Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (68 page)

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

W
OODY
A
LLEN
(b. 1935) was nominated for an Emmy as a writer for Sid Caesar’s television show before becoming famous as a standup comic. He is now best known as the writer and director (and often star) of dozens of movies, including such classics as
Annie Hall, Manhattan,
and
Hannah and Her Sisters.
He has contributed to
The New Yorker
since 1966.

M
ARTIN
A
MIS
(b. 1949) won the Somerset Maugham Award for his first novel,
The Rachel Papers.
His novels include
Money, London Fields,
and
Time’s Arrow.
His memoir,
Experience,
was published
in 2000.

R
OGER
A
NGELL
(b. 1920) has been a fiction editor at
The New Yorker
since 1956 and a contributor since 1944. He has been writing about baseball since 1962; his books include
The Summer Game, Season Ticket,
and
A Pitcher’s Story: Innings with David Cone.

M
ICHAEL
J. A
RLEN
(b. 1930) was the magazine’s television critic in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the author of a novel and seven books of nonfiction, including
Living-Room War,
an examination of television reportage. In 1976, he won the National Book Award for
Passage to Ararat
.

W. H. A
UDEN
(1907–1973) was born in York, England, was educated at Oxford, and achieved fame as a poet in the 1930s. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States, and published his first poem in
The New Yorker.
He was a frequent book reviewer in the 1950s and 1960s. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for
The Age of Anxiety
and the National Book Award in 1956 for
The Shield of Achilles.

D
ONALD
B
ARTHELME
(1931–1989) published 128 stories in
The New Yorker
over twenty-six years, as well as film reviews, Notes and Comment, and parodies appearing under the pseudonym William White. He grew up in Houston and worked there first as a reporter for the
Houston Post
, then as the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum. He moved to Manhattan in 1963. He was regarded as one of the most innovative writers of his generation. His collection
Sixty Stories
was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist in 1982.

N
OAH
B
AUMBACH
(b. 1969) wrote and directed the films
Kicking and Screaming
and
Mr. Jealousy.

L
UDWIG
B
EMELMANS
(1898–1962) was born in the South Tirol, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He worked in hotels and restaurants from the age of fourteen, first in Europe and then in New York, and at one time part-owned a restaurant called the Hapsburg House. His writings for
The New Yorker,
mostly humorous memoirs, began appearing in 1937, and he also produced many covers for the magazine. His books include novels, travelogues, and memoirs, and he worked briefly as a screenwriter. His art was exhibited in New York and Paris; his murals can still be seen in New York’s Carlyle Hotel. He is now best remembered for the “Madeline” children’s books, the first of which was published in 1939.

R
OBERT
B
ENCHLEY
(1889–1945) was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was the editor of the
Lampoon
while at Harvard, and went on to work at
Life
and
Vanity Fair.
One of the wits of the Algonquin Round Table, in the early 1920s, he developed his famous “Treasurer’s Report” monologue for a stage review; he performed it throughout his life onstage, and also in one of the first short films with sound, in 1928. He wrote for
The New Yorker
from 1925 to 1940, providing theater reviews, the Wayward Press column, and many humor pieces. He was also a popular radio broadcaster, and appeared in forty-eight short films, including the Oscar-winning
How to Sleep
(1935).

E
LIZABETH
B
ISHOP
(1911–1979) grew up wealthy but parentless in Nova Scotia and Worcester, Massachusetts. After graduating from Vassar, she traveled, living first in Key West, then in Mexico. Her first poem in
The New Yorker
appeared in 1940. For most of the 1950s and 1960s, she lived with her partner, Maria Carlota Costellat de Macedo Soares, near Rio de Janeiro. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for
Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring
and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976.

R
OY
B
LOUNT,
J
R.
(b. 1941) grew up in Georgia. In addition to several books of comic essays, he is the author of a novel and a book about the Pittsburgh Steelers. He has been an editor at
Sports Illustrated
and a screenwriter, read his stories and poems on public radio, and designed word puzzles for the now defunct
Spy
magazine.

A
NDY
B
OROWITZ
(b. 1958) is the creator and producer of the television series
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
and a co-producer of the film
Pleasantville.
His books include
Rationalizations to
Live By
and
The Trillionaire Next Door.
He is a commentator on National Public Radio’s
Weekend Edition.

M
ARSHALL
B
RICKMAN
(b. 1941) was a member of the folksinging groups the Journeymen and the Tarriers before becoming a writer for
Candid
Camera
and
The Tonight Show.
He collaborated with Woody Allen as a writer on several films, sharing the Oscar for
Annie Hall,
and went on to write and direct a number of feature films, including
Simon
and
The Manhattan Project.

D
AVID
B
ROOKS
(b. 1961) is a senior editor at
The Weekly Standard
and the author of
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.

C
HRISTOPHER
B
UCKLEY
(b. 1952) is the editor of
Forbes FYI.
He is the author of eight books, including
Thank You for Smoking, Wry Martinis,
and
Little Green Men.

F
RANK
C
AMMUSO
(b. 1965), a political cartoonist, and H
ART
S
EELY
(b. 1952), a reporter, are writing partners whose comic articles have appeared in
The New York Times
and the Syracuse
Herald-Journal;
2007-Eleven and Other American Comedies
is a collection of their pieces.

