Rebecca Mead on Middlemarch

On a recent Friday evening, we headed all the way west on 37th Street to hear New Yorker writers recount stories about being that most exciting of things—a New Yorker writer. The event was the opening night of the blitz of panels, conversations and chances to see what writers look like that is the annual New Yorker Festival.

The hangar-like space was converted into a lounge with the addition of cafe tables and chairs. A cash bar offered wine, beer and snacks in serving bowls fashioned  to look like martini glasses. Snippets of conversation—overheard while we looked for a seat—sounded like, dare we say it, the premise of many a New Yorker cartoon.

“Did you buy a place?” we heard a woman sipping red wine ask.

“In the process,” her tablemate responded.

“How was Monterey?” someone squealed.

A woman seated alone waited for the show to start, clutching, appropriately enough, this week’s issue.

Andy Borowitz, the magazine’s humor writer, hosted. “When David Remnick asked me if I wanted to write for The New Yorker, I was so excited I said I would do that for free,” he said.

The editor, Mr. Borowitz said, apparently had the same idea.

Thus, the tone was set. Lauren Collins, in black ankle boots and a patterned dress, reminisced about throwing up on Donatella Versace while on assignment in Lake Como. When she confessed to Mr. Remnick, he made her include it in the story “as penance.” Nicholas Schmidle told a story about interviewing Russian arms dealer Victor Bout, who demanded a subscription in exchange for talking to the magazine. Mr. Schmidle no longer speaks to the inmate, but he does renew his gift subscription.

“The New Yorker makes a lovely gift and the holidays are just around the corner,” Mr. Borowitz said after Mr. Schmidle’s 10 minutes were up. “David Remnick will be selling subscriptions at intermission.” Mr. Remnick, who sat in the audience, stage right, looked amused.

“Did you know, David Remnick hasn’t read the magazine in the 14 years he has been the editor?” joked Mr. Borowitz. “He has them all in a pile on his bedside table, but he can’t seem to get to them.”

Rebecca Mead told a heartwarming story about finding herself while writing about Middlemarch. Film critic Anthony Lane held the mic and paced like a seasoned stand-up.

“When it happens, it’s like a dog that can dance,” Mr. Remnick told The Observer later. “Anthony Lane is a natural comedian.”

Will Mr. Remnick ever tell his story onstage?

“No one has asked me, and if drafted I will not run,” he said. “I swear to God. It’s mortifying enough to hear your name in someone’s story.”

Larry Wright, who closed the show, had the folksy charm of a storyteller at a campfire (he lives in Austin, Texas) as he talked about his 25,000-word story about Scientology. He described the fact-checking process with the notoriously touchy (and litigious) church. “I’ve come to think of the fact-checkers as very erudite and polite agents with the KGB,” he said.

Like everything else about the magazine on this evening, even the fact-checkers became the stuff of legend

In a release at the time, Mr. Warren said, "Like a dogged parole officer, the magazines column has trailed me for nearly three decades, no matter my day job. If I had a buck for every one I've written about which is no longer with us, I could fly business class to Beijing."

His first column ran on Sunday. Let's see how he shook things up:

Looks like "On Magazines" is gonna do just fine on The Huffington Post.

Harry Mount is the author of a playful and, considering the historically staid subject matter, irreverent book on the principles of Latin, Amo, Amas, Amat…and All That (Short Books). New Yorker scribe Lauren Collins writes a fittingly playful, albeit not altogether irreverent, “Talk of the Town” on the 36-year-old journalist.

Strolling around the New Greek and Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum the other day, Mr. Mount, a self-described “Wanker,” began to wax on the etymology of the word “dick.” The subject, em, arose because he was standing before the very object that supposedly spawned the anatomical term. “It’s very useful, if you’ll forgive the vulgarity, to remember the word ‘dick.’ D-I-C-C, for Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. Ionic is a more feminine column. It’s always got the, as it were, twirly-whirly girls’ curls,” he told the magazine, before describing his London primary school’s policy, wherein Latin classes were required for boys but not girls, as “a hangover.”

Then, sitting to sup at a diner near the Met, the conversation turned decidedly juicy. “I was watching Henry V on the plane over—there’s an accepted period of laddish drunkenness in all cultures,” he said. “The Greeks were keen on wine and sexual misbehavior. There’s a great bit of Plato, often read at weddings, about two halves of the same soul being joined. They always neglect to read the part that says the greatest love of all is between two male halves.” (Mr. Mount maintains this homoerotic contention despite having been rolled down a hill in a Porta-Potty during his salad days at Oxford.) As an aside, The Daily Transom hopes to hear plenty more from said writer in the near future.