Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker [Paperback]

Hemingway, Baryishnikov, and Henry Luce are the subjects of some of my favorite celebrity profiles in this wonderful book. But topping my list is "Man Goes to See a Doctor", the awesome Adam Gopnik's sweet and funny rendering of his shrink. Here's a snippet: "Your problems remind me of" - and here he named one of the heroes of the New York School. "Fortunately, you suffer from neither impotence nor alcoholism. This is in your favor." Highly recommended!

This is a compilation of some of the best Profiles to appear in the New Yorker over the last 80 years. Sometimes you will be familiar with the person being profiled, sometimes not, but in all cases you will find the stories entertaining and the writing, superb.

My favorite Profile happens to be of one of the non-famous persons, George H. Hunter ("Mr. Hunter's Grave," by Joseph Mitchell). It is a story not so much about a person but of a long-forgotten community, and a way of life. Despite being the longest entry in the audio collection, I rewound the tape three or four times to listen to it again and again - it was that good.

Some of the celebrity stories are just as compelling, although, being celebrities, many aspects of their lives are already well known. But this sometimes opened a window into foreshadowing that could not have been appreciated by the reader (or even the writer) at the time the piece was done. One example of this concerns Ernest Hemingway ("How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?", by Lillian Ross). Hidden somewhere in the middle of the Profile, Ross mentions the fact that Hemingway's father had committed suicide. This had no major relation to the story in general, and was probably forgotten by most readers at the time, but we have the perspective of history. And it becomes more than just a tidbit when we realize that Hemingway, too, committed suicide 10 years later, in 1961.

Another eyebrow-raising instance came when hearing about Marlon Brando ("The Duke In His Domain," by Truman Capote). Capote was on location with Brando in Japan as Brando was taking part in the filming of "Sayonara." Brando at one point confesses to Capote that he had to lose weight for the part, and that he wasn't there yet. He still had 10-15 pounds to go. Despite this, the dinners delivered to Brando's hotel room are not those of one looking to cut down; to the contrary, Brando could only gain weight eating the food being sent up to him! Hearing Brando fuss about what he should and should not eat and Capote take note of the rich foods on the tray, it almost seems fake, as if Capote knew how Brando was going to end up. But, of course, he didn't. The story was written in 1957!

But what makes this collection great, though, is the quality of the writing itself. It matters not the subject: actor, comedian, dancer, writer, boxer, even a dog! The common thread running through all the Profiles is the way in which each story is told. Always lucid, always interesting, the stories are less stories and more like works of art.

If you enjoy exceptional writing, this collection is for you. Highly recommended. Five stars.

The well-known New Yorker writer, Nicholas Lehman's profile of George W. Bush on the campaign trail would be an atmospheric, perhaps poignant look at the country previous to the Supreme Court decision and 9/11, except for one thing. On the campaign bus, Bush came up to Lehman and said, "So who you writin' this piece for Nicky?" - (NICKY?) Lehman answered, with the name that Bush already knew. And Bush replies, "The Noooo Yawkuh, don't see why any of those readers would be interested in me." That, no matter what your political viewpoint or opinion about the magazine and its readers may be, is an indicator of the power of the magazine via its writing. The authors of the selected pieces are sometimes the primary reason to read the article. Perhaps the most famous example is Capote writing on Brando making Mitchener's Sayonara, an impossible thing to imagine today. The grandiosity of Brando doing something that he would no doubt later be ashamed of is not lost over time. Capote always boasted of his ability to keep himself out of an interview, something that I found amazingly untrue and part of his attraction. In this case, he managed to find the comedy in the Japanese girls calling, "Marron" while remaining deferential to the star. Capote innocently notes every plate of high calorie food consumed like Henry VIII and the serious tone Brando took about his own artistic endeavors. The result was that upon reading the article, Brando vowed to kill the author. Every reader will find their particular famous people who are no longer interesting, and that itself is instructive. For me, those were Johnny Carson, an early Roseanne, Baryshnikov and perhaps sadly, Al Gore. Others, eternally fresh are Isadora Duncan, Richard Pryor and Ernest Hemingway drinking champagne with Dietrich, who was passing around pictures of her grandchild. Papa mentioned that he'd like to see a Dietrich grandson in the ring.
The best, I think most New Yorker fans will agree are the otherwise unknowns, sometimes to everyone, and sometimes just to you. These are those pieces that seem to bring on Buddha-like powers of concentration where time stops and you can't account for the hours, the stuff's been so good. The pieces that will be the most deeply memorable for me are, "Mr. Hunter's
Grave," a 1956 favorite of David Remnick, the editor who placed it first. It's about a lost, secret community of black Oystermen and a mystery solved in graveyard fashion. There are the `Chudnovsky Brothers' and their entire apartment and life spent studying Pi, A piece of Henry Luce that was a savage, sarcastic and hilariously wicked perspective that quite naturally infuriated the tyrant. Nancy Franklin's profile on the infamous Katherine White was an unexpected source of female pride, without the attachment of doctrinaire feminism.
This is a sure thing for future journalists with an interest in the ubiquitous personality piece. Plenty here for those that may aspire beyond People Magazine but still can't quench the thirst for celebrity. For readers just seeking a good read however, it is a promise that life abounds with intriguing characters, subject of course to the eye and the voice of the finest
No matter the proportion of those who deplored reading a campaign piece about the future president, he managed to spark our interest once he shared his opinion about us.