and a moral astonishment: not just at the existence of evil, but at the fact that such evil has been made new, introduced into the writer’s world.

The New Yorker version is much crisper:

Levi seems to join us in our incomprehension, which is both a narrative astonishment and a moral astonishment.

Another example: in the Serious Noticing version, Wood writes,

If you had not read anything else by Primo Levi, you would know, on the basis of the first chapter of The Periodic Table, that you are in the hands of a true writer…. 

Again, The New Yorker version is more succinct:

On the basis of the first chapter of “The Periodic Table” alone, you know that you are in the hands of a true writer…. 

Even more interesting (to me, at least), are the differences in word choices. For instance, in the New Yorker piece, Wood writes, “First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that; it must be described as an “ordeal”); and then they dryly repel that contamination …” (emphasis added). But in Serious Noticing, he says, “First, they register their contamination by what befell them (the “adventure,” we think, should not be called that, it should be described as an “ordeal”); and then they gloriously repel that contamination …” (emphasis added).

Another example: In the New Yorker piece, he writes, “To register his discoveries, he often breaks from the past tense into a diaristic present” (emphasis added). However, in Serious Noticing, he says, “To register his ghastly novelties, he often breaks from past tense into a diaristic present” (emphasis added).

I find the factual discrepancies between the two versions regarding the floor level from which Levi fell/jumped to his death, Jean Améry’s age when he committed suicide, and the exact wording of the famous quote from Levi’s The Drowned and the Saved (all highlighted in red in the above table) puzzling. Wood had the benefit of The New Yorker’s vaunted fact-checkers, yet in republishing his piece in Serious Noticing, he chose to ignore their work. As a result, “Job Existed: Primo Levi” is marred by two factual errors and a questionable translation of one of Levi’s key sentences.

From my comparison of the New Yorker and Serious Noticing versions of “Job Existed: Primo Levi,” I conclude that Wood disregards New Yorker editing and fact-checking.