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A Life of Privilege, Mostly
Gardner Botsford tells the fascinating and humorous story of his W.W. II experiences, from his assignment to the infantry due to a paperwork error to a fearful trans-Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary, to landing under heavy fire on Omaha Beach and the Liberation of Paris. After the war, he began a distinguished literary career as a long-time editor at the New Yorker , and chronicles the magazine’s rise and influence on postwar American culture with wit and grace.
- GenresMemoirNonfiction
260 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
July 2, 2010
I just need to begin by pointing out that in this memoir by a longtime New Yorker editor - you know, that magazine with the legendary factchecking and copyediting - the name of Glenway Wescott is misspelled at least 6 times (as Westcott) and there are a few missing or misplaced periods and quotation marks.
Gardner Botsford was a wealthy Wasp - Hotchkiss, Yale, the Upper East Side, the Gold Coast of Long Island. For a family of five, the Botsfords had eight servants. Every summer the servants would pack up almost the entire household (because you never know if the house you've rented, before you've had the chance to build your summer pile, has linens and silverware) and ship off to either Long Island, or Europe. They had an 8-car garage for their five cars. Gardner's mother was an interior decorator with friends like Harpo Marx, Alexander Woollcott, Bernard Baruch, and Averill Harriman, and an inheritance from steam engine parts. After divorcing Gardner's father, she married Raoul Fleischmann, the very handsome and debonair heir to the yeast fortune, who would become publisher of the New Yorker. Gardner and his mother pose for formal photographic portraits in that now impossibly ridiculous, upper-crusty way - holding cigarettes between index and middle fingers. Gardner was witness to some interesting historical moments: biking with his buddies around Europe, he saw Hitler speak at a rally, and back in the States he went to hear Charles Lindbergh argue against getting involved in a war. Serving in the First Infantry Division, he landed on D Day on Omaha Beach. He snuck away to see Paris liberated. One day General Patton drove up in a jeep and upbraided him for missing insignia on his uniform.
Of course, the reason I wanted to read his memoir is that he was married to one of my favorite journalists, Janet Malcolm. (He's now deceased.) Janet barely makes an appearance in the book. The most amusing anecdotes come from Monroe Wheeler, MOMA executive and longtime companion of Glenway Wescott, in a conversation with Botsford after Janet Flanner's memorial service. Wheeler tells Botsford how the pennypinching Philippe de Rothschild once shared a taxi with Jean Cocteau. The taxi stopped first at Rothschild's house, leaving Cocteau to pay the entire fare once the ride was over. The next day Cocteau complained to Rothschild that he shouldn't have to pay his taxi fare. Rothschild, instead of offering to pay his share, informed Cocteau that "to the Rothschilds the pictures of famous men on the French banknotes were like family portraits - never to be let go of."
Wheeler then tells the story of the elderly Iphigene Sulzberger, matriarch of the New York Times' publishing family, ordered by her doctor to get walking exercise. She trod a path from Fifth Avenue to Madison, back to Fifth, and home. The only problem was that, being advanced in years, she needed to make a pit stop on this brief journey. She would stop at the Carlyle Hotel, but the ladies' room was down a flight of stairs, too difficult to traverse. So she asked the Frank Campbell funeral parlor if she could use their facilities every day and they said no problem. One day as she left the funeral home, an attendant asked if she would sign the guest register, which she did. Soon thereafter she received a check for $5,000. It turned out that she had signed the register for a wealthy woman's funeral, and the woman's will had specified that everyone who had come to her funeral and signed the book would get a bequest of $5,000.
The memoir focuses first on Botsford's military experiences in the war, and then on his editing life. He gives six rules of thumb for editing. I think two of them are particularly interesting:
It's a memoir worth reading if you have an interest in New Yorker history, for the portrait of a dysfunctional William Shawn and behind the scenes machinations involving Jonathan Schell, Lillian Ross, and others.
