Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker by David Remnick

Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker Reviews

• 
  Hannah

  3.5 Stars - Good book
  
  As you might expect with a short-story collection, some are winners and some are losers. The winners were fantastic, and the losers... well, they're they made the reading experience less enjoyable. The rating is an average of the ratings of every individual story and then divided by the number of stories in the book - 44 to be exact.
  
  My favorite story in the collection is one quite early-on and one of the shorter one's in the book - Sailor off the Bremen by
  Irwin Shaw. The story was originally published in The New Yorker on February 25, 1939. This one tells the story of Ernest, who received a brutal beating from a pro-Nazi aboard the Bremen after a Communist demonstration. Ernest's brother and sister-in-law take revenge into their own hands after hearing his story. This one is my favorite because it is beautifully and simply written. Shaw effectively tells the story that Fascism, Nazism, is disgusting on an individual scale. He also was able to humanize the villain, which not every writer can successfully do. I also appreciate how Shaw didn't portray the Communist's as perfect or the ideal opposition to Fascism. From my understanding, Shaw was left-leaning but I thought this particular story was more centrist - perhaps slightly left leaning.
  
  My least favorite story is The Whore of Mensa by Woody Allen. I mean, he's despicable. Do I need to say more?
  
  My runner-up for favorite is A Sentimental Journey by Peter Taylor.
  
  Do I recommend this? Probably yeah. I'd advise to at least skim through it to see if any stories or authors peak your interest.
• 
  Patrick DiJusto

  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 off the train. Maybe its good that I don't get these stories, because maybe that means I don't share their life of middle aged desperation. Maybe.
  
  On the other hand, there's the always funny Sj Perelman.
• 
  Katherine

  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.
• 
  Tiny Pants

  I was surprised how well I liked this collection. I'd bought it not actually realizing it was going to be short fiction -- I thought it would be a compendium of some of the New Yorker's endless stream of profiles and "aww gee, only in New York!" 'Talk of the Town' pieces. But in actuality, it's short fiction first published in the New Yorker which is set in New York.
  
  Given my aversion to my former home -- I've had a rough go of it lately, and as a friend reminded me recently, "Remember that no matter how bad it gets, at least you don't live in New York" -- it's not a bad collection at all. Why? Well, I mean think about it -- the New Yorker publishes quite a bit of very good short fiction (bad stuff too, but we'll get to that in the minute).
  
  The introduction of course is all "you'll argue about what's in this collection, 'cause we all know New Yorkers love to argue!" (yuk yuk), but my only real arguments here were with the pieces that were excerpts from Catcher in the Rye and The Corrections. Sorry no, but that's not short fiction. That's a book excerpt. And in the case of the Franzen, a clumsy one that served mainly to remind me of how much I hated The Corrections (that used copy of Freedom I bought will no doubt be gathering dust for some time yet). There are some pieces as well that are, dare I say, over-anthologized -- "The Way We Live Now" and "You're Ugly, Too," timeless though they are, I practically have memorized.
  
  In all though, I found more to like than to dislike (though my other dislikes were "A Sentimental Journey" and authors I'm just never as into -- Bellow, Malamud, Singer). "Baster" (Eugenides) was strong, though I worry it gave rise to the mediocre Jennifer Aniston/Jason Bateman sperm switch movie. I loved "Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer" (S.J. Perelman) -- seriously laughed out loud. "The Smoker" (David Schickler) I had read in an amazing class in college and forgotten about, but was thrilled to rediscover. My absolute favorite, which I'd never encountered before, was "Another Marvellous Thing" by an author I'd never heard before, Laurie Colwin. I can't say why I liked it, because that would give it away, but if you read any of my other reviews of literary fiction you can probably guess.
• 
  Robin

  Fun short stories from many well-known writers, all set in New York. From "The Whore of Mensa"(Woody Allen) to "The CatBird Seat" (James Thurber), apocalyptic, humorous, and everything in between. These stories were fun to read and evening more entertaining to listen to. Now if I could just find something similar about LA....
• 
  Larry

  I found this for just $2.00 and am glad i don't pay more for it. Its interesting but the theme of New York becomes a bit repetitious and frankly in most cases it could be any city as a backdrop. I love The New Yorker for its variety and would have preferred if this collection had taken that approach with a broader scope.
• 
  Jessica

  Lots of different kinds of stories about New Yorkers. It was ok. Not great.
• 
  Petef

  Some wonderful stories set in New York from many years of The New Yorker. The last one by Susan Sontag was a little disappointing but I can see why they included it. Sontag was a very famous New Yorker and her piece encapsulates a lot of the emotion around HIV/AIDS without ever using those terms. I didn't realise until I read this (and googled her) that she had died.
• 
  Dale

