Rating: 
Summary: Great History And Principle Profiles
Review: "About Town", by Ben Yagoda chronicles the majority of the 80+ years, "The New Yorker", has been contributing its unique journalistic culture to everyone, including, "The old lady in Debuque". Mr. Yagoda's book stands out from many books that have been offered to readers about the magazine for while he certainly is aware of the contributions the magazine has made for over 8 decades; he does not seem to be in awe of it or the people to the point it affects his writing. He clearly admires the magazine, but this does not stop his including a wealth of information that documents the eccentric personalities that shaped the magazine. Some may not find the notes flattering, but he objectively shows some of the magazines famous quirks without committing the blasphemy of a young Thomas Wolfe.The list of writers who either became major or occasional contributors, reads like an amalgam of winners of the highest literary awards that have been offered. The list of those names repeatedly rejected expands the list even further. The book contains dozens of examples of the famous rejection letters that often are almost apologetic about turning down a piece of work while always writing in the first person plural. Having a piece selected by, "The New Yorker", was often considered the ultimate indicator that a new writer had arrived, that he or she had entered the pantheon of the magazine's literary legends. This was true even if the work accepted for publication may not have appeared for months, or even several years. The reception of the envelope stating a writer's work had been admitted was all many authors needed to have their work given unique value and cachet, publication was a bonus. Mr. Yagoda also spends a good amount of his book on the cartoons, their artists, and the painful process that started with an idea only to have to run a gauntlet to be published. As hard as this path may have been, the scrutinizing that a written piece received is almost beyond imagining. It is understandable that first time contributors would have their worked scoured and polished, but when some of the 20th Century's finest writers nearly drew blood over commas the action within the building must have been spectacular. There is a story of one writer who sat outside the editor's office for almost 5 hours over the issue of a single comma. This World War I trench warfare standoff continued until the early hours of the next morning. The editor capitulated, but noted to the writer, "you are still wrong". The story of this fascinating magazine could fill many volumes. If your starting place for gathering an overview of this institution, its editors, staff and writers, is this book, you will have chosen very well. Mr. Yagoda has written a great tribute to those he has chronicled.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Biography of a Great Magazine
Review: Ben Yagoda has written nearly 500 pages, and when you're finished, you'll wish he'd written 500 more. This is the wise, bright and definitive biography that "the world's greatest magazine" deserves. The giants walk through these pages -- Harold Ross, Thurber, Joe Mitchell, A. J. Liebling, Lillian Ross, William Shawn, William Maxwell, Pauline Kael, Wolcott Gibbs, Joe Heller, Raymond Carver, St. Clair McKelway, Genet, Mencken, Audax Minor, Gilbert Rogin, Mary McCarthy, Updike, O'Hara, Capote, Nabokov, Salinger, Behrman et al -- a pantheon of idiosyncratic, brilliant and powerful writers, perhaps the best we'll ever see under a single masthead. Books about The New Yorker would occupy a library shelf. "About Town" deserves the place of honor.
Rating:
Summary: Encore!
Review: Disclaimer: I love The New Yorker. I have been a dedicated subscriber for ten years (and I am only twenty-six), and I read the magazine for years before subscribing under my own name. Given my disclaimer, perhaps my five-star rating is self-evident. But not necessarily: As a lover of the magazine, I approached this text skeptically. I was interested in an unbiased review, yes, but likely I would have been wounded by a wholeheartedly negative portrayal. Yagoda loves TNY even more than I do, if that's possible, yet he truthfully approaches his biography of the magazine. The ugliest facts are laid bare, but in a sympathetic whole. TNY writers, editors, and staff members are lovingly recreated; Yagoda writes so well that I felt I knew these people, I understood these people, and I physically missed them after turning the last page. Like others who have reviewed this book, I wanted more--more, more, more. I felt astonished and sad to have finished the book. Were it a novel, I'd beg for a sequel, even knowing that sequels rarely live up to the original. Even a second-best second-tome would be better than missing the people and the institution that this book brings to life. Admittedly, TNY readers will love this book vastly more than those unacquainted with its pages. However, if you are even beginning to approach the magazine, you must read this book. You will understand the weekly journal better than you do now, and you will appreciate it far more. I certainly do. Bravo, Yagoda!
