Open Letter to Jonathan Swift From Susan Morrison

To: Jonathan Swift

From: Susan Morrison, editor "Snouts of Burmas," The New Yorker

Re: Your "A Modest Proposal" Submission

Dear Mr. Swift,

I'm afraid you have still not grasped that the customary approach for writing for the section is to take a premise, ideally an original one, often based on current events, and give it a twist, a what-if angle, that is funny.

While your recent submission, "A Modest Proposal," fulfilled the first part of this formula, in its execution, it went well beyond the borders of what we can use in the Snouts section because a. it has a personal voice and b. it is as if your goal is to use the light humor format to make a serious point, perhaps something about famine in Ireland?

Think of the successful Snouts submission as being analogous to that Sunkist tuna fish commercial, do they have them on your side of the pond, in which the narrator explains to Charley the Tuna that Sunkist is looking for tunas that taste good, not tunas that have good taste.

Toward this end, we suggest you use as a template our recent Larry David Snouts in which he employs the Kubler-Ross stages of grief and applies them to his golf game. Unfortunately, in many of your submissions, you approach the crafting of a Snouts piece from the opposite perspective, that is, you start with a mundane topic like your golf game and apply it to death. As a result your submissions often strike us as downers.

Take this Modest Proposal story, instead of suggesting that one approach to the question of starvation in Ireland is for the Irish to eat their children, a writer more attuned to the needs of the Snouts column would approach the premise from the opposite angle, namely, he would have the Irish children, born and unborn, offering themselves up as entrees for their starving parents.

Do you see the difference in these two approaches? The second method would make it a lighter, frothier story, which would not oppress our readers by hitting them over the head with whatever ponderous moral points you feel the need to belabor.

There is another issue I must address in this note. I don't see how you can think that showing up at my public appearances and falling to the floor at my feet, grabbing my ankles, and writhing, moaning and begging that we run your weighty musings as Snouts columns can possibly work to your advantage.

I will not hesitate to call security and prevent your entry into any venue, especially the New Yorker forums we hold in the Fall, if you ever again cause a scene like you did at that bookstore in Dumbo during my "kiss-up" conversation with Roseanne Cash three weeks ago.

As you point out, you may well have a problem with tall women like myself, but surely you must realize that the name calling and the kind of references you made during the audience question and answer session last week about my probable rebounding ability will in no way further the likelihood that your submissions to the Snouts column will ever be accepted, at least while I'm running the section and I am a lot younger, and taller, than you.

And not that it is any of your business, but I did play CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) ball and I do know how to clear out space under the backboard. I have to admit that in your ranting statement, poorly disguised as a question at the Roseanne Cash event, you were accurate in your assessment of me as more of a "position" rebounder than a pure leaper. I trust this clarification will not encourage you to make any more ad hominen attacks on me or my staff.

As for the second submission you sent us last week, I don't know what the point was and I didn't find it funny. Your premise that Larry David and Woody Allen died in a car crash and that their obits were written by a failed Snouts contributor who mentioned their Snouts pieces and ignored, in Allen's case, his career as a director, and in the case of his co-decesant, David, his work in TV, never achieved traction.

In conclusion, feel free to try us again, but since you seem to be rather prolific at spinning out these bad Snouts pieces, please take some time off before sending us any new ones. Here at Snouts, we sometimes recommend the writing classes at the 92nd St. "Y." Perhaps that would be useful for you before you resume sending us work.

Sincerely,

Susan Morrison
Editor
Snouts of Burmas, the New Yorker