The New Yorker receives 4,000 unsolicited submissions per month …
“[but] I can’t recall the last writer who leapt from the crates to the page”
New Yorker Editor Bill Buford
Dear Mr. Buford:
Do you remember that scene in Jungle Fever where Samuel Jackson plays a sweaty, spiral-eyed crack addict trying to bamboozle his mother out of a little extra cash so that he can scoot back to his happy place and light up? “Look Mama, I’m dancin’ for you!” he shouts, scuffling, stomping and pumping his arms like Uncle Jed on speedballs. (Sadly, Daddy, a tough-love Republican, later shoots Mr. Jackson for stealing the family television.) Sometimes, that’s the way I feel with you, Mr. Buford, trying to be what you want me to be, instead of celebrating the gorgeous uniquity necessary for a fruitful and mutually appreciative editor-artist relationship.
Henry E. Panky may look like a tough, confident, new-media “It Boy,” but beneath the finger-snapping sang-froid and backwards baseball cap of the public persona, there yet quivers an ingratiating, middle-aged ingénue performing his frantic, skirt-lifting can-can for The New Yorker’s seal of approval.
I’m dancin’ for you, Mama!
Perhaps, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have submitted my last piece under the nom de plume of D. Sedaris. I was only trying, in a frolicsome way, to make a tiny point about the grubbiest little secret in publishing –- I speak, of course, of the perniciously preferential treatment accorded the best-selling, award-winning author over the simpering schlimazel yoo-hooing from the bottom of the slush pile. I was yanking your chain, you hoser, moving your cheese a little, which I assumed would not be taken amiss after the many years of our increasingly flirtatious back and forth. Perhaps, and I hope you won't take this the wrong way, The New Yorker has a six-foot broomstick of self-importance jammed up its ass?
If so, that’s fine with me--and may well be justified. I shall not judge lest I be judged in return.
In any case, I stand ready to credit the fifteen thousand dollars already received—which I consider a legitimate kill fee for "The Dirty Backside of NPR" by "D. Sedaris"—toward any other piece of mine you might see fit to publish: a freebie, as it were. This includes my latest literary zabaglione, the playfully Bukowskian "Harry Potter & the Dark Stranger Between My Legs."
In ending, let me point out that, in my lexicon, “Mama” and “you hoser” are pet names of great fondness and esteem. For example, on occasion, I mischievously called my own beloved mother, “Mama,” and furthermore, my father used to beat me with a hose! (Which presumably is where I got my taste for it!) So, hopefully, you will cherish these endearments in the spirit in which they are offered.
Warmest regards to Hendrik Hertzberg and the entire New Yorker gang. You've got a lot of good eggs there. Let's all do dim sum soon!
Sincerely, your biggest fan,
Henry E. Panky, Associate of Arts (candidate)
By Henry E. Panky
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