The finest pieces in “Reporting Always” may be “The Big Stone” (1954) and “Symbol of All We Possess” (1949). Hemingway loved her article on him, even though others told him he ought to have been offended by the way Ross captured his stagy sportsman’s shtick. But where exactly Ross stands in relation to her material is generally impossible to confirm. She has a knack for locating the peripheral actor - the bartender at a gathering of Beat writers, the balloon salesman at a society function - who makes a tableau snap into focus. And naturally a point of view is implicit in Ross’s choice of focus and her selection of details.

A default tone of light irony offers a built-in distance.

In her introduction to “Reporting Always,” she elaborates on this reportorial ethos: “I have never wanted to write about anybody who did not want to be written about.” She writes “only what can be observed, what I see and hear and never what the subject might be ‘thinking.’ ” Ross’s respect and fondness for her subjects does not drain her profiles of acuity. Ross has said she writes only about people she likes. Leonard McCombe/The Life Images Collection - Getty Images Ross’s work remains fresh and vibrant despite the passage of decades, a model of what patient observation, deep listening and stringent craft can achieve. And there are previously uncollected articles in “Reporting Always,” including a delightful 1960 piece about Manhattan coffeehouse culture and a 2003 visit to the painter Agnes Martin’s studio in New Mexico. The most recent anthology of Ross’s major work was published in 1981 and is out of print. Now many of them appear again, in “Reporting Always: Writings From The New Yorker.” Do we need this new volume?Įmphatically yes. Some of her New Yorker pieces have endured as classics of immersion reporting, for instance a 1950 profile of Ernest Hemingway a view of Hollywood rattled by anti-Communist investigations (“Come In, Lassie!,” 1948) and “Picture,” a 1952 five-part series following John Huston as he struggled to make a screen version of Stephen Crane’s novel “The Red Badge of Courage.” These pieces and others have been collected in book form more than once. Her most recent item for the magazine ran in 2012, giving her a tenure there of 67 years so far.

Lillian Ross began writing for The New Yorker in 1945.

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