The New Yorker had an interest in publishing any writer that could turn in a good piece. It read everything submitted. Hemingway, Faulkner, and the others were well established and well paid when The New Yorker came on the scene. The magazine would have been glad to publish them, but it didn’t have the money to pay them off, and for the most part they didn’t submit. They were selling to The Saturday Evening Post and other well-heeled publications, and in general were not inclined to contribute to the small, new, impecunious weekly. Also, some of them, I would guess, did not feel sympathetic to The New Yorker’s frivolity. Ross had no great urge to publish the big names; he was far more interested in turning up new and yet undiscovered talent, the Helen Hokinsons and the James Thurbers. We did publish some things by Wolfe—“Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” was one. I believe we published something by Fitzgerald. But Ross didn’t waste much time trying to corral “emerged” writers. He was looking for the ones that were found by turning over a stone.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The New Yorker had an interest in publishing any writer that could turn in a good piece. It read everything submitted. Hemingway, Faulkner, and the others were well established and well paid when The New Yorker came on the scene. The magazine would have been glad to publish them, but it didn’t have the money to pay them off, and for the most part they didn’t submit. They were selling to The Saturday Evening Post and other well-heeled publications, and in general were not inclined to contribute to the small, new, impecunious weekly. Also, some of them, I would guess, did not feel sympathetic to The New Yorker’s frivolity. Ross had no great urge to publish the big names; he was far more interested in turning up new and yet undiscovered talent, the Helen Hokinsons and the James Thurbers. We did publish some things by Wolfe—“Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” was one. I believe we published something by Fitzgerald. But Ross didn’t waste much time trying to corral “emerged” writers. He was looking for the ones that were found by turning over a stone." in the context of "E. B. White, as quoted in: (Fall 1969), "The Art of the Essay No. 1", The Paris Review no: 48 (interview by George Plimpton and Frank Crowther)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.