Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker [Paperback]

Lillian Ross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2001

In this fascinating memoir, a renowned journalist tells the remarkable story of the passionate life she shared for forty years with William Shawn, legendary editor of The New Yorker. "An enduring love, however startling or unconventional, feels unalterable, predestined, compelling, and intrinsically normal to the couple immersed in it, so I would have to say that I had an intrinsically normal life for over four decades with William Shawn."Shawn was married, yet Ross and Shawn created a home together a dozen blocks south of the Shawns' apartment, raised a child, and lived with discretion. Their lives intertwined from the 1950s until Shawn's death in 1992. Ross describes how they met and the intense connection between them; how Shawn worked with the best writers of the period; how, to escape their developing liaison, Ross moved to Hollywood-only to return to New York and to the relationship. The book is a gem, an exquisitely told real-life story more potent than fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As John Cheever's stories from the New Yorker magazine demonstrate, in the upper-crust Northeast in midcentury, when divorce simply wasn't done, adultery was not exactly unheard of. But Lillian Ross's exposé of her own decades of adultery with her sainted boss, New Yorker editor William Shawn, still comes as a shock. It's doubly shocking because he was uniquely revered and had an upright if not asexual reputation and because members of the New Yorker family seldom spill the beans.

Gossip connoisseurs will gorge on Ross's tasty tidbits. As a child in Chicago, Bill Shawn narrowly escaped murder by renowned thrill killers Leopold and Loeb, who left Bill's house and kidnapped Bobby Franks instead. Bobby died and Bill became a famously shy victim of phobias--blood, violence, heights, confinement, or darkness could make him, in his own self-imploding way, go postal. When Bill's mom hired a nurse to save him from scarlet fever, the nurse "decided he needed, in addition to nursing, some sexual education. 'To my astonishment, she provided both, but I don't think it did me any harm,' Bill told me."

He was then a child of 12. It does not occur to Ross that sex might have long-term effects of any consequence. She feels zero guilt that she set up a love nest in Marlene Dietrich's old apartment 10 blocks from Shawn's family, and adopted a child, and had a phone put in by Shawn's bed, and spent Christmases with him, leaving Thanksgivings free for Shawn to spend with his wife and biological children. "Bill assured me that Cecille was going along with our arrangements. From time to time, I would think: Maybe she loves him so much she wants him to have what keeps him alive." Meow!

Mrs. Shawn, as Ved Mehta notes in his 1998 book, Remembering Mr. Shawn's New Yorker, was a reporter who supported her husband when they got to New York, and even got him his fateful job at the magazine, prior to devoting herself to their family. Ross got assignments from Shawn that made her famous, but she notes, "We never experienced even a moment of 'conflict of interest' problems, for the simple reason that we never had any conflict of interest.... If I wanted to see Bill in his office, I called his secretary, like everyone else."

"I have always been less inclined than most people I know to indulge in self-analysis," writes Ross. She may be a renowned reporter, but her own mind is one subject that entirely escapes her notice.

Annoyed that romantic emotions were spoiling her mood when her career took off in 1950 ("I felt I should have been having a lot of fun. Instead, I was being emotionally distracted and drained"), Ross did what any disgruntled journalist would do. She spent a year and a half at company expense in Hollywood, playing tennis with Charlie and Oona Chaplin, bonding with Bogart and Bacall, and writing the classic book Picture about her dear friend John Huston's movie The Red Badge of Courage. Ross became an A-list partygoer, the first major showbiz reporter with highbrow credentials, and Huston and company handed her a story much better than the movie in question. "I thought I was the luckiest reporter in the history of journalism," writes Ross, who may be right. And no wonder she was such a hit: cute, connected, willing to listen to egomaniacs and let subjects read her drafts before publication, Ross was, like the showbiz-titan pals of Carrie Fisher that are celebrated in her Hollywood roman à clef Delusions of Grandma, "ruthless and glad."

