Bill Manville's Saloon Society -- the Book!

October 6, 1960, Vol. V, No. 50

By Bill Manville

"Saloon Society: The Diary of a Year Beyond Aspirin" will be published next Friday, October 14, by Duell, Sloan and Pearce; and yet, I must confess, when the column began to run in The Voice exactly and coincidentally two years ago this week, I was afraid it might turn out to be a sort of inside joke for me and a few of my friends.

But as time went on, it came home to me that some Others were listening; that "S. S." had wider interest than I thought. A few cheering letters came in from people who were not Villagers , who wouldn't know A.E. Kugelman if he stole their wife. My friends stopped telling me that they were much funnier than I was reporting them, and wouldn't I really try to get their quotes down more accurately. And on one recent, rainy, and deliriously giddy day, I rode downtown on the Madison Avenue bus in the seat behind two young women who were reading the column aloud to each other, laughing their marvelous, golden heads off all the way (which was far past my stop, incidentally, but I hung in there behind them until they got out, way down in the financial district)...

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]