Gardner Botsford was a wealthy Wasp - Hotchkiss, Yale, the Upper East Side, the Gold Coast of Long Island. For a family of five, the Botsfords had eight servants. Every summer the servants would pack up almost the entire household (because you never know if the house you've rented, before you've had the chance to build your summer pile, has linens and silverware) and ship off to either Long Island, or Europe. They had an 8-car garage for their five cars. Gardner's mother was an interior decorator with friends like Harpo Marx, Alexander Woollcott, Bernard Baruch, and Averill Harriman, and an inheritance from steam engine parts. After divorcing Gardner's father, she married Raoul Fleischmann, the very handsome and debonair heir to the yeast fortune, who would become publisher of the New Yorker. Gardner and his mother pose for formal photographic portraits in that now impossibly ridiculous, upper-crusty way - holding cigarettes between index and middle fingers. Gardner was witness to some interesting historical moments: biking with his buddies around Europe, he saw Hitler speak at a rally, and back in the States he went to hear Charles Lindbergh argue against getting involved in a war. Serving in the First Infantry Division, he landed on D Day on Omaha Beach. He snuck away to see Paris liberated. One day General Patton drove up in a jeep and upbraided him for missing insignia on his uniform.
Of course, the reason I wanted to read his memoir is that he was married to one of my favorite journalists, Janet Malcolm. (He's now deceased.) Janet barely makes an appearance in the book. The most amusing anecdotes come from Monroe Wheeler, MOMA executive and longtime companion of Glenway Wescott, in a conversation with Botsford after Janet Flanner's memorial service. Wheeler tells Botsford how the pennypinching Philippe de Rothschild once shared a taxi with Jean Cocteau. The taxi stopped first at Rothschild's house, leaving Cocteau to pay the entire fare once the ride was over. The next day Cocteau complained to Rothschild that he shouldn't have to pay his taxi fare. Rothschild, instead of offering to pay his share, informed Cocteau that "to the Rothschilds the pictures of famous men on the French banknotes were like family portraits - never to be let go of."
Wheeler then tells the story of the elderly Iphigene Sulzberger, matriarch of the New York Times' publishing family, ordered by her doctor to get walking exercise. She trod a path from Fifth Avenue to Madison, back to Fifth, and home. The only problem was that, being advanced in years, she needed to make a pit stop on this brief journey. She would stop at the Carlyle Hotel, but the ladies' room was down a flight of stairs, too difficult to traverse. So she asked the Frank Campbell funeral parlor if she could use their facilities every day and they said no problem. One day as she left the funeral home, an attendant asked if she would sign the guest register, which she did. Soon thereafter she received a check for $5,000. It turned out that she had signed the register for a wealthy woman's funeral, and the woman's will had specified that everyone who had come to her funeral and signed the book would get a bequest of $5,000.
The memoir focuses first on Botsford's military experiences in the war, and then on his editing life. He gives six rules of thumb for editing. I think two of them are particularly interesting:
1. To be any good at all, a piece of writing requires the investment of a specific amount of time, either by the writer or by the editor. [Joseph:] Wechsberg was fast; hence, his editors had to be up all night. Joseph Mitchell took forever to write a piece, but when he turned in, the editing could be done during one cup of coffee.
4. In editing, the first reading of a manuscript is the all-important one. On the second reading, the swampy passages that you noticed in the first reading will seem firmer and less draggy, and on the fourth or fifth reading, they will seem exactly right. That's because you are now attuned to the writer, not to the reader. But the reader, who will read the thing only once, will find it just as swampy and boring as you did the first time around. In short, if something strikes you as wrong on first reading, it is wrong, and a fix is needed, not a second reading.
It's a memoir worth reading if you have an interest in New Yorker history, for the portrait of a dysfunctional William Shawn and behind the scenes machinations involving Jonathan Schell, Lillian Ross, and others.
June 27, 2020
The pages about The New Yorker have a more lethal ring than the pages about WW2 combat. Some important if common-sensical lessons on pages 175-177 and 196-197. The overall elegance and wit do not paper over the hatchet job on William Shawn in the last two chapters.
October 31, 2013
Full disclosure, I lunched with Gardner Botsford several times before his death. He was a highly entertaining raconteur who was sincerely and unfailingly upbeat. His signature reply to "How are you?" was "Never better," and I believe he meant it. So when several of his acquaintances recommended his autobiography, I became curious and finally got around to reading it. It has a very interesting structure. He starts in the ramp-up to D-Day shortly after he was drafted into the army. And, yes, he was in the first wave to hit Normandy. So right there, you have a pretty sure-fire attention-grabber. The story follows him through the liberation of Paris, then flies back to his privileged upbringing on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and meanders through his long and turbulent career at The New Yorker. It's a fun and erudite ride but obviously not for everyone. The only thing missing, I thought, and it's not a small thing, is a real portrait of the inner man. You never really get a sense of who Gardner Botsford is, and that's a shame, because he must have been a fascinating and complicated character.
