Sidney Offit's charming memoir of a writer's life ingeniously reflects some of the greatest (and most infamous) literary, political, and sports personalities of our century. His early days in Baltimore (where he met H. L. Mencken and entertained Robert Frost) are as engaging as his later encounters with Dylan Thomas, John Steinbeck, Pablo Neruda, Heinrich Böll, and some of the era's greatest ballplayers: Robinson, Mantle, Mays, and Williams.
Mixing with a remarkable and diverse crowd, led Sidney to run-ins and adventures with Truman Capote ("What kind of guy are you?"), Jackie Kennedy (in a corner), Kurt Vonnegut (who identified Sidney as his "best friend"), the incomparable Toni Morrison, and other bards, muses, and just plain folk. Their conversations are recalled with gentle humor and a keen eye for a New York where casual and spontaneous encounters may shape what the country reads or where a stroll around the corner can change a life.
"What a wonderful book--as they say in Dublin, "I couldn't leave it down!" His novelist's eye, boundless generosity of spirit, and robust delight in the strenuous pleasures of metropolitan life are evident on every page of this irresistible memoir by a perennially youthful gentleman of letters."
Joel Connaroe, President Emeritus, J.S. Guggenheim Foundation
"Sidney Offit was the man. He was there.... For more than a half century Offit has interacted with one big cheese after another. And now he recounts to our utter glee, what he saw, did, and heard. Sid pushes the reader---already satiated---to the greedy expectation after each chapter of: who's next?"
Barry Beckham, author of My Main Mother
"It is possible that Sidney Offit knows more famous and interesting people than anyone else on earth, and what is more, has a funny and shrewdly observed story about each of them.... He is truly 20th Century New York City's answer to Samuel Pepys."
