Without Laughter

At 21 years of age, the New Yorker was feeling grown-up and responsible. Until last week, it had generally managed to confine its twinges of social conscience to an occasional sententious One-World outburst on a page usually devoted to more urbane -- or supercilious -- matter. It seemed to believe that no one should talk in a loud voice about anything. But last week Eustace Tilley, the New Yorker's butterfly-watching dandy, was a man with a message.

Out went all the usual cartoons, quips, verse, chichi shopping notes and critical departments. The entire issue, except for entertainment guides up front, was given over to a 30,000-word doomsday documentary on Hiroshima, by John (A Bell for Adano) Hersey. An editorial box explained that "everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of [the atom bomb's] use."

It was a brilliant piece of journalism. The New Yorker's editors had practically stumbled into it. Originally, they planned to print Hersey's report in four articles. Then able, shy co-managing editor Bill Shawn, suggested running the whole thing at once. It took a while to convince Harold Ross, the New Yorker's terrible-tempered editor, a man given to juvenile and profane tantrums, and intuitive, often shrewd judgments. Ross is convinced that everyone on his staff but himself is in danger of going holy. One factor helped decide him: most of the magazine's regular departments (films, theater, books, etc.) were in the summer doldrums. Ross was a little afraid that Hersey's sympathetic piece on the Hiroshima Japanese might sound a little anti-American--so he got Hersey to explain why the U.S. dropped the bomb.

It was too late to do anything about the cover which incongruously showed a picnic scene (New Yorker covers are made up four months in advance). But one editor suddenly thought: "My God, how would a guy feel, buying the magazine intending to sit in a barber's chair and read it!" Ross ordered a white band around the 40,000 New York newsstand copies, warning readers that there was nothing inside but Hiroshima.

By week's end the response to Shawn's hunch, and Hersey's restrained, first-rate reporting, was the biggest thing in New Yorker history. Book Critic Lewis Gannett called Hersey's piece "the best reporting . . . of this war." The New York Times, Herald Tribune and leftist PM applauded solemnly. Manhattan newsstands sold out early on publication day. Showman Lee Shubert tried to get the dramatic rights. In Princeton, N.J., the mayor asked all citizens to read the piece. Knopf planned to publish it as a book. A radio chain wanted Paul Robeson, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and Katharine Cornell to take turns reading the 53-page article on the air. Only one dissenting note was heard: a reader in Brooklyn sent back his copy, saying he had read enough about the atom bomb. He was dismissed as crotchety.

Editor Ross, admitting to having gotten a little religion himself, announced that he was ready to do it again if something as good came along.

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