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Lillian Ross

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The Resume

    (June 8, 1918-September 20, 2017)
    Born in Syracuse, New York
    Birth name was Lilian Rosovsky
    Writer for ‘The New Yorker’ (1945-87,1992-2011)
    Wrote the books ‘Portrait of Hemingway’ (1961), ‘Picture’ (1962), ‘Here But Not Here: A Love Story’ (1998), ‘Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism’ (2002) and ‘Reporting Always: Writing for the New Yorker’ (2015

Why she might be annoying:

    She tried to shave nearly a decade off her age and claim 1927 as her year of birth (making her, rather implausibly, a teen contributor to ‘The New Yorker.’).
    She conducted a 40-year affair with ‘New Yorker’ editor William Shawn while he was married.
    She revealed the details of their affair in ‘Here But Not Here,’ which she published while Shawn’s widow Cecille was still alive.
    Asked if she had considered the book’s impact on Mrs. Shawn, she replied, ‘That isn’t the way one thinks when one is a writer. You don’t think what the impact is going to be on other people.’
    Other ‘New Yorker’ staffers considered her memoir a betrayal of the Shawns. (Writer Jeremy Bernstein: ‘A deeply hurtful, self-indulgent, tasteless book that should never have been written at all’; editor Charles McGrath: ‘A tasteless example of the current avidity for tell-all confessions.’)

Why she might not be annoying:

    Her book ‘Picture’ has been called the first ‘non-fiction novel,’ having preceded the other pioneering works in the genre -- Truman Capote’s ‘In Cold Blood’ and Norman Mailer’s ‘Armies of the Night’ – by five years.
    James Thurber called her ‘the girl with the built-in tape recorder’ for her uncanny ear for dialogue.’
    Irving Wallace said she was a master ‘of capturing the one moment that entirely illuminates the scene, of fastening on the one quote that tells all.’
    In the 1990s, ‘New Yorker’ editor Susan Morrison said, ‘She was the oldest and also most energetic writer at my disposal.’
    Asked about her comment that the pleasure she got from writing was equal to that from sex, she replied, ‘It’s true. And it lasts longer.’

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 5 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 9 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 91 Votes: 62.64% Annoying