SOURCE: "Harold Ross's 'New Yorker': Life as a Drawing-Room Comedy," in Commentary, Vol. 28, No. 2, August, 1959, pp. 122-27.

An American critic, Kramer is best known for his books and essays on modern art. In the following review of James Thurber's The Years with Ross, Kramer characterizes the work published in the New Yorker as essentially trivial and bland.

A few years ago when the art critic for the New Yorker went abroad to report on current art activities in London, Paris, and other European centers, I began receiving regular telephone calls, often several a week, from a zealous young man in that magazine's Checking Department. I confess that the first time the fellow introduced himself, I thought the Checking Department must be something like the Accounting Office and I couldn't imagine why he wanted to talk to me. When he made it clear that he was a kind of...