Life by 1,000 Tiny Pencil Strokes
Amy Reading ’98 highlights the remarkable life of The New Yorker's Katharine S. White in her book, The World She Edited.
Considering the age-old question of whether genius owes more to nature or nurture, The New Yorker’s Katharine S. White—arguably the magazine’s most consequential editor you’ve never heard of—came down on the side of nurture. The rich content that she solicited from her writers resulted from inducement more than manipulation. “She treated everyone as if they were just about to hit that sweet spot between their talent and The New Yorker’s needs,” writes Amy Reading ’98 in The World She Edited. This enthralling biography shows how White struck that balance, leaving her remarkable imprint through written correspondence and pencilings on early drafts of celebrated works that were transformed by her incisive feedback.
From 1925 to 1960, White developed talent, improved manuscripts, and became a quietly influential figure of American literary culture. Until a few years before her retirement, when she hired her own female successor, White was the only woman on the masthead of The New Yorker. Though she was a singular talent, her commonality with others aided her in cultivating the professional and personal growth of some of the century’s most distinctive voices. Reading suggests that the defining feature of White’s tenure was bringing outstanding women writers into the fold and making sure they stayed. She discovered Elizabeth Bishop and Janet Flanner, and she worked closely with Nadine Gordimer, Mary McCarthy, Adrienne Rich, and many others.
In anecdotes that span multiple years, Reading highlights how trust, continuity, and mutual regard defined White’s mentorship. She was receptive to what her writers shared of themselves—allowing for, and even honoring, their vulnerability—and in exchange, revealed a bit of herself via “the personal editorial letter.” As our guide, Reading is fastidious and intuitive, showing how White’s penchant for deciphering words and people grew out of a childhood in which “she was paying close attention to adult reading habits, the curation of an interior life.” Tracing the details of an ostensibly charmed life that was repeatedly interrupted by death, loss, and illness, Reading connects the dots between coping mechanisms White employed to persevere, while chronicling her formative years at Bryn Mawr, the intensity of two very different marriages, and her devotion to her three children.
White had great intellectual acuity, but also a refined sense of emotional intelligence. While the labor of editing is nearly invisible, one of White’s most generous acts was expanding the field of vision for individual writers and, by extension, the appeal of The New Yorker. What could be a more generative model of care and cultivation upon which to build a legacy?
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