Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (Modern Library Paperbacks) [Paperback]

David Remnick (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001 | Series: Modern Library Paperbacks

New York City is not only The New Yorker's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood; it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town collects superb short fiction by many of the magazine's and this country's most accomplished writers. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Here New York is every great place and every ordinary place. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town, is the life of us all.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm'd Manhattan?" marveled the excitable Walt Whitman in 1865. The skinny island and its four sister boroughs have continued to fascinate writers ever since, and it would be hard to find a better record of that fascination than Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. As David Remnick explains in his foreword, the fledgling magazine paid relatively little heed to the nuts and bolts of metropolitan life, and in his original prospectus, Harold Ross didn't even mention fiction. But in the following decades, Ross and his successors published so many classic New York stories that the real challenge, according to Remnick, was whittling down the selection: "As there is barely enough room in this city to contain all of its busy, funny, angry, joyful, carping, and canny inhabitants, there was barely enough room to contain the wide range of stories we agreed upon."

So what made the grade? There are treasures from John Cheever ("The Five-Forty-Eight"), James Thurber ("The Catbird Seat"), Maeve Brennan ("I See You, Bianca"), Isaac Bashevis Singer ("The Cafeteria"), Jamaica Kincaid ("Poor Visitor"), and many others. The uptown neighborhoods appear to be more generously represented--a token, perhaps, of the magazine's well-heeled, fur-bearing readership--but from early Updike to middle-period Tama Janowitz, there are plenty of excursions south of Fourteenth Street. It's not, however, a simple matter of geography, but a kind of urban metaphysics at work. There are numerous and overlapping New Yorks represented in this collection: you'll find John Cheever's postwar paradise cheek-by-jowl with Ann Beattie's yuppie stomping ground. Then there's James Stevenson's vision of a flooded Gotham:

We are on the roof now. I have no idea what time it is, but it is daylight. The lower buildings have been submerged, the tall office buildings stand like tombstones above the heaving waves. There are whitecaps toward Central Park. An ocean liner stood by the Pan Am building for a while, then moved out to sea.... The water is swirling around the skylights now. The wind shifts. The waves are coming straight in from the Atlantic.

Even in this postapocalyptic setting, New York stubbornly remains itself. A wonderful town indeed--and a wonderful collection to celebrate it. --Anita Urquhart --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

From its inception, The New Yorker has added a literary element to the sophisticated upper-middle- and upper-class lifestyles of its primary audience. Those who aren!t in that social echelon have turned to the magazine for its excellent fiction and commentary. These two audio anthologies cover the 1930s through the 1990s. Life Stories, narrated by Amy Irving and others, includes selections from the Profiles feature, which contains biographies of interesting people, some of whom are famous but some who are not: Richard Pryor, Marlon Brando, Isadora Duncan; New Yorker editor Katharine White; the originator of the household hint, Heloise; and the curator of an African American cemetery on Long Island. Wonderful Town includes 20 short stories by John Cheever, James Thurber, E.B. White, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Woody Allen, to name a few, with clear readings by Tyne Daly, Joe Morton, Timothy Jerome, and Maria Tucci. The drawback to both books is the lack of any editorial comment. Why did Remnick (who now edits the magazine) select these particular profiles and stories from the thousands The New Yorker has published? What history do the authors have with the magazine? Or perhaps the listener is expected to be sufficiently au courant to not need to ask. Adults and literary-minded young adults will enjoy these recordings.?Nann Blaine Hilyard, Lake Villa Dist. Lib., IL
Copyright 2000 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
• Publisher: Random House; New edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 037575752X
• ISBN-13: 978-0375757525
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.9 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant collection, January 2, 2001

By 

Richard LeComte "richlec" (Tuscaloosa, AL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (Hardcover)

This collection of New York stories shows both why writers have been fascinated with the Big Apple for so long and also why The New Yorker has been the hallmark of short fiction. The collection begins with Cheever and ends with Perlman, which pretty much sums up the golden years of the magazine. The pleasures here range from a story of lingering urban dread by William Maxwell to a hilarious tale of an intellectual loser by Jonathan Franzen. Updike's story both paints a true picture of New York in the snow and returns to his favorite theme -- infidelity. Philip Roth has a hilarious entry about a famous writer hounded by a game show contestant -- even funnier if you've seen "Quiz Show." The collection made me homesick for New York. It's one of the best books I read in 2000.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific!, August 2, 2002

By 

Ethan Cooper (Big Apple) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (Hardcover)

John Cheever, Woody Allen, and Bernard Malamud wrote my favorite stories in this wonderful collection about life in New York City. Three quick thoughts: (1) While the dynamic captured by some authors seems a little dated (Dorothy Parker), most of the stories resonate with characters, experiences, and social groups that are common today in New York. (2) The collection offers 44 stories and 44 authors. This helps a reader see how these authors are great in different ways. (3) This collection ends, once and for all, the impression that all stories in The New Yorker are the same. Buy this book!

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for literary fiction fans, October 9, 2000

By 

Joseph Levens (Smithtown, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker (Hardcover)

This is not only a good anthology to read for entertainment, but also a necessity for anyone who wants to write literary fiction. The New Yorker is the cornerstone of American contemporary literature, and this book captures a good sampling of the stories which have appeared in its pages the last 50 years or so. I particularly liked DEisenberg's story, and the fact that JCheever's story appears first. I think the book should have had a few more lighter pieces, and wonder why McInerney was skipped over.