In case you haven’t heard, leading literary critic James Wood has left The New Republic to join The New Yorker as a staff writer. Leon Wieseltier, Wood’s former editor, is classy in defeat: “The New Republic plays many significant roles in American culture, and one of them is to find and to develop writers with whom The New Yorker can eventually staff itself,” he told the Times.

Reports that Wieseltier then stamped his feet and held his breath until he turned blue are unconfirmed.