The New York Times
Bandbox is slight but enjoyable, with enough sweet froth to put a mustache on the most finicky sipper. Readers who know little or nothing of the tempestuous teapot struggles in the New York magazine world will be gratified by the period detail as well as the pace. — Sven Birkerts
The New Yorker
Mallon’s fizzy new novel is set at a men’s magazine during the Jazz Age—and a raging newsstand war. The aging but irrepressible Jehoshaphat Harris has made Bandbox into a roaring success, but now his right-hand man has left to start a rival magazine and the future of Harris’s venture is in jeopardy. As photo shoots go awry, profile subjects go berserk, and writers go on benders—some things don’t change—the novel, like its main character, never lets the energy flag. Mallon, in his other books, has gravitated toward previous eras out of an affinity for something like reticence. “Bandbox,” then, is a real departure: antic, stylized, and up-tempo. The dialogue has a Kaufman-and-Hart crackle, and the story boasts more lotharios, floozies, mobsters, and wised-up dames than an M-G-M double feature.
The Washington Post
Given the variety of Thomas Mallon's previous books, it seems to me very unlikely we'll be hearing this jazzy voice from him again anytime soon. Let us relish it while we have it. Bandbox is delicious. — Donald E. Westlake
Publishers Weekly
A new, gleeful exuberance infuses Mallon's latest novel, in which he turns his talent for fastidious historical detail (Dewey Defeats Truman, etc.) to the elaboration of a comedy of errors set in Manhattan during the 1920s. Bandbox is the name of a successful monthly magazine for men, the first and best of its kind until the recent defection of its star editor, Jimmy Gordon, to establish the rival Cutaway. The narrative centers on the cutthroat competition between the two magazines, a suspenseful battle in which two Bandbox editors secretly defect to the other magazine, providing inside information that allows Jimmy to scoop his old boss and win the ratings game. The narrative is a tad slow getting started, since Mallon must introduce each name on the masthead and succinctly describe their various duties. All his characters are colorful and fully dimensional, however, especially Bandbox's aging editor-in-chief, Jehoshaphat (variously Joe, or Phat) Harris, who seems closely modeled on the legendary Harold Ross of the New Yorker. In addition to the magazine staff, there's a Hollywood star chosen to be the subject of a cover story. She's a foul-mouthed nymphomaniac called Rosemary La Roche, who trails chaos in her wake. Mallon adroitly establishes the atmosphere of the Jazz Age, dropping such names as Al Jolson, Leopold and Loeb, President Coolidge, George M. Cohan and the crime boss Arnold Rothstein. The latter is a pivotal character, because when his goons kidnap a kid from Indiana who has come to New York because he idolizes Bandbox, the plot acquires the elements of a thriller. Prohibition, police corruption, a court trial, in-house intrigue, the narcotics trade, animal rights, two gentle romances and several surprise revelations propel the plot, not to mention one of the best features Mallon's ability to convey the deadline-obsessed mentality of a monthly magazine. Mallon has never before employed his wit and humor to such good effect; he writes with comic brio, indulging in clever repartee and nimble farce. To quote the closing sentence: "What do we do for an encore?" (Jan. 6) Forecast: Prominent coverage (reviewers will relish the period publishing world setting) and Mallon's unusually lighthearted approach should make this one of the author's best-selling titles. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
This comic novel by Mallon (Dewey Defeats Truman; Mrs. Paine's Garage) whirls around the no-holds-barred struggle between a veteran magazine editor and his one-time prot g in Prohibition New York City. In one corner is Joe Harris, the aging, oft-"sazzled" king of Bandbox, a once-moribund lifestyle book ("an overpriced rag for overaged pansies") that he rescued with a proven formula of "clothes and journalism"; in the other corner is the rising young Jimmy Gordon, beating Harris at his own roughhouse game running the copycat Cutaway. As the two battle for advertisers, a universe of secondary characters (the lothario "Bachelor's Life" columnist, an animal-loving, abduction-prone copy editor) revolves tightly around their patricidal struggle. The colorfully hectic scenes and wiseass talk make this novel less like Mallon's previous work and more reminiscent of the snappy movie comedies of Preston Sturgess or Ben Hecht. Mallon, who served in the 1980s as GQ's literary editor under the Harris-like Art Cooper, has written a quirky, stylish entertainment whose characters feast on the culture's surface-at a time when there was much to feast on. For all fiction collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/03.]-Nathan Ward, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Manhattan period melodrama, handled with roguish finesse. The byzantine plot begins with a daringly extended exposition in which Mallon, author of other historically based fiction (Henry and Clara, 1994; Dewey Beats Truman, 1997, etc.), introduces nearly two dozen characters. Foremost is Jehoshaphat "Joe" Harris, world-weary editor-in-chief of the struggling men's monthly magazine Bandbox (think Esquire), in a death struggle with rival publication Cutaway, edited by Harris's semi-scrupulous former employee Jimmy Gordon. The time is the mid-1920s. Journalists and their molls talk tough, drink hard, and mingle with such varied celebs as (fictional) film seductress Rosemary La Roche and (historical) crime boss Arnold Rothstein. Harris's bibulous vaudeville reporter "Cuddles" Houlihan pines for his lissome-and plucky-gal assistant Becky Walter. Suave columnist Stuart Newman disgraces Bandbox in a drunken meeting with president Calvin Coolidge. Smoldering photographer's model Waldo Lyndstrom's bisexual misadventures necessitate payoffs to police. Novelist-columnist Max Stanwick (a razor-sharp caricature of bon vivant Ben Hecht) moves in and out of criminous environments with Cagney-like aplomb. An animal-loving fact-checker sets out to rescue animals stashed in unsafe conditions for use by a phlegmatic staff photographer. A rigged fiction contest threatens to topple the magazine's credibility. And when Bandbox subscriber dewy-eyed Indianan John Shepard arrives in NYC and meets his raffish journalistic gods, an indiscreet remark prompted by his overindulgence in "near-beer" gets the kid kidnapped by Rothstein's goons and spirited away to a California ranch. Somehow Harris's feisty mag survivesthis "swirl of plagiarism, narcotics-selling . . . public drunkenness" and other embarrassments. Lost are found, lovers united, and Jehoshaphat trumps the ineffably slimy Gordon and lives to fight another day. Bandbox pulses with a comic energy and detail reminiscent of T.C. Boyle at his most entertainingly manic: it's a wonderful ride, and a quantum leap beyond Mallon's earlier fiction. Ragtime in double-time.
