Janet GrothRecensioni

thumbs down... hate to say it but I couldn't get into this... seemed like a whole lotta namedropping and no substance/story... I discarded it after 70 pages.

I was expecting more details about working inside The New Yorker. Instead, it's who took the author to lunch and what she drank. "Dewar's and soda," "Tanqueray martinis," where you sponsored by these people? There a few very interesting chapters, honestly. I wish there were more of them. Very disappointing, as Groth had an interesting point of view we seldom get to read about.

I was intrigued by this book because it supposedly told the story of a young woman from the Midwest who came to the big city, worked for the New Yorker, got a Ph.D. and taught literature at university. An autobiography of sorts, supplemented with delicious tales of behind the scenes at the best magazine in the country. NOT. That is not at all what this book is about- sadly. The magazine anecdotes are mostly about who was shagging whom in spite of the fact that both parties were married. Mostly, however, it is about a young woman with so little self-worth and self-knowledge that she chooses the wrong men for the wrong reasons- again and again and yet again. I did slog through to the end; I think she does find true love, but by that time I honestly did not care. She annoyed me and the book annoyed me.

I like publishing history and for that I liked Janet Groth's memoir of her life and times spent as a receptionist at the New Yorker. I've made a note of a few New Yorker authors from the fifties and sixties mentioned in her memoir that I would like to explore. I think her book captures a time and a role that is rapidly disappearing. I can also relate to her on some level because I've always wanted to be a writer myself but have let opportunity pass me by--I can relate to how she found herself still a receptionist many years later. I once worked as the accounting assistant at a regional magazine and started out in book publishing as an administrative assistant before moving on up in my career. But man--what fun to be at the center of everything! This is the kind of lady I would love to have lunch with.

That said, I think the book could have used a stronger editor--was this a personal memoir? a memoir about the New Yorker? life in New York in the sixties? I think the book suffers a bit from claiming to be one thing--memoir about the New Yorker but really about that and the author's personal life. But yet not enough of the personal life. Maybe the problem was marketing wanted a MadMen type book and the author wanted to tell her story. It was just oddly structured. This book could have used the firm hand of a good developmental editor.

Editors are valuable!

Janet Groth has some great stories about writers she worked with and she tells them very well in this book. However, when she get into her ugly sexual history and psychoanalysis, I lost interest. She does have some interesting things to say about the New Yorker as a workplace and I felt good knowing that she got an education and embarked on a 20 year teaching career and found a good guy, but I got there after skimming through her sorted sexual history. Strong beginning and ending, but weak in the middle.

So bad. It's slowly drips privilege page by page. I almost didn't finish it but held on and did because I couldn't believe what I was reading. Hypocrisy, privilege and a superficiality that I have rarely encountered. Not worth picking it up unless name dropping makes you all tingly or you want to read about a white, privileged, baby boomer woman writing all about herself over and over.

3 hours of my life I'm not getting back ever. My love of New York fiction sometimes betrays me.

I wanted this memoir to be so much more than it actually is. The author spent almost 20 years as a receptionist on the "writers' floor" at The New Yorker magazine during the 1960s and 1970s. I had hoped for some entertaining insights into the world of magazine publishing at that time in history, particularly given the stellar reputation of The New Yorker. Instead, we get a few fairly tame anecdotes (anything even remotely likely to be controversial is cloaked in altered names) and entirely too much about the author's active and varied sex life. It isn't until nearly the end of the book that she finally gives the reader information about her childhood growing up in the Midwest and her fraught relationship with her alcoholic father that could have made her endless navel-gazing in the first two-thirds of the book worth reading. Alas, by the time I got there, I no longer cared much.½

Let me summarize for you: "I'm hot, all of the writers, married or not, want me. Let me tell you all the things they did for me." DNF @ 25%

girl from midwest in 60's wants to write — stays as a receptionist (20 years) — good scenes of NYC / people — things of an age gone by —

Thanks to a successful interview with a painfully shy E. B. White, a beautiful nineteen-year-old hazel-eyed Midwesterner landed a job as receptionist at The New Yorker. There she stayed for two decades, becoming the general office factotum—watching and registering the comings and goings, marriages and divorces, scandalous affairs, failures, triumphs, and tragedies of the eccentric inhabitants of the eighteenth floor. In addition to taking their messages, Groth watered their plants, walked their dogs, boarded their cats, and sat their children (and houses) when they traveled. And although she dreamed of becoming a writer herself, she never advanced at the magazine.