But Ross's impersonal journalism method works better with big, showy subjects such as Huston or Ernest Hemingway. Faced with the elusive Mr. Shawn, who practically had the power to cloud men's minds so that they could not see him, she fails to illuminate his heart for the reader, despite all the fascinating facts at her command. And does she know how classically, rascally masculine a lot of Shawn's lines sound? Many of them boil down to "My staff doesn't understand me."

Ross notes that William Shawn's brother Mike wrote the Doublemint ad jingle "Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun." William clearly doubled Lillian's fun. But with Mr. Shawn, doubleness wasn't the half of it. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Appearing almost simultaneously with Ved Mehta's Mr. Shawn's New Yorker (Forecasts, April 6), Ross's memoir of William Shawn, who was her lover from 1952 until his death in 1992, shows us, with mixed results, the private side of the talented, self-effacing New Yorker editor. Like Mehta's book, this one flirts with hagiography, but here we see Shawn away from his deskAand outside the marriage that he maintained throughout his and Ross's affair. The author depicts him as a passionate lover, a devoted, unofficial father to her adopted son and a deeply ambivalent editor who called his vocation a "big mistake," his professional life "the ultimate cell." Unfortunately, New Yorker writer Ross (Takes) fails to bring these personaeAromancer, father, literary midwifeAinto focus, and she continually stresses the bliss of the relationship rather than its (probably more interesting) complications. Despite the book's title, Shawn's persistent complaint that he wasAwhether at home or at the magazineA"here but not here," seems never to cast a shadow on his time with Ross, which she describes in almost impossibly sunny terms. When she mentions her guilt about the affair, she is quick to bury it in a r?sum? of personal and professional triumphs, achieved in company with luminaries as varied as A.J. Liebling, Charlie Chaplin and Robin Williams. Ross succeeds best in giving us a glimpse of Shawn's private, romantic idealsAof both his work and his affair with her ("Our time together defied death," he told her). Some readers will balk at Ross's repeating these cris de coeur for public consumption; the rest will probably wish for a less romanticized account of this love story. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (April 3, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431108
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431109
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,107,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting man as written by his "great love", September 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Here But Not Here: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Oh dear but I wish this book was written by the "other woman"---in this case, William Shawn's wife. The author, well known New Yorker writer Lillian Ross comes across as a probably horrid, self absorbed user, which is not, I'm sure, what she intended. While the book is very interesting when the subject is Mr. Shawn and the workings of the New Yorker, everytime she gushes about their enduring love (which she does, endlessly) her writing is banal beyond belief. One thinks, reading much of this book, that perhaps she was only a top writer once--when he was her editor. One of the truly fascinating characters in this book in Wallace Shawn. Perhaps someday he'll write his version of this story.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sad and disappointing, January 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Here But Not Here: My Life with William Shawn and The New Yorker (Paperback)

I looked forward to reading this book for some time but only recently had the chance but it was sad and disappointing. The disappointment came from the thin writing -- from a writer who has had such a rich a varied background. Endless repetitions of phrases (He said he was there and not there; he said I was his wife; I felt no guilt). Repetitions of situations, so on. This is a 20 page monologue carried on 20 times -- and with none of the details that one would like to hear from this very accomplished writer.

What was it like working at the New Yorker all those years? What was it like to interview and work with people like John Huston, Francois Truffaut, Charlie Chaplin, Oona O'Neil, Frederico Fellini, so on.

This book, this writer, needed an editor if anyone did.

But a sequel would be welcome by me -- one that tells the other Lillian Ross story/memoir. This 'wife's lament' is, well, not a very poetic one and not one that commends Lillian Ross as a raconteur.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sappy Pap!, July 6, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Here But Not Here: A Love Story (Hardcover)

My God, where is Shawn when we need him? Lillian Ross' paean to Bill and Tina needs Shawn's ball-pointed editor's pen like potholes need tar.