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Short stories. First printing stated. Orange and yellow covers rubbed, corners and spine ends bumped. Dust jacket rubbed, with several tears and small chips, considerable edge wear. Owner's name on the first endpaper, otherwise the interior is clean and tight.
- GenresNonfiction
Hardcover
First published March 15, 1969
27 people want to read
About the author
Lillian Ross
43 books23 followersLillian Ross was an American journalist and author, who was a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1945 until she retired.
Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Librarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 20, 2019
Lillian Ross is my favorite nonfiction writer -- because of her simple and elegant prose, and because of her ability to capture the humanity of the people she writes about. Her most (in)famous example is a profile of the aging Ernest Hemingway, collected in this book, but my favorite will always be the volume's first story, "The Yellow School Bus." It follows a group of high school students who travel from rural Indiana to New York for their class trip, and Ross does such a wonderful job at making them seem real and fascinating and complex.
When I was writing my book, Author in Chief, I used journalists like Ross as inspiration. I wanted to make the presidents I was describing seem real and human, too. And there's no better model for that than Lillian Ross.
When I was writing my book, Author in Chief, I used journalists like Ross as inspiration. I wanted to make the presidents I was describing seem real and human, too. And there's no better model for that than Lillian Ross.
September 21, 2009
Below is an annotation I wrote on this book. As such, I zeroed in on one very focused aspect of the work--this is for Goddard's MFA program--but in that focused way I omitted what I actually liked in her work, so I'll say it here: Ross has a lovely wit about her. She also does a deft job at capturing the things that powerless people say and the feeble, spasmodic ways they try to gain a little ground in front of important people--Hemingway, for example.
OK, that's it preface-wise, here's the annotation:
At page 121 I lost it.
“Why is the minutiae BORING here?” I wrote on a piece of paper plate marking the spot where Lillian Ross’ laundry lists turned my brain to mush. “I’M NOT READING THIS!!”
Ross is the mistress of the laundry list. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes we’re given enough feel for characters to care about their associated laundry lists, and sometimes we’re not. In the case of the Bean Blossomers in “The Yellow Bus,” the laundry list is used to characterize a group with similar attitudes, they with their souvenirs and the prices paid for restaurant food and their respective repulsion or comfort level with those prices. Then again, sometimes we’re given a list of detail to show, for example, that characters are “indefatigable,” but the passages lack verbs, dialog and hence oxygen, rendered as such into unreadable chunks of concrete and ensuring the reader’s un-indefatigable-ness.
To wit: In “Terrific,” here’s one entry from Ross’ list of five winners of the Maids of the Mardi Gras Ball competition:
Ena Garvin. Born 1918. Years in League--seventeen. Schools: Miss Spence, Barnard, Parsons School of Design. League: Children’s Arts, Docent. Evening Program: Surgical Dressings. Pine Room Program, Hostess, Opening Dinner. Follies, Page Girl. Placement Interviewer (evening). U.N. Evening Parties. Volunteer Social Work Aide, Riverside Hospital Out-Clinic Community: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Catholic Charities. (121)
Who is Ena Garvin? For that matter, who are the other winners, and why should we care about their achievements? We shouldn’t. We’re not hiring managers, yet this list reads like a serialized set of resumes, sprawling over the better part of two pages.
Ross uses the laundry list to better effect in “The Yellow Bus” because we already know the characters to some extent. By the time we find that Dennis Smith has bought a Statue of Liberty ashtray for his mother and a Statue of Liberty cigarette lighter for his father (29), Ross has already made us appreciate him by depicting him as an iconoclast in the midst of small thinkers:
“Back home, you can do anything you please in your own back yard any time you feel like it, like hootin’ and hollerin’ or anything,” said Larry Williams. “You don’t ever get to feel all cooped up.”
“I sort of like it here in Coney Island,” said Dennis Smith. “I don’t feel cooped up.”
Dennis’s buddies looked at him without saying anything. His “sort of liking” Coney Island was the first sign of defection from Indiana, and the others did not seem to know what to make of it. (17)
Similarly, Connie Williams’ repeated hatred of New York (17) in this article gives us some reason to care about her souvenir purchases: two bracelets and a Statue of Liberty pen for herself (29). Combine the brief bits of dialog Ross accords Connie Williams with the tchotchkes Williams bought, along with their intended recipient, and we can begin to form the picture of a negative, small-minded, inarticulate and self-centered tourist who’s characteristically only buying souvenirs for herself. Because we’ve seen these characters speak and interact, we’re willing to be at least a little interested in what they buy.
But Ross’ attention to detail works yet more effectively when this type of exhaustive detail is a) meted out more sparingly and b) woven with narrative and dialogue to further the story and deepen characterization, instead of being set apart as discrete blocks that may or may not retain reader attention. Take the level of detail in “The Big Stone” and how it’s integral to the narrative. Ross dishes up the “crisp new dollar bill” (68) that Harry Winston takes every day from his secretary so that he needn’t carry money; he’s a little fussy and precise, isn’t he? Then there’s the saccharin pill dispensed with a sigh from Winston’s silver box (67) before he wrenches off a 60-carat diamond ring and tosses it at his secretary; hmmm, a little petulant, are we?
