cover image Long Winded Lady Pa

Long Winded Lady Pa

Maeve Brennan. Mariner Books, $13 (368pp) ISBN 978-0-395-89363-0

There's been a lot of rhapsodizing over the mythic heyday of the New Yorker under Harold Ross and Wallace Shawn. This aptly titled book, originally published in 1969 and long out of print, recalls how that heyday actually translated on the page. Although details of New York in an earlier time do have their appeal in this collection of columns that appeared in the magazine's ""Talk of the Town"" section from 1953 to 1968 (supplemented here by six other columns and three features), Brennan often displays what comes off as a grating smugness and an overly arch narrative distance. In ""The Flower Children,"" Brennan watches from a window in her apartment on Washington Place while a Vietnam protest goes on below. Musing on ""Movie Stars at Large,"" she recounts the time she watched Elizabeth Taylor filming a scene in Butterfield 8, then tells of a dream of hers involving Greta Garbo. Some of this material has aged badly, like the passage in ""Just a Pair of Show-Offs"" noting that ""for over a year now Sixth Avenue has been monopolized by young--very young--black girls in huge gold and silver wigs."" Brennan herself is never involved in any of these activities; she is merely an observer. Perhaps when read individually in the magazine these pieces were charming, or perhaps times have simply changed too much for such musings to hold appeal. (Nov.)