A staff writer at The New Yorker magazine since 1974 and the author of four books, Mark Singer is a master of the profile--a biographical sketch rendered through anecdote, incident, interview, and description. "Singer's style," says critic Charlie Friedman, "is to shovel detail atop detail in restrained, intelligent prose and slowly, these seemingly inane facts accrue meaning--ultimately, they add up to a complete person."
Here, in the second paragraph of a sketch that first appeared in The New Yorker (April 13, 1987), Singer describes "the founder and at the moment the only member" of an organization called the Goodnicks of America.
from "Mr. Personality"
by Mark Singer
Seven days a week, Paul Schimmel ventures into the subway with his clarinet. In the IND station at Sixth Avenue and Forty-second Street one recent afternoon, he paid his fare with a free pass. Various good deeds and diplomatic gestures across the years have enabled Paul Schimmel to forge friendships with employees of the Transit Authority who evidently believe that he qualifies for a senior citizen's discount. In fact, he is only sixty-three. He was wearing black slacks, a blue blazer, a light-blue shirt, a blue necktie, a black topcoat, a brown leather cap with earflaps, and black shoes with a fresh shine. "For the shoes, today I decided to splurge," he said. He wears eyeglasses with thick lenses and thick black frames, and he has gray hair, a round, jowly face, and the torso of a born Santa Claus. On the downtown platform, he pauses. After assembling his clarinet, he left its case open at his feet and spread a hand towel across it. Atop that he rested a straw basket, and then he displayed a plastic-sheathed copy of a letter from Mary Duffy, an employee of the geriatric-psychiatric-services division of Coney Island Hospital. The letter verified that Mr. Personality is a habitual doer of good deeds.
"Mr. Personality," by Mark Singer, was first published in The Talk of the Town section of The New Yorker, April 13, 1987, and in revised form appears in Singer's Mr. Personality: Profiles and Talk Pieces, (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989; reprinted by Mariner Books, 2005).
