'Receptionist' Janet Groth recalls her days at The New Yorker from 1957-1978

Writer Janet Groth recalls her days working as a receptionist at the New Yorker from 1957 to 1978.

3. Dinner with Joseph Mitchell

Groth got to know mythic New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell extremely well during her time at the New Yorker and, after talking with him on the subway one night by chance, began soon after to have lunch with him every Friday, a tradition that lasted until she left the magazine. "[His] hair silvered early and seemed to go with his impeccable tailoring and courtly southern manners," she wrote. Once, Groth, Mitchell, and the New Yorker writer Abbott Joseph Liebling went to a seafood restaurant where food was often presented exactly as it had been caught. "They thought it great fun to see me squirm as the waiter brought their order for me," Groth wrote. "Baby squid prepared in its own ink, a hairy concoction that seemed to sprout seaweed and feelers and eyes. Everything at the Red Devil got served in its own ink, or its own shell, or with its spine and bones intact."

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