9780312422851
Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody share button
Ian Frazier
Format Paperback
Dimensions 5.48 (w) x 8.26 (h) x 0.50 (d)
Pages 192
Publisher Picador
Publication Date October 2003
ISBN 9780312422851
Book ISBN 10 0312422857
About Book

Nobody Better, Better Than Nobody is a collection of five extended essays that appeared in The New Yorker from 1978 to 1986. In the tradition of A. J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell, Ian Frazier raises journalism to high literary art. His vivid stories showcase a strange and wonderful parade of American life, from portraits of Heloise, the syndicated household-hints columnist, and Jim Deren, the urban fly-fisher’s guru, to small-town residents in western Kansas preparing to celebrate a historic, mutual massacre, to which they invite the Cheyenne Indians’ descendants with the promise of free bowling.

"Wonderfully dry and dull reporting. . .His remarkable powers of observation are set at full throttle."--New York Times

Reviews

From the Publisher

"Subtle...The unwary reader never knows what Frazier is up to until he's hooked." —The Boston Globe

"Wickedly funny...[A] rare combination of humor and empathy...More eloquent in their directness than poetry." —The New York Times

"Five extraordinary tales profiling people and events in the coolest, clearest, most wittily perceptive prose you’ll find anywhere these days." —Forbes

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Frazier (Dating Your Mom is a staff writer for the New Yorker; collected here are five of his articles that have appeared in the magazine since 1979. They are a masterly blend of detailed observation and subtle humor, perhaps best combined in the title story, a profile of Heloise, the syndicated household-hints columnist. The opening piece describes an unusual festival, the small Kansas town of Oberlin celebrating an anniversary with the descendants of Cheyenne Indians who raided the town in 1878. Frazier's love of fishing and the state of Montana are reflected in ``An Angler at Heart,'' a profile of an unusual purveyor of fishing tackle near New York's Grand Central Station, and ``Bear News,'' which tells almost as much about Frazier as about Montana's bears. The work of a true listener and observer, these reportings are Americana at its idiosyncratic best. (May 4)

Library Journal

Frazier is a reporter's reporter who makes you wish you'd said that in this collection of five articles published in the New Yorker since 1979. In ``Bear News'' he wants to know what bears smell like so he follows tracks backward to find a den ``so I could stick my nose inside.'' In the title piece, he buys socks and saves the hanger because ``it looked somehow special to me.'' He shows it to Heloise of ``Household Hints'' fame, and ``she reacted like an Audubon Society member spotting an indigo bunting at her bird feeder. '' His writing is clever, subtle, and caring, and his essays belong in any literature collection. In ``An Angler at Heart,'' he notes that ``fishing is worth any amount of expense to people who love it, because in the end you get such a large number of dreams per fish.'' Wish I'd said that. Jo Cates, Poynter Institute for Media Studies Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.

Booknews

Still sparkling, and worthy of a new edition, Frazier's 1987 work (Farrar Strauss) is reissued here with a new introduction by the author. The five essays were originally published in . Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.