The Elegant Variation: COMING SOON: OMNIVORE?

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February 27, 2004

COMING SOON: OMNIVORE?

Jessa links to this item about Lawrence Weschler's proposed new magazine Omnivore. She's a bit dismissive, comparing it to The Believer, but I have higher hopes. I've admired Weschler ever since Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders. I vastly prefer his writing to Eggers' and he's shown no evidence of a self-indulgent streak. TEV wishes this endeavor well - send us off a protoype. We're tastemakers!

Mr. Weschler is dissatisfied with current newsstand choices, contending that extended nonfiction reportage intended for general-interest magazines has atrophied amid “the increasingly peg-driven, niche-slotted, attentionsqueezed, sound-bit media environment of recent years.” In short, writers such as A.J. Liebling, John Hersey, and Joseph Mitchell would feel crunched for space today.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Weschler recalled William Shawn in the early 1980s saying the greatest challenge to the New Yorker would come not from another magazine but from television, with the continuing shortening of people’s attention spans coming at a time when things are getting more rather than less complicated. Mr. Weschler said he sees Omnivore as “an intervention in the culture wars.”

Posted at 10:46 AM | Permalink

Comments

"hopelessly utopian" at $20 a pop? I can subscribe to The New Yorker for less than $1 an issue. Will Weschler be 20x better?

Posted by: Pierre Menard | February 27, 2004 at 11:47 AM

No different from the $20/issue of McSweeney's, Pierre. Personally, I hope Weschler gets the cash. The magazine climate needs new blood and the Believer/McSwee people need to be kept on their toes. They have no edge. And I think Weschler might be the guy to do it.

Posted by: Ed | February 27, 2004 at 01:04 PM

Weschler is both a wonderful writer and a smart and sensitive journalist and for anyone to fail to acknowledge that is as , uh, wrong-headed as calling Dale Peck stupid.

Plus, what's the urgency to weigh in with humorless (and useless) speculation —either Omnivore will deliver the goods or not.

Self appointed web pundits are starting to sound like Soviet political propogandists—the adventurist revanchist McSweeney's clique and the running dog lackey Beleiverists and the reactionary Zionist New Yorkers—what a bunch of bloodless technocrats.

Phooey!

Posted by: R Birnbaum | February 28, 2004 at 05:19 PM

Um, I did say that I like the guy and look forward to the magazine. I can only assume Robert's posting is perhaps aimed "in absentia" at Jessa, who has no comments feature on her own site?

As it happens, I've contacted Weschler since posting this, and he very graciously has agreed to send me a copy. So I hope to weigh in more substantially. But to reiterate my posting - I think the world of him and wish his venture well.

Posted by: TEV | February 28, 2004 at 05:27 PM

I am hoping you will share with me your address for Lawrence Weschler. When I contacted the New Yorker they suggested I try at the NY Institiute for the Humanities. I'm about ready to read him with a suggestion and contact for a piece, and cruising for an address I found you first, with the intersting prospect of Omnivore. I hadn't heard about it. Can you help? Thank you, Lynn Travata

Posted by: lynn Travata | July 15, 2004 at 04:26 AM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 27, 2004

COMING SOON: OMNIVORE?

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 27, 2004

COMING SOON: OMNIVORE?

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism