The Fun of It

Stories from The Talk of the Town

By: James Thurber, E. B. White, Lillian Ross

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Paperback | 1 May 2001

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Paperback
514 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1

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William Shawn once called The Talk of the Town the soul of the magazine. The section began in the first issue, in 1925. But it wasn't until a couple of years later, when E. B. White and James Thurber arrived, that the Talk of the Town story became what it is today: a precise piece of journalism that always gets the story and has a little fun along the way.

The Fun of It is the first anthology of Talk pieces that spans the magazine's life. Edited by Lillian Ross, the longtime Talk reporter and New Yorker staff writer, the book brings together pieces by the section's most original writers. Only in a collection of Talk stories will you find E. B. White visiting a potter's field; James Thurber following Gertrude Stein at Brentano's; Geoffrey Hellman with Cole Porter at the Waldorf Towers; A. J. Liebling on a book tour with Albert Camus; Maeve Brennan ventriloquizing the long-winded lady; John Updike navigating the passageways of midtown; Calvin Trillin marching on Washington in 1963; Jacqueline Onassis chatting with Cornell Capa; Ian Frazier at the Monster Truck and Mud Bog Fall Nationals; John McPhee in virgin forest; Mark Singer with sixth-graders adopting Hudson River striped bass; Adam Gopnik in Flatbush visiting the ìgrandest theatre devoted exclusively to the movies; Hendrik Hertzberg pinning down a Sulzberger on how the Times got colorized; George Plimpton on the tennis court with Boris Yeltsin; and Lillian Ross reporting good little stories for more than forty-five years. They and dozens of other Talk contributors provide an entertaining tour of the most famous section of the most famous magazine in the world.

Industry Reviews

Seventy-five years' worth of the "New Yorker"'s pithy, upfront mini-portraits of people and their times. Robert Benchley (1925) sets the tone-at once haute-monde, whimsical, and urban-sophisticate throughout-and Ross (herself a 45-year veteran of the section) caps it off (in 2000). America's preeminent belletrists of the 20th century-Updike, Thurber, Liebling, E.B. White-here get their due for what was once an unsigned hallmark of the magazine. Harold Ross and, later, William Shawn make occasional appearances, and Jackie Onassis signs her name (in 1975) to a treatise on New York landmark preservation. There's a trip to the dress shop with First Lady-elect Roosevelt on the eve of inauguration (1931); a talk with Norman Mailer, "whose novel 'The Naked and the Dead' has been at the top of the best-seller lists for several months now" (1949); a visit to a young playwright-turned-politician named Gore Vidal (1960); plus the best of the best from recent years. An irresistible little treat for the "New Yorker" purists and latter-day fans all the same. (Kirkus Reviews)

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