- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: COUNTERPOINT (7 May 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1582435014
- ISBN-13: 978-1582435015
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 13.7 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 607,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"She has always been able to turn quite ordinary things into 'moments of recognition'... The accomplishment is formidable--something few writers attempt without sounding precious, dull, or both." -- Helen Rogan
Product Description
From 1954 to 1981, Maeve Brennan wrote for the New Yorker's ""Talk of the Town"" department under the pen name The Long-Winded Lady. Her unforgettable sketches - prose snapshots of life in small restaurants, cheap hotels and crowded streets - form a timeless, bittersweet tribute to what she called ""the most reckless, most ambitious, most confused, most comical, the saddest and coldest and most human of cities"". First published in 1969, The Long-Winded Lady is a celebration of one of New York's greatest writers.
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First Sentence
SOMEBODY said, "A full-grown child is five-sixths memory." Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
SOMEBODY said, "A full-grown child is five-sixths memory." Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Maeve Brennan was born in Dublin, which she wrote about in "Springs of Affection," a book that the editors at Amazon named one of the best of 1997. She came to the US when she was 17, and in her 30s hooked up with The New Yorker, for which she wrote the 50-odd sketches about daily life in Manhattan that are collected in "The Long-Winded Lady."
Where the Dublin stories are savage studies of failed marriages, these New York sketches are gentler in tone, more wistful and blue. Brennan, the "I" of all these pieces, eavesdrops on conversations in the bars, streets, and hotel lobbies of the seedier parts of Times Square and the Village. Her vivid, precise reports are then fleshed out with sepeculations, opinions, and little autobiographical details that reveal her own humorous, melancholy sensibility. The book ends up being not just an incomparable time capsule of the city of the 1950s and '60s, but also a self-portrait of one of its many silent "travellers in residence," a somewhat timid, ultra keen-eyed, super-sensitive exile trying to keep her bearings in an often inhuman metropolis. Brennan is never precious, never self-pitying. And there's not a dull or cloying or lame sentence in the book. "The Long-Winded Lady" is a small masterpiece, and both it and "Springs of Affection" are not to be missed.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am so impressed with this book. Brennan's eye for detail, her descriptions of New York, her own loneliness are written in prose that any writer would envy. I have recommended this book to a couple of friends and also will suggest it for my bookclub. Brennan's writing sometimes reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting-the way she captures the light from a room across the way, her observations of situations in restaurants, hotel lobbies, and subways. I read somewhere that she had a terrible breakdown and her last column was written in the early 80's. After that she was seen wandering the streets of NY. I bought this book on a recommendation and never expected to be so moved. Also the book brings the reader back to the 60's.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
An elegant and observant writer
28 May 1999
Format:Paperback
I am so impressed with this book. Brennan's eye for detail, her descriptions of New York, her own loneliness are written in prose that any writer would envy. I have recommended this book to a couple of friends and also will suggest it for my bookclub. Brennan's writing sometimes reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting-the way she captures the light from a room across the way, her observations of situations in restaurants, hotel lobbies, and subways. I read somewhere that she had a terrible breakdown and her last column was written in the early 80's. After that she was seen wandering the streets of NY. I bought this book on a recommendation and never expected to be so moved. Also the book brings the reader back to the 60's.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
For All You People Watchers
9 April 2001
Format:Paperback
This exquisite book of short essays is for you. She captures New York of the `60s in her highly focused vignettes. A long-time writer for The New Yorker, these sketches were featured in the "Talk of the Town" section of the magazine always beginning with "Our friend, the long-winded lady, has written us as follows:" I always looked forward to them and vaguely thought the author was likely to be a well-heeled matron of impressive family lineage with a flair for turning words. My impression was totally incorrect. Ms. Brennan emigrated from Ireland at age 17, never had much money or security and viewed herself as "a traveler in residence."
She gave personalities to streets, buildings, and stores as well as people. " Sixth Avenue possesses a quality that some people acquire, sometimes quite suddenly, which dooms it and them to be loved only at the moment they are being looked at for the very last time." Her focus is keen and unblinking, but she sometimes infuses the scene and the people with the magic of her imagination. Her word portraits are so incisive, I often felt that I was sitting beside her seeing a man "morose and dignified, as though humiliation had taken him unawares, but not unprepared."
There is a certain sadness and loneliness in Ms. Brennan's peripheral outsider remarks, but you never feel pity only admiration for an author that always looks outward to keep from looking inward.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
A small masterpiece in a blue key
18 Dec 1998
Format:Paperback
Maeve Brennan was born in Dublin, which she wrote about in "Springs of Affection," a book that the editors at Amazon named one of the best of 1997. She came to the US when she was 17, and in her 30s hooked up with The New Yorker, for which she wrote the 50-odd sketches about daily life in Manhattan that are collected in "The Long-Winded Lady."
Where the Dublin stories are savage studies of failed marriages, these New York sketches are gentler in tone, more wistful and blue. Brennan, the "I" of all these pieces, eavesdrops on conversations in the bars, streets, and hotel lobbies of the seedier parts of Times Square and the Village. Her vivid, precise reports are then fleshed out with sepeculations, opinions, and little autobiographical details that reveal her own humorous, melancholy sensibility. The book ends up being not just an incomparable time capsule of the city of the 1950s and '60s, but also a self-portrait of one of its many silent "travellers in residence," a somewhat timid, ultra keen-eyed, super-sensitive exile trying to keep her bearings in an often inhuman metropolis. Brennan is never precious, never self-pitying. And there's not a dull or cloying or lame sentence in the book. "The Long-Winded Lady" is a small masterpiece, and both it and "Springs of Affection" are not to be missed.
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