Block that metaphor!
Each week in The New Yorker magazine, wedged in at the bottom of a page, often one hundred pages or more back, there is a small blurb taken from another newspaper or magazine that pokes fun at the writing to be found there. Sometimes, the chosen piece, never more than about fifty words, focuses on an unusual occurrence in a small town. A crime beat report, say, where a citizen is hearing voices (From the Amherst Bee: “A Peppertree Drive resident reported that his phone was talking to him and that he wants it to leave him alone.”) or a report of an accidental death (From the Financial Times: “On March 23, she fell into an elevator shaft. Police, who declared her death an accident, were unable to interview her.”).
The event itself doesn’t matter much. In order to make it onto the bottom of the page in The New Yorker the writing will usually be (how shall I say it?) ill-conceived. The editors of The New Yorker are vigilant in their quest for short, punchy snippets where the writing can be misconstrued in humorous ways. Double entendres, unfortunate word choices, bumbling clauses, unintended messages – one and all – that jump off the page at the reader, but somehow never occur to the author or his editor.
Another favorite category of The New Yorker editors is the metaphor. Over the top, groan-inducing metaphors end up in a category called “Block that Metaphor!” Here is an entry from the March 6, 2006 issue:
Block that Metaphor!
From the De Moines Register.
“I’m tired of being Charlie Brown and putting in more hoops for teachers to jump through and then pulling the football of higher salaries away at every turn.”
Here is another one from the April 21, 2006 edition:
Block that Metaphor!
From the Astoria (Ore.) Daily Astorian.
“Rather than wallowing in tears, let this passionate community strike while the iron is hot. It probably won’t cost the National Park Service a single penny, will be no skin off its nose, will heal the community and it presents a golden opportunity for first-person interpretation.”
Sure I groaned when I read that. But the thing is, I also feel sorry for the person who wrote it, probably late at night under deadline. If you are a writer, you want your work to be published in the New Yorker. But not this way! Imagine the deflation that follows when an old school mate drops you an email: “Hey saw your piece in the New Yorker. Hah!” Only you didn’t submit anything to The New Yorker and what did that “Hah!” mean? Perhaps you don’t subscribe to The New Yorker. And you can’t even get the magazine at any of the news kiosks in town because – hey, it’s a small town – there aren’t any news kiosks here. So you go to the library, find this week’s torn and tattered copy of The New Yorker on the shelf and start paging through it. Finally, you find what you are looking for, way in the back, the passage you wrote for the local newspaper many months before. There it is, larger than life, being lampooned by only the single most important literary magazine in the world. Phfffff.
I don’t know. All I can say is it’s a good thing the metaphor police at The New Yorker aren’t paying attention to blogs. At least, not yet. We all have comparably bad days out here in the blogosphere. I, for one, have been known to cook up some pretty wicked metaphors that stink like poker night in a one room apartment after a bean burrito dinner. Just don’t quote me on that.
1:00:23 PM 
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