Algonquin Round Table News Book Launch Party at the Algonquin

Book Launch Party at the Algonquin

The Algonquin Round Table New York (Globe Pequot Press) was published today. I hope you can find a copy in your local bookstore. Here you can enter your ZIP code and it will tell you the closest bookstore to shop local.

We had a fantastic book launch party at the Algonquin Hotel. What was wonderful was the descendants of the Vicious Circle that attended, I thank them so much!

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Walk in the Footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table in New Guide Book to Jazz Age Writers & WitsWalk in the Footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table in New Guide Book to Jazz Age Writers & Wits

Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press)

Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press)

New York—Retrace the steps of the legendary wits that convened at the Algonquin Hotel in 1919 who called themselves the Vicious Circle. THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE NEW YORK: A HISTORICAL GUIDE is the first book to fully explore the whole group and their world. It’s packed with photos and maps.

“That is the thing about New York,” wrote Dorothy Parker in 1928. “It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day.”

Now you can journey back there, in time, to a grand city teeming with hidden speakeasies, luxurious Broadway playhouses, and dazzling skyscrapers. In these places, Parker and her cohorts in the Vicious Circle sharpened their wit, polished their writing, and captured the energy and elegance of the time. Robert Benchley, Parker’s best friend, became the first managing editor of Vanity Fair before Irving Berlin spotted him onstage in a Vicious Circle revue and helped launch his acting career. Edna Ferber, creator of bestselling melodramas, wrote the Pulitzer-winning So Big as well as Show Boat and Giant. Jane Grant pressed her first husband, Harold Ross, into starting The New Yorker. Herman Mankiewicz was a Times wage slave who soaked up the atmosphere, later pouring it into his screenplay for Citizen Kane. Parker wrote for Vanity Fair and Vogue before ascending the throne as queen of the Round Table, earning everlasting fame (but rather less fortune) for her award-winning short stories and unforgettable poems. These are a few of the thirty figures from backstage Broadway to newspaper city rooms in the book.

Explore their favorite salons and saloons, their homes and offices (most still standing), while learning about their colorful careers and private lives. Packed with archival photos, drawings, and other images—including never-before-published material—this illustrated historical guide includes current information on all locations. Use it to retrace the footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table, and you’ll discover that the golden age of Gotham still surrounds us.

About the Author
Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (author), president of the Dorothy Parker Society, is the author of Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide (Lyons Press). He has been leading walking tours from the Algonquin Hotel for 15 years. Visit him at fitzpatrickauthor.com.

Anthony Melchiorri (foreword) is the creator and host of Hotel Impossible on the Travel Channel. A former general manager of the Algonquin Hotel, he has twenty years experience at the top hotels in the industry.

To Pre-Order: The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide, by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, (Lyons Press January 2014; ISBN: 978-1-4930-0757-8)

Heywood Broun on Babe Ruth in 1922Heywood Broun on Babe Ruth in 1922

With baseball season around the corner, let’s look at one of the many Algonquin Round Table links to the game. In the world of New York newspaper columnists in the Jazz Age, Heywood Broun stood out from the rest. His column “It Seems To Me” was beloved, and he could tackle any subject. Broun had gotten his start as a baseball writer, and continued his passion for ballpark trips even when he became a celebrity covering Broadway and news stories. Broun had seats in the press box to watch Babe Ruth in his amazing 1921 season with the New York Yankees. This column appeared in 1922.

Ruth Vs. Roth
By Heywood Broun

We picked up “Who’s Who in America” yesterday to get some vital statistics about Babe Ruth, and found to our surprise that he was not in the book. Even as George Herman Ruth there is no mention of him. The nearest name we could find was: “Roth, Filibert, forestry expert; b. Württemberg, Germany, April 20, 1858; s. Paul Raphael and Amalie (Volz) R., early edn. in Württemberg—”

There is in our heart not an atom of malice against Prof. Roth (since September, 1903, he has been “prof. forestry, U. Mich.”), and yet we question the justice of his admission to a list of national celebrities while Ruth stands without. We know, of course, that Prof. Roth is the author of “Forest Conditions in Wisconsin” and of “The Uses of Wood,” but we wonder whether he has been able to describe in words uses of wood more sensational and vital than those which Ruth has shown in deeds. Hereby we challenge the editor of “Who’s Who in America” to debate the affirmative side of the question: Resolved, That Prof. Roth’s volume called “Timber Physics” has exerted a more profound influence in the life of America than Babe Ruth’s 1921 home-run record.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun

The question is, of course, merely a continuation of the ancient controversy as to the relative importance of the theorist and the practitioner: should history prefer in honor the man who first developed the hypothesis that the world was round or the other who went out and circumnavigated it? What do we owe to Ben Franklin and what to the lightning? Shall we celebrate Newton or the apple?

