I Wonder, by Way of an Evening With the New Yorker
And I really do. Wonder.
What I'm wondering is when direct questions became a no-no in a public arena. Let me explain.
I remember the first time I heard the "I wonder" phrasing. It was in a graduate English class, and all that struck me was that the phrasing was deeply intentional, and sounded like it was standing in for genuine curiosity on behalf of the speaker. The speaker sounded more like somebody who wanted to be taken seriously as a professor-to-be than as somebody who wanted to find out something. (Aren't all professors students? . . .)
The "I wonder" phrasing was on display last evening during a public interview of sorts at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. The conductor (not as powerful as a psychoanalyst and extremely poised) was the withy Larissa MacFarquhar. The man in the other chair was Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Ms. MacFarquhar, on the New Yorker's staff since 1998, impressed especially with her abilities during the question session that concluded the 90-minute discussion. When a woman in the balcony asked a long question of (the mostly deaf) Dr. Sacks (Ms. MacFarquhar had to distill and repeat each question for him; she did quite well), and then asked a follow-up one, and then had the temerity to recommend to Dr. Sacks Martha Graham's dance "Lamentations" (partly I took this as a symbolic gesture of the desperation artists experience collectively in America's generally philistine provinces), Ms. MacFarquhar did not point out to the woman (as Christopher Hitchens once did to a woman one of his readings, slightly different situation but still) her rudeness. As the woman to my right was muttering, "We don't care," Ms. MacFarquhar was neutrally relaying the recommendation to Dr. Sacks.
In retrospect, it was quite endearing, this woman recommending a dance to a neurologist. Because, frankly, there are few cities where this kind of thing happens during a Q&A. This does not, I highly suspect, happen in Columbus, Ohio.
So even if it's now utterly beside the point that the New Yorker is not written for the little old lady etc., at least the minds colliding during a New Yorker-generated evening can be as vital and eccentric as Harold Ross's magazine once was.
In Media City these days, I'll take what I can get.
[to be continued]
What I'm wondering is when direct questions became a no-no in a public arena. Let me explain.
I remember the first time I heard the "I wonder" phrasing. It was in a graduate English class, and all that struck me was that the phrasing was deeply intentional, and sounded like it was standing in for genuine curiosity on behalf of the speaker. The speaker sounded more like somebody who wanted to be taken seriously as a professor-to-be than as somebody who wanted to find out something. (Aren't all professors students? . . .)
The "I wonder" phrasing was on display last evening during a public interview of sorts at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. The conductor (not as powerful as a psychoanalyst and extremely poised) was the withy Larissa MacFarquhar. The man in the other chair was Dr. Oliver Sacks.
Ms. MacFarquhar, on the New Yorker's staff since 1998, impressed especially with her abilities during the question session that concluded the 90-minute discussion. When a woman in the balcony asked a long question of (the mostly deaf) Dr. Sacks (Ms. MacFarquhar had to distill and repeat each question for him; she did quite well), and then asked a follow-up one, and then had the temerity to recommend to Dr. Sacks Martha Graham's dance "Lamentations" (partly I took this as a symbolic gesture of the desperation artists experience collectively in America's generally philistine provinces), Ms. MacFarquhar did not point out to the woman (as Christopher Hitchens once did to a woman one of his readings, slightly different situation but still) her rudeness. As the woman to my right was muttering, "We don't care," Ms. MacFarquhar was neutrally relaying the recommendation to Dr. Sacks.
In retrospect, it was quite endearing, this woman recommending a dance to a neurologist. Because, frankly, there are few cities where this kind of thing happens during a Q&A. This does not, I highly suspect, happen in Columbus, Ohio.
So even if it's now utterly beside the point that the New Yorker is not written for the little old lady etc., at least the minds colliding during a New Yorker-generated evening can be as vital and eccentric as Harold Ross's magazine once was.
In Media City these days, I'll take what I can get.
[to be continued]
posted by Elizabeth Manus at 10:52 PM
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