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The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks)
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
EDITOR’S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
1920s
“UP THE DARK STAIRS —” Robert Benchley
A MARQUISE AT HOME —Author Unknown
THE KING’S PAJAMAS — Bill Corum
MIGHT HAVE BEEN — Author Unknown
CAL AND BELLES LETTRES — Author Unknown
MODEST MR. SHAW — Author Unknown
VACHEL LINDSAY — Author Unknown
FENCE BUSTER — Author Unknown
THE SIN OF ADAMS — Russel Crouse
DIME NOVEL — Author Unknown
THE OLD LADY — James Thurber
MUSIC MAKERS — James Thurber
POTTER’S FIELD — E. B. White
HARRIETT — E. B. White
DANCING COUPLE — James Thurber
BIG BOY — James Thurber and Harold Ross
NEWSREEL — Robert M. Coates
CALDER’S CIRCUS — Robert M. Coates and James Thurber
ISADORA’S BROTHER — E. B. White
1930s
SOUP OF THE EVENING — Robert M. Coates and Geoffrey Hellman
CORSETS DE LUXE — Geoffrey Hellman
PAINTER IN TOWN — Murdock Pemberton and E. B. White
SEVEREST CRITIC — E. B. White
ANGEL — James Thurber
THE HIGH PLACE — James Thurber
TRIVIA — E. B. White and Harold Ross
TEX AND ELLA — James Thurber and Harold Ross
AL — James Thurber
THE FLYING SPOT — James Thurber
OXFORD MAN — Charles Cooke and Harold Ross
THE FRESCOER — James Thurber
INAUGURAL BLUES — James Thurber and Harold Ross
LONG RANGE — Wolcott Gibbs
HIGH HATS — Joseph Mitchell, Charles Cooke, James Thurber, and Harold Ross
GREAT MEN — James Thurber
THE BLUES MAN — James Thurber
AS MILLIONS CHEER — Helen Cooke, Charles Cooke, Clifford Orr, and Harold Ross
HOUSE OF BRICK — Helen Cooke and E. B. White
LENOX 1734 — James Thurber
JEANN AND JIMMY — William Shawn and James Thurber
BRONX TIGER — Fred Wittner and James Thurber
THE DAKOTA — Charles Cooke and Harold Ross
GTDE — James Thurber
MISS RAND — A. J. Liebling and Harold Ross
THE JOYCES — James Thurber
MET’S MAÎTRE — Charles Cooke and Russell Maloney
DARK CONTRALTO — Charles Cooke and Russell Maloney
WALTER’S BANKS — Eugene Kinkead
KNOCK OF OPPORTUNITY — Alva Johnston and Harold Ross
DÉSHABILLEUSE — A. J. Liebling
DEAD PAN JOE — Fred Wittner
ET TU, SHADOW? — A. J. Liebling
LEFTIST REVUE — Charles Cooke
EXILES IN PRINCETON — E. J. Kahn
1940s
INTERNE — Eugene Kinkead
THE ADMIRAL’S CHAIR — Eugene Kinkead
COOKLESS CONGRESSMAN — Geoffrey Hellman
PREPARED PIANIST — Mary Webb and Berton Roueche
MASTERPIECE — John McCarton
THE CELLULOID BRASSIÈRE — Andy Logan
LAST WORD — Andy Logan
ONE MAN’S FAMILY — Lillian Ross
ABSURDISTE — A. J. Liebling
TWELFTH NIGHT — Frances Lanahan
AFTER TEN YEARS — William Shawn, Niccolo Tucci, and Geoffrey Hellman
LUGUBRIOUS MAMA — A. J. Liebling
LIVE MERCHANDISE — Herbert Warren Wind and Spencer Klaw
RUGGED TIMES — Lillian Ross
COCTEAU — Geoffrey Hellman
COLE PORTER — Geoffrey Hellman
ON FIRE — Lillian Ross
1950s
SUCCESS — Rex Lardner
ELIOT AND GUINNESS — John McCarten
UNFRAMED SPACE — Berton Rouche
SLOW — Rex Lardner
NO BULLIES OR TOADIES — E. J. Kahn
ANNA IN HARLEM — Lillian Ross
OUTSIDE THE PROFESSION — Brendan Gill
MR. HULOT — Lillian Ross
NOTES AND COMMENT — Maeve Brennan
ROCKEFELLER CENTER HO! — John Updike
BON VOYAGE — Philip Hamburger
LOVERLEE, LOVERLEE — John Updike
GOOD-NATURED MAN — Geoffrey Hellman
THE MUSHROOM’S EDGE — John McCarten
CARICATURIST — Geoffrey Hellman
PLAYWRIGHT — Lillian Ross
1960s
VIDAL — Richard Rovere
NICHOLS, MAY, AND HORSES — John McCarten
