SOURCE: "In the Beginning There Was Ross …," in Commonweal, Vol. CII, No. 8, July 4, 1978, pp. 247-48.

Woodcock is a Canadian educator, editor, and critic best known for his biographies of George Orwell and Thomas Merton. He also founded Canada's most important literary journal, Canadian Literature, and has written extensively on the literature of Canada. In the following excerpt, he offers an analysis of the influence of the New Yorker on American journalism and literature.

It is hard to think of an internationally read and celebrated magazine that, in many of its aspects, is more localized than The New Yorker. From the beginning it has been an intimate voice—though not of course the only one—of a great city. But that great city happened, during the most important years of the magazine that bore its name, to become for a while the leading center of world culture. In the...