Ross still flirts with laundry-list making in “The Big Stone,” of course; for example, she describes the spectrum of good to bad diamonds and how Winston relishes them: “from top blue-white diamonds, through fine white diamonds, white diamonds, top silver Cape, top light-brown, light brown, and silver Cape, to Cape, or yellow.” (65) She also hangs up a laundry list for the flaws of which Winston is tolerant: “bubbles, clouds, cracks, carbon spots, and the white, cracklike markings known as feathers.” (65)
Again, though, these embryonic (on Ross’ scale, at any rate) laundry lists are salvaged from becoming leaden by the grace with which they are woven into the narrative. They are also mercifully brief. In the context of painting the intricate nuances of the passion belonging to a passionate man, detail is a pleasure to read. By this point in the article, Winston’s profile has been drawn compellingly enough to interest us in the source of his “greatest aesthetic pleasure” (64) and the fact that he regards diamonds as being “like your children.” (65)
A lesson, then, for my own writing: Laundry lists are best left on refrigerators, unless we weave them adroitly into the characters and/or narrative.
OK, that's it preface-wise, here's the annotation:
At page 121 I lost it.
“Why is the minutiae BORING here?” I wrote on a piece of paper plate marking the spot where Lillian Ross’ laundry lists turned my brain to mush. “I’M NOT READING THIS!!”
Ross is the mistress of the laundry list. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes we’re given enough feel for characters to care about their associated laundry lists, and sometimes we’re not. In the case of the Bean Blossomers in “The Yellow Bus,” the laundry list is used to characterize a group with similar attitudes, they with their souvenirs and the prices paid for restaurant food and their respective repulsion or comfort level with those prices. Then again, sometimes we’re given a list of detail to show, for example, that characters are “indefatigable,” but the passages lack verbs, dialog and hence oxygen, rendered as such into unreadable chunks of concrete and ensuring the reader’s un-indefatigable-ness.
To wit: In “Terrific,” here’s one entry from Ross’ list of five winners of the Maids of the Mardi Gras Ball competition:
Ena Garvin. Born 1918. Years in League--seventeen. Schools: Miss Spence, Barnard, Parsons School of Design. League: Children’s Arts, Docent. Evening Program: Surgical Dressings. Pine Room Program, Hostess, Opening Dinner. Follies, Page Girl. Placement Interviewer (evening). U.N. Evening Parties. Volunteer Social Work Aide, Riverside Hospital Out-Clinic Community: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Catholic Charities. (121)
Who is Ena Garvin? For that matter, who are the other winners, and why should we care about their achievements? We shouldn’t. We’re not hiring managers, yet this list reads like a serialized set of resumes, sprawling over the better part of two pages.
Ross uses the laundry list to better effect in “The Yellow Bus” because we already know the characters to some extent. By the time we find that Dennis Smith has bought a Statue of Liberty ashtray for his mother and a Statue of Liberty cigarette lighter for his father (29), Ross has already made us appreciate him by depicting him as an iconoclast in the midst of small thinkers:
“Back home, you can do anything you please in your own back yard any time you feel like it, like hootin’ and hollerin’ or anything,” said Larry Williams. “You don’t ever get to feel all cooped up.”
“I sort of like it here in Coney Island,” said Dennis Smith. “I don’t feel cooped up.”
Dennis’s buddies looked at him without saying anything. His “sort of liking” Coney Island was the first sign of defection from Indiana, and the others did not seem to know what to make of it. (17)
Similarly, Connie Williams’ repeated hatred of New York (17) in this article gives us some reason to care about her souvenir purchases: two bracelets and a Statue of Liberty pen for herself (29). Combine the brief bits of dialog Ross accords Connie Williams with the tchotchkes Williams bought, along with their intended recipient, and we can begin to form the picture of a negative, small-minded, inarticulate and self-centered tourist who’s characteristically only buying souvenirs for herself. Because we’ve seen these characters speak and interact, we’re willing to be at least a little interested in what they buy.
But Ross’ attention to detail works yet more effectively when this type of exhaustive detail is a) meted out more sparingly and b) woven with narrative and dialogue to further the story and deepen characterization, instead of being set apart as discrete blocks that may or may not retain reader attention. Take the level of detail in “The Big Stone” and how it’s integral to the narrative. Ross dishes up the “crisp new dollar bill” (68) that Harry Winston takes every day from his secretary so that he needn’t carry money; he’s a little fussy and precise, isn’t he? Then there’s the saccharin pill dispensed with a sigh from Winston’s silver box (67) before he wrenches off a 60-carat diamond ring and tosses it at his secretary; hmmm, a little petulant, are we?
Ross still flirts with laundry-list making in “The Big Stone,” of course; for example, she describes the spectrum of good to bad diamonds and how Winston relishes them: “from top blue-white diamonds, through fine white diamonds, white diamonds, top silver Cape, top light-brown, light brown, and silver Cape, to Cape, or yellow.” (65) She also hangs up a laundry list for the flaws of which Winston is tolerant: “bubbles, clouds, cracks, carbon spots, and the white, cracklike markings known as feathers.” (65)
Again, though, these embryonic (on Ross’ scale, at any rate) laundry lists are salvaged from becoming leaden by the grace with which they are woven into the narrative. They are also mercifully brief. In the context of painting the intricate nuances of the passion belonging to a passionate man, detail is a pleasure to read. By this point in the article, Winston’s profile has been drawn compellingly enough to interest us in the source of his “greatest aesthetic pleasure” (64) and the fact that he regards diamonds as being “like your children.” (65)
A lesson, then, for my own writing: Laundry lists are best left on refrigerators, unless we weave them adroitly into the characters and/or narrative.
October 12, 2008
A classic must-read for all writers and journalists.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews