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12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web
https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=f752530a-fbde-4586-a296-41b0cd73b215&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/3HomeTop Picks: All BooksCast of Characters
Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and theGolden Age of The New Yorker
MoreCast of Charactersby Thomas VinciguerraPrice: $27.95(Hardcover)Published: November 09, 2015Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: From its birth in 1925 to the early days of theCold War, The New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as thecountry’s most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerrapaints a portrait of the magazine’s cadre of charming,wisecracking, driven, troubled, brilliant writers and editors. Heintroduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, andauthor of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine. We meetthe demanding and eccentric founding editor Harold Ross, whowould routinely tell his underlings, "I'm firing you because you arenot a genius," and who once mailed a pair of his underwear toWalter Winchell, who had accused him of preferring to go bare-bottomed under his slacks. Joining the cast are the mercurial, blindJames Thurber, a brilliant cartoonist and wildly inventive fabulist,…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This Book
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Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We SayIt's hard to resist The New Yorker in its heyday: the magazine personified (personifies?) both a certain sophisticatedManhattan perspective and the desire to obtain a certain, sophisticated Manhattan perspective. It was genuinelyrevolutionary and in that remarkable era from its founding in 1925 to the Cold War boasted a Murderer's Row oftalent in its pages: James Thurber, Charles Addams, Wolcott Gibbs, John O'Hara, illustrators like Arno, founderHarold Ross and of course E.B. White. Author Thomas Vinciguerra does not resist and those who revel in the detailsof that group and that era will find much to savor here. It's roughly chronological but often many chapters feel likestand-alone features that might have appeared in The New Yorker itself: here's a chapter on excessive drinking,there's a chapter on romantic and marital woes, yet another on the war and the inevitable final chapter as they filetheir final stories once and for all. Indeed, it would play better as a serialized offering over a year, say one a month.Read all at once, it is exhaustive and exhausting. Gibbs played a central role in the magazine as both editor andreviewer and writer, but much is explained when Vinciguerra mentions in an author's note that this began as abiography of him alone. Too often, every little byway is explored at tedious length. If the formidable and marvelousKatharine Angell (wife of E.B.) becomes ill late in the day, we can't be told she was plagued by maladies. We aretold, "By the early 1970s, Katharine was suffering from shingles, dermatosis, a fractured vertebra, osteoporosis, akidney infection, and congestive heart failure." The accretion of detail is admirable at first but eventually frustrating.Still, Vinciguerra usually keeps all their foibles and brilliance in perspective. He's a little too kind at times. (Forexample, Arno is a physically abusive man who welched on child support; Vinciguerra doesn't forgive but sees it asevincing his anger at the world and describes Arno giving one date a "shiner," far too colorful and friendly a word forbeating her up.) More problematic is that this truly is about a cast of characters. Each vivid, eccentric character getsour full attention, one after the other. The New Yorker itself is a little lost in all this, with little sense of forwardmomentum allowed to develop. Sure, highlights like the takedown of Time magazine and John Hersey's Hiroshimapiece are captured. But this is a series of portraits more than the journey of the magazine itself. Still, it's intelligent,well-grounded, and moment-to-moment entertaining. With a cast of characters like this, how could it fail? Now if onlyI had Gibbs or Ross or Shawn to edit this rambling little review.... -- Michael GiltzLessWhat Others SayA fresh view…. Ably captures the antic spirit of the New Yorker's first heyday. - Kirkus ReviewsCaptures the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of its editors and writers…will be embraced be faithful New Yorkerreaders. - Publishers WeeklyVinciguerra’s writing has a way of bringing these characters to sparkling life…. New Yorker readers are a dedicatedlot and will snap this ‘golden age’ volume up. - BooklistIt's a beautiful book and a sad book, as the flood of time and modernity rises before the Cast of Characters can walkin pairs to the ark. - P.J. O’Rourke Irresistible…a banquet of information about the good writing and bad manners of the eccentric crew who made amyth both of themselves and of the journal they made famous. Vinciguerra writes a sharp, crisp sentence, and tellshis story with brio. - John Lahr, author of Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh
https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=f752530a-fbde-4586-a296-41b0cd73b215&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/3HomeTop Picks: All BooksCast of Characters
Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and theGolden Age of The New Yorker
MoreCast of Charactersby Thomas VinciguerraPrice: $27.95(Hardcover)Published: November 09, 2015Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: From its birth in 1925 to the early days of theCold War, The New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as thecountry’s most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerrapaints a portrait of the magazine’s cadre of charming,wisecracking, driven, troubled, brilliant writers and editors. Heintroduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, andauthor of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine. We meetthe demanding and eccentric founding editor Harold Ross, whowould routinely tell his underlings, "I'm firing you because you arenot a genius," and who once mailed a pair of his underwear toWalter Winchell, who had accused him of preferring to go bare-bottomed under his slacks. Joining the cast are the mercurial, blindJames Thurber, a brilliant cartoonist and wildly inventive fabulist,…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This Book
Go to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site whereyou can get this book.BookFilter
12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web
https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=f752530a-fbde-4586-a296-41b0cd73b215&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/3
Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We SayIt's hard to resist The New Yorker in its heyday: the magazine personified (personifies?) both a certain sophisticatedManhattan perspective and the desire to obtain a certain, sophisticated Manhattan perspective. It was genuinelyrevolutionary and in that remarkable era from its founding in 1925 to the Cold War boasted a Murderer's Row oftalent in its pages: James Thurber, Charles Addams, Wolcott Gibbs, John O'Hara, illustrators like Arno, founderHarold Ross and of course E.B. White. Author Thomas Vinciguerra does not resist and those who revel in the detailsof that group and that era will find much to savor here. It's roughly chronological but often many chapters feel likestand-alone features that might have appeared in The New Yorker itself: here's a chapter on excessive drinking,there's a chapter on romantic and marital woes, yet another on the war and the inevitable final chapter as they filetheir final stories once and for all. Indeed, it would play better as a serialized offering over a year, say one a month.Read all at once, it is exhaustive and exhausting. Gibbs played a central role in the magazine as both editor andreviewer and writer, but much is explained when Vinciguerra mentions in an author's note that this began as abiography of him alone. Too often, every little byway is explored at tedious length. If the formidable and marvelousKatharine Angell (wife of E.B.) becomes ill late in the day, we can't be told she was plagued by maladies. We aretold, "By the early 1970s, Katharine was suffering from shingles, dermatosis, a fractured vertebra, osteoporosis, akidney infection, and congestive heart failure." The accretion of detail is admirable at first but eventually frustrating.Still, Vinciguerra usually keeps all their foibles and brilliance in perspective. He's a little too kind at times. (Forexample, Arno is a physically abusive man who welched on child support; Vinciguerra doesn't forgive but sees it asevincing his anger at the world and describes Arno giving one date a "shiner," far too colorful and friendly a word forbeating her up.) More problematic is that this truly is about a cast of characters. Each vivid, eccentric character getsour full attention, one after the other. The New Yorker itself is a little lost in all this, with little sense of forwardmomentum allowed to develop. Sure, highlights like the takedown of Time magazine and John Hersey's Hiroshimapiece are captured. But this is a series of portraits more than the journey of the magazine itself. Still, it's intelligent,well-grounded, and moment-to-moment entertaining. With a cast of characters like this, how could it fail? Now if onlyI had Gibbs or Ross or Shawn to edit this rambling little review.... -- Michael GiltzLessWhat Others SayA fresh view…. Ably captures the antic spirit of the New Yorker's first heyday. - Kirkus ReviewsCaptures the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of its editors and writers…will be embraced be faithful New Yorkerreaders. - Publishers WeeklyVinciguerra’s writing has a way of bringing these characters to sparkling life…. New Yorker readers are a dedicatedlot and will snap this ‘golden age’ volume up. - BooklistIt's a beautiful book and a sad book, as the flood of time and modernity rises before the Cast of Characters can walkin pairs to the ark. - P.J. O’Rourke Irresistible…a banquet of information about the good writing and bad manners of the eccentric crew who made amyth both of themselves and of the journal they made famous. Vinciguerra writes a sharp, crisp sentence, and tellshis story with brio. - John Lahr, author of Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh