Twitter Tale: Dan Baum on His Rise and Fall at The New Yorker

By Tom

Want to find out how to get hired at The New Yorker? Want to find out how to get fired at The New Yorker? Dan Baum, former staff writer at The New Yorker and author of one of the best-reviewed books of the year so far,Nine Lives, has done both, and having been asked about it at author readings, he's telling the story via Twitter, at 140 characters a pop. As someone fascinated by The New Yorker and also by the behind-the-scenes relationships between writers and editors (very different in magazines than in books), I find this to be total candy. I especially like the links to his old article proposals (successful and unsuccessful). Check out his author video for Nine Lives, by the way--it's a heck of a pitch, and you can see what he's learned in his years of selling editors on story ideas.

And Twitterizing it? Well, it's a bit of a gimmick, and there's no reason the same content couldn't be poured into a blog post or two, but the novelty of the form gives it that old defamiliarizing kick. It feels a little--only a little, poetry fans!--like rolling along in one of A.R. Ammons's looping long poems (and I love rolling along in A.R. Ammons's looping long poems).

Baum called it a day a few hours ago and promises to finish the tale tomorrow. Here's a sample (don't forget to read up, blog-style):

[Via Sullivan] --Tom