Imagine our delight when this book arrived and we saw our own Barry Blitt on the cover, looking a bit windblown and holding a broken umbrella over his head. Rumor always had it that Blitt also drew covers for The New Yorker, and sure enough he is the cover boy for this delightful volume about the magazine’s cartoonists, with photographs by Alen MacWeeney and short profiles by Michael Maslin, a cartoonist himself. (One of my favorites of his is of a pugnacious pie, pastry fists raised, approaching a man with a knife and saying, “C’mon! You want a piece of me?”) Bob Mankoff, AIR MAIL’s cartoon editor, is also featured in the volume, not just because of his work but also because he ran the department for 20 years. The book will remind you of many of your favorite cartoons, but one needs no memory nudge at all: Mankoff’s classic of the man standing at his desk, phone in hand and calendar open, saying, “No, Thursday’s out. How about never—is never good for you?”
It is hard to believe that this is the first full-length biography of Jimmy Breslin, who ruled New York’s tabloid world for decades and became more famous than most anyone he ever wrote about. Surely that is because he was more interesting than most of his subjects, though he did have the gift of making those subjects more interesting characters than they might have been otherwise. Those only familiar with his prose may be surprised to learn he ran with Norman Mailer on his mayoral ticket in 1969, the campaign’s main message being that New York City deserved statehood. They lost. Richard Esposito knew Breslin from his days as editor at the New York Daily News and New York Newsday, so his writing captures Breslin the man and not just the myth, and Esposito gives generous credit to Ted Gerstein, who did so much of the legwork. Both men share a Breslin trait: knowing how to tell a terrific story without getting in the way.
Niall Williams is not as well known in the United States as he should be. This is his ninth novel and is set in the same Irish village as a previous work, This Is Happiness. Dr. Jack Troy and his daughter Ronnie both live in Faha, and their lives are upended one December when a baby is left in their care. The story is heartwarming without inducing a false tear, and its sweetness is hard-earned and never cloying. If you are looking for a novel that speaks to our better angels, put down the newspaper, turn off the cable news, and read Time of the Child.
Jim Kelly is the Books Editor at AIR MAIl
