Friends, Writers, and Other Countrymen: A Memoir

Sidney Offit was the man. He was there. And now Manhattan’s keenest anecdotist invites the reader to the party of his lifetime. For more than a half century he has interacted with one public figure after another, and now recounts to our utter glee, what he saw, did, and heard. Offit pushes the reader–already satiated–to the greedy expectation after each chapter of, who’s next?

Mixing with a remarkable and diverse crowd, led Sidney to run-ins and adventures with Truman Capote ( What kind of guy are you? ), Jackie Kennedy (in a corner), Kurt Vonnegut (who identified Sidney as his best friend ), the incomparable Toni Morrison, and other bards, muses, and just plain folk. Their conversations are recalled with gentle humor and a keen eye for a New York where casual and spontaneous encounters may shape what the country reads or where a stroll around the corner can change a life..

Sidney Offit’s charming memoir of a writer’s life ingeniously reflects some of the greatest (and most infamous) literary, political, and sports personalities of our century. His early days in Baltimore (where he met H. L. Mencken and entertained Robert Frost) are as engaging as his later encounters with Dylan Thomas, John Steinbeck, Pablo Neruda, Heinrich Boell, and some of the era’s greatest ballplayers: Robinson, Mantle, Mays, and Williams.