Personally, our sympathies go out to the performer rather than the fellow in the study or the laboratory. Many scientists staked their reputations on the fact that the world was round before Magellan set sail on the Vittoria. He did not lack written assurances that there was no truth in the old tale of a flat earth with dragons and monsters lurking just beyond the edges.

But suppose, in spite of all this, Magellan had gone on sailing, sailing until his ship did topple over into the void of dragons and big snakes. The professors would have been abashed. Undoubtedly they would try to laugh the misfortune off, and they might even have been good enough sports to say, “That’s a fine joke on us.” But at worst they could lose nothing but their reputations, which can be made over again. Magellan would not live to profit by his experience. Being one of those foreigners, he had no sense of humor, and if the dragons bit him as he fell, it is ten to one he could not even manage a smile.

By this time we have rather traveled away from Roth’s “Timber Physics” and Ruth’s home-run record, but we hope that you get what we mean. Without knowing the exact nature of “Timber Physics,” we assume that the professor discusses the most efficient manner in which to bring about the greatest possible impact between any wooden substance and a given object. But mind you, he merely discusses it. If the professor chances to be wrong, even if he is wrong three times, nobody in the classroom is likely to shout, “You’re out!”

The professor remains at bat during good behavior. He is not subject to any such vicissitudes as Ruth. Moreover, timber physics is to Mr. Roth a matter of cool and calm deliberation. No adversary seeks to fool him with speed or spitballs. “Hit it out” never rings in his ears. And after all, just what difference does it make if Mr. Roth errs in his timber physics? It merely means that a certain number of students leave Michigan knowing a little less than they should—and nobody expects anything else from students.

On the other hand, a miscalculation by Ruth in the uses of wood affects much more important matters. A strike-out on his part may bring about complete tragedy and the direst misfortune. There have been occasions, and we fear that there will still be occasions, when Ruth’s bat will be the only thing which stands between us and the loss of the American League pennant. In times like these who cares about “Forest Conditions in Wisconsin”?

Coming to the final summing up for our side of the question at debate, we shall try to lift the whole affair above any mere Ruth versus Roth issue. It will be our endeavor to show that not only has Babe Ruth been a profound interest and influence in America, but that on the whole he has been a power for progress. Ruth has helped to make life a little more gallant. He has set before us an example of a man who tries each minute for all or nothing. When he is not knocking home runs he is generally striking out, and isn’t there more glory in fanning in an effort to put the ball over the fence than in prolonging a little life by playing safe?

***

Adapted from The Lost Algonquin Round Table: Humor, Fiction, Journalism, Criticism and Poetry From America’s Most Famous Literary Circle (Donald Books/iUniverse). Edited by Nat Benchley and Kevin C. Fitzpatrick. Available Here.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun on Being Fired in the Spring, Summer, and Winter (Summer is Best)Heywood Broun on Being Fired in the Spring, Summer, and Winter (Summer is Best)

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun

This is one of the very last columns that Heywood Broun ever published. Broun ran his own bi-weekly newspaper, Nutmeg (later called Broun’s Nutmeg) in Stamford, Connecticut, where he resided. It was in operation in the late 1930s, and was concurrent as he wrote a syndicated column “It Seems to Me” for Scripps-Howard and organized the Newspaper Guild. After his contract was allowed to lapse in late 1939, he moved to the New York Post. He only had one column appear in the paper, as he succumbed to pneumonia on December 18 at age 51. This column was written ten days before his death.

Old Newspaperman
By Heywood Broun
December 9, 1939

It happens suddenly. On a Tuesday, perhaps, you’re sitting around kidding back and forth in the City Room and maybe growing reminiscent about some story you covered quite a long time back. Yes, that’s the way it was. It gave an opening to a young squirt reporter and he said, “Uncle Heywood, how did you like Jenny Lind’s first concert?”

Now naturally I never saw Jenny Lind but I did ride in horse-driven buses on Fifth Avenue and I saw Admiral Dewey come parading across Washington Square and we all hollered because he had won the Battle of Manila and made America a world power.