Rating:
Summary: Giving Good Weight
Review: I agree with Jack Olsen, who felt this lengthy book wasn't long enough. I spent several nights reading much later into the night than I should have -- and paid for it the following mornings -- but I was extremely sorry when I finished "About Town." Reviewers such as John Leonard in the New York Times Book Review have rightfully lauded Mr.Yagoda for his extensive research in The New Yorker archives. Equally impressive, though, is the acute critical judgement Yagoda brings to bear on the non-fiction, short stories, poems and cartoons that have defined the magazine -- either by their inclusion or exclusion. In meshing the archival letters and notes between writers and editors with his own hard-won views of the magazine's contents and the artists who created them, Yagoda in effect has created and orchestrated a book-length conversation and meditation on good writing. "About Town" is so well written, and so rich in anecdote, telling detail and, with a nod toward New Yorker editor/founder Harold Ross, the beauty of fact, that if it weren't ABOUT The New Yorker I suspect that it would have been accepted for excerpting by the magazine's long-gone original regime. For those like me who finish the book wanting more, the only solace is that, in a sense, you can continue the converation about good writing with Yagoda by revisiting the works and authors he dissects. I'm looking forward, for instance, to rooting out Peter Taylor's early stories -- I'm familiar with his classic later works -- checking out writers with whom I am unfamiliar, such as Irwin Shaw, and to re-reading some Cheever to follow the evolution outlined by Yagoda.In this continuing quest, good places to start are the collections of short stories ("Wonderful Town") and profiles ("Life Stories") edited by current New Yorker editor David Remnick. Also, check out "The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism" co-edited by Yagoda which includes selections from many New Yorker stalwarts. Years ago one of the magazine's former stalwarts, John McPhee, wrote an article about the farmers' markets in New York City, where customers could be assured of getting their money's worth -- and then some -- from the rural formers who manned the stands. He titled it, and a subsequent collection, "Giving Good Weight." In "About Town," Ben Yagoda gives good weight.
Rating:
Summary: Let Me Count The Ways---
Review: I have had an ongoing love affair with The New Yorker since I was ten years old. First I read just the cartoons, then the reviews, and finally an obsession with the entire magazine. Ben Yagoda is the first account I have read that does not have a personal agenda or bias. His research is meticulous and presented in such a lively manner that the reader never feels bombarded with dry facts and statistics. He brings to center stage a fabulous cast: from founder, Harold Ross, A. J. Liebling, E. B. White, James Thurber, Lillian Ross, John Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, John Updike to the last "real" New Yorker editor-William Shawn. Mr. Yagoda's talent brings them to life, sets them in the context of The New Yorker, and they greet you from around every corner. Mr. Yagoda lets us see why and how The New Yorker wielded such a remarkable influence in its heyday from the `30's through the early `60's. The standards set for fact checking, daring fiction, and in-depth "fact" pieces were hard to emulate. I well remember entire issues set aside for arcane subjects. I always gave the prize to Ved Mehta for writing excruciatingly long articles about subjects of which I had absolutely no interest. Yet I eagerly awaited Mehta's biographical sketches. That was part of The New Yorker's charm; they gave their writers the freedom to try different venues. The magazine was famous (or infamous) for their ruthless editing. One of my favorite quoted memos was from Vladimar Nabokov who wasn't so much outraged that The New Yorker had tinkered with his text, but amazed. "Never in my life has such a thing happened." said the bewildered Mr. Nabokov. "About Town" is a fascinating read that can also be used for a reference book. It is scrupulously indexed and cross-referenced. This is the definitive biography of The New Yorker. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Let Me Count The Ways---
Review: I have had an ongoing love affair with The New Yorker since I was ten years old. First I read just the cartoons, then the reviews, and finally an obsession with the entire magazine. Ben Yagoda is the first account I have read that does not have a personal agenda or bias. His research is meticulous and presented in such a lively manner that the reader never feels bombarded with dry facts and statistics. He brings to center stage a fabulous cast: from founder, Harold Ross, A. J. Liebling, E. B. White, James Thurber, Lillian Ross, John Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, J. D. Salinger, John Updike to the last "real" New Yorker editor-William Shawn. Mr. Yagoda's talent brings them to life, sets them in the context of The New Yorker, and they greet you from around every corner. Mr. Yagoda lets us see why and how The New Yorker wielded such a remarkable influence in its heyday from the '30's through the early '60's. The standards set for fact checking, daring fiction, and in-depth "fact" pieces were hard to emulate. I well remember entire issues set aside for arcane subjects. I always gave the prize to Ved Mehta for writing excruciatingly long articles about subjects of which I had absolutely no interest. Yet I eagerly awaited Mehta's biographical sketches. That was part of The New Yorker's charm; they gave their writers the freedom to try different venues. The magazine was famous (or infamous) for their ruthless editing. One of my favorite quoted memos was from Vladimar Nabokov who wasn't so much outraged that The New Yorker had tinkered with his text, but amazed. "Never in my life has such a thing happened." said the bewildered Mr. Nabokov. "About Town" is a fascinating read that can also be used for a reference book. It is scrupulously indexed and cross-referenced. This is the definitive biography of The New Yorker. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: You'll learn a lot
