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No matter how little space you give some writers, they try to fill it with a world. Frank Stewart is one of these writers; marketed as a bridge columnist and allotted about 160 words a day, he presides over a cast of characters who preen, smolder, blunder, lick their wounds, and occasionally make the kind of off-tune remark that lands Stewart in trouble with the front office.
“Pat vetoed that one,” Stewart told me—speaking of Patrick Fitzmaurice, his editor at the Tribune Content Agency, which syndicates him. “We went back and forth and back and forth and finally we killed the lead. I put in some kind of vanilla—under protest. The syndicate is extremely careful about that kind of stuff. I had another one. Cy the Cynic and Wendy [Cy’s feminist bete noire] were going back and forth and I had Cy tell a blond joke. ‘What do you do when a blond throws a grenade at you? Pull the pin and throw it back.’”
Yet last month something ominous occurred. The New York Times, whose bridge column dated back to 1935 and had been written over the years by only three columnists, laid off the incumbent, Phillip Alder. This didn’t perturb Stewart particularly, having seen other bridge columnists—such as himself—dropped by newspapers and quickly reinstated. But the Times, facing down the usual storm, has made its decision stick.
Furthermore, I think Stewart’s been spared a couple of handicaps Phillip Alder had to put up with. The first of these you might think I’ve got backwards. Alder could be timely: he could publish a story tomorrow about a tournament that wrapped up today. The 130 American papers that carry Stewart’s columns run them three months after he turns them in.
As you see, Alder’s second great handicap was a knack for constructing reports that would put his mother to sleep. Meanwhile, Stewart could launch a column this way:
“Slow down,” I begged.
“I’m faster than a speeding ticket,” the Cynic chortled.
Cy’s driving is mirrored in his play, where he operates on impulse . . .
