What a job! Janet Groth worked as a receptionist at The New Yorker for over twenty years, during the era of editor William Shawn. She worked with (and slept with) some of the magazine’s greatest contributors.

At first I was bored by the episodic nature of the chapters, each one outlining a relationship with a particular person she encountered by way the magazine. However, as the book went on, I began to recognize that Groth uses the relationships (and a whole lot of name-dropping) to show a larger transformation of her own character.

She kept the same job right through the women’s rights movement, never getting promoted and never getting properly compensated for her skills and experience. However, as she says at the end of the book while reflecting on all the perks, official and unofficial, of a job with The New Yorker, “it is not clear to me who was exploiting whom.”

I would recommend this to fans of Mad Men.