New York Stories edited by Bob Blaisdell

New York Stories is a sophisticated, stunning book published last October by Dover Publications about New York City picking up 14  prestigious writers for telling to the readers "their"  New York City. The book is edited by Bob Blaisdell.
We will meet Herman Melville in a short-tale Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street able to let us show again and another time where possible all his writing abilities; a sophisticated Edith Warthon, while I found absolutely wonderful P.G. Wodehouse in a wonderful, so smiling, funny, hilarious adventure of Bertie, his friend Rocky and Jeeves, Bertie's precious butler.
This time the problem is this one: Rocky's aunt (in most cases it's an aunt's problem in P.G.Wodehouse's adventures) wants to leave all her money to her affectionate nephew Rocky, but Rocky is desperate when one day in the late morning visits Bertie, still to bed. Bertie had still to drink his first cup of tea, eating his bread with butter and jam, you know and he was in a bad mood because of the unexpected arrival of his friend.
Rocky appears desperate: the dear relative asks him to go to NYC, all expenses paid by the lady plus the extras, enjoying the wonderful cosmopolitan life of the city, asking him just to reporting her all the latest novelties from the Big Apple via letter.

Now: Rocky writes a poem every several months published somewhere, what he loves to do the most is spending his time to bed in pajamas since at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, in his beloved British  rural countryside. Affording to NYC, from UK appears like a sacrilege. He wouldn't have proper dresses,  he doesn't want to have anything to do after all with the mundane life of NYC.

Someone must do this sacrifice for him: Jeeves and Bertie accept all happy and cheerful to afford to New York City for this unusual and unexpected vacation reporting to Rocky what they are seeing and what they are enjoying. Rocky writes beautiful letters in the while to the aunt. So beauty that at a certain point Rocky's aunt will appear to NYC destroying in part their plans.
I just can tell you I laughed from the beginning to the end.
Mythical Wodehouse!

In the book also a short tale of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, O. Henry, Stephen Crane, and many more!

I surely thank NetGalley and Dover for this ebook!

 

Anna Maria Polidori