Mere pseud mag ed

Over 18 months ago Bill Buford left the position of fiction editer of the New Yorker to become the magazine's Europe correspondent. Although I had long held the view that Buford is a much better editor than he is a writer [not that there's anything wrong with that ... ] his last couple of pieces for the magazine were excellent, and I looked forward to seeing what he could come up with in his new role. We waited. And waited. And then we waited some more. And then we kind of forgot about him. Until this week, when his first piece in his "new" job appears in the "Food" issue (his last piece was a profile of a NYC chef (name forgotten; the issue is in a box somewhere) and involved Buford himself working for a time as a kitchen hand, so it kind of makes sense). It was something of a jolt to see his name in the table of contents. At this rate he matches the Joseph Mitchell of the 1950s, who averaged something less than one article a year (but they were all crackin' pieces).