ALBEE — Lillian Ross
FACES — John Updike
THE MARCH — Calvin Trillin
ALL FRESH AND WIDE-EYED — John McCarten
FUGUE — Lillian Ross
BECKETT — Jane Kramer
RED MITTENS ! — Lillian Ross
THE MCLUHAN METAPHOR — Jane Kramer
LONG-WINDED LADY — Maeve Brennan
RUNOUTS, KICKOUTS, AND POPOUTS AT GILGO BEACH — James Stevenson
1970s
BIKE TO WORK — Hendrik Hertzberg
QUESTIONS AT RADIO CITY — Hendrik Hertzberg
THE POSTMASTER — William Shawn
ELVIS! DAVID! — Hendrik Hertzberg
ALMANAC — Garrison Keillor
MAYS AT ST. BERNARD’S — Lillian Ross
ELSEWHERE — Lola Finkelstein and Lillian Ross
“WONDER BAR” — Anthony Hiss
DYLAN — Hendrik Hertzberg and George Trow
NEW BOY — Hendrik Hertzberg
FANCY — Lillian Ross
BEING PRESENT — Jacqueline Onassis
LEAVING MOTOWN — Jamaica Kincaid and George Trow
MINNESOTA FATS — Ian Fraizier
TAXI JOKES — Mark Singer
TWENTY-FIVE THOUSANDTHS OF A SECOND — Ian Fraizer
FILM — Ian Fraizer
TURNOUT — George Trow
1980s
STILL WONDERFUL — Mark Singer
FILMMAKER — Veronica Geng
MELNIKOFF’S — Mark Singer
BOJANGLES’ — William McKibben
HANDBAG — Ann Beatie
SPEED AND ROSES — William McKibben
THE FLOAT COMMITTEE — Alec Wilkinson
TOURIST — Susan Lardner
D. OF D. — George Throw
WITH FELLINI — Lillian Ross
MONSTER TRUCKS AND MUD BOG — Ian Frazier
WORKOUTS — Lillian Ross
EAGER — William McKibben
POPCORN MEMOIRS — Susan Lardner
ADOPTION — Mark Singer
IN VIRGIN FOREST — John McPhee
TASTE OF TEXAS — William Finnegan
ON DISPLAY — Susan Orlean
PALACE — Adam Gopnik
IN PROGRESS — Bryan Disalvatore
1990s
MISS SUBWAYS — David Owen
POPSIANA Nancy Franklin
MURPHYS — John Seabrook
FLOWERING — Garrison Keilor
JUDY HEAVEN — Nancy Franklin
SPLURGE — Susan Orlean
GOOD CITIZEN — John Seabrook
SCOUTING — Susan Orlean
THE SMELL — John Seabrook
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER — Alison Rose
INTENSIVE CARE — Susan Orlean
WORD PERFECT — David Handelman
TOU-TOU-TOUKIE, HELLO — Hilton Als
RUSSIAN TENNIS: ADVANTAGE YELTSIN — George Plimpton
THE SHIT-KICKERS OF MADISON AVENUE — Lillian Ross
AFTER MIDNIGHT — William Finnegan
A BATTALION OF BELLAS — James Traub
A DICKENSIAN TASK — Brendan Gill
THE TIMES EMBARKS ON NEW WAYS TO GET OUT THE GRAY — Hendrik Hertzberg
SON OF EST: THE TERMINATOR OF SELF-DOUBT — Kurt Andersen
DO THE ROOKIES KNOW HOW WILLIE MAYS PLAYED? — Roger Angell
AL HIRSCHFELD BLOWS OUT HIS CANDLES — Philip Hamburger
THE WORLD WAS INVITED TO NOAM CHOMSKY’S VIRTUAL BIRTHDAY PARTY — Rebecca Mead
A POSTMODERNIST GOES SHOPPING — Paul Goldberger
ELEGY FOR A PARKING SPACE — John Seabrook
A LITTLE BIT OF AUDREY FOR EVERY ONE — Daphne Merkin
BILL AND HILL, MEET ROB AND LAURA — Andy Borowitz
NOSTALGIA FOR THE BYGONE DAYS OF FEMINIST FAMILY FEUDING — Rebecca Mead
2000
THE NEW YEAR STUMBLES IN — Anthony Lane
THE WELL-HEELED AND THE WONKY TOAST THE MILLENNIUM — John Cassidy
TWO MENUS — Steve Martin
THE BOOK TO HAVE WHEN THE KILLER BEES ARRIVE — David Owen
THE FAST-FOOD PRESIDENT GOES HAUTE CUISINE — Rebecca Mead
WHAT’S IN A DOMAIN NAME? — Julian Bames
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF SOME SEXY SNAPSHOTS — Mark Singer
THE GUY WHO MAKES THE PRESIDENT FUNNY — Jeffrey Toobin
NAKED AND TRUTHFUL IN THE BRONX — Lillian Ross
NUDIE PIX REDUX — Mark Singer
BALLOON DIPLOMACY FOR ELIÁN — Rebecca Mead
AN ODE TO GOLF — John Updike
A RUBIN’S GUIDE TO GETTING IT ALL — Nick Paumgarten
QUIZ WHIZ — Nancy Franklin
PROVERBS ACCORDING TO DENNIS MILLER — Johnny Carson
THE GOODEST GUYS — David Remnick
AN ANALOG TO AST TO THE DIGITAL AGE — Lillian Ross
ABOUT THE EDITOR
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM MODERN LIBRARY PAPERBACKS
Copyright Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was created with the special help of Erin Overbey, and with the support of other talented people at The New Yorker, including Ann Goldstein, Dana Goodyear, Marshall Heyman, Ed Klaris, Pam McCarthy, Brenda Phipps, David Remnick, and Christopher Shay. Susan Morrison generously lent her particular touches—to be found weekly in The New Yorker’s The Talk of the Town—to this book as well. Modern Library’s David Ebershoff, Christen Kidd, and Judy Sternlight shared their expertise with me. I thank them, one and all.
INTRODUCTION
DAVID REMNICK
Fairly often, Lillian Ross will call the office to say, “I’ve got a good little story.” She has been doing this for fifty years or so, and, in the particulars, it can mean anything. It can mean she’s just paid a visit to Federico Fellini or Robin Williams; it can mean she’s been listening in on the talk of private-school kids on the East Side; it can mean she’s been hanging out on a movie set near the Cross Bronx Expressway. Anything. But what it always means, in the end, is that The Talk of the Town, one of the few features of The New Yorker that have been there from the very first issue, will bear her imprint that week.
Lillian Ross has been writing for The Talk of the Town since the last months of the Second World War, and she has never lost the taste for it—the fun of getting around the city, the immediacy and wit of the section at its best, the thrill of writing in a form that demands compression but allows for immense variety. Lillian is no cub reporter; she could easily stick with the more leisurely varieties of writing and labor, but she still likes a deadline. She’s always ready to drop whatever she’s doing, go off to report a Talk story, write it up that evening (she’ll work all night to get it right), and hand it in the next morning. When the editors or fact checkers call to consult her on some change or other, they may well be told she is out—out taking a run around the Central Park reservoir.
From Thurber to Ross through Mark Singer and Nancy Franklin, Talk writers have shown a gift for telling a story in inventive ways. As a young Talk writer, John Updike could tell a story simply by quoting the overheard conversation at a bar or in a park; Philip Hamburger liked to go to Big Events, especially presidential inaugurals, and find his story within a story. It’s never been much of a secret to the editors that readers of The New Yorker are most likely to read the short things first: above all, the cartoons and The Talk of the Town. And, like the cartoons, the best Talk pieces have a combustive power; they are miniatures that provide a burst of pleasure and a revelatory glimpse into some corner of life.
To read The Fun of It is to come across overlooked masterpieces by well-known writers (E. B. White’s “Potter’s Field” or James Thurber’s “The Joyces”); to discover writers, such as Geoffrey Hellman, John McCarten, and Maeve Brennan, whose names have not persisted the way they should have; and to delight in some curiosities (a piece by Jacqueline Onassis—who knew?—and one by William Shawn, who edited the section himself for decades).
