Mark Singer, a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine "from the age of 23 who extended the magazine's franchise of rich reporting and witty prose about offbeat, complicated and quintessentially American characters," died June 19, the New York Times reported. He was 75. Singer wrote "urbane 'Talk of the Town' pieces... reflected on serious national matters like the Affordable Care Act, and did a hitch traveling the country as the correspondent for the 'U.S. Journal' column."
He was best known, however, for his profiles of subjects like magician Ricky Jay; a set of four doorman brothers in New York; and "a braggadocious real-estate developer, Donald Trump, years before he ran for office," the Times noted.
Singer's books, many of them collections of pieces from the magazine, include Funny Money (1985); Mr. Personality: Profiles and Talk Pieces (1989); Citizen K: the Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996); Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists, and Others (2004); Character Studies: Encounters with the Curiously Obsessed (2005); The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns (with Alan C. Greenberg, 2010); and Trump and Me (2016).
"He came out of the tradition of A.J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell and Calvin Trillin, which is to say he combined meticulous reporting and a very distinctive comic voice, which is extremely rare," said New Yorker editor David Remnick.
"Singer's voice is pitched perfectly to the register of the New Yorker: cool and intelligent, with a wry and artful skepticism uncorrupted by cynicism," Jeff Macgregor wrote in the New York Times Book Review. "Neither aloof nor Olympian, he maintains instead an efficient distance from his subjects. He is a terrific reporter, with a receptive ear for dialogue and a painter's eye for the salient detail."
In 1997, Singer was less than excited when then editor Tina Brown assigned him to profile Donald Trump. "Observing him over several months on construction sites, in his Trump Tower office and on a private plane, Mr. Singer concluded that Mr. Trump, in the period before he became a reality TV star, was a man 'who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul,' " the Times noted.
"That profile," Remnick said, "got everything about Trump 20 years before he ran for president: the vanity, the casual cruelty, the outsized selfishness. It was all there."
"Trump Solo" was included in Singer's Character Studies collection. After a mention of it in the Times review, Trump wrote a letter to the editor attacking Singer, who, in turn, sent a mock thank-you note to Trump for the publicity, along with a check for $37.82 for the Amazon sales boost.
Trump was not amused. The Times noted that he "returned the letter with an all-caps note at the bottom, reading, in part, 'MARK--YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER.' " Singer later said that Trump did, however, cash the check, a framed photocopy of which the writer displayed in his apartment. In 2016, Singer expanded and updated his essay into the book Trump and Me.
"Mark and I would talk about, What is writing?" said Ian Frazier, who shared an office with Singer. Their conclusion: "When you can sense a real wind and just keep going with it."