I’m so thankful Leon Wieseltier is still around. It seems the intellectual world used to be full of people like him who could offer up the perfect quip at a second’s notice. People who could spit wit instead of vitriol, wrapping even their bitterness inside a sweet-tasting candy shell. They just don’t make them like that anymore. This ability has been most brilliantly on display this past week since Leon was recently robbed of the jewel in his crown. After years of trying, the New Yorker has finally poached James Wood, widely acknowledged (and I think so too, for whatever it’s worth) as the world’s most interesting literary critic.
This was Wieseltier’s initial comment in The New York Times’ announcement of Wood’s move: “The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom The New Yorker can eventually staff itself.”
Ouch. And he shows off even more of those elegantly carved teeth today in a New York Observer piece. You see, Wieseltier is concerned that Wood just won’t be able to write the same kind of criticism at the New Yorker: “It would be hard to comment on the difference between The New Republic’s audience and The New Yorker’s audience without sounding vain and snobbish. The pieces we publish, they’re more argumentative. They’re more agitated and more agitating. They make more fights. They’re more scholarly. We allow a touch of wildness. They’re certainly less polite. David believes that civility is a primary intellectual virtue. I believe it’s a secondary intellectual virtue, or no intellectual virtue at all.”
But ultimately, Wieseltier admits, he doesn’t blame David Remnick, the New Yorker’s editor, too much. The budget of the succesful magazine allows for such high profile acquisitions. Or, as Leon put it, “It’s pointless to be angry at rich people for shopping.”
Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.