June 24, 2023
An Entertaining Memoir, Mostly
A fully-lived, remarkable life makes for a good memoir, and one laced with humor is even better. Gardner Botsford begins his with an account of being drafted into the army in World War II.
Despite an affluent background that included prep school Hotchkiss, Yale, travel in luxury around the world, and fluency in French, Botsford faced in 1943 at the induction center a bored clerk who promptly classified him to the infantry. In the author’s telling (probably apocryphal), a sergeant reviews the paperwork saying, “You goofed on this one. But what the hell, let it go.” That is a story to which many who entered the army as a draftee can relate.
Botsford becomes an infantry officer with the First Division, landing under heavy fire on Omaha Beach on D-Day as soldiers around him are killed or wounded. His job is to connect with the French Resistance but his fluency in French causes him to trust a French peasant who is harboring a German sniper. A day later another GI, not encumbered by being able to communicate in French, searches the house and is killed when he discovers the enemy.
Botsford goes on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, is wounded twice, and receives the Bronze Star. In between, he sneaks into Paris as one of the first Americans to enter the city. At the end of the war, he is one of two Americans to arrive in Prague and has to decide what to do when the Germans wish to surrender to him.
Only after recounting his wartime experience does the author reveal the affluent background in which he was raised, the beneficiary of two families of exceptional wealth. In New York City, the family townhouse had eight servants for a family of five. Summers were spent on Long Island or in France. After graduation, he and a friend from Yale set off for an around the world trip staying in the most expensive hotels even as war loomed on the horizon.
Botsford’s stepfather, Raoul Fleischmann, had bankrolled The New Yorker, and after leaving Yale he got a job there — only to be fired when Harold Ross who had founded the magazine got in a dispute with Fleischmann. Rehired in 1942 by William Shawn, managing editor under Ross, Botsford was soon after off to war.
Returning to The New Yorker after discharge, Botsford became one of its most powerful editors, working with Janet Flanner, A.J. Libeling, Joseph Mitchell, Roger Angell, and Janet Malcolm who later became his wife.
Sprinkled throughout this entertaining narrative are Botsford’s rules of editing and a number of humorous anecdotes. One of my favorites related to Iphigene Sulzberger, wife of the publisher of The New York Times. At an advanced age, Mrs. Sulzberger liked to take a walk in the neighborhood but often found the need to use a restroom. Fortunately it was easy to use the facilities at the Frank Campbell funeral home. One day, as she was leaving, a staff member asked her to sign the visitation book for someone who had recently died. Mrs. Sulzberger didn’t know the person but did as she was told. She later received a check for $5,000 because the deceased had provided in her will for such a sum to be paid to anyone who visited her coffin.
For most of his career, Botsford had a mutually respectful and collaborative relationship with William Shawn, long-time editor of The New Yorker, and he provides an entertaining description of the atmosphere in working with Shawn, others on staff, and the talented and often eccentric and hard-drinking writers for the magazine. Only at the end does Botsford’s account take a negative turn in which writers with whom he has worked begin to suffer mental deterioration and then his relationship with Shawn itself is destroyed. It’s hardly unusual for the last years of a rewarding career to end on a negative note. Unfortunately that also holds true for this book which has been entertaining to read up until the last few pages.
A fully-lived, remarkable life makes for a good memoir, and one laced with humor is even better. Gardner Botsford begins his with an account of being drafted into the army in World War II.
Despite an affluent background that included prep school Hotchkiss, Yale, travel in luxury around the world, and fluency in French, Botsford faced in 1943 at the induction center a bored clerk who promptly classified him to the infantry. In the author’s telling (probably apocryphal), a sergeant reviews the paperwork saying, “You goofed on this one. But what the hell, let it go.” That is a story to which many who entered the army as a draftee can relate.
Botsford becomes an infantry officer with the First Division, landing under heavy fire on Omaha Beach on D-Day as soldiers around him are killed or wounded. His job is to connect with the French Resistance but his fluency in French causes him to trust a French peasant who is harboring a German sniper. A day later another GI, not encumbered by being able to communicate in French, searches the house and is killed when he discovers the enemy.
Botsford goes on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, is wounded twice, and receives the Bronze Star. In between, he sneaks into Paris as one of the first Americans to enter the city. At the end of the war, he is one of two Americans to arrive in Prague and has to decide what to do when the Germans wish to surrender to him.
