I just sense great things from you Ms. Warren. I love this piece. I too have always wanted to write for The New Yorker. One piece in that magazine would be all I needed and then I could die a happy death.

I once read a piece by a writer, who said that he was writing for them and making an amount of money that I couldn’t imagine justified the amount of time he must have spent. I thought of Joan Didion’s After Henry, where she said that she made $300 one month in a summer.

For a time, I was a regular subscriber, but that was all I ended up reading and the magazines started piling up. The caliber of the writing was stratospheric. I used to be transformed into a cathartic self-absorbed cocoon when I read pieces. One of the greatest was a short story about a pathological liar. I was working with one at the time and I was completely consumed by the character’s break from reality. I too remember reading a piece about a man in the Wild West, who was killed by his wife for money, or a piece by E. L. Doctorow, and something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

It wasn’t that I could write as well as these writers, or if I could, I certainly couldn’t keep it up, but I always wanted to write a piece that achieved the act of bringing someone into themselves as they read and reality simply disappeared.

Louis Menand said in American Studies that the editors of The New Yorker created a magazine that played on the readers’ egos. Everyone wanted to be in the realm of what the magazine exuded.

Your story reminds me of the story in The New Yorker called “Cat Person,” which Kristen Roupenian had written in response to the feminist times (#MeToo!”) and it seemed to explain them. She submitted the piece and it was picked.

I guess you could say that these great news sources have their ear to the pavement.

I just wanted you to know that I am very happy for you and I am excited by your method of editing over and over. Like The New Yorker, and I am sure The New York Times, editing is an art form and it really makes a difference. Congratulations!