Review: I read the book mostly to read about my favorite writers (Pauline Kael, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross) and their experiences at the New Yorker. I wasn't disappointed. But the book also introduced to A.J. Liebling and John Hersey and host of other fine writers that I hadn't a clue about. On top of that, it's just a doggone fine history of the greatest literary magazine in U.S. history. Hats off to Ben Yagoda for another fine work
Rating:
Summary: Excellent work of literary criticism and history
Review: Since the 1920's The New Yorker magazine has ebbed and flowed in and out of the nation's conscience. On occasion The New Yorker itself is splashed across the front page of major newspapers with stories either by or about the magazine. What other periodical is there whose change in editorship is chronicled with unfleeting attention as was recently the case when Editor Tina Brown was deposed. The supposed demise of The New Yorker magazine has been chronicled many times and the subject is old hat. It interestingly parallels the decline of our culture brought on by the decline of reading lamented by Alan Bloom, Harold Bloom and other cultural critics. But The New Yorker still survives some 80 years after it was founded by Harold Bloom. To appreciate it's place in the American psyche it is worth revisiting it's decades long history as Ben Yagoda has done in "About Town: The New Yorker and The World It Made". Mr. Yagoda had free reign of the internal papers and correspondence of The New Yorker and willing participation from many of her former writers and editors. His meticulously researched book is replete with facts and anecdotes that makes for a wonderful read. Further he casts a critical eye at the magazine on it's literary merits and offers a well-read analysis of it's fiction in the manner of The New Yorker's own great literary critic Edmund Wilson. It is difficult today to appreciate the impact that The New Yorker had on American culture in it's heydays of the 1930s through the 1950s. That a humor magazine lacking a table of contents or photographs and whose articles were often without byline could sweep past such stalwarts as "Life" and "The Saturday Evening Post" is prima facie difficult to understand. In recent years the magazine lost it's poignancy and fell apart with spiraling financial losses (which continue today) and a dull demeanor that was famously mocked by recent editor Tina Brown when she criticized the "50,000 word article on sapphires". Some of us like to read 50,000 word magazine articles and The New Yorker appears to be the only mass circulation forum to find such lengthy works. Some of The New Yorker's long fact pieces-the distinction between "fact" and "fiction" is made clear in The New Yorker with an editor being assigned to head up each department-have been reprinted as famous books. My personal favorite is the spine tingling murder tale "In Cold Blood" related by Truman Capote. More famous is John Hershey's account of the atomic bomb dropped on Japan in "Hirsohima". These articles read with a breathless pace that is steady and lends itself to reading in a single setting. There is neither wasted adjective nor adverb. These were heavily edited by William Shawn and others and retold in the famous New Yorker voice which reads as if many of the works in the magazine had been written by one person. Some writers, such as Thomas Wolfe, have mocked that aspect of the magazine. Some New Yorker writers did not appreciate such heavy-handed editing. Vladimir Nabokov, author of the novel of illicit love "Lolita", complained to the editor and founder Harold Ross about Katherine White who wanted to alter his fiction. Mrs. White was the patrician beauty and wife of the New Yorker writer E.B. White. She, James Thurber, Harold Ross, and E.B. White set the pace for the magazine in it's early years. White wrote the famous books "Charlotte's Web", "The Elements of Style", and "Stuart Little". Brendan Gill in his 1975 book "Here at The New Yorker" openly disparages the fact side of the magazine while praising the fiction. This is quite odd and overboard since Gill as a writer of fiction, Talk of the Town reporter, and the magazine's theater critic no doubt would have appreciated such newsworthy, well-written articles as "The Massacre at El Mozote". This chronicled the massacre of hundreds of civilizians in El Salvador by the American-backed government. This article is not ordinary journalism but is literary journalism such as was written by Truman Capote. The article does not relate the facts in newspaper pyramid style fashion with short column inch paragraphs. Rather the prose is written like a novel and makes a more interesting read albeit a much longer one than would fit into the conventional daily press. Another great work of literary journalism described by Ben Yagoda is Lillian Ross's description of the making of the John Huston movie "The Red Badge of Courage". And it is quite amazing that Edmund Wilson, author of the Marxist History "To the Finland Station" and the book of Civil War literature "Patriotic Gore", learned Hebrew so that he could document the Dead Sea Scrolls. The import of fiction to the New Yorker seems to have waned. Currently issues contain only one fiction piece while other works are relegated to-or perhaps made prominent in--a fiction-dominated version of the magazine which appears every few months. Gone are the days when eager readers poured over each new issue looking for a story by John O'Hara or J.D. Salinger. Not unfallable, The New Yorker has made some obvious gaffes when it turned down short stories by Flanner O'Connor and rejected a work by J.D. Salinger that would eventually become "The Catcher in the Rye". Harold Ross was the magazine's founder and served as it's editor until 1951. He is by far a more colorful figure than William Shawn and his legacy is greater. Ross was something of a country redneck, sporting a crew cut, who hailed from what at that time was a rural village: Aspen, Colorado. His dislike of Black people is describe by Yagoda. Ross's gift was surrounding himself with talented writers and editors and giving then somewhat free reign to innovate. Yet even he engaged in wholesale editing. Brendan Gill recalls being called to the mat for using the word "indescribable". "Nothing is indescribable" Harold Ross roared.
