Angell

It's the birthday of writer and editor Roger Angell (books by this author), born in New York (1920). His mother and stepfather were well known in the literary world — Katharine Sergeant Angell, the longtime New Yorker fiction editor, and E.B. White, the essayist and children's author — but Angell attributes his earliest cultural education to his father, a lawyer who hired a grad student to tutor the 11-year-old Angell by reading progressive magazines and watching silent film. It was what inspired him, perhaps, to sneak out of gym class to go to the movies two or three times a week in his early teens, which he claims taught him storytelling. Of course, he learned a thing or two about the writer's life from watching his stepfather working on deadline for The New Yorkereach week, when — as Angell told New York Magazine — White would send his column off at the end of a long day with the proclamation, "It isn't good enough." The New Yorker's constant presence in Angell's childhood had another side effect: He memorized the caption for every cartoon the magazine had published in its existence, at that point about seven or eight years. But it wasn't until his mother had retired from the magazine, after Angell had been the editor of the Air Force's weekly brief while stationed in the Pacific, and after he'd been an editor for Holidaymagazine, that The New Yorker finally called him home in 1956. He's worked there ever since. Although today he's best known for writing about baseball, a career trajectory he attributes not to intention but to a fan's enthusiasm for the game, Angell has also served as a fiction editor since his first day on the job, editing writers like John Updike, Woody Allen, and many others. He's also written the magazine's annual Christmas poem, a longstanding and humorous tradition, since 1976. Angell has published a number of collections of his articles; he was 79 when he published his first full-length book, A Pitcher's Story. His most recent, Let Me Finish, collects personal essays on his childhood, service in WWII, and, of course, his storied career. He's said, "Experienced writers know that what they've done can always be better; a book is just something you had to let go of in the end." And, comparing books and baseball, he's said, "... each have formal chapters. There are wonderful beginnings that don't stand up and boring beginnings that are great in the end. You just don't know. They're both, baseball and reading, for people who aren't afraid of being bored."