These are original critical essays on an iconic American periodical, providing new insights into twentieth century literary culture. This collection of newly commissioned critical essays reads across and between New Yorker departments, from sports writing to short stories, cartoons to reporters at large, poetry to annals of business. Attending to the relations between these kinds of writing and the magazine's visual and material constituents, the collection examines the distinctive ways in which imaginative writing has inhabited the 'prime real estate' of this enormously influential periodical. In bringing together a range of sharply angled analyses of particular authors, styles, columns, and pages, this book offers multiple perspectives on American writing and periodical culture at specific moments in 20th century history.
Features: eleven new perspectives on major American writers, including Roth, Cheever, Plath, and Updike, in relation to their first publication contexts; reconsiders modern and contemporary American writing and periodical culture, focusing critical attention on commercially successful 'smart' magazines; draws on new research in The New Yorker's manuscript and digital archives; and, a distinctive combination of close critical reading and cultural analysis.