I generally read one book at a time but as my available reading time is in the late evening I could not continue to read this book at night. I'm generally a fiction reader but was curious to read this title as, over the years (particularly during the years I worked in New York), the magazine was frequently part of my browsing/reading times.

I don't know what I anticipated to read, but the book was at first different than expected. For many of the first chapters, it seemed merely a diary shared to impress with name-dropping. This was then complemented by restaurant names and the myriad of gastronomic delights consumed at each. It reminded me of some acquaintances who have to share their precise detailing of menu selection from each restaurant experience. I simply don't care. At this point, I picked up novels to read for my late evening reading and then began treating the book like a magazine where I might read a few pages at various intervals during the day, then pick it up again on another day (but not necessarily a consecutive day) and continue reading a few more pages with another pause of time in-between.

I am glad that I continued reading Janet Groth's "The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker." I agree with The Boston Globe that described it as "A literate, revelatory examination of self." I found the book to be an introspective portrayal of one woman's life within a primarily man's world (at that time) of periodical history. It is insightful and revealing.

An important element of the book not to be missed is "A Conversation with Janet Groth," which is a Q&A adapted from an interview conducted by Ellen Birkett Morris with Janet Groth, published on Authorlink. Janet Groth shares her life journey through her years of employment at The New Yorker and discloses behind-the-scenes experiences - both professionally and the overflow into her personal life. She shares without hesitancy and unveils her thoughts, actions, and growth as a woman. In that regard, it is a book to be respected and a woman to be held in high esteem for the revelations she shares for others to learn from and perhaps also to be inspired.

I wanted to like this book because I love all things New Yorker and 1950s, but it was wretched. Poor organization, bad writing, bloated sense of self, and overall boring. What a disappointment.

I requested this book from my library thinking it would be an interesting insiders view of The New Yorker magazine in the 50's & 60's. Instead what we got was a water downed memoir about the author's sexipades during the swinging 60's. When she did discuss people from the magazine she often used pseudonyms and even then didn't really give out too much information.

I kept wondering why she was insecure, something she doesn't explain until the end of the book. She met well known writers, up and coming writers, cartoonists, and poets while at The New Yorker. Some were eccentric, others bipolar, a professor who committed suicide after he won a prestigious award, while the cartoonist she thought she would marry was just a cad. A poet she went with told her he had no time for a wife and family. Too much of a distraction. I thought what went on in the offices of The New Yorker would be rather staid. Far from it!

wow -- was this disappointing. the quality of writing is not good at all and groth does nothing to endure herself to readers. is this her job? i don't know. probably not. but when you want people to buy and read your story ... a nonfiction memoir ... there's got to be something going on in there to make it worthwhile for readers. i found groth's tone to be very, to use her own word, snooty. which wouldn't be so bad (i mean, she anchored her book around the new yorker, i was prepared to give leeway. heh!) if she wasn't constantly pointing out how not being snooty was a good thing when being around the lofty company she kept. she expressed a disdain for snootiness and something she called 'side', along with expressing dismay for gossip - and talking about a trauma inflicted upon her as a child because of hurtful gossip she overheard - and which was something she held onto well into her mid-life. and yet here she is, gossiping rather freely about other people's lives. i mean, perhaps much of the dirt she dishes isn't news for some of the people she speaks of, but i don't know that it's groth's place to be furthering such information? as well, groth voices a rather contradictory position on abortion, rendering a judgement adjacent women who have a abortions and lumping them all into one category. to be fair, and clear, groth does appear to be quite politically liberal, and she voices her belief in a women's right to choose. but then qualifies that right, brushing over her own decision to have an abortion. it was a weird, weird moment in the book. going into the read, i had hoped for much more information (not gossip) about the new yorker - but this book is very slim in this department. essentially, this book is a lot of name-dropping, and a woman's exploration of her past. which would be fine... if there was not, literally, a 'who am i?' section, and if groth's 'education as the new yorker' was actually interesting. so many moments in the story had potential, but they went underdeveloped. groth does get very personal at some moments, but it never felt authentic to me, and it all felt fairly shallow and, at moment, mean-spirited. i feel like a horrible human being for responding this way to her and to this book, but - wow - did this story go off the rails.

This is the memoir of a woman not who did amazing things, but who knew intriguing people.

This is the memoir of a woman not who did amazing things, but who knew intriguing people.

