Synopses & Reviews
Thanks to a successful interview with the painfully shy E.B. White, a beautiful, 19-year-old, blue-eyed blonde from the cornfields of Iowa lands a job as a receptionist at The New Yorker magazine. There she stays two decades, becoming general all-around factotum—watching and registering the comings and goings, marriages and divorces, scandalous affairs, failures, triumphs, and tragedies of the eccentric inhabitants of the 18th floor. Though she dreamed of becoming a writer, she never advanced at the magazine.
This memoir of a particular time and place is as much about why that was so as it is about Groths fascinating relationships with John Berryman, Joseph Mitchell, Muriel Spark, as well as E.J. Kahn, Calvin Trillin, Renata Adler, Peter DeVries, Charles Addams, and many other New Yorker contributors and bohemian denizens of Greenwich Village in its heyday. Eventually, Groth would have to leave The New Yorker in order to find herself.
Review
“A nostalgic, wistful look at life inside one of Americas most storied magazines, and the personal and professional limbo of the woman who answered the phone.”
—Kirkus Reviews Booklist
Review
“An honest and engaging memoir for fans of the magazine and histories of Mad Men-era New York.”
—Library Journal Library Journal
Review
“[Groth] is witty, honest, and self-deprecating, without whining, and quite a good role model.”
—Booklist TheCelebrityCafe.com
Review
“The New Yorkers many fans will enjoy Judith Wests warm narration of this behind-the-scenes look at the iconic magazine.”
Library Journal People Magazine
Review
“An evocative memoir.”
—People Magazine The Washington Post
Review
“[Groths] history is a fascinating one thats well told, and the lessons learned are transferable to anyone ever doubting their purpose in life.”
TheCelebrityCafe.com
Review
“Vividly depicts a largely vanished Manhattan in which Ritz Crackers were the foundation of hors doeuvres, martinis were the mainstay of lunches, and pliable, overqualified women were stuck in lowly jobs forever.”
The Washington Post
Synopsis
Janet Groths seductive and entertaining look back at her 21 years (1957 to 1978—the William Shawn years) of lateral trajectory at Americas most literary of institutions.
About the Author
Janet Groth, Emeritus Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, has also taught at Vassar, Brooklyn College, the University of Cincinnati, and Columbia. She was a Fulbright lecturer in Norway and a visiting fellow at Yale and is the author of Edmund Wilson: A Critic for Our Time (for which she won the NEMLA Book Award) and coauthor of Critic in Love: A Romantic Biography of Edmund Wilson. She lives in New York City.JUDITH WEST has amused, informed, thrilled, and otherwise entertained via stage and studio for more than 20 years. A narrator, director, and writer for audiobooks since 1999, she also coaches narrators and has taught performance and directed at leading Chicago universities, and has extensive experience in print publishing as a writer, editor, and researcher. Judith lives with her rescued cats in a vintage Chicago bungalow off Devon Avenue, the nations most ethnically diverse street. Fittingly, she counts ethnic cooking, travel, and antiques among her pleasures.