Discover the Best Books Written by Veronica Geng
Veronica Geng (January 10, 1941 – December 24, 1997) was an American fiction writer, critic, and magazine editor. Geng was an influential and acclaimed humorist who typically wrote short stories and essays. The Los Angeles Times called her "a brilliant contributor to The New Yorker and the quirky dark lady of Manhattan's literary scene, celebrated for her deadpan essays and revolving-door sex life." The New York Times said that Geng "carried on in the tradition of S.J. Perelman."
Starting in the early 1970s, Geng reviewed books for The New York Times for many years; during this time, she also wrote for the Village Voice. Her parody of The New Yorker's film critic Pauline Kael, published in The New York Review of Books in 1975, caught the eye of Roger Angell, a New Yorker fiction editor. (He later called Geng "the hardest person he ever had to edit.") Geng began writing for The New Yorker in 1976 and became an assistant fiction editor.
Geng's work typically included elements of satire and parody, with allusions to both high culture and popular culture. Critics praised her humor pieces for their unusual coupling of subjects and control of style, e.g., the Watergate Tapes, reviewed by a hip Rolling Stone critic, or a sitcom about the young Henry James.
"Her thing was high, intellectual comedy," noted Charles McGrath, another New Yorker editor. The writer Kurt Andersen said Geng's pieces "felt as if they were created in a laboratory or an institute for advanced studies.” In About Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made, the author Ben Yagoda described her later writings as "subtle to the point of unintelligibility."