52 McGs.: The Best Obituaries from Legendary New York Times Reporter Robert McG. Thomas
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.42 (554 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1416598278 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 192 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-06-13 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"The Last Word" according to R. Walker. Regular readers of The New York Times will have noticed that while the paper's style has a certain consistently, some of its writers stand out anyway. Robert McG. Thomas was one of those writers. He made his mark not with flash, but with grace, and he did it in the most unlikely place of all: the obituary pages. Thomas (who died in early 2000) had an eye for detail, and an amazing touch in telling not just a life story, but the story behind it. Many obit junkies picked up on and actively sought Thomas's obits between 1995 and 1999; one was Chris Calhoun, who has pulled together this. Never enough P. Reilly The great obit writers are the best short story writers ever. I only wish that this book was longer -- more McG and his extraordinary mini bios, please.. "Quick Read" according to S. Humphries. It was entertaining. I kept it in the car to read during carpool line waits and Dr. appointments. Perfect for such occasions.
Eschewing traditionally famous subjects, Thomas favored unsung heroes, eccentrics, and underachievers, including: Edward Lowe, the inventor of Kitty Litter ("Cat Owner's Best Friend"); Angelo Zuccotti, the bouncer at El Morocco ("Artist of the Velvet Rope"); and Kay Halle, a glamorous Cleveland department store heiress who received sixty-four marriage proposals ("An Intimate of Century's Giants"). In one of his classic obituaries, Thomas described Anton Rosenberg as a "storied sometime artist and occasional musician who embodied the Greenwich Village hipster ideal of 1950's cool to such a laid-back degree and with such determined detachment that he never amounted to much of anything." Thomas captured life's ironies and defining moments with elegance and a gift for making a sentence sing. Among his devoted fans, his pieces were known simply as McGs. He had an uncanny sense of the passion and personality that make each life unique, and the ability, as Joseph Epstein wrote, to "look beyond the facts and the
Readers meet Ted Hustead, builder of the internationally renowned South Dakota drugstore, Wall Drug, "a tourist attraction that seems famous largely for its very fame." There's also the classic hustler Minnesota Fats, about whom "the only certainty was that you could never know for sure"; Marshall Berger, "who taught generations of Noo Yawkahs how not to speak the Kings County English"; and the 1950s hipster Anton Rosenberg, who was so prototypical that "he never amounted to much of anything." Other subjects include the character actor Emil Sitka, foil of the Three Stooges; Francine Katzenbogen, a lottery millionaire who used her winnings to help cats; Maurice Sagoff, who wrote "Shrinklets," which condensed literary classics into humorous verse; and Edward Lowe, the inventor of Kitty Litter. Thomas Jr. As Michael T.