Witty and deftly drawn parodies from a literary legend
Roger Angell has a long history with the New Yorker: the son of fiction editor Katharine White and the stepson of E. B. White, Angell has spent decades writing and working for the magazine, to which he has contributed across genres and gained special renown for his essays on baseball. With A Day in the Life of Roger Angell, the author’s gifts as an urbane humorist come to the fore. The pieces here include two of Angell’s famous Christmas poems, parodies—of horoscopes, sports broadcasts, and Lawrence Durrell—and a tense correspondence over a short fiction contest that pays only in baked goods. Combined, these miniatures form a funny and charming chronicle of Manhattan life, as experienced both on the ground and in the city’s most literary circles.
Roger Angell (b. 1920) is a celebrated New Yorker writer and editor. First published in the magazine in 1944, he became a fiction editor and regular contributor in 1956; and remains as a senior editor and staff writer. In addition to seven classic books on baseball, which include The Summer Game (1972), Five Seasons (1977), and Season Ticket (1988), he has written works of fiction, humor, and a memoir, Let Me Finish (2006). He edited the short story collection Nothing But You: Love Stories from The New Yorker(1997). In 2011, he was awarded the PEN/ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sports Writing. Angell lives in New York City.