Everybody got to calling me Uncle Heywood and at the drop of a hat I could be induced to talk about Matty and the old, old Giants. And when the mood gripped me I would even go back to the days of Dan McGann. You can always spot an old newspaperman by his tendency to talk and write of things in the past. Every one of us will insist that they don’t grow fighters like Fitzsimmons any more.

There isn’t any set time for becoming an old newspaperman but around fifty is the dangerous age and at fifty-one the line is definitely marked as the groove on the floor of the Alamo.

I’ve been fired in the Spring, the Summer and early Winter. I like it best in the Summer. Three times in thirty-one years isn’t so much to be fired. The first firing is often worse than the last. It’s very discouraging to get canned when you’re young. That’s the way it was with me. I was twenty-one and working on the Morning Telegraph. My stall in the old Eighth Avenue car barn was right next to Bide Dudley. He was getting $35 a week and my salary was $28. I wanted $30 but when I asked for it they fired me.

The next job was a long time coming. Fortunately I was a man of character and living at home and so I didn’t go into insurance or business but just borrowed money from my father and sat around for six months doing nothing. Eventually Burdick gave me a job on the Tribune.

He was a shy city editor and when he mentioned the salary he didn’t want to pronounce the fatal words. He gazed away off at a distant window and wrote on a piece of scratch paper $25. Newspaper work is like that. You can go perfectly straight down once you are over the top of the mountain but detours are necessary as you come up from the valley.

As a matter fact it was a mountain which made me. Burdick gave me the Tribune job on the strength of a recommendation from Fred Pitney, his star reporter. Pitney remembered that when I covered the E. H. Harriman death watch for the Evening Sun, I had crawled up through the woods at Arden and come right to the door of the big house. Getting there didn’t get me anything but a boot from the butler. Still after a year and a half Pitney remembered me as an energetic young man. I’ve seen that hill since and now I couldn’t walk it let alone make the grade on my belly.

Pretty nearly ten years went by before I got fired again. The World did it. I had gone onto the paper on my own volition and through the seductive influence of Mr. Swope.

The Sacco-Vanzetti case has something to do with it but only indirectly. First of all I went on a one-man strike because they said I wasn’t to write about the case anymore. They didn’t disagree with my opinions but they objected to violence of language. “Is Harvard to be known hereafter as Hangman’s House?” Was the sentence which made the trouble.

At the end of six or seven months the good shoemaker and the poor fish peddler were dead and things were patched up for me to go back to the paper. Getting fired was something of a surprise. Being bereft of topics I dashed off a little masterpiece for The Nation saying that I thought the editorial policy of The Morning World was a shade on the timid side. I believe I said, “The World on numerous occasions has been able to take two, three, or even four different stands with precisely the same material in hand. So constant were the shifts during the Sacco-Vanzetti case that the paper seemed like an old car going up a hill.”

Naturally I didn’t expect the editors to like it but after all The Nation isn’t so big and umbrage wasn’t in the scope of my vision. Blithely on the way home I bought a morning paper but I only looked at the sport page. Arriving home I was asked as I came in the door whether or not I had read The World. “Sure,” I replied, “Yankees win, Giants win, Dodgers lose.” Those were the old, old Giants.

“But have you seen your own page?” my wife persisted.

“I’m saving that up for later,” I told her.

“You needn’t,” she said, “you’re fired.”

And so I was. There in my old spot was a box explaining that Mr. Broun had been dropped on account of disloyalty. I did object to the word a little because the casual reader would hardly know whether I had robbed the till or sat on the editor’s hat.

Still it was Summer and I was full of energy and I went around opening my shirt to show my scars and having a fine time in general. And presently I got a job with Scripps-Howard which lasted eleven years. This ran out in the Winter.

Since Nutmeg is a publication which belongs to what the Parisians wittily call “Le Presse Confidentiale,” or French to that effect, I think I may reveal that the farewell conference with Roy W. Howard passed off in entire peace and amity.

He said, “I’ve talked it over with my associates and we’ve decided not to make you an offer. It would be just too much grief. The price of newsprint is going up and we think the place to cut expenses is among the high price specialists in order to protect the run of the mine reporter.”

“Roy,” I said (all Scripps Howard executives are known by the first name even to the humblest employee), “I can’t possibly make any squawk about that because I’ve made that same speech myself at dozens of Guild meetings.”

And so we shook hands and had a drink and everything was very pleasant. But I still think it is better to be fired in the Summer.

For more about Heywood Broun and his newspaper career, be sure to get a copy of The Algonquin Round Table New York, A Historical Guide (Globe Pequot Press).