BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
______________________________________________________
It seems odd, nearly wrong, to be 104 posts into a blog about publishing and writing and yet not one mention of the Algonquin Hotel and the writers — aka “The Algonquin Round Table” — who regularly hung out there in the 1920s to drink, eat, drink, be witty, drink, conduct business, and drink some more.
So today I walked over to the Algonquin Hotel at 59 West 44th Street.
The Round Table crew preceded me by generations. But the thing is, back when I was supposed to be fawning over…
L to R: Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott
…the likes of Tom Wolfe, Richard Brautigan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Hunter S. Thompson, and Charles Bukowski, the old Round Table sorts were instead my literary heroes.
Among them Robert Benchley, George S Kaufman, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Ring Lardner, and Edna Farber.
The hotel treated the group to their own table and waiter; plus free celery, olives, and popovers.
The New Yorker magazine was conceived of around the table. And even funded there.
Yep, poker games would break out at the Round Table, and when Harold Ross won a big pot, he used it to fund the magazine. And on February 21, 1925, when the first issue published, it included works by Dorothy Parker, Ralph Barton, Alexander Woollcott, Ring Lardner, and Robert Benchley.
Even today, hotel guests receive a free copy of the magazine.
For years I was a big fan of The New Yorker. Although perhaps more so because of E.B. White’s long and impressive tenure there. (Recall that White shows up in this blog as my favorite writer in several postings, including the one about my life at The Subway Inn).
I once went to the Algonquin Hotel with friends Julie Stillman and Leigh Stocker. We three were early into our publishing careers and it just seemed the cool thing to do. I had only ever drunk beer, which seemed like the wrong thing to order there. I had no idea what to order as the waiter approached, and was horribly embarrassed to admit it.
Julie kindly suggested I order a “scotch and water.” But when I said that to the waiter, he asked something about “straight up” and I panicked. Julie took over, as if accompanying me on a day trip from the asylum.
In 1956, when Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe composed “My Fair Lady” at the Algonquin, music flowed for days out of Suite 908. They even worked all night, writing “I Could Have Danced All Night” (makes sense), which prompted the hotel to threaten removal of the room’s piano if they didn’t quiet down.
Maya Angelou always stayed there whenever she came to Manhattan. She even wrote the screenplay adapted from her memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” on Algonquin stationary.
The 181-room hotel opened in 1902.
And in 1946 Ben Bodne bought it, fulfilling a promise made to his wife when they honeymooned here that one day he would buy it for her. Sort of like the Super Motel 8 ashtray I got Sally.
I gotta wrap this up with some Dorothy Parker quips.
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
“You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”
“Tell him I was too fucking busy — or vice versa.”
“I hate writing, I love having written.”
“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”
“I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.”
“That would be a good thing for them to put on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”
Tomorrow: I visit Dorothy Parker