Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (70 page)

F
RANK
S
ULLIVAN
(1892–1976) claimed that his career as a humorist began at the
New York World,
after he wrote a long obituary of a socialite who turned out not to be dead. He began contributing to
The New Yorker
in 1926; his cliché expert, Mr. Arbuthnot, testified in the magazine from 1935 to 1952. Sullivan was also known for the annual Christmas poem “Greetings, Friends!,” which he wrote for forty-two years, until 1974.

J
AMES
T
HURBER
(1894–1961) was born in Columbus, Ohio, and joined
The New Yorker
in 1927 as an editor and writer; his idiosyncratic cartoons began to appear there four years later. His books include two children’s classics—
The 13 Clocks
and
The Wonderful O
—and a memoir of his time at
The New Yorker,
The Years with Ross.
He also co-wrote a successful play,
The Male Animal,
and appeared in
A Thurber Carnival,
a miscellany of his works that was adapted for the stage. In 1947, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” was made into a film starring Danny Kaye.

C
ALVIN
T
RILLIN
(b. 1935) has been a staff writer for
The New Yorker
since 1963 and has reported from all over America in his long-running U.S. Journal series. His many books include the best-sellers
Remembering Denny
and
Messages from My Father,
along with comic novels, short stories, a travel book, and three books on food, collected as
The Tummy Trilogy.
He has also twice written and performed one-man shows.

G
EORGE
W. S. T
ROW
(b. 1943) first wrote for
The New Yorker
in 1966 and co-founded
The National Lampoon
in 1970. His essay of cultural criticism “Within the Context of No-Context” was published in 1980 and later became an influential book. He is the author of a novel,
The City in the Mist,
and a collection of satirical short stories,
Bullies.
He has also written several plays, including
The Tennis Game,
and has co-written two Merchant-Ivory films,
Savages
and
The Proprietor.
He has published a further volume of cultural reflections,
My Pilgrim’s Progress: Media Studies, 1950–1998.

J
OHN
U
PDIKE
(b. 1932) has written for
The New Yorker
since the mid-1950s, when he was a staff writer for The Talk of the Town. He has contributed more than six hundred short stories, poems, essays, and reviews. He has published more than fifty books, and has won two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and two National Book Critics Circle Awards.

L
ISA
W
ALKER
(b. 1956) has written a novel,
Because of You.

E
LWYN
B
ROOKS
W
HITE
(1899–1985) worked as a newspaperman, an advertising copywriter, and a mess boy on an Arctic steamer before coming to
The New Yorker
in 1927. Here his output comprised humor pieces, poems, short stories, newsbreak captions, and even one cover illustration, but he was most associated with the Notes and Comment essays, which he wrote for thirty years. He is famous for three enduring works of children’s literature:
Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web,
and
The Trumpet of the Swan.
He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1978.

W
ILLIAM
W
HITE
was a pseudonym of D
ONALD
B
ARTHELME.

C
HET
W
ILLIAMSON
(b. 1948) has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Edgar, and Stoker awards for his fantasy, horror, and science-fiction writing. He is also an actor.

A
LEXANDER
W
OOLLCOTT
(1887–1943) joined
The New York Times
in 1909, and was a feared and famous drama critic there from 1914 to 1922. A central figure at the Algonquin Round Table in the 1920s, he was one of the very first contributors to
The New Yorker.
In the early 1930s he wrote Shouts and Murmurs in the magazine almost every week. At the same time, he became a popular and influential radio broadcaster. He also acted in a number of plays, most famously playing the character based on him in
The Man Who Came to Dinner,
by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

D
AVID
R
EMNICK
is the editor of
The New Yorker.

H
ENRY
F
INDER
is the editorial director of
The New Yorker.

Copyright © 2001 by The New Yorker Magazine

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American CopyrightConventions. Published in the United States byRandom House, Inc., New York, and simultaneouslyin Canada by Random House ofCanada Limited, Toronto.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

All of the pieces in this collection were originallypublished in
The New Yorker.
The publication date of each piece is given at the end of the piece.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Fierce pajamas: an anthology of humor writing from the New Yorker/edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder.

p.cm.

1. American wit and humor. I. Remnick, David. II. Finder, Henry. III. New Yorker.

PN6165 .F542001

817¢.508—dc212001031775

Random House website address:
www.atrandom.com

eISBN: 978-1-58836-067-0

v3.0_r1