Ancient Priest
02-25-2009, 09:11 AM
That is my guess as to how Cycle Canada will go with the new editor at his desk.
Costa, if not the longest incumbent editor in the job, was at least the best regarded by his readers. (One of the best: Bruce Reeve was a thoroughly committed member of The Writing Life, and people prized him a whole lot for it. We were his beneficiaries. We benefitted.) We would have to go back into history to do a complete weighing up of every editor whom everyone remembers...
But while Costa didn't just give us bikes, bikes, and more bikes, he was a bike guy. He spent a lot of years in coveralls and made his living at wrenching on bikes. He did that well and he graduated. He knew more about bikes than most of us will ever, and he could write about them. Not grunts either: he put it in good, clear, available words which were as nice and digestible as a well-poured beer.
This new guy, though, is another proposition. Neil has a brain like the Sargasso Sea - by an accident of tides and winds, it collects everything - shipwrecks and odysseys, tragedies and treasures. Nothing that arrives there ever goes to waste. If it is wide, it is also deep. Neil Graham thinks beyond bikes. If he is in the selling-of-bikes business (and aren't we all who are committed to the inexplicable joy of feeling a live and responsive machine between our legs?) he will do it with his might!
My guess is that this new editor will not be satisfied with reporting the HOW and the WHEN of motorcycles. Nor even the WHO and the WHAT. But the essential and as yet unanswered question of WHY! That takes intellect.
Now, if we could just somehow get rid of those ****ing bottom-liners...
Costa, if not the longest incumbent editor in the job, was at least the best regarded by his readers. (One of the best: Bruce Reeve was a thoroughly committed member of The Writing Life, and people prized him a whole lot for it. We were his beneficiaries. We benefitted.) We would have to go back into history to do a complete weighing up of every editor whom everyone remembers...
But while Costa didn't just give us bikes, bikes, and more bikes, he was a bike guy. He spent a lot of years in coveralls and made his living at wrenching on bikes. He did that well and he graduated. He knew more about bikes than most of us will ever, and he could write about them. Not grunts either: he put it in good, clear, available words which were as nice and digestible as a well-poured beer.
This new guy, though, is another proposition. Neil has a brain like the Sargasso Sea - by an accident of tides and winds, it collects everything - shipwrecks and odysseys, tragedies and treasures. Nothing that arrives there ever goes to waste. If it is wide, it is also deep. Neil Graham thinks beyond bikes. If he is in the selling-of-bikes business (and aren't we all who are committed to the inexplicable joy of feeling a live and responsive machine between our legs?) he will do it with his might!
My guess is that this new editor will not be satisfied with reporting the HOW and the WHEN of motorcycles. Nor even the WHO and the WHAT. But the essential and as yet unanswered question of WHY! That takes intellect.
Now, if we could just somehow get rid of those ****ing bottom-liners...