Here At The New Yorker [Paperback]

Brendan Gill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 1997

For over sixty years Brendan Gill has been a contented inmate of the singular institution known as the New Yorker. This affectionate account of the magazine, long known as a home for congenital unemployables, is a celebration of its wards and attendants—William Shawn, Harold Ross's gentle and courtly successor as editor; the incorrigible mischief-maker James Thurber; the two Whites, Katherine and E. B.; John O'Hara, "master of the fancied slight"; and, among a hundred others, Peter Arno, Saul Steinberg, Edmund Wilson, and Lewis Mumford. Brendan Gill has known them all, and by virtue of his virtually total recall, keen eye, and impeccable prose, his diverting portraits of these eccentrics in rage and repose are amply supplied with both dimples and warts. Here at the New Yorker—now updated with a new introduction detailing the reigns of Robert Gottlieb and Tina Brown—is a delightful tour of New York's most glorious madhouse.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Brendan Gill sold his first story to the New Yorker in 1936, when he was 21, and has worked there ever since. When his irreverent memoir appeared in 1975, it caused the most delightful of frissons, because the outside world then knew little about his workplace. Gill declares that "in the old Ross-Shawn days, what hadn't happened at the magazine was more worthy of note than what had." In reality, of course, a great deal was happening, and Gill seems to have heard and remembered it all. (This edition also contains a 1997 introduction, complete with acute and politic comments on the Bob Gottlieb and Tina Brown regimes.) But Here at the New Yorker is far from an exposé, consisting instead of the recollections of a lucky man who loves his work and many of his fellows.

Each reader will have his or her favorite anecdotes. Gill remembers taking the subway with Marianne Moore, who was squeezed next to two high school musicians. "Miss Moore stared with admiration at the drum, then said to the boy holding the drumsticks, 'Sonny, when the time comes, give it a big bang just for me.'" And, speaking of big bangs, the old New Yorker was far more squeamish--an organ in which bare nipples were nowhere to be found. Its first editor, Harold Ross, shown a cartoon complete with one such entity, growled: "Take that goddam tit up to Mrs. White and ask her what to do about it." His successor, William Shawn, shared his modesty though not his speech patterns. When Mr. Shawn asked the novelist Henry Green what led him to write Loving, Green's reply wasn't quite what he had expected. Alas, readers, you must turn to page 386 of this endlessly charming book for the offending response.

About the Author

Brendan Gill (1914–1997) was a staff writer for theNew Yorker for over sixty years. He was the author of over twenty books, including his memoir, Here at the New Yorker (also available from Da Capo Press/Perseus Books Group), three works of fiction, and biographies of Cole Porter, Tallulah Bankhead, and Charles Lindbergh.

Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (August 22, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306808102
• ISBN-13: 978-0306808104
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #662,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent b.g. information on everyone's favorite magazine, July 14, 2001

By 

Maslow (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Here At The New Yorker (Paperback)

It was interesting to read about the writers and editors who helped make The New Yorker a magazine of such distinction. I bought this book during that whole rage of last year when "Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker" was all over the place. In the time since I read this book, I resubscribed to the magazine. Periodically, I read glimpses of the magazine's former glory in its pages. I don't think I could read "Gone," though. Even though I know The New Yorker is not as good as it once was, that doesn't mean I have to take a broom handle to it. That's why I found "Here at The New Yorker" great, pricisely because of its balance.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More, if not all, that you ever wanted to know about the 'New Yorker', November 1, 2009

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Here At The New Yorker (Paperback)

Brendan Gill worked for the 'New Yorker' for sixty years. He wasone of its major 'Talk of the Town' writers and an editor who seemed to be involved with every facet of the magazine. In this Memoir he tells the inside story of major relationships in the magazine. He goes on at great length about founding editor Harold Ross and his successor William Shawn, and he tells too of the owner Raoul Fleischmann and his relationship to editors and magazine. He tells us about many of the artists, writers, editors ,some of whom are well- known to the public, and others lesser so. He tells his own story, in which he has a great deal of praise and love for his father who widowed early gave unstinting support to his five children.
Gill can be small- minded as he is in the opening section in which he talks about writers who are 'losers'. But he was a tremendously sociable and intelligent person, who seemed to genuinely want to mix and mingle. He tells us his philosophy of living beyond one's means and indicates the way he did it.
To my mind the book was longer than it had to be, and without some overall statement of Gill's view of life and the magazine. But it has many interesting anecdotal parts. My favorite was the small section on arguably America's greatest poet of this century , Wallace Stevens. Stevens upon reaching retirement age did not want to retire, and so left behind complicated work which only he could do. His firm thus had to keep him on. Gill also describes Stevens morning walks to work in Hartford where the custom was for people to give rides to walkers. Stevens always refused the rides and composed poetry on the way to work. Gill shows an appreciation of those figures larger than himself like Stevens and Edmund Wilson. He appears as the consummately 'in' social person. A sense of fun, chic, elegance, sophistication radiate from the work. In his person he thus seems to epitomize much of what the 'New Yorker'was and is as a magazine.

5.0 out of 5 stars The New Yorker At It's Most Interesting, February 20, 2010

By 

Mary Ingram (Asheville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Here At The New Yorker (Paperback)

I loved this book. It is superbly written. the times this book
is about was when there were really great writers in our country.
You will find, E. B. White, wife, Katherine(a powerhouse at
The New Yorker), Thurber (one of my favorite writers), Peter Arno
(those wonderful sometimes unexplainable cartoons, Charles Addams
(sound familiar?), Edmund Wilson (very interesting review) and so
many more; some forgotten and gladly brought back to life. And then
there,s the founder of the magazine, Harold Ross who breathed life
into it(it seems literally) and kept it going and then the great
Wallace Shawn who took over from Ross. Some books like this, I can
get easily bored but this one was kind of like a favorite mystery;
you can't put it down. It is indeed most likely the best book
written about an era.