Read The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution for Free Online

scale. En route from North China to Shanghai on a destroyer, Hersey was bedridden with the flu and was given some reading material by some crew members from the ship’s library. One of the books, Thornton Wilder’s 1927 novel
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
, gave him the narrative template for his Hiroshima story. Hersey was struck by the way Wilder retold a tragedy— in his case, the collapse of a rope suspension bridge in Peru—by focusing on its five victims, tracing their lives backward in time up to the point where their fates are intertwined in a single horrific event.
    Upon arriving in Hiroshima on May 25, Hersey cast about for any residents of the island who could speak English. Having read a report tothe Holy See on the bombing, written by a German Jesuit priest, Hersey sought out and found Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, who introduced Hersey to other potential interview subjects. All told, he met around fifty people, and then narrowed that group down to six—Kleinsorge, a clerk, a seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, and a surgeon. Hersey spent six weeks rigorously interviewing his subjects, then returned to New York on June 12.
    Six weeks later, Hersey shaped his copious notes and interview transcripts into a 150-page, thirty-thousand-word story with the title “Some Events at Hiroshima.” The original intention was to run the story in four consecutive issues of the magazine, but that presented a continuity problem; a reader who hadn’t read the first installment would need a synopsis of it to understand the second section, while someone who had already read the first issue would feel bogged down by a recapitulation. Shawn suggested that the entire story take up a single issue—an unprecedented move for the magazine.
The New Yorker’s
editor in chief, Harold Ross, had misgivings about such a radical move;
New Yorker
readers, after all, had grown accustomed to the magazine’s mixture of the serious and the lighthearted. Could readers do without their
New Yorker
cartoons in favor of a long, depressing analysis of unfathomable human tragedy? Ross stewed on the matter for a week, at one point pulling out the first issue of the magazine, which stated, “
The New Yorker
starts with a serious declaration of purpose.” That sealed the deal for Ross—the magazine would run the story in a single issue, to the exclusion of everything else— but not without numerous emendations and changes that Ross believed were essential to delivering maximum emotional impact.
    It was customary for
The New Yorker
to immediately set all rough drafts into galley form shortly after they were received, in order for Ross and Shawn to visualize the pieces as they would appear in the magazine. For “Some Events at Hiroshima,” Ross, a meticulous line editor, scribbled hundreds of notes in the margins of the proof for Hersey to read. “It was the first experience I had had with editing as careful as that,” said Hersey, who frequently published stories in
Life
without a single editorial change.
    For ten twenty-hour days, Ross and Shawn tabled less pressing magazine matters and holed themselves up in Ross’s office, furiously making changes for Hersey, who rewrote as quickly as he received the pages. When they were done, the editors had over two hundred changes for thestory, the title of which was eventually shortened to “Hiroshima.” According to a
Newsweek
article that ran shortly after the article was published, “no one outside Ross’ office, except a harried makeup man, knew what was going on.”
    On his query sheet for the editorial department, Ross laid out some of his thoughts:
    I am still dissatisfied with the series title.
    All the way through I wondered about what killed these people, the burns, falling debris, the concussion—what? For a year I’ve been wondering about this and I eagerly hoped this piece would tell me. It doesn’t. Nearly a hundred thousand dead people are around but Hersey doesn’t tell how