St. Clair McKelway (1905–1980)

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a magazine called The New Yorker that published superb writing and made money doing it. That day, I fear, has passed; the magazine probably doesn't make money and I think its *superb* writing is thinner on the ground than once was the case. I am deeply grateful that it still exists and does all the very, very good publishing that it does.

But oh me, oh my, for the times when A.J. Liebling, Joseph Mitchell, and St. Clair McKelway were show more simply among the talent pool, and not standouts!

This collection of McKelway's best pieces of character-driven, crime-reporting pieces from the 30s to the 60s illuminates one of the old New Yorker's best gifts to us, its future: Clear, lucid, beautiful prose about moments in time, people in medias res, events not worthy of Historical Record but too...too...cool? weird? off-kilter? INTERESTING...to miss out on knowing, however briefly. It's a piece of Americana that the magazine doesn't do so much of anymore, though it's by no means a vanished idea in those not-so-hallowed pages anymore. It's just amazing to me how good The New Yorker remains, in this wildly different landscape from that of its heyday.

When I got my copy of this elephantine tome, I quailed at the sheer bulk of it. I self-impose a duty to read books that I review twice. Anything that a writer has spent time, sweat, and possibly money on creating, I can't justify responding to in writing with a glancing blow, a negligible investment of one trip through, that will no doubt leave many incomplete and unsatisfied crannies unexplored.

THIS book, I thought, *has* to be the exception! 1,240 pages, if read twice?! AAARGH!

I loved it all. I can't tell you to read it twice, I don't think most people would listen, but I can tell you that Adam Gopnik, the present-day New Yorker writer who edited the collection, chose very wisely and you will not find your attention flagging. I myownself love the piece "Firebug-Catcher" the best of them all for its bygone Brooklyn setting. I feel very, very sure that any LT member who procures this book will find a lot of joy in reading it because of its literary merits, because it's a glimpse into a past as dead as ancient Rome and just as full of fascinating characters, and most of all because it's just great value for money spent. Member rocketjk uses door-stoppers like this as "between" books, ones he reads a piece out of between other, shorter books, and that is just about the perfect way to read Reporting at Wit's End.

An aside: Bloomsbury USA, the publishers of this book, are celebrating their tenth anniversary. Buy their books. They're a wonderful, wonderful publisher of terrific books: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, The Art of Losing, Diet for a Hot Planet, on and on. Show 'em some love with your dollars, and enable them to keep bringing us the good books they do. show less

I must admit I feel misgivings any time I set out to read a 600+ page book. Six hundred pages seems utterly interminable when I’ve chosen poorly, and I cast longing glances at all the unread books on my shelf – each impatiently waiting their turn for my attention. So when the LibraryThing Early Reviewer copy of Reporting at Wit’s End arrived in the mail and I hefted it for the first time, I felt a tingle of abject fear. I revere, but rarely actually read The New Yorker. St. Clair show more McKelway’s work for that august publication sounded wonderful in the advance blurb, but what had I gotten myself into?

It is with great delight (and no small amount of simple relief) that I can say I thoroughly enjoyed Reporting at Wit’s End. Rather than being too long and too ponderous, it was -- if anything -- too short.

McKelway’s writing is crisp, sly, and deceptively straightforward, and although the various events he recounts took place between 1910 and 1960, they are as vivid and as “present” as today’s news. He was writing not as an historian, but as an observer of the quirky aspects of human nature – people on the edges of what is found acceptable in a civil society. He writes with great understanding (and even compassion) for his embezzlers, counterfeiters, impostors, and con men, the delusional, the vengeful, the monomaniacal, and the unlucky. Rather than bringing you into the past, his articles make the past seem as fresh and relevant as this morning’s headlines and his subjects as recognizable as your next door neighbor. Anyone who enjoys masterful writing that flows with an ease that seems effortless (but must have been hewn out by sweat and sheer force of will) is bound to find many pleasures in this book.

Going through the other LibraryThingers reviews, I saw that some readers felt the article entitled “The Edinburgh Caper” dragged. It was indeed long, the longest piece in the volume, and I grant it wasn’t the breeziest. In it McKelway tells of a trip he took to Scotland in 1959 where he became convinced he was embroiled in a complex international kidnapping plot involving the Queen of England, President Eisenhower, and Nikita Khrushchev and invasion/overthrow/bombing of their countries. McKelway is giving a first hand account of what it is like to descend into insanity, part of you understanding it’s all in your head, but more parts of you utterly sure that you’re the crux of a huge and catastrophic conspiracy. The pacing and length of “The Edinburgh Caper” are central to the effect: mapping the process of losing touch with reality. For me it induced cold terror.

“The Edinburgh Caper” is paired with one other of McKelway’s pieces from the 1960s, “The Big Little Man From Brooklyn,” which recounts the adventures of a master impostor who assumes identities (physician, diplomat, Naval Officer, press agent, etc.) as his whims move him. Together the two articles peel away the comforting notions we hold about the stability of “self,” and our ability to discern deception from truth. Concluding Reporting at Wit’s End with that one two punch was a stroke of brilliance on the part of the editors. Where exactly is “wit’s end” and will any of us recognize it when we arrive there? And is it really always such a bad place to be? McKelway sends his dispatches from that weird in-between world and makes us wonder how close we are to that edge. show less

A quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore: gang war in Chinatown, an avuncular counterfeiter, the New York court system, the life of a beat cop. McKelway takes his time, but he's seldom less than urbane and informative, and he gets the facts from people who know. Style old-fashioned, but it smells less of mold than of real history. Originally published in The New Yorker, starting in 1933.

I think one of the reasons God keeps a low profile is because there would be nothing to talk about with Him if He didn’t. I mean, I flipped out the first time I sat on Santa’s lap so how would I approach the Divine? “I really like what you did with the mountains and I had a cold last fall and kind of blamed You for it.”

Praising the extraordinary is also difficult. Reporting at Wit’s End is a miracle, reportage as transcendence. I read many of the early pieces years ago when a show more funny old man who ran Capitol Hill Books started handing me stuff and telling me to buy them because I’d like them. For months I bought whatever he recommended and put them away thinking this was the price I paid to have a dealer working my wish list. Finally the old man died and I started to read the books because, well I don’t know why. He was dead and it seemed like the right thing to do. They were marvelous, each one, and I have no idea how he knew that each one would appeal to me. But my favorite was McKelway’s ‘True Tales From the Annals of Crime and Rascality.’

St. Clair McKelway had to have something going for him to overcome his name. He wrote like an angle about grifters, preachers, thieves, robbers and maniacs. Wit’s End has many works from the 50s and 60s and McKelway’s voice was still strong. I doubt he approved of the people he wrote about, but he told their story with wit, muscle and a keen perception.

Reporting at Wit’s End is a treasury of superlative writing, a gift. And as far as I know McKelway never took a writing class. Which really is something I’d like to talk with God about if I get the chance. show less