Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2012
320 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
In 1957, when a young Midwestern woman landed a job at The New Yorker, she didn't 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 magazine's eccentric luminaries. This memoir of a particular time and place is an enchanting tale of a woman in search of herself.
"Revelatory ... deeply reflective ... Groth chronicles the many dazzling personalities whose lives touched, and moved, hers." - Publishers Weekly
"[Groth] is witty, honest, and self-deprecating, without whining, and quite a good role model." - Booklist
"An honest and engaging memoir for fans of the magazine and histories of Mad Men-era New York." - Library Journal
"A nostalgic, wistful look at life inside one of America's most storied magazines, and the personal and professional limbo of the woman who answered the phone . ... For readers who can't get enough New Yorker lore, an amiable view from the inside." - Kirkus
"Are you a New Yorker magazine groupie? Do you wait every week just to laugh at the cartoons and read Talk of the Town? If so, we have a book for you ... The magazine's eccentricity was not lost on Groth. Lucky for us." - USA Today
"An evocative memoir." - People
"[Groth's] collected the sort of gossipy anecdotes that would have you hanging on her every word at a literary cocktail party." - Entertainment Weekly
"This is not a juicy tell-all – Groth remained an outsider as much as she was an insider at the magazine throughout her tenure, and legendary editor William Shawn stays a shadowy figure on the floor above throughout the book. Instead, she paints a picture of a naive Midwesterner with a mane of thick blond hair coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s, experiencing the era's turbulent politics and sexual revolution, all from behind the receptionist desk." - The Associated Press
"A literate, revelatory examination of self." - The Boston Globe
"Groth can be charmingly offhanded: anecdotal, gently gossipy ... The Berryman chapter, one of the first in the book, is also among the finest ... 'As a poet-teacher,' she recalls, 'he so invested his ego in his work that he was ego-free, a fleshless, selfless lover of enlightenment, pure spirit.' That's a terrific description, evoking not just his classroom style but also the humor and erudition of his poems." - Los Angeles Times
"Much of the story is envy-inducing ... [Groth] finds her own delightful voice, which is the book's real pleasure." - Oprah.com
This information about The Receptionist was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Janet Groth, Emeritus Professor of English at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, has also taught at Vassar, Brooklyn College, the University of Cincinnati, and Columbia. She was a Fulbright lecturer in Norway and a visiting fellow at Yale and is the author of Edmund Wilson: A Critic for Our Time (for which she won the NEMLA Book Award) and coauthor of Critic in Love: A Romantic Biography of Edmund Wilson. She lives in New York City.
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