MAEVE BRENNAN left Ireland for America in 1934, when she was seventeen. In 1949, she joined the staff of The New Yorker, to which she contributed reviews, essays, and short stories. Her acclaimed works The Rose Garden, The Visitor, and The Springs of Affection are also available from Counterpoint. Maeve Brennan died in 1993 at the age of seventy–six.
“Brennan’s luminous writings graced The New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the
Town’ section for nearly 30 years . . . these ‘moments of
recognition,’ as she called them, are delicately crafted summonings
of a New York City that has mostly disappeared . . . Brennan
exemplifies what the old New Yorker was all about.” —Kirkus
Reviews
"This is another timely recommendation as a new edition of
Irish–born, Maeve Brennan's short story collection The Springs of
Affection has just been reprinted by the Dublin–based press
Stinging Fly. I'd definitely urge readers to seek this out too, but
personally I have a soft spot for her non–fiction. Between 1954 and
1968 Brennan supplied copy for The New Yorker's Talk of the Town
section under the fabulous pen name ‘The Long–Winded Lady'. Her
vignettes of Manhattan life combine the detachment of the flaneuse
with the lived experience of her own street–dwelling
subjects—especially poignant given Brennan became homeless towards
the end of her life and lived out of the ladies' bathroom at the
offices of the New Yorker." —BBC
"Of all the incomparable stable of journalists who wrote for The
New Yorker during its glory days in the Fifties and Sixties—AJ
Leibling, Joseph Mitchell, Lillian Ross and John McPhee are all
worth seeking out—the most distinctive was Irish–born Maeve
Brennan. Her keen–eyed observation of the minutiae of New York life
has been compared to Turgenev, but a closer parallel is Edward
Hopper . . . Anyone familiar with New York will enjoy a
transporting jolt of recognition from these pages. Looking back
from our own time, when it seems that every column has to be loaded
with hectoring opinion and egotistical preening, Brennan's stylish
scrutiny of minor embarrassments and small pleasures is as welcome
as a Dry Martini." —The Independent
"Every piece in this collection is as precise and as surprising as
"A Young Man with a Menu"; anyone who loves New York, The New
Yorker, or Maeve Brennan will savor The Long–Winded Lady." —Alix
Wilber
Praise for Maeve Brennan:
"[Brennan] has always been able to turn quite ordinary things into
‘moments of recognition . . . The accomplishment is
formidable—something few writers attempt without sounding precise,
dull, or both." —Time
"Maeve had a quickness of wit, a sharp tongue, and the gift of
style . . . Bitter, dazzling, talented, tenderhearted, intractable
Maeve!" —Brendan Gill
“Maeve Brennan . . . helped put New York back into The New Yorker,
and has written about the city of the sixties with both honesty and
affection . . . She is constantly alert, sharp-eyed as a sparrow
for the crumbs of human event, the overheard and the glimpsed and
the guessed at, that form a solitary city person’s least expensive
amusement.” —John Updike
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