The Guest List

When you grow up with a sister who successfully conceived and produced a one-woman play about Dorothy Parker, you tend to take notice of new books that partially examine the Algonquin Round Table. So when writer Ethan Mordden recently released his book, The Guest List: How Manhattan Defined American Sophistication—from the Algonquin Round Table to Truman Capote’s Ball, my pop culture radar was alerted. Mordden’s book is summarized (by its publisher, St. Martin’s Press) as: “From the 1920s to the early 1960s, Manhattan was America’s beacon of sophistication. From the theatres of Broadway to the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel to tables at the Stork Club, intelligence and wit were the twinned coins of the realm. Alexander Woolcott, Irving Berlin, Edna Ferber, Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, the Lunts and Helen Hayes presided over the town. Their books, plays, performances, speeches, dinner parties, masked balls, loves, hates, likes and dislikes became the aspirations of a nation. If you wanted to be sophisticated, you played by Manhattan’s rules. If you didn’t, you simply weren’t on the guest list. The Heartland rebelled against Manhattan’s dictum, but never prevailed. In this lively cultural history, Mordden chronicles the city’s most powerful and influential era.” Mordden was kind enough to do a brief email interview. To get a better idea of the book’s perspective, make sure to read this excerpt provided by the publisher.
Ethan Mo

Tim O’Shea: In book loaded with great anecdotes and details, written by an author like yourself with a wealth of knowledge, how do you decide what great stories to include or exclude?

Ethan Mordden: I like stories that illuminate the subject: enjoyable but telling. For example, almost any Dorothy Parker story, however funny, reveals her despair at being too smart and not pretty enough, a real problem in her day, though much has changed since.

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