It seemed incongruous because -- "Because I might have better things to do?" Remnick laughed at my surprise. And yet Remnick seemed quite at home that night.
"I have lots of interests," he said. Indeed. That statement underscores what I contend is Remnick's one-of-a-kind status in publishing today: not only does he edit what's widely regarded as the nation's most respected magazine, he is also its most accomplished reporter.
In the past year, Remnick, 47, has reported memorable pieces about the unreal reality of life in Israel and New Orleans. But what truly stood out was his extraordinary profile of former President Bill Clinton, a must-read if you want to understand how Clinton won two presidential terms and why he left the White House with such a tangled legacy -- and what it all will mean to the 2008 national prospects of his wife, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. As a New Yorker staff writer from 1992 to 1998, Remnick had a reputation for being a reporter who could produce an excellent profile on seemingly any subject (note the variety in his terrific book, "Reporting," published earlier this year).
Uh-oh. What have I done? I mean, I have heaped praise on Remnick.
What was I thinking???
Remnick, you see, has a well-deserved reputation as someone who welcomes compliments about as eagerly as word that the New Yorker has published a piece containing a typographical error. I asked him bluntly: Are you the magazine's finest writer? "That's not even remotely true," he said, screwing up his face as if he had taken a whiff of some bad cheese.
But he brightened at that suggestion that the New Yorker was the nation's finest magazine. "I dearly hope that's true," he said. I interviewed Remnick in his office in the Conde Nast building, located in the heart of ever-bustling Times Square.
Even though we were on the 20th floor, the noise from corporate neighbor MTV's Nelly Furtado concert came through loud and clear. Barely acknowledging the music, Remnick talked about Clinton, whom he called "brilliant, complex and maddening. He LOVES the game he is in" -- namely politics.
Remnick deftly captured Clinton in his endless flesh-pressing style on his travels over the summer. Remnick watched as Clinton attended the World Cup final match in Germany and then embarked on a tour of Africa. One of the underlying themes of Remnick's piece was that Clinton didn't do enough to limit the AIDS epidemic in impoverished nations and now was trying to right the record by raising money and contributing his time as a former president.
When I asked Remnick if he came away liking his subject, he said bluntly: "It's not a date. It's not my job as a reporter to like or dislike somebody." Clinton, he concluded, "is a force of nature.
" The same could be said of Remnick's profile of the nation's 42nd President. The story's sheer length made an immediate impression. A New York Times executive told me in awestruck tones: "That story covered something like 15 pages in the New Yorker!
I read it all and I loved it. It was the single biggest commitment I made to ANYTHING since I married my husband." Rick Stengel, the new Time managing editor, who overlapped with Remnick at Princeton, said admiringly: "I could read David all day and all night.
" (Laughed Remnick: "He'd have to!" when I told him what Stengel had said about the piece.) For the record, Remnick's Clinton profile ran 21,000 words.
"That's even long for us," Remnick pointed out. Clearly, it's good, as the saying goes, to be The King.
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