Alternative career possibility #253: Personal-ad proofreader
Raymond Shapiro has worked for the NYRB since its inception, and for years proofread the personals. He estimates that from the 1960s to the ’80s he read 30,000 of them, in his own publication and elsewhere, and collated 400 or so into a book, Lonely in Baltimore. He says that back then, people were fascinated by the NYRB personals. “Many people didn’t read about Proust and James Joyce, and classical art, but they did read the personals,” he says. Frank in terms of homosexuality, adultery and swinging, they were a bellwether of the culture. “They were very different, in that they had verve, originality. They represented the spirit of the times.”
— Catherine Keenan, “Love in the Personals,” Sydney Morning Herald, 3 January 2004 (via Arts & Letters Daily)
I want a job like that. Think of the entertainment value of reading clever NYRB-style personals for a living! Only I think I’d prefer to proofread personals at the London Review of Books, if ads like the ones from the LRB cited in this article — e.g. “Tap-dancing Classics lecturer. Chilling, isn’t it?” — are any indication.
Incidentally, the personal ads in every publication in my area almost invariably say things like “Good-looking person seeks companion for sunsets, walks on the beach, and dining out. I like music and movies.” They’re depressingly vague and banal. I’m thinking of using a few samples in a lesson for my composition students on how to revise bland, abstract prose into something concrete and interesting.
(I keep meaning to place a personal ad of my own, but I don’t know how much of a response I’d get with “Velma seeks Daphne — well, not exactly. Me: bespectacled literary nerd. You: danger-prone, in a good way, but not dippy. Red hair a plus. Must like baroque opera and used bookstores.” Maybe I should advertise in the London Review of Books, but there’s the small problem of my not living in the UK. Oh well.)
Move here!
Although I feel bound to report that I’ve never yet come across such a Daphne.
The NYRB personals are still pretty frank. The most recent issue has one in which a woman asks to be violently impregnated and then abandoned by a married man, for example.
qB: Now there’s an idea! I’ve never been to London, but it looks immensely appealing in your photographs.
Ben: That wouldn’t be the “Leda seeking her swan” ad, would it? That one was a bit creepy.
Yeah, that’s the one. I don’t actually remember what the rest of it said, but it’s an odd way to start an ad (though it could have been worse: it could have been Io).