Janet Groth describes her two decades working as the receptionist at The New Yorker. Her memoir The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker is an account of watching and registering the comings and goings, marriages and divorces, scandalous affairs, failures, triumphs, and tragedies of the magazine’s eccentric staff.
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Janet Groth
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Comments [5]
I'm reading the book now , and finding it interesting and honest .
Her affair with a cartoonist is brutally honest and vivid,as is her suicide attempt.
The author's relationships with Joseph Mitchell , poet John Berryman and Muriel Spark also are interesting.
On topic because women did not have choices in 1957. Katharine Gibbs Schools are no more. The last one closed in Boston in July 2011. I loved the "Kate" school reference in the interview. I am writing the institution's history. When one mentions a secretary or receptionist today, there are two responses: Gibbs and "Mad Men."
Wonderful idea asking about the great AJ Liebling, Maude.
Katherine Gibbs Schools - they now turn out more paralegals than secretaries.
I worked at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for nine years in the late 90s early 2000s--FSG's offices sound like her description of the New Yorker's offices. Despite the office's drab decor, I have such nostalgia and adoration for that place and the old guard--Roger Straus and Peggy Miller in particular.
I'm wondering if the author has any stories of AJ Liebling?
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