During more than fifty years as a staff writer for the New Yorker, Brendan Gill has associated with many of the most intriguing artistic, intellectual, and social figures of our time. His recent book, A New York Life: Of Friends and Others, is a lively social history of New York's cultural elite; it also reveals a glimpse of how literary and intellectual circles are formed and preserved.
In a series of original profiles, Gill vividly portrays forty-five of the most beguiling individuals he has known. This month, Book World features five of these portraits: Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Russell Hitchcock, Dorothy Parker, Maxwell Anderson, and Harold Lloyd.
Gill's subjects were drawn from a circle of friends and professional connections acquired over a lifetime, from his days as a Yale undergraduate to his year as an established writer to his tenure as one of New York's most venerable cultural lions. During his years at the New Yorker, Gill has written innumerable short stories, poems, profiles, and book reviews. He was the magazine's drama critic for sixteen years and recently reestablished its architectural column. Gill is the author of fifteen books, including a prizewinning novel, The Trouble of One House, and Many Masks, a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright. His memoir, Here at the New Yorker, was a national best-seller.
Commentaries on Gill's life and interests accompany our excerpt from A New York Life. They are written by Peter Shaw and Willard Espy, literary men who are members of Gill's charmed circle.
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