Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,28
nice things.”
But I wasn’t being honest. I never wrote a negative review without worrying about closed restaurants, lost jobs, and fired chefs; there was no joy in thinking about the harm my words could cause.
“You can’t be a restaurant critic,” Mary Frances Fisher once told me, “unless you are one of those ambitious sorts, willing to walk on your grandmother’s grave.” I’d quoted that in the article about disapproving of what I did, the article that had sent Truman to see me. And then I’d refuted it, ending the article by quoting A. J. Liebling. “All it really takes to be a restaurant critic,” I’d written, “is a good appetite.”
But I hadn’t fooled myself; I’d taken the easy way out, and I knew it. Now, as the chef and his son walked away from me, I felt nothing but relief that my reviewing days were behind me.
“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LIKE the managing editor I’ve hired,” I warned Laurie before her first day at the office. “I took Donna’s advice and picked someone who’s a serious bean counter. He seems like a total pain in the ass, but Human Resources has assured me he’s the best ME in the building.”
What they’d actually said was that the editor of Allure was distraught to be losing Larry Karol. Since I’d pretty much hated him on sight, I had a hard time understanding why she was so upset; I thought I was doing her a favor.
He was a tall, thin stork of a man who stalked into my office, disapproval etched into every line of his body. His head was small, the hair so closely cropped that you couldn’t help noticing his compact, neat ears. His face bore so few distinguishing characteristics I thought that if you tried to describe him you’d end up noting his impeccable posture and that he was very, very clean. When I introduced Laurie, he studied her long hair and colorful clothing, making no attempt to hide his dismay.
“Not very corporate.” Did he actually say the words? But it was easy to tell what he was thinking. He shook her hand and then turned on his heel. “I’m going to walk around and get the lay of the land,” he called over his shoulder as he strode off. Laurie and I looked at each other, mouths twitching; he couldn’t wait to escape.
An hour later he was back. “This place”—his voice was strangled—“is insane! It’s not a magazine; it’s like some girls’ seminary from the last century. Their procedures are absolutely archaic; I can’t imagine how such inefficiency has been permitted.”
Larry had discovered, in less than an hour, something that had completely eluded me: The magazine had no support staff.
“You didn’t notice that there were no copy editors?” Larry was incredulous. So was I. My copy editor at The New York Times, Don Caswell, had become my best friend and constant savior; was there no one at Gourmet who made sure the copy flowed smoothly and the grammar was correct?
“And,” he continued, “the complete lack of fact-checkers escaped your attention?” I gulped; fact-checkers are the ultimate defense against errors. Didn’t anybody question Gourmet’s writers on their sources? Was there nobody who made sure that what the magazine printed was actually true?
And Larry wasn’t finished. “Are you telling me that you didn’t know that Gourmet has no photo editor?”
“That’s not possible!” I cried. “This is Condé Nast. There must be somebody on staff who figures out which photographers to use.”
He shook his head. “There isn’t. I guess the art director just calls her friends.” His scathing look telegraphed, in a single second, how outraged he was, how hopeless I was, and his deep regret at having accepted the job. “I’m going to have to reorganize everything, from the bottom up.” He gave me another searing look. “Do you have the faintest idea what you’re doing?”
I shook my head miserably; there was no point in denying it.
“Did you notice,” Laurie said when he’d stalked off again, “that beneath all that bluster he seemed rather pleased? He doesn’t want us to know it, but he likes the idea of shaking everything up. It gives him a chance to create his own systems.”
“I had no idea they were so short-staffed.” The head of HR sounded genuinely chagrined when I called to say we’d need to hire a few people. “But why are you there?” Jill Bright did not try to hide her surprise. “You’re not due to start for another