The Gould

Eleanor Gould Packard, who was the New Yorker's hugely formidable watchdog of English style, died on Sunday night. Hundreds of New Yorker writers have had the humiliating but rejuvenating experience of being sent back to school by Miss Gould's proofs. (Or should that be: "...the experience — humiliating but rejuvenating — of being sent back to school..."? She lives on in our anxious minds.) I am forever grateful for the education, and I will long savor the memory of that triumphant day when one of my pieces came back with fewer than ten spidery annotations per page. Miss Gould had written one extra word at the top: "Good." I wish I'd saved that proof.