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Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker
From a legendary journalist and star writer at The New Yorker -- one of the most revered institutions in publishing -- an insider's look at the magazine's tumultuous yet glorious years under the direction of the enigmatic William Shawn.
Renata Adler went to work at The New Yorker in 1963 and immediately became part of the circle close to editor William Shawn, a man so mysterious that no two biographies of him seem to be about the same person. Now Adler, herself an unrivaled literary force, offers her brilliant take on the man -- and the myth that is The New Yorker -- disputing recent memoirs by Lillian Ross and Ved Mehta along the way.
With her lucid prose, meticulous eye for detail, and genuine love of The New Yorker, Adler re-creates thirty years in its history and depicts Shawn as a man of robust common sense, amazing industry, and editorial genius, who nurtured innumerable major talents (and egos) to produce a magazine that was -- and remains -- unique. Her ensemble cast -- all involved in legendary friendships, feuds, and love affairs -- includes Edmund Wilson, S. N. Behrman, Brendan Gill, Calvin Trillin, Dwight MacDonald, Donald Barthelme, Hannah Arendt, Pauline Kael, S. I. Newhouse, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and practically everyone of note in and around The New Yorker.
Above and beyond the fascinating literary anecdotes, however, Adler's is a striking narrative that follows the weakening of Shawn's hold over the magazine he loved, his reluctant attempts to find a successor, and the coup by which he was ultimately overthrown. It is a wonderful piece of reporting, full of real-life drama of Shakespearean dimensions, which Shawn himself surely would have loved.
Renata Adler went to work at The New Yorker in 1963 and immediately became part of the circle close to editor William Shawn, a man so mysterious that no two biographies of him seem to be about the same person. Now Adler, herself an unrivaled literary force, offers her brilliant take on the man -- and the myth that is The New Yorker -- disputing recent memoirs by Lillian Ross and Ved Mehta along the way.
With her lucid prose, meticulous eye for detail, and genuine love of The New Yorker, Adler re-creates thirty years in its history and depicts Shawn as a man of robust common sense, amazing industry, and editorial genius, who nurtured innumerable major talents (and egos) to produce a magazine that was -- and remains -- unique. Her ensemble cast -- all involved in legendary friendships, feuds, and love affairs -- includes Edmund Wilson, S. N. Behrman, Brendan Gill, Calvin Trillin, Dwight MacDonald, Donald Barthelme, Hannah Arendt, Pauline Kael, S. I. Newhouse, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and practically everyone of note in and around The New Yorker.
Above and beyond the fascinating literary anecdotes, however, Adler's is a striking narrative that follows the weakening of Shawn's hold over the magazine he loved, his reluctant attempts to find a successor, and the coup by which he was ultimately overthrown. It is a wonderful piece of reporting, full of real-life drama of Shakespearean dimensions, which Shawn himself surely would have loved.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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401 people want to read
About the author
Renata Adler
24 books260 followersBorn in Milan, Italy, Adler grew up in Danbury, Connecticut after her parents had fled Nazi Germany in 1933. After attending Bryn Mawr, The Sorbonne, and Harvard, she became a staff writer-reporter for The New Yorker. She later received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Georgetown University.
Adler’s essays and articles have been collected in Toward a Radical Middle (1969) and A Year in the Dark (1970), Reckless Disregard (1986), and Canaries in the Mineshaft (2001). Renata Adler is also the author of two successful novels Speedboat (1976) and Pitch Dark (1983). Both novels are composed of seemingly unconnected passages that challenge readers to find meaning. Like her nonfiction, Adler's novels examine the issues and mores of contemporary life.
In 1987, Adler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That same year, she received an honorary doctorate from Georgetown University. Her "Letter from Selma" has been published in the Library of America volume of Civil Rights Reporting. An essay from her tenure as film critic of The New York Times is included in the Library of America volume of American Film Criticism. In 2004, she served as a Media Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute.
