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The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker

von Janet Groth

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Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. HTML: 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. This memoir of a particular time and place is as much about why that was so as it is about Groth's fascinating relationships with poet John Berryman (who proposed marriage), essayist Joseph Mitchell (who took her to lunch every Friday), and playwright Muriel Spark (who invited her to Christmas dinner in Tuscany), as well as E. J. Kahn, Calvin Trillin, Renata Adler, Peter Devries, Charles Addams, and many other New Yorker contributors and bohemian denizens of Greenwich Village in its heyday. During those single-in-the-city years, Groth tried on many identities�??Nice Girl, Sex Pot, Dumb Blonde, World Traveler, Doctoral Candidate�??but eventually she would have to leave The New Yorker to find her true s… (mehr)

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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. (

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Andy5185 | Jul 9, 2023 |

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. (

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ezmerelda | Mar 8, 2023 |

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.
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PattyLee | Dec 14, 2021 |

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!

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auldhouse | Sep 30, 2021 |

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. (

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Colleen5096 | Oct 29, 2020 |

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Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. HTML:

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.

This memoir of a particular time and place is as much about why that was so as it is about Groth's fascinating relationships with poet John Berryman (who proposed marriage), essayist Joseph Mitchell (who took her to lunch every Friday), and playwright Muriel Spark (who invited her to Christmas dinner in Tuscany), as well as E. J. Kahn, Calvin Trillin, Renata Adler, Peter Devries, Charles Addams, and many other New Yorker contributors and bohemian denizens of Greenwich Village in its heyday.

During those single-in-the-city years, Groth tried on many identities�??Nice Girl, Sex Pot, Dumb Blonde, World Traveler, Doctoral Candidate�??but eventually she would have to leave The New Yorker to find her true s

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