This is the memoir of a woman not who did amazing things, but who knew intriguing people.

I'm sorry to report that this one didn't do much for me. I expected some really interesting New Yorker stories, but the book ended up being much more a tale of personal growth that could have been set just about anywhere (but with a few famous writers thrown into the mix). There are some good scenes (most notably Groth's hiring by E.B. White), but on the whole I just wasn't all that impressed.½

EarlyWord blurb

Possibly I expected too much from this slim memoir of Jan Groth's twenty-one years as the receptionist at The New Yorker. There is a good deal of inevitable name-dropping; yet many names have been changed. More, the book covers a time in her life when, as a transplanted Midwesterner and aspiring writer, she is insecure about her own identity, and suffers from a sense of being victimized, exploited, and stereotyped as a dumb blond. It is the story of personal growth, borrowing the glamorous aura of the august magazine. Overall, I cannot say that I was very interested, but at least it was not terribly long.

Quotes/excerpts:

There was no talking down. If, in the course of opening a book, [John Berryman] paused to give us a disquisition on the correct way to open books, it was never with an air of condescension. Rather, he managed to convey the idea that there was always a best way to do even the simplest things, and to credit us with wanting to know that best way. (16)

But most broken relationships have codas, and ours was no exception. (99)

That moment to which Saint John of the Cross was referring when he spoke of "the dark night of the soul" never comes to most of us, not because we experience no comparable state, but because we find it hard to justify the grandeur of the phrase. (104)

One of the things I appreciated most about the receptionist job was the way it expanded to allow me to try on half a dozen or so alternate lives. (116)

"Nobody gonna harm you if you can just make 'em remember they a human bein'. You got to treat 'em like one and that's how you remind 'em they is one." (164-165)

I thought, It is so easy to make a man ridiculous. One has only to say no. I suppose that's why they hate us so. (174)

Please don't show us how like little boys you are. We don't want to see how vulnerable you are. We come to you for strength and protection. If you show that you are weak, like us, we are confronted in a way that you are not - no, you really are not, having on some level known it all along - that we are alone, that no one is safe, and that men and women can only cling to one another, suspended over the void. (181)

To be competitive in a healthy and effective way, you have to know what you want, and how to fight for it. (199)

Moving alone through unfamiliar landscapes, surrounded by strangers speaking a language I didn't understand, was a way of granting myself a parole ticket, of being able to say, You see, it is quite natural not to understand what people are saying to me, not to know what is expected of me or how I should respond. I am, after all, a person from another country. (199-200)

I was, from my earliest appearance on the scene, a hypersensitive social barometer of the impression I was making on those around me. (209)

"We are all of us searching for a perfect family. Sometimes we substitute material things, but often in the friendships we form, the lovers we take, the mates we marry, we are arranging for ourselves the understanding mother, the good father, the loving brother and sister we yearn for, the things we missed in our own." (220)

I love memoirs, love reading about the literary scene in NYC, but found this book unsatisfying. I didn't get a clear picture of the New Yorker writers and their personalities, nor did I get much insight into the author's own life. She speculates that she never made any advancement into the ranks of writers at the New Yorker because of sexism (and that certainly played a role), but this books suggests a different explanation: she's simply not that skilled of a writer.

A disappointment.

I was instantly put off by the pretentious tone of The Receptionist, by Janet Groth. The subtle references to John Updike or Tom Wolfe, the various high brow culture events that were part of every story, and French infused dialog were almost enough to give up. But remembering that my own pretense was the very reason I chose the book in the first place, I kept going. I’m now quite glad I did.

Learning virtually nothing about the New Yorker Magazine, I learned a great deal about Ms. Groth and her raison d'être if you will. My desire to hear about John Updike, Tom Wolfe, et al was replaced with a keen interest in the events in Ms. Groth’s life as she discovered Janet Groth. It was a quite pleasant discovery.

There's a certain cache to the New Yorker magazine in the literary world. I remember thinking I was all that and a bag of chips in high school when I first subscribed. I was pretty sure that simply having a subscription to the magazine validated my literary taste. And I know I'm not the only one who has attached such a value to it over the years. Janet Groth, in her new memoir, The Receptionist, takes readers inside the offices of the venerable publication through her own experiences as a receptionist for twenty-one years on the writers' floor from 1957 to 1978.

Groth first took the job as a way to break into the publishing business, taking the receptionist role so that she wouldn't be consigned to the typing pool and so that she could eventually become the writer she wanted to be. Strangely enough, she never did leave the receptionist's desk over that twenty-one years, aside from one brief stint elsewhere in the magazine, and she didn't exactly leave to write either, going back to graduate school after her stint at The New Yorker had run its course. In very brief chapters, Groth talks about the well-known personalities at the magazine starting with her initial interview with E.B. White and intersperses the small scenes amongst the writers on the eighteenth floor with tales of her own personal life and growth in the city.

Somehow given the title of the memoir, I expected more stories from Groth's tenure at the magazine. Whats she does offer up is actually fairly superficial and scant and often feels more like name dropping than substantive and interesting work tales. The lunches and other encounters she details bleed the personalities out of the folks she includes whether out of a desire to be circumspect or respectful to them or something else entirely. There's just something dry here and while I wouldn't have wanted salacious gossip, breathing life into some of the personalities at the magazine would have added immeasurably to the book. As for Groth's personal life, it never did grab me. And certainly she was searching for the life and the person she wanted to be but there were overly contemplative bits that didn't seem to fit the tone of the rest of the narrative. Ultimately this one didn't work for me, which probably negates any early literary validation my magazine subscription might have afforded me, especially given that so many others seem to be raving about it around the internet.½

Although I don't read The New Yorker, I'm aware of its reputation, the careers launched, the personalities housed there, (and I've certainly read pieces that debuted there, anthologized later); so when offered a review copy of Groth's memoir, I pounced.

This was a book so good I've lost the ability to arrange letters into words. So I apologize now for the jumpy, incoherent gush of a review that follows.

From the first pages, I was sold on Groth.

Mr. [E.B.] White took a moment to absorb this information. When he could bring himself to speak again, he asked, "Can you type?"

"Not at a professional level," I said.

He coughed and looked at the resume that Arthur Zegart had given him and that had led to my being there in his office. "What about this short story prize you won?...Was that story typed?"

I told him that yes, of course it had been, but that I deliberately maintained a slow, self-devised system that involved looking at the keyboard.

"I was afraid, you see, that if I became a skilled typist, I would wind up in an office typing pool." (p2)

I want Groth to be my bestie -- who wouldn't?! Candidly she shares how she got her job, the professors who inspired her to take up writing, the writers she worked with, the love affairs, her aspirations as a writer and a scholar, and the way The New Yorker changed throughout her time there. This memoir is a series of vignettes from 1957 to 1978. Technically there as just a receptionist, Groth's life was shaped and impacted by the personalities she assisted, supported, befriended, romanced, entertained, liked, disliked, loved, and lost: Muriel Spark, John Berryman, Joseph Mitchell, Renata Adler, and hosts of others.

Groth came-of-age at an era that, frankly, frightens me -- the late '50s and '60s -- in big, bad New York City, working for a literary magazine that was renown then for the personalities and expense lines. When women were having to find, invent, reinvent, discover, and hide themselves, Groth navigated that time with not unsurprising bumps and fits, and she shares her experiences without shame. (Happily!) I found her to be breathtakingly honest in her account of her time at The New Yorker. Her tone sounds a little bemused, a little pained, a little wry -- not aloof, but aware -- and I was often holding my breath in amazement. Her writing is so honest and unapologetic, and yet, she shares enough warmth and vulnerability that I felt deeply sympathetic toward her.

Even if you're not familiar with the writers from The New Yorker, if you enjoy memoirs and coming-of-age stories, get this one. Like a surprisingly dangerous aunt, Groth's stories are titillating, gasp-inducing, fascinating, depressing, and inspiring.

It's hard to succinctly summarize this book. In part, it is a memoir of the author's 20+ years working as a receptionist at the New Yorker, full of observations of the likes of Calvin Trillin, Charles Addams, E.B. White, William Shawn, Pauline Kael, and others -- the kind of tale a literary Joan Holloway might pen. It's also a remembrance of a career of two parallel tracts: Groth tends the desk while teaching at Vassar and nurtures the professional and personal lives of her authors even as she earns her own PhD in English literature. Beyond that, it is a reflection of a time and place where literature and opera shared the throne with old-school drinking and sexual tension. But to oversimplify this as a Mad Men and women's lib journey is an oversimplification: underlying all of this is a personal story of a woman finding herself at a time when she was exploring options beyond marriage and motherhood. Recommended. (129)