Ships from: acton, MA
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Ships from: Chicago, IL
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Out of the pages of America's most beloved magazine come eighty years of good cheer and inspiring emotions for the holidays-plus the occasional comical coal in the stocking-in one incomparable collection. Sublime and ridiculous, sentimental and searing, Christmas at The New Yorker is a gift of great writing and drawing by literary legends and laugh-out-loud cartoonists.
Here are seasonal stories, poems, memoirs and more, including such classics as John Cheever's 1949 story, Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor, about an elevator operator in an exclusive building who experiences the fickle power of charity . . . James Thurber's 1927 satire, A Visit to Saint Nicholas in the Hemingway Style ("It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren't even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them.") . . . and Richard Ford's acerbic and elegiac 1998 story, Creche, in which an unmarried Hollywood lawyer spends a wistful holiday with her sister's estranged husband and kids.
Here, too, are S. J. Perelman's 1936 Waiting for Santy, a playlet in the style of a Clifford Odets labor drama (the setting: "The sweatshop of Santa Claus, North Pole") and Vladimir Nabokov's heartbreaking 1975 story, Christmas, in which a father grieving for his lost son in a world "ghastly with sadness" sees a tiny miracle on Christmas Eve. And it wouldn't be Christmas-or The New Yorker-without dozens of cartoons by Addams, Arno, Chast and others, or a virtuoso Roger Angell carol or two ("Toss down a warm noggin with/Lauren Holly, Beverly Cleary/Christopher Reeve, and Timothy Leary.")
From Jazz Age to New Age, E.B. White to Garrison Keillor, these works represent nearly a century of wonderful keepsakes for Christmas, from The New Yorker to you.
Spend CHRISTMAS AT THE NEW YORKER with:
JOHN CHEEVER, Christmas is a Sad Season for the Poor
JOHN UPDIKE, Christmas Cards
H.L. MENCKEN, Stare Decisis (A Christmas Tale)
ALICE MUNRO, The Turkey Season
JAMES THURBER, A Visit from Santa in the Hemingway Style
KEN KESEY, Skid-row Santa
JOHN O'HARA, Christmas Poem
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Christmas
GARRISON KEILLOR, A Christmas Story
RICHARD FORD, Creche
E.B. WHITE, Comments
PETER DEVRIES, Flesh and the Devil
WILLIAM MAXWELL, Homecoming
KARL SHAPIRO, Christmas Eve
OGDEN NASH, All's Noel That Ends Noel
MARIANNE MOORE, Saint Nicholas
CALVIN TRILLIN, Christmas in Qatar
ROGER ANGELL, Greetings, Friends!
SALLY BENSON, Spirit of Christmas
Plus Talk of the Town and cartoons by CHARLES ADDAMS, PETER ARNO, ROZ CHAST, WILLIAM HAMILTON, EDWARD KOREN, GEORGE PRICE, J.J. SEMPE, EDWARD SOREL, ART SPIEGELMAN, WILLIAM STEIG, GAHAN WILSON, and many more
christmas in qatar
calvin trillin
(A new holiday classic, for those tiring of "White Christmas" and "Jingle Bells")
verse:
The shopping starts, and every store's a zoo.
I'm frantic, too: I haven't got a clue
Of what to get for Dad, who's got no hobby,
Or why Aunt Jane, who's shaped like a kohlrabi,
Wants frilly sweater sets, or where I'll .nd
A tie my loudmouthed Uncle Jack won't mind.
A shopper's told it's vital he prevails:
Prosperity depends on Christmas sales.
"Can't stop to talk," I say. "No time. Can't halt.
Economy could fail. Would be my fault."
chorus:
I'd like to spend next Christmas in Qatar,
Or someplace else that Santa won't .nd handy.
Qatar will do, although, Lord knows, it's sandy.
I need to get to someplace pretty far.
I'd like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.
verse:
Young Cousin Ned, his presents on his knees,
Says Christmas wrappings are a waste of trees.
Dad's staring, vaguely puzzled, at his gift.
And Uncle Jack, to give us all a lift,
Now tells a Polish joke he heard at work.
So Ned calls Jack a bigot and a jerk.
Aunt Jane, who knows that's true, breaks down and cries.
Then Mom comes out to help, and burns the pies.
Of course, Jack hates the tie. He'll take it back.
That's fair, because I hate my Uncle Jack.
I'd like to spend next Christmas in Tibet,
Or any place where folks cannot remember
That there is something special in December.
Tibet's about as far as you can get.
I'd like to spend next Christmas in Tibet.
verse:
Mom's turkey is a patriotic riddle:
It's red and white, plus bluish in the middle.
The blue's because the oven heat's not stable.
The red's from ketchup Dad snuck to the table.
Dad says he loves the eyeglass stand from me-
Unless a sock rack's what it's meant to be.
"A free-range turkey's best," Ned says. "It's pure."
"This hippie stuff," Jack says, "I can't endure."
They say goodbye, thank God. It's been a strain.
At least Jack's tie has got a ketchup stain.
chorus:
I'd like to spend next Christmas in Rangoon,
Or any place where Christmas is as noisy
As Buddhist holidays might be in Boise.
I long to hear Der Bingle smoothly croon,
"I'm dreaming of a Christmas in Rangoon"-
Or someplace you won't hear the Christmas story,
And reindeer's something eaten cacciatore.
I know things can't go on the way they are.
I'd like to spend next Christmas in Qatar.
Overview
Out of the pages of America's most beloved magazine come eighty years of good cheer and inspiring emotions for the holidays-plus the occasional comical coal in the stocking-in one incomparable collection. Sublime and ridiculous, sentimental and searing, Christmas at The New Yorker is a gift of great writing and drawing by literary legends and laugh-out-loud cartoonists.
Here are seasonal stories, poems, memoirs and more, including such classics as John Cheever's 1949 story, ...