9 (of 100) years of The New Yorker
This past week marked 100 years of The New Yorker. I’ve contributed humor pieces to the magazine since 2016—just under one tenth of its existence. In New Yorker years, that makes me a fourth grader. Like any fourth grader, I’m due for a career retrospective.
The magazine’s website used to display a section of its most popular pieces. In late May of 2016, this is how that section looked:
That’s a list of writers at the top of their game digging into the most timely, prescient stories and media—and then there’s me, with an absurdist imagining of what “really” happens on “The Bachelorette” in my very first piece for The New Yorker. At the time, I didn’t fully understood or appreciated how cool (and silly) it was to be part of that cultural conversation. Now I get it. It was very cool, and very silly. Plus, I finally read Adam Gopnik’s piece. We should keep an eye on this Trump guy.
Though my writing has trended toward the political over the years, “The Bachelorette Happened to Me” is still one of my favorite things I’ve written. It starts like this:
It was a Monday night. A casting-director friend had set me up on a date with a girl named Sarah. I was excited—my friend had told me that she was sending a car to pick me up. I figured this must be an expensive place we were going, so I dressed nice. Just before eight o’clock, a limousine pulled up in front of my house. Fancy, I thought. The limo contained around twenty other men, all dressed really well, and all very buff, with handsome faces. They kept saying things like “She's so pretty,” and “I wonder who she'll choose tonight.” I was confused. Maybe I'd been set up on a group date? Maybe this was a very trendy Uber Pool? I heard the doors lock, and a voice from the front seat told us to prepare an introduction and a talent.
As I tried to think of a talent I had (maybe juggling? I could kind of juggle), we arrived at a large house with a camera crew in the driveway. This should have been my first red flag. Sarah stood outside, greeting the men one by one. I was jealous already—who were these other dudes? The rest of us waited in the limo and introduced ourselves. The guy sitting across from me was named Chris. The guy next to me said his name was Chris B. Then Chris B. told me that my name was Chris D. I said, “No, my name is Ralph.” He told me, “That's very funny, Chris D. Now go introduce yourself to Sarah and do a talent.” Then he pushed me out of the limo and I had to juggle for Sarah.
To be clear, this wasn’t my first submission. Emma Allen, the magazine’s cartoon and humor editor, had declined my writing the year before with tactful kindness and encouragement to keep trying. Twelve months later, I wrote something worth publishing. Even a decade ago, Emma was the consummate humor editor—able to see quickly what can work and how to make it work better. Eight years later, she graciously provided the blurb that appears on the cover of my debut book (available now—always be plugging!)
It took me another year to land my next Shouts piece. They say to write what you know. Well, I was on a flight when I wrote this one, sitting in the emergency exit row. It’s called, aptly, “Sitting in the Emergency Exit Row: What You Need to Know.”
A snippet:
Thank you for flying with Delta Airlines. You are seated in the emergency-exit row of this aircraft. Please listen carefully to the following instructions, and then verbally confirm that you feel capable of performing all necessary duties.
In case of a water landing, your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device. Remove your cushion before pulling the emergency handle above your window. The wall will detach and allow you and the other passengers to safely exit the aircraft. Once everyone is floating in the water, it is your job to get them to dry land. Congratulations on this newfound leadership opportunity.
You must pick a direction to swim in and make sure everyone keeps swimming in that direction. Some passengers may become frightened. Buck them up by saying, “This is just like the movie ‘Cast Away’! Or that other Tom Hanks movie ‘Sully’!” That should restore everyone’s high spirits.
Next, please briefly direct your attention to the emergency handle below your window. This handle is labelled “Release the Lizards.” Do not, under any circumstances, pull this handle. If you do, it will release the lizards. They are hungry, and they do not rest.
This one came with its own surprise. The magazine wanted to record the piece with a special guest and run it on The New Yorker Radio Hour. Tony Hale (of Veep and Arrested Development) agreed to voice the script. I was delighted. We recorded at The New Yorker’s offices. Tony gave a few different takes, and I was tasked with providing feedback—but what feedback could I have had? Each read was better than the one before. It’s Tony Hale, for Hale’s sake!
So, where can you listen to the recording? Well, nowhere. If you recall, in 2017 a snake was actually found in an overhead compartment on a plane. Someone must have pulled the “Release the Lizards” handle. Then there were a few more incidents, enough months in a row that the piece went from continually getting pushed back to simply never airing at all. That happens pretty frequently with creative projects. When I was at The Tonight Show, I’d estimate that 90 percent of everything we wrote and produced never saw the light of day. The experience with the radio piece was a true example of enjoying the journey, not the destination.
That said, the destination would’ve been fun, too.
It took another couple years to start selling consistent pieces to The New Yorker. Around 2019 to 2022 I hit a real groove. I published terms and conditions for Earth, which would go on to open my debut book. I published an entire story based on the classic idiom about “teaching a man to fish,” which drew some fan mail from fly fishers. I published my first cowritten piece, with my very smart and funny wife. In 2021, I had my first piece in the print magazine. It was called “Things Fully Vaccinated People are Still Not Allowed to Do.” This included nuisances like replying all to large email threads, playing devil’s advocate, or, inexplicably, eating hot dogs like they’re corn on the cob. It was one of the most-read Shouts pieces that year. In 2022, I published the definitive guide to doing your taxes and a seemingly prescient set of jokes about inflation. I’ve railed against billionaires, found linguistic comedy in marriage, derided the inertia of elected officials, mocked Tesla and George Santos, revealed David Blaine’s daily life and Pete Davidson’s effect on mine, and tapped into the hold my phone has on my head.
Publishing comes in waves, of course. I didn’t run a single piece last year. Sometimes you need a break, so you can keep going for another nine years (or even another hundred). Breaks are good. Life isn’t a 60mph highway—it’s got side roads and on- and off-ramps. I wish it wasn’t a road at all, to be honest. Life would be better as a walkable city.
You know, like New York.
It’s been 16 months of my debut essay collection. Celebrate the Sweet Sixteen! Order This Won’t Help in bulk.
What I’ve been reading
Onward and Upward, David Remnick
“We were not proud of our first issues of The New Yorker,” Grant admitted in a memoir that she published in 1968. “We had hoped it would be an immediate triumph as well as a literary one.” It was neither. “Failure hung all about us.” At newsstands across town, heaps of unsold copies shivered in the winter chill. The fifteen-cent cover price tempted almost no one. Ross and Grant briefly considered spending a hundred dollars to buy up copies and plump their circulation statistics, but abandoned the plan as too expensive. Ross implored Dorothy Parker to come to the office and write something. Parker replied that she had dropped by, but “somebody was using the pencil.”
The Fork in the Road, Mark Greif
“Simple advice can be offered to anyone in a decision-making role at an institution. Every tub must stand on its own bottom. If you can find solidarity with other institutions like your own, do it. But even when you can’t prevent others from defecting, there need be no solidarity in weakness. Prepare to stand on your own for a bit. Reach into reserves if they exist. Delay programs if you must. Don’t change, or kneel, or find hostages to feed into a slobbering maw. Don’t coordinate yourself, don’t align yourself, don’t appease, when it may yet prove unnecessary.”
Ring Lardner would be proud. But he's dead, so I'll have to do.