Adler’s essays and articles have been collected in Toward a Radical Middle (1969) and A Year in the Dark (1970), Reckless Disregard (1986), and Canaries in the Mineshaft (2001). Renata Adler is also the author of two successful novels Speedboat (1976) and Pitch Dark (1983). Both novels are composed of seemingly unconnected passages that challenge readers to find meaning. Like her nonfiction, Adler's novels examine the issues and mores of contemporary life.
In 1987, Adler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That same year, she received an honorary doctorate from Georgetown University. Her "Letter from Selma" has been published in the Library of America volume of Civil Rights Reporting. An essay from her tenure as film critic of The New York Times is included in the Library of America volume of American Film Criticism. In 2004, she served as a Media Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 3, 2010
Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker, Renata Adler's account of the decline of the magazine, is one of those books that, it seems to me, very few people are qualified to review. It has come under attack for being factually inaccurate, for attributing conversations to people who never had them, even for fabricating situations that never occurred. The problem is that most of the people who have made these accusations of inaccuracy or falsification are targets of Adler's ire or scorn in the book, so that they have a vested interest in denying any heinous or embarrassing things they may have said or done.
Robert Gottlieb, for example, New Yorker editor from 1987 to 1992, receives some of Adler's harshest criticism: instead of listening to the magazine's staff, he prefers to talk about himself and how wonderful he is; he has a complete lack of curiosity; he may have been a wonderful book editor at Knopf, but magazine editing is an entirely different business, at which he sucks; he presided through the years of the magazine's most precipitous decline. Yet Gottlieb is one of the people who has reviewed Gone. Should we believe his version of events, or Adler's?
There is at least one glaring factual error in the book, where Adler states that Nixon resigned in August 1976 (of course, it was August 1974). Beyond that, I have no idea whether Adler, who wrote for the magazine from the 1960's through the 1980's, is being entirely truthful, partially truthful, or merely vindictive. But she is a good writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed her dish.
"Adler was the young writer everybody talked about," writes Michael Wolff in New York magazine. "She was The New Yorker's "It" girl. A sort of brainy Candace Bushnell, a bohemian Mia Farrow-ish Platonic ideal. Richard Avedon photographed her. She was a wildly sought-after dinner party guest." She had been educated at Bryn Mawr, Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Yale Law School, and had been the New York Times' film critic.
Most of the book covers the New Yorker under legendary editor William Shawn (1951 - 1987). Shawn was almost universally loved and respected by his editors and writers, who were given extraordinary freedom. Adler, for example, was allowed to take the position as the Times' film critic for 14 months and maintain her office at the New Yorker. On the downside, Shawn was a fickle taskmaster who might delay publication of a writer's work again and again, even as the writer continued to submit pieces for publication and have them accepted, for months or even years at a time. This sounds unbelievably frustrating, the writer's equivalent of becoming pregnant and bringing a fetus to term over and over, without being allowed to ever actually give birth.
Even as Adler reveres Shawn, his reign does not escape criticism. Under him, the magazine began to lean strongly left (e.g., Jonathan Schell's and Charles Reich's pieces) and began to publish photographs. It was the beginning of the end. After the 80-year old Shawn was fired by new owner S.I. Newhouse and replaced by Gottlieb, Adler writes, Shawn continued to edit pieces that writers would bring to him as he sat across the street at the Algonquin.
Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown was brought in after Gottlieb to resurrect lagging sales. Brown's effect on the magazine was to amplify the Conde Nast vulgarization that had already begun: more ad pages, more photographs, sleazy Vanity Fair style celebrity journalism.
Adler's greatest scorn, after she skewers Shawn paramour Lillian Ross and Gottlieb, is reserved for Gottlieb protégé Adam Gopnik, now the magazine's "Paris correspondent." Gopnik is portrayed as a loathsome toady and sycophant from whom Adler receives phone calls in which he "would present, as criticism and in tones of concern, some extravagant compliment to himself." Gopnik has a habit of "letting it be known, shyly and modestly, or otherwise, that he was responsible, behind the scenes, for events in other people's professional lives." In a published review of a Picasso biography, he takes credit for discovering a small symbol in Picasso's work that was actually the discovery of a Ph.D candidate at Columbia.