  I've been working on this anthology for several years but I've finally finished it. Some of my favorites are:
  Distant Music by Ann Beattie
  The Balloon by Donald Barthelm
  Snowing in Greenwich Village by John Updike
  The Cafeteria by Isaac Bashevis Singer
  Rembrandt's Hat by Bernard Malamud
  and I have to include Woody Allen's The Whore of Mensa.
• 
  Mary

  What part of a collection of short stories from The New Yorker requires explanation or justification for reading it? The reputation for consistency in publishing some the best writing in the English language continues.
• 
  Sarah

  When a story is great it's great. When it isn't, it isn't. So this is a mixed batch. I CONFESS. I didn't read everyone. Partly because of the uncomfortability of being returned to past decades when I first started reading T.N.Y. The Salinger story isn't very good. Lorie Moore - holds up.
• 
  Rory Gillis

  Enjoyable little collection that captured some of the subtleties of the city, from birth to death. Some good lines here, but the stories themselves were often unmemorable - ultimately an odd selection, but redeemed through humour.
• 
  Laura

  So many eccentric stories with clearly very different styles — amazing collection to read, especially now.
• 
  Libraryassistant

  The good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 
  Jonathan

  Eclectic collection of short stories by some of our greatest writers. Most were enjoyable - some did not grab me as much.
• 
  Abant Berke

  Some really excellent bits and some really boring ones but that’s to be expected from a short story collection I think. You literally could not pay me to live in New York City though
• 
  Tim

  I got this at an estate sale, and as you can tell, I've been reading this tome for a year and a quarter. This is one of those books that I use to "clear my palate" between longer works (OK, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, S-F, Patricia Cornwell, Lee Child, fun stuff). This is a tour de force of excellent short stories from about 1927 to about 1999. This is a thoroughly enjoyable compendium of stories about New York, and represents a literary Who's Who, from Woody Allen (His "The Whore of Mensa" gives an entirely new meaning to "Talk Dirty to me") to John Cheever to Saul Bellow to E.B. White, John Updike, Irwin Shaw, Vladimir Nabokov, and a host of others whose names I had hitherto not known (Thank You, Wikipedia!). I HIGHLY recommend this collection, although the pages are crammed with words and it'll take you awhile. Witnessing the turning of a phrase on every page is a very salubrious intellectual experience. Read it!
  
  And -- Happy Groundhog Day! Seems somehow apropos...
• 
  Christine Rebbert

  I am so behind on my book-keeping (ha ha). But I did finish this book -- the second volume of short stories I've read this year, a genre I am not generally drawn to. But this one was stories about New York City from the New Yorker magazine over the years. A lot of authors you'd expect -- Updike, Salinger, Cheever, Thurber, Janowitz -- and a few I wasn't familiar with. Some were better than others, to me. Some seemed quite dated. Whatever the story was about, New York City was really the main character. This is a very thick book, maybe over-rich. My general impression at the end, though, was, whew! Glad that's over...
• 
  Tajma

  Miraculously, I only skipped over only 3 of these stories. This is truly a superb collection and makes me want to renew my New Yorker subscription. I highly recommend this for any lover of the short story format.
• 
  Amy

  I haven't read every single story; this was the "textbook" for a creative writing class I took over the summer. It was good. It contains stories from the New Yorker. I gave it a 4 instead of a a 5 for some degree of pretension and samey-ness.
• 
  Fili

  If you're a lover of New York and the New Yorker, then you must read this collection of short stories. Some are better than others. Really loved the one that turns out was done by Alfred Hitchcock. Enjoy!
• 
  Diana

  A terrific collection of stories by some of the luminaries of the literary world. Nearly every one is a gem, thanks to the skillful selecting by David Remnick. I open the book at random to get in the mood for a trip to New York, and am never disappointed.
• 
  Jane Gregg

  Loved it. Like a bag of licorice allsorts, you get a taste of every mood, every morsel of the city of NY. Some particularly great pieces included by some bloody fab writers. The Woody Allen will have you choking on your peanuts. The Nabakov, a well-known one, is always so sad. Moods of the city.
• 
  Jennifer

  Great melange of NYC stories!
• 
  Maggie Tiojakin

  New York, New York!
• 
  Christina

  Some stories star New York, in other tales the Big Apple is but a supporting player or backdrop. Offerings from John Cheever, Lorrie Moore, Philip Roth and Veronica Geng. Selections are hit and miss.