Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker

One day George Eliot wrote a letter to her friend Mrs. Bray. ŒIf there is any one action or relation of my life,¹ she wrote, "which is and always has been profoundly serious, it is my relation to Mr. Lewes.¹ The action was simple: to love him, a married man, an editor of the Leader, and to then be encouraged by that love, by the cares and the cautions of deep affection, to make herself into a novelist. But simple isn¹t the same as easy: theirs was a union without legal or social recognition. But they lived how they could, and they made arrangements, and they did their work with honesty and love. Lillian Ross went to work at The New Yorker in 1945. She was already a good reporter with a friendly attachment to facts, but The New Yorker was a certain kind of magazine, and although there were a few women around, they were only allowed to write Œnotes,¹ which they handed to a rewrite man, usually Brendan Gill, who put their words through the typewriter to make them sound male. A lot of the people on the magazine were idols to the young Ms. Ross. There was Joe and Joe (Liebling and Mitchell), humane, beautiful writers both, and there were editors like Katharine White, who was dedicated to every sentence her writers put down, and William Shawn, who became the Editor, and would almost sob if you spoke the names of his favorite contributors. ŒEvery morning,¹ writes Lillian Ross, "on my way to West Forty-third Street, I couldn¹t contain my excitement over my good fortune to have become part of that place.¹ The young reporter fell in love with her job. And over time, and several hurdles, she fell in love with William Shawn, the man who made her job what it was. Shawn was complicated, not only in his manners, shy and introverted, but also in his character, depressive, regretful, existentially troubled. On top of all that he was married with children. But he and Ms. Ross had similar feelings for one another, and they made them last for 40 years. ŒWas I a dope?¹ asks Ross. ŒWas there a vacancy in me? Why was I not beset with guilt ­ or with resentment ­ about the woman who remained Bill¹s wife?¹ The answer to these difficult questions is that Shawn and Ross would never allow themselves to become adversaries. They were open-minded and gentle, and never free from a little pain. The same can be said of Mrs. Shawn, who put up with all this, and who had the character to let it be as it was. Lillian Ross has found a way to honor every player in this local drama. She has brought all the dignity of her feelings for Mr. Shawn to the writing of this tender story. She is a writer after all, and a very, very good one at that. Her love of Shawn was forever tied to her love of reporting. Here she brings the two loves together, one last time, in a manner that is so unusual, and so honest, that one can only welcome the appearance of this careful, restorative book, and wish there were more like it. Lillian Ross has

I find it amazing to suddenly think that I live in a puritanical society. "Here But Not Here" by Lillian Ross is a very special love story. What bothers Jeremy Bernstein (Los Angeles Book Review, May 17) most is that Lillian Ross is writing about a deep and penetrating and lasting love that became her life. Hers is the passionate story of two extremely shy and brilliant lovers who slowly evolve into each other and become that one person that all two people want to become. It is a private story, now made courageously public, which gives the reader the hope and happiness of existing love. Not all people are capable of such love. That is the book's undeniable beauty. It is the sort of love that insists on itself on itself and must live -- despite all the values that seek to deny it. A great love affair is high art.Lillian Ross, as most people know, is a marvelous writers, and the late William Shawn was the best American editor ever. It is an act of br! ! avery for very good writers to share their private emotional life with the world -- a world that is very often cold and mean-spirited. To have found such a love and lived it is an art all its own. Her sharing that discovery and that life is an act of generosity, not self-aggrandizement. Her story of a love lived against all the odds fills one with happiness that it happened and sadness that, like life itself, it had to end. But her story of the live she shared with William Shawn is life-enhancing, and I, for one, am grateful. It makes life worth living. -- Carol Matthau, Pacific Palisades

How extraordinary! "Here But Not Here" is a *genuine* love story -- without saccharine or neurasthenia -- by one of the greatest and, until now, least celebrated reporters alive. For over fifty years Lillian Ross, while closely acquainted with many famous people, has, on principle, firmly avoided celebrity herself. No personal interviews, no book tours, no talk shows. "I don't believe in doing it. I don't want publicity about myself, and I don't even want to do that kind of self-serving talk.... All that matters -- and perhaps, if you stop to think about it, you might agree -- is what I write." Now, in this remarkable capstone work, she has abandoned her cherished privacy, impelled by transcendent motives: her devotion to the late William Shawn, and her gratefulness to that quirky Mecca of prose aficionados, "The New Yorker." Addicts of the magazine, and prose fanciers everywhere, may want to hunt up Miss Ross's "Reporting" (the 1981 paperback) and "Takes" (1983) for her introductory notes, her "rules for reporters," the bedrock of her writing career. And "Here But Not Here" is itself a trove of rich details about the idiosyncratic workings and the history of "The New Yorker":: its editorial leaders (Harold Ross, William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown); some of its great staff writers past and present (the ineffable Joe Mitchell, A. J. Liebling, John McPhee, and many others): Lillian Ross's (*not* Truman Capote's) invention of "the non-fiction novel" ("Picture," 1952), and her role in recruiting and encouraging new writers at the magazine; the duplicity surrounding the sale of the publication to the Newhouse conglomerate, the callous and prematurely-forced resigmation of Shawn, as well as S. I. Newhouse's mendacious promise to allow Shawn and his colleagues to select the new editor (Charles McGrath had been chosen by senior staff, few of whom stood up for shawn in the showdown, but Newh! ouse hired Robert Gottlieb). The vital core of this thought-provoking book, however, is the story of how Shawn and Ross came eventually to love each other so truly and absolutely after they had surmounted the forbidding hurdles of conventionality in the 1950s. Legal matrimony was not an option for them, unfortunately -- but neither was furtiveness. Their open yet intimate mutuality flourished for forty fulfilling years, without bitterness but not devoid of some contextual sadness. The keynote of these recollections, however, is joy -- and gratitude for the durability of their loving and sharing -- so respectful, yet playful, honest, earthy, and unselfish. A marvel, really; how courageous and generous of Miss Ross to share her celebration of working, loving, and living! A prediction: Lillion Ross will hear a chorus of outraged cries from self-badged moralists. So she may have to suspend, temporarily, her Rule #16: "Hold on to the quietness in your life." But readers may rest assured that she will also eschew public retaliation; Rule #4 s

"A successful autobiography can make you feel as if you've stumbled upon an unlocked diary. Lillian Ross's short, page-turning story of her unconventional love affair with William Shawn, famed editor of The New Yorker, is such a tale ..."Although some might squirm at the details of this odd relationship (Shawn had a private phone line that only Ross used installed near his bed), its honesty and surprising romanticism are not only fascinating but appealing, you are glad Ross had the courage to reveal her hidden life ..."Although the people who knew the couple were aware of their liason, it was never made legitimate. With this book, Ross announces it to the world, revealing a truly moving love story. All moralizing be damned -- at least until you've finished the book."

"What raises Ross' memoir far above the level of titillating gossip is its depiction -- the more powerful because it seems largely unintentional -- of the consequences of a complicated man's refusal to seek love and warmth as a unified whole instead of in fragments."