Torchy and Vee

Torchy, the red-headed office boy with the fastest mouth in Manhattan, is married now — and Vee has opinions, in-laws and a war on. Sewell Ford ran the series for years on slang alone: every line first person, every sentence a wisecrack, and a portrait of white-collar New York that no serious novelist bothered to record. Fifty-nine plates of painting from 1870 to 1926, among them John Sloan, follow the city from Greenwich Village rooftops to the home front, matching Torchy's wartime Manhattan line for line.