Nearly twenty years ago, I bought Lillian’s book Reporting, a collection of longer pieces, mainly because her Profiles of Ernest Hemingway and the Brooklyn-born bullfighter Sidney Franklin were legendary, and I’d never read them. Her introduction was odd: seventeen numbered paragraphs of advice for young writers. Some of her points struck me as, well, arguable (“4. Do not write about anyone you do not like”), but many of them seemed right on and have stayed with me. I especially like the generosity of “14. Do not be afraid to acknowledge that you have learned from other writers.” In The Fun of It, Lillian makes clear that she learned not only from her predecessors and her contemporaries but also from those who have come later: Ian Frazier, Mark Singer, Susan Lardner, Hendrik Hertzberg, Hilton Als, John Seabrook, Adam Gopnik, Anthony Lane, Susan Orlean, and Rebecca Mead among them. The Fun of It is true to its title, but it’s also the selected reading course of a writer who helped to shape a form with her own gifts: reporting, storytelling, and clarity—the makings of a “good little story.”
EDITOR’S PREFACE
LILLIAN ROSS
“TALK STORIES,” as we at The New Yorker call the brief journalistic pieces in The Talk of the Town, have today evolved into the sharpest, funniest, and often timeliest short form writing in the history of the magazine. These little (a thousand words or less) gems now bear out the ultimate refinement of what Harold Ross told us, in his 1924 Prospectus, he wanted his magazine to be:
“It will assume a reasonable degree of enlightenment on the part of its readers. . . . It will hate bunk. . . . It will print facts that it will have to go behind the scenes to get. . . . It hopes to be so entertaining and informative as to be a necessity for the person who knows his way about or wants to. . . . The New Yorker will devote several pages a week to a covering of contemporary events and people of interest.”
As a literary form, according to William Shawn, who succeeded Ross as editor in 1952, the Talk story was sui generis. It was not an abbreviated version of something else, and it imposed, he said, “certain demands on the writer, among them discipline, technical agility, swift movement, the power to make every word and every touch count, a feeling for facts, a warm response to people, and a sensitiveness to the particulars of place, situation, and event.”
It took Ross, working with others, a couple of years of experimenting to find the way toward what he envisioned. The development is revealed in the chronological arrangement of the stories in this book. “Up the Dark Stairs—” —Robert Benchley’s first piece for The New Yorker (December 19, 1925)— seemed to be the appropriate note to sound at the start here. Relevant to journalism, it might be regarded as a warning to writers who try to get fancy and show off, instead of getting to the point of
the story they’re supposed to tell.
Shawn, who edited the department himself for several decades, used to call The Talk of the Town the “soul of the magazine.” He was quick to recognize its imperfections, especially when he made mistakes, including tolerance of occasional nonreporting reporters—wordy, would-be Tolstoys or misguided would-be Gertrude Steins. Under Robert Gottlieb, who was the magazine’s editor from 1987 to 1992, the department stayed more or less the same, with some interesting new writers coming into the fold. When Tina Brown took over as editor in 1992, she shook up the magazine as a whole, made bold artistic innovations, hired many talented and daring writers, artists, and editors, and directed attention to the need for freshness and immediacy. David Remnick, the first reporter and writer to take on the job of editor, in 1998, made many additional innovations, including turning the focus of The Talk of the Town back to the city—Ross’s original intention—so that it would become again a “necessity for the person who knows his way about or wants to.” During the past eight years, a host of brave newcomers have worked for The Talk of the Town and have noticeably mastered the “discipline, technical agility, swift movement, the power to make every word and every touch count.” The department’s current editor, Susan Morrison, has unquestionably led the way.
The main progenitors of the seeds of today’s Talk stories were E. B. White, who arrived at the magazine in 1926, and James Thurber and Wolcott Gibbs, both of whom came a year later. In the early years, Ross himself did some of the reporting, writing, and rewriting, but he had many advisers and helpers, among them George S. Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert M. Coates, Ralph Ingersoll, Marc Connelly, and Robert Benchley. A Talk story, in Ross’s view, should include facts of interest, importance, and humor—indeed, these were his priorities, and it took only a couple of years for his reporters, in both form and content, to secure them. Although Ross shared many of the prejudices of his day, and some of the early stories (and cartoons) display a certain snobbishness toward blacks, immigrants, and the poor, his priorities were always clear.