Late Pass

The following excerpt is from Brendan Gill's "Here at the New Yorker"

Born in the tobacco country of North Carolina, where his numerous family lives and where he continues to own a farm, (Joseph) Mitchell was a reporter for the World-Telegram before coming to The New Yorker. As a newspaperman, he was expected to turn out a considerable amount of copy every day; on The New Yorker, his writing has been accomplished at a pace increasingly slow. Whether Mitchell or any of the rest of us would write more (or at least would write more rapidly) if the magazine were more sternly businesslike in its demands upon us remains, after all these years, an open question. The fact is that although productivity is rewarded by a scale of payments that increases with the number of pieces sold during the course of a year, lack of productivity is neither rebuked nor deplored. On the contrary, it may be sneakingly admired, as proof that the magazine considers writing an occupation often difficult and sometimes, for the best writers, impossible.

Mitchell, who is in his sixties, used to take months over a piece and now takes years. One consequence of that long period of composition is the interest it arouses among his editors and fellow writers; everyone speculates about the nature of the piece upon which Mitchell is at work and about when it may be handed in. Nobody would dream of putting such questions to Mitchell directly; that would be an unthinkable violation of our custom of pretending that each of us is engaged upon a project of great size and extreme delicacy, the slightest reference to which might cause it to shred away into dust.

If the ideas expressed above seem to fit your circumstances, you may print a copy of this paper and submit it with any assignment during the semester it is assigned with no penalty and my admiration. The only exception to this is special projects where deadlines must be upheld. This is not transferable- only one per writer per year. If used with a joint lab report, and if it is to be applied for each member of the group, then each member must submit this late pass. Please sign your name on the dotted line before submitting.

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