YEAR OF CHANGE: More About The New Yorker and Me

A yearlong diary (1987) from a veteran writer at America's premier polite/intellectual affairs magazine. Despite the prodigious name-dropping, only the most hard-core followers of the ins and outs of N.Y.C. writerly society are likely to make it through 365 days in the unedited life of Kahn--most of whose daily entries offer veritable Homeric catalogues of New York's most familiar literary names. Along with the guys at the magazine, the Century and Harvard Clubs and the N.Y.C. publishing party circuit, Kahn writes about the stories he is working on (first for William Shawn, then for Robert Gottlieb), about his passion for crossword puzzles, and, in unfunny detail, about his dog's bowel movements. The ostensible excuse for this book (a sequel to Kahn's 1979 About the New Yorker and Me) is the much-publicized overthrow of Shawn by S.I. Newhouse and the arrival of Gottlieb from Knopf. But those still eager for more inside-gossip on the Gottlieb takeover will be disappointed, for there is nothing new here, only a few anecdotes of how the author gets to know--and like--his new boss. For Kahn, 1987 marked his 70th birthday, 50th reunion at Harvard, and 50th anniversary of writing for The New Yorker. A long and impressive life, but one which has seen far more felicitous works than this strained entry.