The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780375756498)

William Shawn once called The Talk of the Town the soul of the magazine. The section began in the first issue, in 1925. But it wasn't until a couple of years later, when E. B. White and James Thurber arrived, that the Talk of the Town story became what it is today: a precise piece of journalism that always gets the story and has a little fun along the way.

The Fun of It is the first anthology of Talk pieces that spans the magazine's life. Edited by Lillian Ross, the longtime Talk reporter and New Yorker staff writer, the book brings together pieces by the section's most original writers. Only in a collection of Talk stories will you find E. B. White visiting a potter's field; James Thurber following Gertrude Stein at Brentano's; Geoffrey Hellman with Cole Porter at the Waldorf Towers; A. J. Liebling on a book tour with Albert Camus; Maeve Brennan ventriloquizing the long-winded lady; John Updike navigating the passageways of midtown; Calvin Trillin marching on Washington in 1963; Jacqueline Onassis chatting with Cornell Capa; Ian Frazier at the Monster Truck and Mud Bog Fall Nationals; John McPhee in virgin forest; Mark Singer with sixth-graders adopting Hudson River striped bass; Adam Gopnik in Flatbush visiting the grandest theatre devoted exclusively to the movies; Hendrik Hertzberg pinning down a Sulzberger on how the Times got colorized; George Plimpton on the tennis court with Boris Yeltsin; and Lillian Ross reporting good little stories for more than forty-five years. They and dozens of other Talk contributors provide an entertaining tour of the most famous section of the most famous magazine in the world.

Author: Lillian Ross, E. B. White
ISBN-10: 0375756493
ISBN-13: 9780375756498
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 05/01/2001
Pages: 512
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.63lbs
Size: 9.58h x 5.44w x 1.26d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2001 pg. 400
Publishers Weekly 05/07/2001 pg. 238
Library Journal 05/01/2001 pg. 84
Booklist 05/15/2001 pg. 1723
BookPage 07/01/2001 pg. 18
New Yorker (The) 12/10/2001 pg. 107