The New Yorker Down Under

On the eve of a New Yorker writers' festival in Sydney, Hendrik Hertzberg reminisces on the magazine that was: One writer "sat in a room growing increasingly depressed for three years, then moved back to San Francisco", his home town. Five years later, the writer "was back in New York visiting a friend when he ran into Shawn in the hall". Shawn's response? "Hello. Have you been on vacation?"