Letters from the Editor - by Thomas Kunkel (Paperback)

About the Book

These revealing letters of Harold Ross tell the story of the birth of "The New Yorker". Although he claimed he was not a writer, Ross spent hours each day firing off letters to friends, such as E. B. White, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and others. Filled with anecdotes, this collection is a chronicle of the formation of the most prestigious magazine in America.

Book Synopsis

These exhilarating letters--selected and introduced by Thomas Kunkel, who wrote Genius in Disguise, the distinguished Ross biography--tell the dramatic story of the birth of The New Yorker and its precarious early days and years. Ross worries about everything from keeping track of office typewriters to the magazine's role in wartime to the exact questions to be asked for a "Talk of the Town" piece on the song "Happy Birthday." We find Ross, in Kunkel's words, "scolding Henry Luce, lecturing Orson Welles, baiting J. Edgar Hoover, inviting Noel Coward and Ginger Rogers to the circus, wheedling Ernest Hemingway-- offering to sell Harpo Marx a used car and James Cagney a used tractor, and explaining to restaurateur-to-the-stars Dave Chasen, step by step, how to smoke a turkey." These letters from a supreme editor tell in his own words the story of the fierce, lively man who launched the world's most prestigious magazine.

About the Author

Thomas Kunkel is the author of a biography of Ross, Genius in Disguise, and Enormous Prayers. He works at the University of Maryland College of Journalism and lives in Burtonsville, Maryland.