The Press: Lovable Old Volcano

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Often the Ross notes involve minute points of grammar, punctuation and style; a self-taught precisionist who abandoned high school, he keeps his Fowler's Modern English Usage well thumbed. (Of one syntactical sin, Ross noted: "White writes as if he has two or more gall bladders. I suspect only one.") Frequently the notes display a real or feigned ignorance ("Who he?", "What's that?"); they also dip into an astonishing fund of information ranging from eunuchs to eels, from trout-fishing to poker.

Spit in the Ocean. Ross banged out one such memorandum after reading a short-story manuscript about a World War II poker game. Wrote ex-Private (World War I) Ross: "I was amazed and alarmed . . . These men, these officers . . . these leaders of our soldier boys, are not playing poker at all. They are playing a bastard form of poker invented for women and children and defectives. It is a horror called Spit in the Ocean, I believe, and other things, some of them vile. It is impossible for me to believe that any officers of our army . . . would be seen dead in any such game ... As for me, I begin to see a great light on the question of why it is taking so long to win this war ..." But after three pages and 15 numbered objections to the author's imprecise descriptions of "this monstrous, one-pack, chipless, tinhorn game," Editor Ross concluded: "This is a very good story . . ."

The Ross notes are quick challenges to his editors,* to be acted on or not as they see fit; most New Yorker writers do not get the charge of Ross birdshot full in the face. Ross's unflagging concern for the right word, the apt phrase and the exact image has long been a stimulating and sometimes maddening goad to New Yorker writers. It has also given The New Yorker its reputation as one of the most ably edited magazines in U.S. journalism. Explains E. B. White: "Ross understands, but does not overestimate, the artistic temperament and the creative mind. A writer (if he is any good) feels . . . that he has just passed a miracle or masterpiece. Ross, on the other hand, when he receives this opus suspects that what he holds in his hand is just another bundle of ambiguities. Both are right."