GONE: The Last Days of The New Yorker

by Renata Adler

In 1982, The New Yorker published "The Fate of the Earth," by Jonathan Schell, a five-part meditation on nuclear war. When the pieces were published in book form, by Knopf, the jacket copy, unsigned, was written in fact by Mr. Shawn. He described the book as "possibly one of the great events in the history of human thought." Even given the occasionally effusive nature of jacket copy, this seemed excessive. But Mr. Shawn, whose last published piece (apart from some very concise and moving obituaries of New Yorker writers) was thought to have been a little fantasy about a meteors hitting New York, in 1945, had actually been writing several Notes &c Comments himself since Mr. Schell came to the magazine. His views often echoed Mr. Schells. When The Fate of the Earth was published in Germany, a reviewer raised a question of plagiarism. Certain points and passages in the book, particularly a chapter called "The Second Death," closely resembled parts of a book originally published in Germany—written, in fact, by a former husband of Hannah Arendt.