The Fun of It

William Shawn once calledThe Talk of the Townthe 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 theTalk of the Townstory 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 Itis the first anthology ofTalkpieces that spans the magazine's life. Edited by Lillian Ross, the longtimeTalkreporter andNew Yorkerstaff writer, the book brings together pieces by the section's most original writers. Only in a collection ofTalkstories 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 igrandest theatre devoted exclusively to the movies; Hendrik Hertzberg pinning down a Sulzberger on how theTimesgot 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.

As Lillian Ross writes in her Preface, <i>Talk</i> stories have today evolved into the sharpest, funniest, and often timeliest short-form writing in the history of the magazine. These little (a thousand words or less) gems now bear out the ultimate refinement of what Harold Ross wanted his magazine to be.