The Receptionist: An Education at The New YorkerIn 1957, when a young Midwestern woman landed a job at The New Yorker, she didnÕt expect to stay long at the reception desk. But stay she did, and for twenty-one years she had the best seat in the house. In addition to taking messages, she ran interference for jealous wives checking on adulterous husbands, drank with famous writers at famous watering holes throughout bohemian Greenwich Village, and was seduced, two-timed, and proposed to by a few of the magazineÕs eccentric luminaries. This memoir of a particular time and place is an enchanting tale of a woman in search of herself. |
Contents
Introduction or Jack Spills the Beans | 1 |
Homage to Mr Berryman | 9 |
On Writing Not Writing and Lunching with Joe | 20 |
Remembering Muriel | 45 |
Rough Passage through the New Yorker Art Department | 69 |
Party Girl | 96 |
Back on Reception | 106 |
Fritz | 126 |
A World Awry | 155 |
A New Roommate | 161 |
The Journey Out | 171 |
The Journey In | 187 |
Changing | 201 |
A Renaissance Man | 207 |
Mr Right at Last | 212 |
What the Receptionist Received | 224 |
Common terms and phrases
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