Friends, Writers, and Other Countrymen
A Memoir
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"Sidney Offit has devised a marvelous mirror of his unique personality as well as a one of a kind tour of the New York literary world in the last half century. Anyone even faintly interested in books will find it impossible to put down."---Thomas Fleming, bestselling author of Liberty! The American Revolution
Sidney Offit's charming memoir of a writer's life ingeniously reflects some of the greatest (and most infamous) literary, political, and sports personalities of our century. His early days in Baltimore (where he met H. L. Mencken and entertained Robert Frost) are as engaging as his later encounters with Dylan Thomas, John Steinbeck, Pablo Neruda, Heinrich Böll, and some of the era's greatest ballplayers: Robinson, Mantle, Mays, and Williams.
Mixing with a remarkable and diverse crowd, led Sidney to run-ins and adventures with Truman Capote ("What kind of guy are you?"), Jackie Kennedy (in a corner), Kurt Vonnegut (who identified Sidney as his "best friend"), the incomparable Toni Morrison, and other bards, muses, and just plain folk. Their conversations are recalled with gentle humor and a keen eye for a New York where casual and spontaneous encounters may shape what the country reads or where a stroll around the corner can change a life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It seems that Offit, former senior editor of Intellectual Digest and book editor of Politics Today, knew everyone who was worth knowing, as his new memoir is peopled with noted writers, lawmakers and sporting buddies. Realizing early that his passion was writing, Offit, who has now curated journalism's George Polk Awards for more than 25 years, becomes an astute observer on the New York celebrity scene, encountering H.L. Mencken, accused Communist spy Alger Hiss, studio head Dore Schary, Marlon Brando and poets Robert Frost and Frank O'Hara. Some of the meetings with celebrities, like politician Adlai Stevenson, CIA's Allen Dulles, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, are lightweight, revealing little beyond their patented image. He fares better in his descriptions of the no-nonsense Che Guevara offering him Cuban cigars; not-so-tall actor Errol Flynn; pugilist Mike Tyson with "his high pitched little boy little girl voice that belied his speed, power, and rage." It's a memoir that lapses into name-dropping but is often wonderful in its remembrances.