Adler describes a conversation shortly after Gottlieb has been hired, in which Gopnik asks to hear her impressions of the "new" New Yorker.
"It's already a Conde Nast publication", Adler says, "but with typos, cartoons missing their captions, hideous ads. A friend of mine received an issue missing several pages. Then the prior pages were repeated. The price per issue has been raised. There's a new section, in New Yorker type, advertising real estate. And the pieces are not good. It's something that in all one's fears, hopes, and analyses, one could not have predicted, even a short time ago."
"Five years ago?" Mr. Gopnik asked.
"Two weeks ago," I said. "It's not even a first-rate Conde Nast publication. Whatever else it is, it is irremediably not the same." Mr. Gopnik sighed.
"Yes," he said, as though he were agreeing with every word and nuance of what I had just said. "It has become a better magazine. But not as nice a place to work in. And that's sad."
Robert Gottlieb, for example, New Yorker editor from 1987 to 1992, receives some of Adler's harshest criticism: instead of listening to the magazine's staff, he prefers to talk about himself and how wonderful he is; he has a complete lack of curiosity; he may have been a wonderful book editor at Knopf, but magazine editing is an entirely different business, at which he sucks; he presided through the years of the magazine's most precipitous decline. Yet Gottlieb is one of the people who has reviewed Gone. Should we believe his version of events, or Adler's?
There is at least one glaring factual error in the book, where Adler states that Nixon resigned in August 1976 (of course, it was August 1974). Beyond that, I have no idea whether Adler, who wrote for the magazine from the 1960's through the 1980's, is being entirely truthful, partially truthful, or merely vindictive. But she is a good writer, and I thoroughly enjoyed her dish.
"Adler was the young writer everybody talked about," writes Michael Wolff in New York magazine. "She was The New Yorker's "It" girl. A sort of brainy Candace Bushnell, a bohemian Mia Farrow-ish Platonic ideal. Richard Avedon photographed her. She was a wildly sought-after dinner party guest." She had been educated at Bryn Mawr, Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Yale Law School, and had been the New York Times' film critic.
Most of the book covers the New Yorker under legendary editor William Shawn (1951 - 1987). Shawn was almost universally loved and respected by his editors and writers, who were given extraordinary freedom. Adler, for example, was allowed to take the position as the Times' film critic for 14 months and maintain her office at the New Yorker. On the downside, Shawn was a fickle taskmaster who might delay publication of a writer's work again and again, even as the writer continued to submit pieces for publication and have them accepted, for months or even years at a time. This sounds unbelievably frustrating, the writer's equivalent of becoming pregnant and bringing a fetus to term over and over, without being allowed to ever actually give birth.
Even as Adler reveres Shawn, his reign does not escape criticism. Under him, the magazine began to lean strongly left (e.g., Jonathan Schell's and Charles Reich's pieces) and began to publish photographs. It was the beginning of the end. After the 80-year old Shawn was fired by new owner S.I. Newhouse and replaced by Gottlieb, Adler writes, Shawn continued to edit pieces that writers would bring to him as he sat across the street at the Algonquin.
Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown was brought in after Gottlieb to resurrect lagging sales. Brown's effect on the magazine was to amplify the Conde Nast vulgarization that had already begun: more ad pages, more photographs, sleazy Vanity Fair style celebrity journalism.
Adler's greatest scorn, after she skewers Shawn paramour Lillian Ross and Gottlieb, is reserved for Gottlieb protégé Adam Gopnik, now the magazine's "Paris correspondent." Gopnik is portrayed as a loathsome toady and sycophant from whom Adler receives phone calls in which he "would present, as criticism and in tones of concern, some extravagant compliment to himself." Gopnik has a habit of "letting it be known, shyly and modestly, or otherwise, that he was responsible, behind the scenes, for events in other people's professional lives." In a published review of a Picasso biography, he takes credit for discovering a small symbol in Picasso's work that was actually the discovery of a Ph.D candidate at Columbia.
Adler describes a conversation shortly after Gottlieb has been hired, in which Gopnik asks to hear her impressions of the "new" New Yorker.
"It's already a Conde Nast publication", Adler says, "but with typos, cartoons missing their captions, hideous ads. A friend of mine received an issue missing several pages. Then the prior pages were repeated. The price per issue has been raised. There's a new section, in New Yorker type, advertising real estate. And the pieces are not good. It's something that in all one's fears, hopes, and analyses, one could not have predicted, even a short time ago."
"Five years ago?" Mr. Gopnik asked.
"Two weeks ago," I said. "It's not even a first-rate Conde Nast publication. Whatever else it is, it is irremediably not the same." Mr. Gopnik sighed.
"Yes," he said, as though he were agreeing with every word and nuance of what I had just said. "It has become a better magazine. But not as nice a place to work in. And that's sad."
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January 6, 2020I heard an interview with Adler on the Longform podcast, and immediately ran to get this book from the library. I raced through it.
July 27, 2013
Alternate title: Renata Adler's Burn Book.
February 10, 2013
Bookforum recently profiled Adler's fiction and I came across this book about her time at the New Yorker. The kindest way to describe this book is gossipy. I don't think I've ever read a more mean-spirited book. Adler's charmed life of extreme privilege combined with her talent and high intellect = scary self-certainty and a total lack of self-awareness.
June 3, 2019
All the fubsy fuddy-duddy stuff Tom Wolfe lampooned in not one but TWO snickersnack hit pieces on Mr. Shawn, the dean of the golden-age New Yorker, are treated by the prosecutorial Ms. Adler as evidence of paradise lost. Republican, friend of Henry Kissinger, organizer of a bible study course with Peter Duchin (wait, what?), Renata longs for a time when credentialed elitists, those enemies of the Trumpian mindset, ran things with a rock-ribbed custodianship, amending their privilege with a painstaking care for tradition. And then in came a man called...Gottlieb. Later, Tina Brown, silly but at least English and married to a successful man, arrives and goes full-bore to Vulgartown; but it is Gottlieb who represents the downfall of Mr. Shawn’s genteel enterprise into the Paleolithic version of a cracked-out-on-clickbait rag.
GONE is perhaps the one example of Adler’s “Your Honor, let the record show” prose that has the filigreed dancey quality of her quirky, darting, at times deliberately minor-key, rule-breaking novels. As many of us connoisseurs say in many different media, Things used to be different once—there were standards around here! What, heaven forfend, would Renata say about the world of Buzzfeed, of Thought Catalog, if Cancel Culture? For some odd reason I pray we never find out.
GONE is perhaps the one example of Adler’s “Your Honor, let the record show” prose that has the filigreed dancey quality of her quirky, darting, at times deliberately minor-key, rule-breaking novels. As many of us connoisseurs say in many different media, Things used to be different once—there were standards around here! What, heaven forfend, would Renata say about the world of Buzzfeed, of Thought Catalog, if Cancel Culture? For some odd reason I pray we never find out.
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April 8, 2013I admit it....I love New York literary gossip (possibly because I live in Baltimore and it's a change of pace from local gossip) and I loved this book, lots of delightful dish. Sometimes it seems as though attacking the NEW YORKER has been a favorite pastime of the American intelligentsia since the magazine started, cf. Dwight Macdonald's attack in PARTISAN REVIEW in the 30s, Robert Warshow's in his book THE IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE in the 50s, and Seymour Krim's "Who's Afraid of the NEW YORKER Now?" from the 60s (included in the posthumous collection WHAT'S THIS CAT'S STORY?) Other attacks, such as Tom Wolfe's, proved flimsy (Macdonald, who had become a NEW YORKER contributor by the time of Wolfe's hatchet-job, said the only thing Wolfe got right was the magazine's address). Adler's experience with the magazine's (latest) decline is vividly described herein. Any NEW YORKER reader who has a love-hate relationship with the magazine (and don't we all?) should read this.
