Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I'm not usually a fan of The New Yorker. I can never get through the whole thing and when trying, often feel bogged down. But, everyone says The New Yorker represents good writing, so I picked up For The Fun Of It to see if it would actually show me what "good writing" is. It did!
This book is filled with fun vignettes from The New Yorker starting in the 1920s and going through the year 2000. Each piece is a page or two and describes an interesting encounter with a New York personality.
You can read about the store that gave Mae West her corsets (1930), Gimbels' venture into live pony-selling (1947), what taxi drivers think is funny (1977) and about "a terrible new smell" that turned up in Tribeca (1992). Or read about "The Guy Who Makes President Clinton Funny"(2000.) And these examples barely scratch the surface. The pieces are written by such notables as James Thurber, Lillian Ross, Brendan Gill, Robert Benchley and even Johnny Carson ("Proverbs According to Dennis Miller"(2000)).
There are one or two clunkers, but they're in a definite minority. I really recommend this book to anyone who appreciates and likes to read about the quirky, creative and independent personalities that comprise New York City and, what the heck, America. The book's span of 70 years makes it even more fun and interesting. This book would be a great gift, too.
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