Garlic and Sapphires Read Online Free

go.
    â€œWhat should I say to them?” I asked.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he replied. “You’ll do fine.”
    â€œBut I don’t want the job,” I said.
    â€œOf course you don’t,” he replied.
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    I wouldn’t fit in here,” I assured the first assistant managing editor I was taken to meet. He was a tall, unassumingly elegant man with a courtly manner. He had drooping gray hair and a surprisingly small and dreary office.
    â€œWhy is that?” he asked.
    â€œBecause,” I explained, “I don’t review restaurants the way your critics do.”
    â€œOh?” he said. “And how do our critics review restaurants?”
    â€œThey hand down judgments from on high,” I said. “They seem to think that they are right.”
    â€œThey’re wrong?” he asked.
    â€œThere is no right or wrong in matters of taste,” I said. “It’s just an opinion. And in the case of restaurants, an extremely subjective one, given that no one has the faintest idea if what you taste when you bite into an apple is the same thing that I do.”
    He looked a little taken aback, and I saw that he had expected me to lobby for the job. “You may be right,” he said in a conciliatory tone that clearly indicated I was not. “But of course,” he continued, “should you come to the Times, you would do things our way.”
    â€œNo,” I said, “I wouldn’t. But why would you hire me if you don’t want what I do?”
    â€œI think it’s time for your next appointment,” he replied, ushering me to the door.
    Next up was Al Siegal, the much-dreaded arbiter of linguistic style. He turned out to be a thoughtful man of considerable girth. “Mr. Five by Five” played in my head as he said, “You’ve been very successful at the Los Angeles Times. You run your own department. Why would you consider coming to New York at this point?”
    I was surprised by my answer. Looking him straight in the eye, I said, “My mother died a year ago. I wouldn’t have considered living here while she was alive, but now that she’s gone, I guess I can come home.”
    He looked utterly shocked and a thrill ran through me. “That’s done it!” I thought. “They’ll never hire me now.”
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 
    I saw one bigwig after another, surprised that none of them seemed to know what questions they should be asking. But it gave me the opportunity to ask a few of my own. “Who tells your critics what to review?” I queried one man.
    His head jerked back as if I had just suggested that the paper was riddled with corruption. “I certainly hope,” he said stiffly, “that the Los Angeles Times does not attempt to influence its critics.”
    â€œNever,” I replied. “But I’ve been told that things are different at the New York Times. They say that Bryan Miller doesn’t choose his own restaurants and that the editors even decide how many stars a restaurant should receive.”
    â€œI can assure you,” he said, looking extremely solemn, “that there is no truth in that rumor. Our critics are given the widest possible latitude. It is unthinkable that anyone would ever, ever, interfere with a critic’s opinion. That would be”—he cast about, searching for a suitably derogatory word—“unethical.” And then, to make his point perfectly clear, “Absolutely unethical. And not at all in the tradition of the Times. ”
    As they escorted me from one gray cubicle to the next, I thought how itchy this would be if I actually wanted the job. These men in suits had a pompous gravitas, a kind of sureness we lacked at the Los Angeles Times. We were eager to please; they dared you to please them.
    The physical differences were also shocking. In Los Angeles we had big airy, open offices. Light