David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for Lenin's Tomb and is also the author of Resurrection and King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. He lives in New York City with his wife and three children.
"Eloquent witness to the magazine's remarkable content over the
years.... It was the Profile a New Yorker staffer coined the term
that the magazine really revolutionized. It's intoxicating to have
these pieces all in one place."
--Newsday
"An anthology that makes] you remember why the magazine has long
had a reputation for literary excellence."
--Chicago Tribune
"Splendidly entertaining."
--Houston Chronicle
"Eloquent witness to the magazine's remarkable content over the
years.... It was the Profile a New Yorker staffer
coined the term that the magazine really revolutionized. It's
intoxicating to have these pieces all in one place."
--Newsday
"An anthology that makes] you remember why the magazine has long
had a reputation for literary excellence."
--Chicago Tribune
"Splendidly entertaining."
--Houston Chronicle
To long-time readers of the New Yorker, one of the reasons to welcome this excellent collection of 43 stories written over the past seven decades will be the recollection of their first encounters with some of the writers who were fresh new voices when their stories set in Manhattan first appeared. Such then-newcomers as Lorrie Moore, Jeffrey Eugenides, Deborah Eisenberg, Anne Beattie and Laurie Colwin portray New York in their distinctive voices. The literary Old Guard is here in solid phalanx too: stories by John Updike, Bernard Malamud, John O'Hara, Elizabeth Hardwick, John Cheever, Peter Taylor and William Maxwell define aspects of their decades with timeless clarity. Holden Morrisey Caulfield makes his debut in J. P. Salinger's "A Slight Rebellion Off Madison"(1946); Philip Roth's millionaire author Zuckerman is accosted on Second Avenue in "Smart Money"(1981); one of Isaac Bashevis Singer's innumerable group of displaced Jews and ardent lovers holds forth in "The Cafeteria" (1968) on the Lower East Side. At opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, two entries, Woody Allen's "The Whore of Mensa," (1974) and "Mid-Air" (1984), by Frank Conroy, have become classics. Published this year, Jonathan Franzen's "The Failure" defines the `90s in the city, yet Maeve Brennan's 1966 "I See You, Bianca," a quiet narrative about loss highlighted by "the struggle for space in Manhattan," could have been written today. If Dorothy Parker's wit now seems shrill ("Arrangement in Black and White," 1927 ), and Irwin Shaw's "Sailor Off the Bremen," from the same year, seems mannered, Jean Stafford's "Children Are Bored on Sunday"(1948), still resonates with a peculiarly New York atmosphere. Of course, there are tales from such New Yorker stalwarts as John McNulty, S. J. Perelman, E. B. White and James Thurber. Manhattan as geographical area and emotional landscape takes visible shape as haven and hell, locus of opportunity and of dead end lives. (Feb.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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