Only after recounting his wartime experience does the author reveal the affluent background in which he was raised, the beneficiary of two families of exceptional wealth. In New York City, the family townhouse had eight servants for a family of five. Summers were spent on Long Island or in France. After graduation, he and a friend from Yale set off for an around the world trip staying in the most expensive hotels even as war loomed on the horizon.
Botsford’s stepfather, Raoul Fleischmann, had bankrolled The New Yorker, and after leaving Yale he got a job there — only to be fired when Harold Ross who had founded the magazine got in a dispute with Fleischmann. Rehired in 1942 by William Shawn, managing editor under Ross, Botsford was soon after off to war.
Returning to The New Yorker after discharge, Botsford became one of its most powerful editors, working with Janet Flanner, A.J. Libeling, Joseph Mitchell, Roger Angell, and Janet Malcolm who later became his wife.
Sprinkled throughout this entertaining narrative are Botsford’s rules of editing and a number of humorous anecdotes. One of my favorites related to Iphigene Sulzberger, wife of the publisher of The New York Times. At an advanced age, Mrs. Sulzberger liked to take a walk in the neighborhood but often found the need to use a restroom. Fortunately it was easy to use the facilities at the Frank Campbell funeral home. One day, as she was leaving, a staff member asked her to sign the visitation book for someone who had recently died. Mrs. Sulzberger didn’t know the person but did as she was told. She later received a check for $5,000 because the deceased had provided in her will for such a sum to be paid to anyone who visited her coffin.
For most of his career, Botsford had a mutually respectful and collaborative relationship with William Shawn, long-time editor of The New Yorker, and he provides an entertaining description of the atmosphere in working with Shawn, others on staff, and the talented and often eccentric and hard-drinking writers for the magazine. Only at the end does Botsford’s account take a negative turn in which writers with whom he has worked begin to suffer mental deterioration and then his relationship with Shawn itself is destroyed. It’s hardly unusual for the last years of a rewarding career to end on a negative note. Unfortunately that also holds true for this book which has been entertaining to read up until the last few pages.
March 19, 2024
Lobstergirl’s review sums it up nicely. I would just add a few notes.
Botsford's style is breezy to a fault. The book feels weirdly organized, or simply not organized much beyond starting in the middle of his life, jumping back, then jumping forward. It took me a while to get into the book, and the first part is the exciting bit - on the front lines in WWII. But Botsford really did not engage me until he came to decsribe his mother in the next section. I have a feeling she was much more intersting to him than some pesky Nazis trying to kill everyone in sight and remake civilization in their own image.
Botsford races through his experiences in the army (compare this to James Salter in Burning the Days) and he reports only one significant impact, briefly noted, they had on him, his PTSD manifested, in and out of the office, as physical anger management issues he had to learn to tame. However, by putting his army experiences first in the memoir, he gains a gravitas he might not have if he had started chronologically. Despite that, once Botsford is back in New York and ensconced at The New Yorker, where he would work over 30 years, his light touch marches steadfastly into what reads like a bloodbath of revenge and retribution.
He does not have much time for the Old Guard at The New Yorker. Ross and Thurber are pigenonholed as misguided and overrated. He takes A. J. Liebling down a peg or two, despite their sharing a front row seat to the Normandy invasion, complaining about Liebling's messy first drafts.
He clearly admires Janet Flanner and lays down a good case for his respect. That she is a variation of his mother is left to the reader to discern. Similarly, Joseph Mitchell is deified and untouchable. But the real hero of this book is Maeve Brennan.
In fact, a lengthy letter from Maeve to Botsford, quoted what seems like in full, decsribing a drunken Christmas dinner starring Jean Stafford, offers the most insight into his time, and perhaps the time of all the major players, at The New Yorker. I am a fan of Brennan and this tribute by Botsford only increased my admiration. Her ending is deeply felt and you feel Botsford's heart breaking to tell it.
At this point the book threatens to become a dirge of strange and sad ends. But then Botsford launches into one of his main goals in writing this memoir: setting the record straight, tackling Shawn and what really happened when Botsford almost became the editor of The New Yorker. This extended section of the book left a bad taste in my mouth. I think that's because the broader context of the events is narrowed to office politics and the paranoia running rampant amongst the magazine staff is finally pegged on the gossipy activities of Shawn's lover, Lilian Ross. The books ends there and that puzzled me.
Maybe I just took it the wrong way. Maybe these are details about writers I love and admire I just did not want to know. Maybe Botsford's memoir is a gaunlet thrown down for all readers, but challenging me to keep respecting them. Challenge accepted.
Botsford's style is breezy to a fault. The book feels weirdly organized, or simply not organized much beyond starting in the middle of his life, jumping back, then jumping forward. It took me a while to get into the book, and the first part is the exciting bit - on the front lines in WWII. But Botsford really did not engage me until he came to decsribe his mother in the next section. I have a feeling she was much more intersting to him than some pesky Nazis trying to kill everyone in sight and remake civilization in their own image.
Botsford races through his experiences in the army (compare this to James Salter in Burning the Days) and he reports only one significant impact, briefly noted, they had on him, his PTSD manifested, in and out of the office, as physical anger management issues he had to learn to tame. However, by putting his army experiences first in the memoir, he gains a gravitas he might not have if he had started chronologically. Despite that, once Botsford is back in New York and ensconced at The New Yorker, where he would work over 30 years, his light touch marches steadfastly into what reads like a bloodbath of revenge and retribution.
He does not have much time for the Old Guard at The New Yorker. Ross and Thurber are pigenonholed as misguided and overrated. He takes A. J. Liebling down a peg or two, despite their sharing a front row seat to the Normandy invasion, complaining about Liebling's messy first drafts.
He clearly admires Janet Flanner and lays down a good case for his respect. That she is a variation of his mother is left to the reader to discern. Similarly, Joseph Mitchell is deified and untouchable. But the real hero of this book is Maeve Brennan.
In fact, a lengthy letter from Maeve to Botsford, quoted what seems like in full, decsribing a drunken Christmas dinner starring Jean Stafford, offers the most insight into his time, and perhaps the time of all the major players, at The New Yorker. I am a fan of Brennan and this tribute by Botsford only increased my admiration. Her ending is deeply felt and you feel Botsford's heart breaking to tell it.
At this point the book threatens to become a dirge of strange and sad ends. But then Botsford launches into one of his main goals in writing this memoir: setting the record straight, tackling Shawn and what really happened when Botsford almost became the editor of The New Yorker. This extended section of the book left a bad taste in my mouth. I think that's because the broader context of the events is narrowed to office politics and the paranoia running rampant amongst the magazine staff is finally pegged on the gossipy activities of Shawn's lover, Lilian Ross. The books ends there and that puzzled me.
Maybe I just took it the wrong way. Maybe these are details about writers I love and admire I just did not want to know. Maybe Botsford's memoir is a gaunlet thrown down for all readers, but challenging me to keep respecting them. Challenge accepted.
Read
February 4, 2024shaking it up a little and reading a memoir by an American rich person! really loved hearing about the politics of working at the new yorker. less interested in the war stories, but they were engagingly written, and that's obviously my bizarre personal taste (taking normandy=eh; getting mad about a comma=love)
February 26, 2018
Even D-Day and work at the post-war New Yorker couldn't get this one to pop. Mildly interesting at times, but mostly dull.
March 21, 2019
Botsford seemed to have had an exceedingly good war. I wonder how it would hold up under further scrutiny?
June 21, 2023
Very interesting story of a blue blood young man finding his way through WW2 and adopting to postwar US.
April 22, 2025
Fascinating beginning (WW2) and middle but so draggy at the end. Too bad. Needed more editing.
January 31, 2026
A fabulous read! Loved how he shared so many interesting and funny stories.
December 11, 2010
A memoir by a former "The New Yorker" editor which starts during his WW II days and then goes back to the beginning of his life and skips to the magazine years. Mildly interesting to me, mostly for glimpses of famous people he knew. I suspect Botsford was a better editor than writer.
January 15, 2014
Found out about this memoir while reading My Mistake by Daniel Menaker. They both worked at the New Yorker. Dan was right about Botsford's writing style. A very charming raconteur and a charming and interesting book.
January 20, 2016
This memoir of a New Yorker editor is filled with good WWII stories--he hit the beaches on D-Day--and dish on the some of the best writers and editors ever. It bogs down a bit at the end with a minute recounting of end of his and William Shawn's careers, but still a good read.
August 9, 2010
REALLY ENJOYED THIS
March 7, 2011
Brilliant bits. And hard to care about bits.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews