A. J. Liebling

Pencil sketch of A.J. Liebling

Abbott Joseph "Joe" Liebling (born October 18, 1904, in New York City; died December 28, 1963) was an American journalist who was closely associated with The New Yorker from 1935 until his death. Best known as a press critic, Liebling wrote the magazine's "Wayward Press" feature from 1945 on.

Quotes

• As a result of its generous stand [Robert Maynard Hutchins’ controversial policy of admitting students after their second year of high-school], the University of Chicago’s undergraduate college acts as the greatest magnet for neurotic juveniles since the Children’s Crusade, with Robert Maynard Hutchins…playing the role of Stephen the Shepherd Boy.
  • Chicago: The Second City (Knopf, 1952; University of Nebraska Press, 2004), ISBN 0-8032-8035-1, p. 110

• Inconsiderate to the last, Josef Stalin, a man who never had to meet a deadline, had the bad taste to die in installments.
  • The New Yorker (March 28, 1953), quoted in David Remnick, "Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at 100", The New Yorker (March 29, 2004)

• The subject [of Stalin's death] permitted a rare blend of invective and speculation—both Hearst papers, as I recall, ran cartoons of Stalin being rebuffed at the gates of Heaven, where Hearst had no correspondents—and I have seldom enjoyed a week of newspaper reading more.
  • Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer (2004), p. 23

• People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
  • The New Yorker (April 7, 1956)

• Show me a poet, and I'll show you a shit.
  • The New Yorker (March 28, 1953), quoted in David Remnick, "Reporting It All: A.J. Liebling at 100", The New Yorker (March 29, 2004)

• Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
  • The New Yorker (May 14, 1960)

• There is a New Orleans city accent... associated with downtown New Orleans, particularly with the German and Irish Third Ward, that is hard to distinguish from the accent of Hoboken, Jersey City, and Astoria, Long Island, where the Al Smith inflection, extinct in Manhattan, has taken refuge. The reason, as you might expect, is that the same stocks that brought the accent to Manhattan imposed it on New Orleans.
  “You’re right on that. We’re Mediterranean. I’ve never been to Greece or Italy, but I’m sure I’d be at home there as soon as I landed.”
  He would, too, I thought. New Orleans resembles Genoa or Marseilles, or Beirut or the Egyptian Alexandria more than it does New York, although all seaports resemble one another more than they can resemble any place in the interior. Like Havana and Port-au-Prince, New Orleans is within the orbit of a Hellenistic world that never touched the North Atlantic. The Mediterranean, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico form a homogeneous, though interrupted, sea.
  • The Earl of Louisiana (1960), quoted as epigraph in John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (wr. 1960s; pub. 1980)

• You can hope for lucky encounters only if you walk around a lot.
  • The Road Back to Paris (1988)

• A man´s taste is formed more by his culture, his profession, and the period in which he is young than by his race or politics.
  • The Road Back to Paris (1988)

Quotes about A. J. Liebling

• As A. J. Liebling wrote: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." Today, a handful of multinational corporations own much of the media and control what the American people see, hear, and read. This is a direct threat to American democracy. It is an issue we cannot continue to ignore.
  • Bernie Sanders, Our Revolution (2016)