Another Round at the Algonquin
Book Launch for Konrad Bercovici’s Newly Discovered Manuscript On May 9th, 6–9pm
Join us at the historic Algonquin Hotel (59 W 44th St.) for the launch of The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch, by acclaimed author, journalist, and Algonquinite Konrad Bercovici. Enjoy a night of readings, refreshments, and bon mots with the ghosts of Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and their famously caustic crowd.
The Algonquin Round Table is a story unto itself. The late author’s granddaughter, Mirana Comstock, discovered the unpublished manuscript in his papers. A writer herself, she subsequently wrote the foreword and served as editor of her grandfather’s work.
“Reading The Algonquin Round Table is such an intimate insider’s view, I feel as if I am lunching there with him,” she says. Indeed, Konrad Bercovici (1881–1961) was a Round Table regular and a brilliant, prolific author and journalist in his own right. The scribe of 40 books and hundreds of articles and short stories, screenplays and teleplays, he was heralded as “America’s master of the short story” and compared to Chekhov and Maupassant.
Konrad Bercovici’s newly discovered manuscript is more than a boon for scholars. It is also a fascinating look at this era for the casual reader.
Here’s Ben Hecht, writing at the speed of thought. Dorothy Parker, out-quipping the boys as she slings one-liners. Charles Laughton running lines in his room while Houdini practices his next great escape and Valentino fumes about a lack of on-premises fainting female fans.
Flitting through these pages you’ll also find Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks, and Hedy Lamarr, with additional cameos by Eugene O’Neill, H. L. Mencken, D. H. Lawrence, and William Faulkner.
The book highlights the Round Table regulars, but also the lesser lights and hangers on. Doubling as a behind-the-scenes biography of The Algonquin Hotel, it offers upstairs/downstairs glimpses of eccentric staffers and visionary owners whose spirit imbues the famous hotel to this day.
Packed with brilliant vignettes, this wonderful time capsule captures a bit of everything. Theater history converges with literary history as we meet the precursors of today’s media influencers.
So come, grab a drink, and relive the roaring decades when the Algonquin was the cultural landmark at the center of an incomparably urbane New York City scene.
(from the press release by Jesse Tisch)
