Janel Malcom’s “Forty-One False Starts” 1994

Janel Malcolm’s 1994 New Yorker essay on trying to interview David Salle at the height of his fame. The fits and starts of the journalistic process become the story, and —wonderfully, in an elliptical way only Malcolm could muster— a blueprint for understanding Salle’s very paintings. Expanded later into her essay collection of the same name (get it).