A.J. Liebling
A.J. Liebling (
October 18,
1904 -
December 28,
1963) was an
American journalist who was closely associated with
The New Yorker from 1935 until his death. He was one of the best-known, most entertaining, and most widely admired journalists of his generation in the United States.
Liebling was born
Abbott Joseph Liebling into a well-off family in
Manhattan's Upper East Side, where his father worked in New York's fur industry. His mother was from
San Francisco. After early schooling in New York, Liebling was admitted to
Dartmouth College in the fall of 1920. He left Dartmouth without graduating, later claiming he was "thrown out for missing compulsory chapel attendance". He then enrolled in the
School of Journalism at
Columbia University. After finishing there, he began his career as a journalist at the
Evening Bulletin of
Providence, Rhode Island. He worked briefly in the sports department of the
New York Times, fired for listing the name "Ignoto" (Italian for "unknown") as the referee in results of games.
In 1926, Liebling's father asked if he would like to suspend his career as a journalist to study in Paris for a year.
I sensed my father's generous intention, Liebling replied, and, fearing that he might change his mind, I told him that I didn't feel I should go, since I was indeed thinking of getting married. "The girl is ten years older than I am," I said, "and Mother might think she is kind of fast, because she is being kept by a cotton broker from Memphis, Tennessee, who only comes North once in a while. But you are a man of the world, and you understand that a woman can't always help herself...." Within the week, I had a letter of credit on the Irving Trust for two thousand dollars, and a reservation on the old Caronia for late in the summer, when the off-season rates would be in effect. [Source: The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, p. 54.]
Thus in summer 1926, Liebling sailed to
Europe where he studied French medieval literature at the
Sorbonne in
Paris. Although he stayed for little more than a year, this interval inspired a life-long love for France and the French, later renewed in his war reporting. He returned to Providence in autumn 1927 to write for the
Journal. He then moved to New York, where he proceeded to campaign for a job on
Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World, which carried the work of
James M. Cain and
Walter Lippmann and was known at the time as 'the writer's paper.' In order to attract the attention of the city editor, James W. Barrett, Liebling hired an out-of-work Norwegian seaman to walk for three days outside the Pulitzer Building, on Park Row, wearing sandwich boards that read
Hire Joe Liebling. [Source: The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, p. 54.] He wrote for the
World (1930-31) and the
World-Telegram (1931-1935). He married Mary Anne Quinn in 1934 despite knowledge of her schizophrenia; she was often hospitalized during their marriage.
Liebling joined
The New Yorker in 1935. His best pieces from the late thirties are collected in
Back Where I Came From (1938) and
The Telephone Booth Indian (1942).
During
World War II, Liebling was active as a war correspondent, filing many stories from
Africa,
England, and
France. His war began when he flew to Europe in October 1939 to cover its early battles, lived in Paris until June 10, 1940, and then returned to the United States until July 1941, when he flew to Britain. He sailed to Algeria in November 1942 to cover the fighting on the
Tunisian front (January to May 1943). His articles from these days are collected in
The Road Back to Paris (1944). He participated in the
Normandy landings on
D Day, and he wrote a memorable piece concerning his experiences on a landing craft. He afterwards spent two months in Normandy and Brittany, and was with the
Allied forces when they entered
Paris. He wrote afterwards: "For the first time in my life and probably the last, I have lived for a week in a great city where everybody was happy." Liebling was awarded the Cross of the
Légion d'honneur by the French government for his war reporting.
Following the war he returned to regular magazine fare and for many years after he wrote a
New Yorker monthly feature called "Wayward Press", in which he analyzed the US press. Liebling was also an avid fan of
boxing,
horse racing and food, and frequently wrote about these subjects. In 1947 he published
The Wayward Pressman, a collection of his writings from
The New Yorker and other publications. During the late forties, he vigorously criticized the
House Un-American Activities Committee, became friends with
Alger Hiss, divorced his first wife, and married Lucille Spectorsky in 1949. (He was later to divorce again, and marry author
Jean Stafford in 1959.)
In 1961, Liebling published
The Earl of Louisiana, originally published as a series of articles in
The New Yorker in which he covered the trials and tribulations of the governor of
Louisiana,
Earl K. Long, the younger brother of the Louisiana politician
Huey Long.
Liebling died on December 28, 1963, and was buried in the Green River Cemetery,
East Hampton, New York. His papers are archived at
Cornell University.
In 2002,
Sports Illustrated named his
The Sweet Science the best sports book of all time.
Liebling is remembered for many quotes and aphorisms, such as:
*"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
*"People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news."
*"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."
His writing was often memorable, as was his eating, and he nicely combined the two passions in
Between Meals (1962), of which the following extract gives a taste:
In the restaurant on the Rue Saint-Augustin, M. Mirande [Parisian actor and gourmand
Yves Mirande] would dazzle his juniors, French and American, by dispatching a lunch of raw Bayonne ham and fresh figs, a hot sausage in crust, spindles of filleted pike in a rich rose sauce Nantua, a leg of lamb larded with anchovies, artichokes on a pedestal of foie gras, and four or five kinds of cheese, with a good bottle of Bordeaux and one of champagne, after which he would call for the Armagnac and remind Madame to have ready for dinner the larks and ortolans she had promised him, with a few langoustes and a turbot no more '34s and hardly any '37s. Last week, I had to offer my publisher a bottle that was far too good for him, simply because there was nothing between the insulting and the superlative."
*
Back Where I Came From - 1938
*
The Telephone Booth Indian - 1942
*
The Road Back to Paris - 1944
*
The Wayward Pressman - 1947
*
Mink and Red Herring: The Wayward Pressman's Casebook - 1949
*
Chicago: The Second City - 1952
*
The Honest Rainmaker: The Life and Times of Colonel John R. Stingo - 1953
*
The Sweet Science - 1956
*
Normandy Revisited - 1958
*
The Press - 1961
*
The Earl of Louisiana - 1961
*
Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris - 1962
*
Mollie and Other War Pieces - 1964 (posthumous)
A collection of his writing was published in
2004 as
Just Enough Liebling (ISBN 0374104436).
*
"A.J. Liebling's Delectable Political Jambalaya", by Jonathan Yardley, 20 January, 2004,
The Washington Post*
The Church of Liebling: The uncritical worshippers of America's best press critic*
"Not quite enough A.J. Liebling" by Allen Barra, Salon.com, Sept. 23, 2004
