I have worked with her for just over three years, and for some reason we have a history of misdirected faxes between us.

I remember one fax a particularly abusive one, as it happens (``Bill why the fuck did you ask me to read this fucking drivel?'') coming through the machine of a visiting Italian diplomat, staying somewhere in Manhattan, who was so startled to receive it that he faxed back an apology for having been brought into this obviously private editorial congregation, promised to destroy his copy, and vowed should he ever meet the author in question not to mention that he wrote fuckingdrivel.

I wonder if he got the fax sent out at two in the morning on Wednesday, inviting me to a meeting about a special issue. I didn't. The subject, of course, was not a special issue, and when I reached the office I found several editors in tears. It was not, they felt, time for Tina to leave. All the editors in the office that morning the editor of Talk of the Town, the books editor, the managing editor, the features editor, me had come to the New Yorker, persuaded by Tina, to help her fashion the magazine into the best publication in the English language. The job was not done.

Most of us had not seen her for some time. Her mother died the week before. Wednesday was effectively Tina's first day back. Witnessing her mother's death, she said, was clarifying. And, after she buried her and experienced that chilling recognition of her own mortality Tina returned determined to live a life of her choosing. What do I want to do during the next 10 years, she said. She wanted to have fun; she wanted to runher own show.

In the past six months, there has been a curious public row between the people involved in running the New Yorker. The principal parties have been Tina; Tom Florio, who was the New Yorker's publisher until last month; and his elder brother Steve Florio, who runs Conde Nast, now the magazine's parent company. At stake was the question of who is responsible for the New Yorker's losses. One version, full of confidential details, appeared in the Wall Street Journal; a counter version, full of more confidential details, appeared in the New York Times back and forth, culminating in a spectacular hatchet job in the current issue of Fortune.

The effect, though, was this: Tina, it was clear, was not the one running the place, and Tina, therefore, was in the position to leave with dignity. What was her achievement? To my mind, a considerable one, and I've been disappointed by the press she's got, citing her more flamboyant miscalculations. In fact, most were self-correcting. Tina, like most creativepeople, has an ability to enter something like an idea motor mode, in which all kinds of connections get made at extraordinary speed. I recall a meeting in which there was a pile of sweets on the table, and Tina, already in high adrenaline free-flow, was eating them, unthinking, one after the other, going faster and faster, the sugar serving to exaggerate the pace and tempo of her thinking, until finally we all screamed for her to slow down. Tina's ideas could be a bit scatter-shot, but she could rely on her judgment, which was exceptional, to correct her more frightening impulses.(Roseanne as a guest editor of a woman's issue has been cited in the press here; in the end, tellingly, Roseanne did not edit a woman's issue).

The many ideas that have worked are impressive to consider. She asked the historian Simon Schama to be the art critic; Anthony Lane to be the film critic; and Adam Gopnik to be the Paris correspondent. She stood by Janet Malcolm during a libel case, and gave over the whole magazine toher account of Sylvia Plath. She adored Updike and Mailer and Vidal. She took on David Remnick, a Pulitzer Prize journalist from the Washington Post, and let him become a star. In fact, she made many journalists into stars and made many of them a lot of money. And she had an uncanny ability to predict what people would want to read. There is a long list of Tina stories I would never have done and was shown to be wrong on almost every one.

There is an adage that a good magazine lasts only a decade. In fact, I think it takes about a decade, at least, to get one right. I edited Granta for 16 years, and I think it was only starting to work in year 14. The legendary William Shawn hit his stride around year 15. Tina has been here a mere six years. There was so much more to do.