Introduction Last week I ran the first part of “James Thurber, A Reader’s Guide,” the first in a series of about, well, thirty-five. If you want to go back and read it, it’s here. The first part ended with me rambling on about how I liked Thurber much more than another *New Yorker* author, Wolcott…
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James Thurber, a reader’s guide
Introduction Some months ago, I thought I would write a longish piece on James Thurber—maybe five or ten thousand words at the most. Well, that was then. I’ve got about thirty-five thousand and counting, including footnotes. I’m going to start running this thing in thousand-word chunks, starting with this one. I’ve been learning about footnotes…
Words, Words, Words
I’m working my way up to writing a long piece on James Thurber, a writer who was a constant companion of my childhood. I recently tracked down one of his more obscure works, The Beast in Me and Other Animals, discovering as I did so that it includes a handful of “Talk of the Town”…
Totally not the New Yorker
This week’s cartoon is submitted by Ben, that bike-ridin’ fool from Harrisburg, PA. Ben “explains” that this is a surrealistic cartoon. Well, being literary tends to make one literal, so I assumed that that object in the foreground is a foot, belonging to someone who I’ll also assume is a guy and the dog’s owner….
The New Yorker, defining deviancy down
Way back in the day, in 1997, to be precise, the New Yorker ran an article by James Traub on the University of Phoenix, not too kindly entitled “Drive-Thru U.: Higher Education for People Who Mean Business (The Next University).” Well, what a difference a decade (and a half) makes. Earlier this year, Harold Ross’…
Wolcott Gibbs
Wolcott Gibbs is practically unknown today, except to that small and no doubt dwindling band who know a great deal about the early days of the New Yorker. Founder/editor Harold Ross once told James Thurber “There wasn’t anything the three of you [Gibbs, Thurber, and E.B. White] couldn’t do. You could have got the magazine…
THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDITING NEW YORKER ARTICLES
The average contributor to this magazine is semi-literate; that is, he is ornate to no purpose, full of senseless and elegant variations, and can be relied on to use three sentences where a word would do. It is impossible to lay down any and complete formula for bringing order out of this underbrush, but there…
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” Q: What would life be like if smart girls ruled the world? A: Not so hot!
Mattel’s legendary high fashion gal on the go Barbie is pushing 65. Most of the jokes in Greta Gerwig’s monster, monster hit of the same name have a similar vintage. Seriously, is there a single gag in this movie that couldn’t have appeared on Saturday Night Live back in 1975? But the monster success of…
Roy Jenkins was part of the solution, and part of the problem. Was that part of the problem?
Roy Jenkins had a fascinating life. Born in 1920 in Abersychan, a mining community in Wales, he came from a strongly “Labour” family—his father, Arthur Jenkins, was a leading official in the Union of Mineworkers, eventually becoming a member of Parliament. Jenkins himself was elected to Parliament at the age of 28, working his way…
Winston Churchill, Total Homo
Yeah, you read that right. Winston Spencer Leonard Churchill, worshipped by neocons as a monumental, more than human demi-god, had an eye for the lads. Or so says Michael Bloch in his diverting 2015 opus, Closet Queens Some 20th Century British Politicians. Although there’s no good evidence that Sir Winston ever went to bed with…