Magazines: Suzanne Farrell profile

[Farrell Fan]

I'm going off-topic to recall my days in book advertising when publishers thought it a selling point to describe what they'd published as "readable." The highest accolade was calling something "compulsively readable."

[Ray]

I'm all for readability; the Acocella piece certainly was that. But the New Yorker *used* to have a reputation of readable prose that also told us something new (weren't parts of Taper's Balanchine bio first printed there?). I really don't mean to fault JA--she's got a lot to do with very little space and, I imagine, time and resources.