Swag Bag: A Toolkit for Reviving the Algonquin Round Table
Last night, about 150 bookish folk raised their glasses to a new partnership. The refurbished and reopened Algonquin Hotel hopes to resurrect its literary reputation by hosting the Penguin Previews Series at the Round Table–readings and talks featuring Penguin authors held in the famed hotel lobby, where the wits of the Algonquin Round Table met and traded barbs through the 1920s.
After they’d had their fill of the thematic cocktails (The Penguin, a variation on a White Russian, and The Matilda, a liquored-up mimosa named for the housecat that lives in the lobby and serves as the hotel’s mascot, perhaps even more so than Dorothy Parker), partygoers traded in a postcard-size photo of the resident kitty for a gift bag. Below the jump, a catalog of the goodies contained therein. Read More
