Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra
Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
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Cast of Characters
Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker

Author: Thomas Vinciguerra

Narrator: Tony Pasqualini

Unabridged: 13 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/09/2015

Synopsis

The professional and personal lives of the pioneers of an enduring magazine, the New YorkerFrom its birth in 1925 to the early days of the Cold War, the New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as the country’s most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra paints a portrait of the magazine’s cadre of charming, wisecracking, driven, troubled, and brilliant, writers and editors.He introduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, and author of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine. We meet the demanding and eccentric founding editor Harold Ross, who would routinely tell his underlings, “I’m firing you because you are not a genius,” and who once mailed a pair of his underwear to Walter Winchell, who had accused him of preferring to go bare-bottomed under his slacks. Joining the cast are the mercurial, blind James Thurber, a brilliant cartoonist and wildly inventive fabulist; and the enigmatic E. B. White—an incomparable prose stylist and Ross’ favorite son—who married the New Yorker’s formidable fiction editor, Katharine Angell. Then there is the dashing St. Clair McKelway, who was married five times and claimed to have no fewer than twelve personalities, but was nonetheless a superb reporter and managing editor alike. Many of these characters became legends in their own right, but Vinciguerra also shows how, as a group, the New Yorker’s inner circle brought forth a profound transformation in how life was perceived, interpreted, written about, and published in America.Cast of Characters may be the most revealing―and entertaining―book yet about the unique personalities who built what Ross called not a magazine but a “movement.”

About Thomas Vinciguerra

Thomas Vinciguerra is a founding editor of the Week magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Times. He is the editor of Conversations with Elie Wiesel and Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from the “New Yorker.”

About Tony Pasqualini

Tony Pasqualini has performed in and directed over a hundred plays on countless stages around the country for forty years. He is one of the founders of the Freehold Theatre and Acting Studio in Seattle as well as a member of the Pacific Resident Theatre in Los Angeles. Tony has also guest starred on many television shows including The Office, Without a Trace, CSI: NY, Mad Men, Bones, and Frasier.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Steve on February 05, 2021

This is the fourth "portrait of The New Yorker" book that I have read, the others being The Years with Ross by James Thurber, Here at The New Yorker by Brendan Gill, and About Town: The New Yorkerand the World It Made by Ben Yagoda. It has been decades since I read either the Thurber or the Gill bo......more

Goodreads review by Howard on May 31, 2017

Thomas Vinciguerra's elegantly-written and well-researched book (now in paperback) takes readers back to the bygone era between the wars, when the crazy, creative characters who started The New Yorker built a magazine institution now nearing a century of striving to present the best of American lite......more

Goodreads review by Andie on February 18, 2021

The New Yorker is arguably the most storied publication in the United States, and this book, documenting its first 25 years is full of memorable 9some may say eccentric) characters. From the founder and editor Harold Ross, to Wolcott Gibbs, James Thurber, E, B, White, Katharine Angell, John O'Hara, a......more

Goodreads review by Ray on November 09, 2017

This is a really good overview of the terrific writers and editors who founded The New Yorker, the best literary and journalistic magazine the US has ever produced.........more

Goodreads review by Brenden on November 07, 2019

I'm not sure if I didn't like the writing of this book or I didn't like the people in it. "Cast of Characters" delivers exactly what it promises: an overview of the early days of the New Yorker. I have been reading books about groups of artists in particularly special times and places lately, and so......more

Quotes

“Vinciguerra…lets us visit with the giants and see them at work, home, and play. It’s a beautiful book.” P. J. O’Rourke, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Reading Thomas Vinciguerra’s Cast of Characters is like being at a tantalizing gossip session about the star writers and supporting players of the New Yorker in its formative years. The book is entertaining, often surprising, and deeply interesting. Vinciguerra is an avid chronicler and a fair one.” Mary Norris, New York Times bestselling author

“Vinciguerra gives us substance along with the bon mots and, in so doing, evokes the bright, brilliant, long-ago Manhattan that all newcomers have dreamed of finding.” Tim Page, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

“An exuberant reunion of the magazine’s eccentric inner circle in…Vinciguerra…elegantly conjures an evocative group dynamic.” New York Times

“Loosely organized and pleasantly digressive…swift and enjoyable reading.” New York Times Book Review

“Fresh and invigorating…It’s to Vinciguerra’s great credit that he manages to avoid both condescension and hagiography in writing about the flawed, brilliant people behind it.” Boston Globe

“Captures the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies of its editors and writers…Will be embraced by faithful New Yorker readers.” Publishers Weekly

“By conducting extensive interviews and combing The New Yorker‘s archives, the author brings to life the personalities who not only helped make the magazine a success, but who shaped the modern American literary landscape.” Library Journal

“New Yorker readers are a dedicated lot and will snap this ‘golden age’ volume up, adding it to their view of the vibrant, eccentric, shape-shifting rag that touches them, and the world, with its words and pictures.” Booklist

“Vinciguerra brings to life the colorful personalities who shaped the publication…These portraits are an entertaining addition to the history of this influential magazine.” BookPage

Awards

  • BookPage Top Pick
  • BookPage Book of the Day
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