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A Reader Asks: What Was That Old New Yorker Story I Can't Get Out of My Mind?

Filed under: Letters & Challenges Tagged: anthologies, books, Complete New Yorker, fiction, Roger Angell

A learned reader who owns The Complete New Yorker was still unable to track down a story that's haunting him. Can you help? We tried, too. No dice. Whoever writes in first with the correct answer, whatever it is, wins a copy of The New Gilded Age, in my opinion one freaking fantastic document of our times.

I read a New Yorker short story circa 1966 that has been haunting me ever since but have been unable to track down. All I remember (I think) is that it was about a summer romance in Brooklyn or some place like that, and it had a kicker of an ending in which it was revealed that the hero, who had been called by some more or less dashing name, was really named Howard. Then there was a sort of implication that the two lovers never saw each other again. In around 1979 I described this to Roger Angell, for whom it rang no bells. Then yesterday I was on a 9 1/2 hour flight from Rome and opened up NYer on DVD and searched consecutively for "summer," "summer romance," "Brooklyn," etc., and looked at summaries for everything between 1960 and 1971, but had no luck. Do you have any suggestions?

2 comments

Comments

It may have not been in the New Yorker! You may have read it somewhere else, and thought wow! this is a great New Yorker story, but it wasn't there...perhaps slumming in Esquire?

shawSeptember 01, 2007

Now that we have the Complete New Yorker on dvd, and Playboy magazine coming out this fall, and MAD magazine already out on dvd, I suggest someone come out with the complete Esquire. I would definitely buy it
for the old covers.

bruce robinsonSeptember 04, 2007

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Who she?

I'm Emily Gordon, reachable at emily@emdashes.com.

I'm an editor at PRINT magazine in New York City. I've worked at The Nation, Newsday, PEN America, and Legal Affairs. I've written for the NY Times Book Review, Salon, The Washington Post, The Village Voice... continued

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A few clips

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Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)

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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.

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Written and edited by Emily Gordon (plus various guest contributors), designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.

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