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Kim Goldsworthy
Lunch at the Algonquin
Lunch at the Algonquin
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In the 1920s, a group of writers and editors were meeting daily in the Algonquin Hotel for lunch in New York City. Today, the best known celebrities are Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. But the other attendees would likewise be honored with Academy Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and O. Henry awards. George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly would win Pulitzer Prizes for their Broadway plays. Harold Ross would go on to start the magazine "The New Yorker." Franklin P. Adams was the most popular newspaper columnist in New York City. Alexander Woollcott was famous as a drama critic for the New York Times. Heywood Broun was a very well known columnist. Today, this group is called "The Algonquin Round Table," or their own name for themselves, "The Vicious Circle." But back then, most of them were just up-and-coming wanna-bes.
What would it have been like, to be a fly on the wall, and sit in on a typical luncheon? What were their opinions on the hot issues of the day?
The book, "Lunch at the Algonquin," answers those question. This book, historical fiction in novelette form, is a dialogue of the Algonquin Wits as they converse about everything and nothing: Prohibition; radio; film; theater; the Red Scare; The Sacco-Vanzetti trial of the century; Sigmund Freud; pets; cigars; virgins; the Pulitzer Prize committee; photography; and what to do this weekend. They deliver their lines to each other with wit and sarcasm, with sharp tongues and sharp minds. In between bites, they make puns, toss off insults, quote the classics, and woe to those who can't keep up. The book re-creates one of their famous luncheons. They arrive, they eat, they talk, they leave. All in one hour's time.
The author includes enough historical asides and supporting material in the appendix to give the reader a bird's eye view of post-World War I America. The key issues of the day are covered, and the status of technology and the social movements are reviewed. For example, Hollywood films were silent, and radio had not yet arrived as a consumer good. The use of telephones was not yet universal. The pressing worries of health were the deadly epidemic, the Spanish flu, and the incurable disease, polio. The social pressures were the spread of jazz music, and the treatment of the children of slaves, and the violence of communists and anarchists. Airlines were not yet safe enough or cheap enough to beat out the railroads or steamships. Vaudeville was still alive but not well. Burlesque was the adult alternative to vaudeville.
Fans of the Roaring Twenties or The Jazz Age, or fans of Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, will enjoy sitting down with the Algonquin Round Table and soaking up the atmosphere of mid-town Manhattan. Readers of "Lunch at the Algonquin" will absorb a history lesson of post-war America. Viewers of the television show "The Boardwalk Empire" (HBO) or viewers of the Ken Burns film "Prohibition" (PBS) will enjoy re-living the 1920s and visiting New York City when everything was either starting, ending, or radically changing.
What would it have been like, to be a fly on the wall, and sit in on a typical luncheon? What were their opinions on the hot issues of the day?
The book, "Lunch at the Algonquin," answers those question. This book, historical fiction in novelette form, is a dialogue of the Algonquin Wits as they converse about everything and nothing: Prohibition; radio; film; theater; the Red Scare; The Sacco-Vanzetti trial of the century; Sigmund Freud; pets; cigars; virgins; the Pulitzer Prize committee; photography; and what to do this weekend. They deliver their lines to each other with wit and sarcasm, with sharp tongues and sharp minds. In between bites, they make puns, toss off insults, quote the classics, and woe to those who can't keep up. The book re-creates one of their famous luncheons. They arrive, they eat, they talk, they leave. All in one hour's time.
The author includes enough historical asides and supporting material in the appendix to give the reader a bird's eye view of post-World War I America. The key issues of the day are covered, and the status of technology and the social movements are reviewed. For example, Hollywood films were silent, and radio had not yet arrived as a consumer good. The use of telephones was not yet universal. The pressing worries of health were the deadly epidemic, the Spanish flu, and the incurable disease, polio. The social pressures were the spread of jazz music, and the treatment of the children of slaves, and the violence of communists and anarchists. Airlines were not yet safe enough or cheap enough to beat out the railroads or steamships. Vaudeville was still alive but not well. Burlesque was the adult alternative to vaudeville.
Fans of the Roaring Twenties or The Jazz Age, or fans of Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, will enjoy sitting down with the Algonquin Round Table and soaking up the atmosphere of mid-town Manhattan. Readers of "Lunch at the Algonquin" will absorb a history lesson of post-war America. Viewers of the television show "The Boardwalk Empire" (HBO) or viewers of the Ken Burns film "Prohibition" (PBS) will enjoy re-living the 1920s and visiting New York City when everything was either starting, ending, or radically changing.
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