C
LARENCE
D
AY
(1874–1935) was born into an affluent New York family and began a career as a stockbroker. He turned to writing after being partially disabled by rheumatoid arthritis, eventually working entirely from his bedroom. Great success came in the early 1930s, with comic memoirs of family life. These pieces ran in
The New Yorker
beginning in 1933, and were collected in 1935 as
Life
with Father. Life with Father
became a long-running play in 1939, a film in 1947, and a CBS sitcom from 1953 to 1955.

P
ETER
D
E
V
RIES
(1910–1993) was born in Chicago and worked there as an editor of
Poetry
magazine. He was a regular contributor to
The New Yorker
in the 1940s and 1950s. His life in suburban Connecticut provided the setting for many of his popular comic novels, including
Reuben, Reuben
and
The Tunnel of Love.

L
ARRY
D
OYLE
(b. 1958) was for several years a writer and producer for
The Simpsons.
He has also been an editor at
Spy
magazine and
The National Lampoon.

H. F. E
LLIS
(1907–2000) wrote and edited for
Punch,
until S. J. Perelman encouraged him to contribute to
The New Yorker
. He is perhaps best known in England for his book about a hapless British schoolmaster,
The Papers of A. J. Wentworth, BA.

F. S
COTT
F
ITZGERALD
(1896–1940) achieved overnight fame with his first novel,
This Side of Paradise.
His output in the 1920s—notably
The Beautiful and Damned
and
The Great Gatsby
—epitomized the Jazz Age, a phrase Fitzgerald coined. From 1929 to 1937, he published three stories and two poems in
The New Yorker.

N
ANCY
F
RANKLIN
(b. 1956) has been on the staff of
The New Yorker
since 1978. She is now a theater and television critic for the magazine.

B
ILL
F
RANZEN
(b. 1952) lives in Connecticut with his wife, the cartoonist Roz Chast. He is the author of the book
Hearing from Wayne and Other Stories,
and has contributed to
The New Yorker
since 1981.

I
AN
F
RAZIER
(b. 1951) has written humor and reported pieces for
The
New Yorker
since 1974. His books include
Dating Your Mom, Great Plains,
and
On the Rez.

B
RUCE
J
AY
F
RIEDMAN
(b. 1930) published his first novel,
Stern,
in 1962; it was followed by
A Mother's Kisses,
The Current Climate,
and
collected short stories. His dramatic works include a play,
Steambath,
and screenplays for
Splash!
and
Stir Crazy. Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos
is a collection of his comic essays.

P
OLLY
F
ROST
(b. 1952) has written on film for
Harper’s Bazaar
and
Elle,
and about cooking for
The New York Times
.

F
RANK
G
ANNON
(b. 1952) lives in Georgia. He is the author of
Yo,
Poe; Vanna Karenina;
and
All About Man,
a comic book about the men’s movement. His writing has appeared in
The New Yorker
since 1985.

V
ERONICA
G
ENG
(1941–1997) was born in Atlanta and worked as a fiction editor at
The New Yorker
starting in the mid-1970s. Many of her parodies were collected in
Partners
and
Love Trouble Is My Business.
A posthumous collection,
Love Trouble: New and Collected
Work,
appeared in 1999.

M
ICHAEL
G
ERBER
(b. 1969) and J
ONATHAN
S
CHWARZ
(b. 1969) have written humor pieces together for many publications, including
The Atlantic Monthly,
Harper’s,
and
McSweeney’s.

W
OLCOTT
G
IBBS
(1902–1958) was born in New York and worked on newspapers in Long Island before joining
The New Yorker
in 1927. He became known for the varied Profiles, parodies, and reminiscences he contributed and for his exacting editing of others. In 1940, he became the magazine’s drama critic, and in 1950 his play
Season in the Sun
(adapted from his earlier book about Fire Island bohemianism) became a Broadway hit.

A
DAM
G
OPNIK
(b. 1956) was born in Philadelphia and began to write for
The New Yorker
in 1986, where he has published under various rubrics, among them The Art World, Paris Journal, and New York Journal. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for his essays and a George Polk Award for magazine reporting. He is the author of
Paris to the Moon.

R
OBERT
G
RAVES
(1895–1985) was born in London and produced more than 120 books in his long life, including the First World War memoir
Goodbye to All That,
the historical novel
I, Claudius,
and
The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth.
His poems appeared in
The New Yorker
for a quarter of a century, starting in 1950.

S
COTT
G
UTTERMAN
(b. 1961) has contributed humor pieces to
The New Yorker
and
GQ.
He has also written for
Artforum, Vogue,
and other publications. He is the co-author, with Miles Davis, of
The Art of Miles Davis.

D
ONALD
H
ALL
(b. 1928) published his first poem at the age of sixteen. He has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry and numerous children’s books, as well as books on Henry Moore and baseball. He edited
The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America
(1990),
The
Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes
(1981), and more than twenty other anthologies and textbooks.

P
HILIP
H
AMBURGER
(b. 1914) has been a staff writer at
The New Yorker
since 1939, contributing Profiles, foreign correspondence, Notes for a Gazetteer, television and music criticism, and numerous short, funny pieces. He has published eight collections of his work, including
Friends Talking in the Night
and
Matters of State.

J
ACK
H
ANDEY
(b. 1949) was born in Texas and lives in New York. He wrote for Steve Martin in the 1970s and 1980s, was a writer for
Saturday Night Live,
and is the author of several books, including
Deep Thoughts; Deeper Thoughts; Deepest Thoughts;
and
The Lost Deep Thoughts.