Wonderful Town, David Remnick
Wonderful Town, David Remnick
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Wonderful Town
New York Stories from The New Yorker

Author: David Remnick

Narrator: Tyne Daly, Maria Tucci, Joe Morton, Timothy Jerome

Abridged: 9 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/07/2000


Synopsis

New York City is not only The New Yorker magazine's place of origin and its sensibility's lifeblood, it is the heart of American literary culture. Wonderful Town, an anthology of superb short fiction by many of the magazine's most accomplished contributors, celebrates the seventy-five-year marriage between a preeminent publication and its preeminent context with this collection of forty-four of its best stories from (so to speak) home.

East Side? Philip Roth's chronically tormented alter ego Nathan Zuckerman has just moved there, in "Smart Money." West Side? Isaac Bashevis Singer's narrator mingles with the customers in "The Cafeteria" (who debate politics and culture in four or five different languages) and becomes embroiled in an obsessional romance. And downtown, John Updike's Maples have begun their courtship of marital disaster, in "Snowing in Greenwich Village."

Wonderful Town touches on some of the city's famous places and stops at some of its more obscure corners, but the real guidebook in and between its lines is to the hearts and the minds of those who populate the metropolis built by its pages. Like all good fiction, these stories take particular places, particular people, and particular events and turn them into dramas of universal enlightenment and emotional impact. Each life in it, and each life in Wonderful Town, is the life of us all.

Including these stories from the magazine's most iconic writers:

“The Five-Fourty-Eight” by John Cheever
“Distant Music” by Ann Beattle
“Sailor off the Bremen” by Irwin Shaw
“Physics” by Tama Janowitz
“The Whore of Mensa” by Woody Allen
“What it was Like, Seeing Chris” by Deborah Eisenberg
“Drawing Room B” by John O’Hara
“A Sentimental Journey” by Peter Taylor
“The Balloon” by Donald Barthelme
“Another Marvellous Thing” by Laurie Colwin
“The Failure” by Jonathan Franzen
“Apartment Hotel” by Sally Benson
“Midair” by Frank Conroy
“The Catbird Seat” by James Thurber
“I See You, Bianca” by Maeve Brennan
“You’re Ugly, Too” by Lorrie Moore
“Signs and Symbols” by Vladimir Nabokov
“Poor Visitor” by Jamaica Kincaid
“In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks” by Hortense Calisher
“Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in this Place” by John McNulty
“Slight Rebellion Off Madison” by J. D. Salinger
“Brownstone” by Renata Adler
“Partners” by Veronica Geng
“The Evolution of Knowledge” by Niccolo Tucci
“The Way We Live Now” by Susan Sontag
“Do the Windows Open?” by Julie Hecht
“The Mentocrats” by Edward Newhouse
“The Treatment” by Daniel Menaker
“Arrangement in Black and White” by Dorothy Parker
“Carlyle Tries Polygamy” by William Melvin Kelley
“Children Are Bored on Sunday” by Jean Stafford
“Notes from a Bottle” by James Stevenson
“Man in the Middle of the Ocean” by Daniel Fuchs
“Me Spoulets of the Splendide” by Ludwig Bemelmans
“Over by the River” by William Maxwell
“Baster” by Jeffrey Eugenides
“The Second Tree from the Corner” by E. B. White
“Rembrandt’s Hat” by Bernard Malamud
“Shot: A New York Story” by Elizabeth Hardwick
“A Father-To-Be” by Saul Bellow
“Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer” by S. J. Perelman
“Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat
“The Smoker” by David Schickler

About The Author

David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. He began his career as a sportswriter for The Washington Post and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for Lenin's Tomb. He is also the author of Resurrection and The Devil Problem and Other True Stories, a collection of essays. He lives in New York City with his wife and children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Patrick

Maybe the New Yorker fiction section is not for me. Too many of the stories were of the John Cheever Saul Bellow Philip Roth John Updike kind, in which a middle aged man puts on his raincoat and leaves his office and gets on the train to Scarsdale and reminisces about an affair he had, and then gets......more

Stories including: The Five-Forty-Eight by John Cheever Distant Music by Ann Beattie Sailor off the Bremen by Irwin Shaw Physics by Tama Janowitz The Whore of Mensa by Woody Allen What It Was Like, Seeing Chris by Deborah Eisenberg Drawing Room B by John O'Hara A Sentimental Journey by Peter Taylor The Ballo......more

Fascinating collection of very different stories united by one city. I would recommend.......more

The New Yorker will probably always be the top contributor to Best American Short Stories. Of course it only makes sense b/c they likely get the most submissions—but even so, they've always had these crazy talented editors... Loved most of the stories chosen here, some not so much.......more


Quotes

"Wonderfully rich and textured."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"An anthology that makes] you remember why the magazine has long had a reputation for literary excellence."
--Chicago Tribune

"Smart, well-written, and emotionally resonant, while possessing a high entertainment value."
--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)