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In praise of Sydney Wolfe Cohen

I have, in fact, made two new-year resolutions. One, as foreshadowed yesterday, is to learn some Spanish in the hope of getting a hair's breadth closer to an understanding of Mexico, my new favourite country. The other is to make the acquaintance of Sydney Wolfe Cohen, who contributed—notwithstanding a vast correspondence on the subject of Philip Pullman—our most memorable comment of 2007, in reply to Enid Stubin's brilliant sketch of life at "Sydney Wolfe Cohen Associates, the pre-eminent indexing service in New York City". It was a comment that managed to be both politely grouchy and quietly pleased. Here is a sample:

The associates that Enid Stubin writes about with measured admiration
were the best and the brightest people that I could lure into indexing,
many of them continuing in the trade for more than 20 years. Indexers usually work at home, make their own hours, and return their work on the promised day. Schedules are often tight, and we all dance to the beat of the publisher’s drum. But we do indexing because it agrees with our noncorporate personalities, makes use of everything we have ever learned, and gives us a sense that we are contributing to the order of the universe, such as it is. Of course, we also like the idea of being paid to read books.

I often think, when I read the letters page of a magazine or newspaper, that the best writers out there are the readers. We are lucky, at More Intelligent Life, in having writers—such as Enid—so dazzling that I can still give them the edge. But comments, in almost every case, have been an almost equal joy. Readers, commenters, and writers, at the start of this new year, I take off my hat to you. Last year was such a pleasure that I can scarcely believe we were only in business for three months of it. May our first full year together bring four times the fun.