Q. You’re posting about magazine cruises?? If TMN told you to jump off the Empire State Building, would you?
A. Could I basejump?
Mr George Loper and Ms Molly Ivins, aboard the MS Ryndam
for The Nation‘s 1998 reader cruise. image: loper.org
Eric Wemple’s report of the failure of The New Republic‘s reader cruise is good, but doesn’t reach the hilarity of Eric Alterman’s New Yorker account of The Nation‘s near-mutinous first cruise.
A cruise consultant who had helped set up the trip was taken aback by the ambience. ‘I’ve never seen a cruise audience be so ornery to its guest speakers,’ he confided to me by the Stairmasters, adding, ‘and it’s not only the New Yorkers, either.’ He was grateful, though, that no one tried to unionize the crew’s largely Indonesian wait staff.
It’s part of Mr George Loper’s [pictured above] The Nation Cruise Anthology. Nick’s experience with one Nation editor begs the [gender biased. So sue me.] question, “Would YOU go on a cruise with this woman?”
Able efforts all, but for my money, David Foster Wallace is still king of the Reportage From Cruises You Don’t Want To Go On hill.