Liebling follows on, IIRC, to recount the (or perhaps a theoretical) chat with madame at the evening's proposed eaterie as to the choice of dishes (I think Mme suggests the very good selection of game she has just obtained and M. Mirande is all for several birds), the cooking thereof, and of course the vins.
So, you MUST read Between Meals. I can't believe, tbh, that it has slipped through your net. There was a small AJL flurry around early 2000s, most things were reprinted and I bought everything of his I could find. Must admit I don’t know whether this title is still in print.
It is, just under a tenner at amazon uk. Only 15 left, though I cannot believe I have provoked a rush.
I like Liebling so much that I bought a collection of his writing on boxing, a subject which holds no interest for me. And this is understating it.
Garrison Keillor wrote somewhere that he preferred various New Yorker writers (Liebling among the ones he mentioned, I think) to the “big mazumbos” of American literature. I like some of those mazumbos very much, but are any of them better prose writers than Liebling?
Liebling is the author of one my favorite sentences (cited in GDOS under "promoter"):
"In the Jollity Building, which stands six stories high and covers a half of a Broadway block in the high Forties, the term “promoter” means a man who mulcts another man of a dollar, or any fraction or multiple thereof."
Liebling follows on, IIRC, to recount the (or perhaps a theoretical) chat with madame at the evening's proposed eaterie as to the choice of dishes (I think Mme suggests the very good selection of game she has just obtained and M. Mirande is all for several birds), the cooking thereof, and of course the vins.
So, you MUST read Between Meals. I can't believe, tbh, that it has slipped through your net. There was a small AJL flurry around early 2000s, most things were reprinted and I bought everything of his I could find. Must admit I don’t know whether this title is still in print.
It is, just under a tenner at amazon uk. Only 15 left, though I cannot believe I have provoked a rush.
Thanks Ben. If only I could sort my books (high shelves, bad back; they were filled by a younger other) I would check the © of the text I used. Could '38, however, have poss. been the New Yorker date? Anyway, I regularly reread him, esp. the JB. And his 'often alone but seldom lonely' seems to be one of the key comments on my chosen and much-loved work.
I like Liebling so much that I bought a collection of his writing on boxing, a subject which holds no interest for me. And this is understating it.
Garrison Keillor wrote somewhere that he preferred various New Yorker writers (Liebling among the ones he mentioned, I think) to the “big mazumbos” of American literature. I like some of those mazumbos very much, but are any of them better prose writers than Liebling?
Liebling is the author of one my favorite sentences (cited in GDOS under "promoter"):
"In the Jollity Building, which stands six stories high and covers a half of a Broadway block in the high Forties, the term “promoter” means a man who mulcts another man of a dollar, or any fraction or multiple thereof."
And by the way, a small error in the entry: the New Yorker piece the sentence comes from, "The Jollity Building," came out in 1941, not 1938. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1941/04/26/the-jollity-building?_sp=e2b90c76-6cc1-41f1-8358-aae6ff01c200.1767451969414
Mirande sounds wonderful.