About Town
The New Yorker and the World It Made
Ben Yagoda
478 pages, including notes and index
published in 2000

The New Yorker is one of the quintessential symbols of American, East Coast intellectualism and sophistication. It has published many of the best literary writers in the States, many of America's best humourists and many of its best essayists. Even now, when the general consensus is that the magazine is but a shadow of its former self, it still commands a prestige and authority unmatched by any other magazine.

What made and makes The New Yorker such an interesting magazine is that wasn't just a humouristic magazine, not just a literary magazine, but combined the two as well as paid attention to politics and current affairs, all in its own, unitimable style. There have been other great American magazines, but none quite like The New Yorker. You cannot mistake an issue of the magazine for anything else.

Such a magazine deserves a good history devoted to it. About Town is one attempt to provide such a history. It isn't the first attempt, nor likely to be the last. As a history, About Town is nicely chatty, with lots of interesting anecdotes and looks behind the scenes, as well as a sprinkling of the cartoons that helped contribute to the magazine's charms.

The New Yorker was founded in 1925 and until 1987, had been in the hands of only two editors: the founding editor, Harold Ross and his successor, William Shawn. It's this 62 year that Yagoda concentrates on; to him, the old New Yorker died when Shawn was fired. This view is not uncommon amongst the magazine's fans, I gather.

And About Town is very much a fan's history, as Yagoda admits to in his introduction. This leads in places to a slightly too rose-tinted a view of the magazine, but on the whole Yagoda is objective enough to stop his history from becoming a hagiography. Also, if he wasn't a fan, he might not have gotten access to the magazine's huge archives, which must have helped quite a lot with his research.

It may have also helped in making this book into more than a collection of anecdotes about an interesting magazine. Yagoda takes the time not only to trace the evolution of the magazine itself, but also of its influence on New York and America's cultural and political life. The New Yorker was not only influential on American literature after all, but also on the political scene, especially with its essays -- Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was first published in The New Yorker, as was John Hersey's "Hiroshima".

I myself am not necessarily a New Yorker fan, not having read the magazine at any great length, but am aware of its cultural influence, which is one reason why I read this book. On the whole it was an interesting read, even for a non-fan. There were times though, as I remarked earlier, that it was a bit too fannish a history and not critical enough.