Rating:
Summary: A "must" for all fans of the New Yorker magazine.
Review: The New Yorker was founded in the Jazz Age and grew to literary proportions, coming to represent the arts of the city and the major participants in these arts. Yagoda is the first to use the New Yorker's archives, donated to the NY Public Library in 1991: his picks from these archives, supplemented by interviews with over fifty literary figures, makes for a lively coverage.
Rating:
Summary: Metamorphosis...
Review: There are at least two ways to view Ben Yagoda's book ABOUT TOWN: 1) as the history of The New Yorker Magazine, how it was conceived and developed and changed over time, and 2) as a social document reflecting its times. The subtitle of the book "and the World it Made" does not seem quite as accurate unless one considers that "world" to be the corporate culture created by the staff led by Ross and Shawn, the two longtime editors who built the magazine. The New Yorker certainly has influenced the world within which it existed along with many other magazines. Harold Ross, the founder and first editor of the magazine, with the help of Katherine and E.B.White, Thurber, Dorothy Parker, and many other fine editors and writers launched the magazine in the 1920s. The sophisticated and literary focus of the magazine soon captured the fancy of New Yorkers. During the hard days of the depression the magazine actually gained subscribers as readers enjoyed the humorous repartee and cartoons that helped them laugh at their troubles. Many new readers learned of the magazine during WWII as it was handed around the barracks. The GI bill produced many educated readers who remembering their wartime contact with the magazine now subscibed to it. Following WWII, the magazine included more and more "social conscience" articles, for example, John Hershey's essay on "Hiroshima." Ross died in the early 1950s, and during the fifties under the editorship of William Shawn, the magazine became relatively banal according to Yagoda who says it appealed to stay-at-home wives who enjoyed articles that reminded them of their college days (among other pieces, Mary McCarthy's tales of her Italian travels were featured). In the 1960s, the magazine once again became more vocal about social issues and the environment. Yagoda says the best years of the magazine came in the 1970s when writers like Woody Allen wrote wonderful wacky pieces and investigative journalists covered the scandals in
Washington. Following a downturn in subscriptions in 1980s, the magazine was purchased by a media mogul and William Shawn departed. With Tina Brown's arrival, the magazine metamorphed into a Conde Nast publication. Garrison Keillor's comments about Brown's arrival (as he left) are amusing. Over the years, I have read John Updike, Alice Munro, Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine White, and many of the writers who once wrote for the New Yorker. When I was a child, my mother used to quote Dorothy Parker regularly ("Rivers are damp..."), but I had no idea Parker wrote for The New Yorker until years later (we lived in a rural area and subscribed to the Progressive Farmer!!). When I read Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING, it changed my life, but I read it in book form when it was first published as a Book of the Month Club selection. I only became aware of The New Yorker magazine when I was in my thirties and a college writing instructor suggested it. Yagoda says many people discovered the magazine when they were students. As a social document, The New Yorker articles very much reflect the times, and to some extent, at least under Ross, the magazine seemed to be ahead of the times. In reading this book, I was reminded of National Public Radio, which seems to be the main innovator in broadcast journalism these days--though I am told there are all sorts of happenings on the Internet. The in-depth news stories, the essays by various knowledgeable citizens, the political commentaries and Garrison Keilor are all comparable to The New Yorker magazine. If you are interested in a snapshot of the 20th Century from an educated New Yorker magazine perspective, or in writing and magazine development in general, you will find much of interest in this book. The tales concerning the origins of many innovative features of the magazine are quite good. Yagoda suggests the magazine pretty much ended with Shawn's departure in the late 1980s. He devotes eight pages at the end of the book to the three editors who followed Shawn. He says the median age of the readership grows older every year (not replacing subscribers) and most of current readership as such is owing to the retention of loyal readers. He quotes some of these readers who no longer actually read the magazine but have not given up their subscriptions. His book goes a long way toward explaining to me why I dropped my subscription a few years ago.
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