October 23, 2012
Totally not what I was looking for. I do not know what possessed me to order this from the library. I am hurrying it back to them tomorrow. And none too soon. I suppose I will never know now what makes Renata Alder the type and quality of writer she has a reputation for being. She is certainly not my cup of tea.
May 15, 2019
Wonderful gossip about the New Yorker, mostly during the last days of Shawn, and the succession to Gottleib, wonderfully told, with bits at the end on Tina Brown and Remnick. Although it has a touch of stream of consciousness disarray to it, and two instances of bad editing (once when she attributes a quoted statement simultaneously to herself and to the person she was talking with). At times very intelligent, and at all times telling it like she sees it, damn the torpedoes. She hates Lillian Ross and even more Adam Gopnik, whom she nails quite well on some of his annoying tendencies, only magnified by orders of magnitude to the degree that it will I think forever be impossible to give him a fair hearing again, without at least a nagging voice hectoring in the background. One point she makes is that The New Yorker before its fall was meant to be read. Her comments on magazine graphics folk are very endearing indeed, making a point I have frequently thought and even made myself (as in a letter I sent to Scientific American once and as I'm feeling again in spades with the current desecration of the once proud New Republic). Quoting Adler:
'The notion that cutting means improving came...mostly from the new, anti-verbal folks in graphics. People in graphics believe that space, empty or filled with busy novel forms, has value, and that printed text, meant to be read, diminishes the value of that space. They seem to regard paragraphs as units, not of meaning but of type, and to think long paragraphs of words printed in a single typeface, unadorned, "look bad." ... On the whole, however, readers...prefer just text.'
Hear, Hear! Although Goodreads may not be the forum to express such sentiments.
'The notion that cutting means improving came...mostly from the new, anti-verbal folks in graphics. People in graphics believe that space, empty or filled with busy novel forms, has value, and that printed text, meant to be read, diminishes the value of that space. They seem to regard paragraphs as units, not of meaning but of type, and to think long paragraphs of words printed in a single typeface, unadorned, "look bad." ... On the whole, however, readers...prefer just text.'
Hear, Hear! Although Goodreads may not be the forum to express such sentiments.
June 26, 2015
I read "Speedboat" last year and really liked its girl-about-town swagger. This book was so mean-spirited and rather crude, I thought, especially the last few chapters which are basically an attack on Adam Gopnik. It seems that she invested so much of her identity in a certain era of her life - when she was young, mentored by the great and good, and could dream of publishing everything. Slowly she lost two out of the three - she aged, and many of the pieces that she wanted to publish in the New Yorker were stalled or cancelled without giving her the option of placing them elsewhere. The third thing, the social networks, seemed to have sustained her, but then she wrote this book which I would imagine burned a lot of bridges.
March 10, 2011
The New Yorker is my favorite magazine and I was curious about the changes that came with the change of editors. This author seemed bitter about the turnover and, as a result, I kept thinking her view was biased. She obviously adored William Shawn (editor from 1951-1987) and maybe didn't write this with an open mind. I'll need to read more about this from other New Yorker writers to get a better sense of what happened. Lots of name-dropping in this book and a lot of trash talk about Adam Gopnik.
May 19, 2016
I would have enjoyed this more if I were old enough to have been a regular reader of the magazine during the period the book covers. Apparently, the years I read it, it was awful.
Clearly this was a book that had to be written. Not sure it had to be published. The intended audience, at times, seemed quite small (like only people who worked at the magazine during the period in question). Also, it's clear the author is an excellent writer, but the book still suffered from some strange transitions. The last few chapters, however, were exccellent.
Clearly this was a book that had to be written. Not sure it had to be published. The intended audience, at times, seemed quite small (like only people who worked at the magazine during the period in question). Also, it's clear the author is an excellent writer, but the book still suffered from some strange transitions. The last few chapters, however, were exccellent.
September 7, 2013
AMAZING
January 17, 2014
Good where gossipy, dull and plodding where not. Best part is a devastating profile of Gopnik.
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October 13, 2015#kindle
June 28, 2022
I happened upon this book at an AirBnB where I recently found myself (gasp!) without a book and unanticipated open time for reading. When I pulled this one book off the shelf, I didn't really know what I was getting into, only that as a current subscriber to the New Yorker I was intrigued with learning more about its history. What this book reveals is a workplace drama from the perspective of a former writer for the publication. I found it quite a slog to get through the first few chapters though by the end the book does somewhat redeem itself as Adler provides some of the insights into why they felt the strong need to share their experience. However, I still feel confused by who Adler is and what is the point of this book beyond a historical time capsule representing her experience as a writer in the 1980s and 90s. It did pique my interest into learning more about current and former editors of the publication, and given the publication is still around it made me wonder what she might think of it today.
October 27, 2021
So good and funny and thought provoking. A lesson in speaking plainly to convey authority—I bet Adler’s Watergate speeches were perfect.
We don’t talk or think nearly enough about our responsibility to institutions, or what affiliation offers the individual. Often that’s for the usual reasons (selfishness, laziness, myopia) but sometimes it’s because we refuse to speak honestly about places we love. The myth-making that happens in real time has such a chilling effect on actual solutions to real problems, and I’ve never seen that so well-captured. I think every leader should read this on the eve of his ascension and every junior employee should read on days when he wants to blow it all up and run away.
It also goes without saying that memoirists could learn a thing two from Gone, as could journalists though we (and Adler) know they can’t and won’t.
We don’t talk or think nearly enough about our responsibility to institutions, or what affiliation offers the individual. Often that’s for the usual reasons (selfishness, laziness, myopia) but sometimes it’s because we refuse to speak honestly about places we love. The myth-making that happens in real time has such a chilling effect on actual solutions to real problems, and I’ve never seen that so well-captured. I think every leader should read this on the eve of his ascension and every junior employee should read on days when he wants to blow it all up and run away.
It also goes without saying that memoirists could learn a thing two from Gone, as could journalists though we (and Adler) know they can’t and won’t.
October 24, 2025
This is a book that has no real narrative through-line, that is clearly barely researched outside the author's own recollections and grudges, and is at points staggeringly petty and meanspirited. It begins by calling out Lillian Ross for spreading lies about a shared bicycle (?) and ends with a vicious denigration of Adam Gopnik's whole personality.
I had an incredibly good time. Anyone interested in media gossip should read it.
I had an incredibly good time. Anyone interested in media gossip should read it.
June 10, 2018
The merciless characterization of Adam Gopnik -I have a feeling Humorist™ Andy Borowitz would come in for a more severe savaging- is not enough to salvage the rest of this boring tract about what was ultimately a privileged time in the print media world.
April 6, 2025
This is not a New Yorker 101 book. It's as insider as you get, I think, about a very particular moment in that seminal magazine's history. Adler's voice is sharp, funny, unmistakeable, and I tore through the book. It's part screed, part lament, part history, and the combo works.
December 11, 2018
This is a hot mess of a book: petty, vindictive and I found it oddly riveting
November 15, 2020
Not as much fun as I'd hoped. Frequently self-indulgent and petty, verging on mean-spirited at times.
November 26, 2021
An odd memoir by an odd woman. Funny, but not humorous.
December 1, 2021
More like 2.5 stars. Renata Adler is a great writer. She was also an insider at The New Yorker. Unlike Adler's other books and writings, this mediocre book has only gotten worse with time.
October 1, 2024
Like all of Renata’s work it’s great. I love the way she goes after Adam Gopnik
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October 2, 2025Well, this was interesting. Adler certainly has lots of opinions about change at The New Yorker.
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November 17, 2025a gossipy memoir about new journalism in the 60s is a page-turner for a guy like me
September 19, 2023
Ugh. Stick with Tall Timber. This was just slightly more interesting than her novels. But it’s a very,
very different sort of memoir compiled from vignettes of people. She writes minimally and with extreme perceptiveness of a bunch of landed cultural types from the century of cool.
very different sort of memoir compiled from vignettes of people. She writes minimally and with extreme perceptiveness of a bunch of landed cultural types from the century of cool.
October 17, 2022
If ‘spill the tea’ were a book.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews