Character Studies: Encounters with the Curiously Obsessed

Jeff MacGregor

In writing about small folks -- the stewbums and the dead-enders, the desperate pilgrims and the Bowery savants -- Mitchell found a way to write about us all. For more than 30 years, thread by thread, he wove an immense tapestry of New York. In his best work, which seemed to be the only work of which he was capable, the reader knew that some grand, elusive truth stood just around each corner. Most important, in all his subjects we found some resonant aspect of ourselves, because Mitchell's genius lay not in his painstaking devotion to craft, but in his subtle affection for the rest of us, in the astonishing wealth of his empathy.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Many, if not all, of the profiles in Singer's latest work (after Somewhere in America) are already lodged firmly in the memories of New Yorker readers, and not just because so many of his subjects-Donald Trump, Ricky Jay, Martin Scorsese-are so remarkable. In fact, it's often in the stories about lesser-known personalities, from a Japanese-American farming family that supplies California's hottest restaurants with their vegetables, to a convention of Tom Mix fans in Las Vegas, that Singer's talents, including his ability to seem at once sympathetic to and skeptical of his subjects, are most visible. While a remembrance of his colleague Joseph Mitchell, who famously spent his last three decades at the magazine without completing a new article, highlights Singer's more personal, introspective side, in most of these stories he's a semidetached observer: you never forget he's there, but your attention is never diverted from the main attraction. In an introduction, Singer describes his reporting as "sublimated voyeurism" and "cultural anthropology." The dual descriptions perfectly encapsulate his entertaining yet informative journalism, and the work itself places him at the head of the New Yorker's current team of staff writers. Agent, Jin Auh. (July 12) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Singer (Somewhere in America) here offers an entertaining mix of his portraits from The New Yorker, gathered in book form for the first time. In the essays he trains his skills on the likes of Martin Scorsese and Donald Trump; The Wednesday Group, the self-selected intelligentsia of El Paso; well-known bibliophile Michael Zinman; high-powered women who decide to quit the fast track; and Richard Seiverling, a Tom Mix fan determined to preserve the memory of the movie cowboy. It's quite a cast of characters, and Singer lavishly gives them all their due. Readers will chuckle at Singer's experiences with Trump-who was not pleased with the profile-and book lovers will enjoy Zinman's maneuvers through the ins and outs of the book business. Readers will certainly see a bit of themselves in the characters of this fascinating look at the many facets of American life. Recommended for all libraries.-Ron Ratliff, Kansas State Univ. Lib., Manhattan Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Eclectic, long-winded and occasionally diverting portraits by New Yorker staff writer Singer (Somewhere in America, 2004, etc.). The quirkier the subject the better in this reporter's book, although Singer is clearly not interested in his subjects per se but rather in what he unearths about them that will give him insider cachet. In the case of his tediously detailed study of the family-run vegetable farm in Del Mar, Calif., that supplies Wolfgang Puck's Spago restaurant, Singer's well-connected attentions win him an invitation from the owners to attend their matriarch's funeral back in Japan. "Secrets of the Magus," a rather cloying profile of famous sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay, merits reading for his in-the-know look at the craft and its historic practitioners. "Trump Solo," written in 1997, ensures that the real-estate mogul comes off as a self-absorbed blowhard by nailing his "gaseous blather." Singer likes Martin Scorsese a lot better, recording in "The Man Who Forgets Nothing" how "convincingly" the director repudiates his most graphically bloody depictions by declaring, "I'm not interested in violence that way anymore." The most worthwhile pieces here are the portraits of less famous people involved in compelling pursuits, such as Richard Seiverling, organizer of the Tom Mix Festival, and international book collector Michael Zinman. "Mom Overboard!" offers 1996 cameos that now seem largely cliched of overtaxed professional women on the mommy track. Occasionally, Singer's recondite searches take him where few readers care to tread, as in "La Cabeza de Villa," which recounts the Skull and Bones Society's claim to have Pancho Villa's skull in its Yale home. "Joe Mitchell'sSecret" delightfully treats a subject closer to home: deceased fellow New Yorker reporter Mitchell, author of Joe Gould's Secret, whose "urban peregrinations . . . delineated a romantic quest, the trajectory of a polite but persistent intimate affection."Peregrinations of a curious, harmless sort that time has rendered largely irrelevant.