Here at the New Yorker

1975, 1976 Berkley [sic] Medallion edition
Brendan Gill
Here at the New Yorker
Original price $1.95, purchase price unknown
Paperback in terrible condition
B-

I didn't know till reading the Wikipedia article today that this book was controversial among Gill's colleagues, although I do own E. J. Kahn's About The New Yorker and Me (1979) and vaguely recalled that he disliked Gill's book.  The issues they had with it aren't mine, since I don't feel any emotional attachment to James Thurber (whom Gill loathed) or even E. B. White.

Like The Dictionary of Misinformation, this is a book I used to enjoy more than I did this time.  In fact, I reread it so much, it had split in half, and this reading made another 100 pages split off.  What appealed to me most about the book was Harold Ross, so maybe part of the problem is that in the last three months I've reread the Thurber book on the same subject.  Yes, this book covers a greater span than that 1959 biography, but other than a nice glimpse of one of my favorite film critics, Pauline Kael, I don't find that to be as interesting a period at The New Yorker.  Another issue is that there are a distracting amount of typos in the book, and this bothers me in particular since so much emphasis is laid on accuracy in the magazine.  Also, while the meandering, anecdotal tone can be entertaining at times, I felt that not all of the side-trips were worth it.  (I got really bored in the section on the local bar and the writers who wrote of it.)

That said, I do like Gill's eye for what was quirky about The New Yorker, even into the 1970s, from the layout of the building to the layout of the magazine.  The photos and cartoons really do illustrate his points and this is actually one area that Thurber's New Yorker book surprisingly could've done better with.  (Perhaps Thurber's loss of sight made him think less visually?)  Gill does have some Ross stories that Thurber missed.  And Gill's autobiographical details are interesting, since he led a charmed but not perfect life.  Amusingly, Gill's son Michael's autobiography is called How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.

And speaking of sons, Ross's successor William Shawn had a son named Wallace, whom it is impossible to think of as not middle-aged (in My Dinner with Andre, The Princess Bride, Clueless, etc.) but here he is in this book, as a young actor.

As for Brendan Gill, he outlived just about everybody (even two-years-younger Kahn), and kept writing for the magazine, dying in 1997, about 60 years after Ross first doubted Gill's commitment.