Talk Stories

When I sat down to write the little introductory card I include in our Phinney by Post selections for what I had planned would be this month's choice—Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place (see below)—I realized the book of hers I really wanted to send out was this one, a collection of her first published work, when she got started writing Talk of the Town pieces for the New Yorker in the '70s and '80s. The subjects of the pieces are often the fluffiest of fluff—publicity luncheons for the most part—but you can watch her voice—and her playful restlessness with the form—develop. Best of all are the two introductory essays, one by Kincaid and one by her friend and New Yorker colleague Ian Frazier, that make their adventures as young writers in the city sound like the most appealing youth I can imagine.