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Eustace Tilley Conquers Austria

Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: Art Spiegelman, Barack Obama, covers, Eustace Tilley, Hillary Clinton, Rea Irvin

Martin Schneider writes:

My mother is the American correspondent for the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Recently she started a blog on American topics, a mix of quick bursts about the primaries (for now) and clarifications of American expressions or habits that never get explained in the standard resources that a German-speaking audience would consult ("selling the Brooklyn Bridge," "Dear John letter," and so on).

The recent Obama/Clinton cover remix prompted her on Monday to introduce her readers to a certain waistcoated dandy. Whether you read German or not, enjoy the Eustace-y goodness.

Update: Confronted with a deluge of requests (well, one), I supply the following quick and dirty translation. I fully await adjustment from my mom, who has me cornered in the German department.

"The New Yorker, yes, The New Yorker" for a long time was the theme of an ad campaign for this esteemed magazine. This statement of confirmation was the answer to the astonishment of an unseen listener in the face of all of the interesting, unexpected, and not-at-all-old-fashioned things that could these days be found in the by no means stodgy New Yorker.
Once again, The New Yorker has surpassed everyone: The following cover [refers to first link below, Clinton/Obama Eustace cover] is a variation on the likeness of a certain Eustace Tilley, a made-up character who every February for decades (indeed, from the very beginning) captured in simultaneously traditional and satirical ("tongue-in-cheek") fashion the cool detachment of New Yorker readers.

The week of February 5 (it's the edition of February 11, but it appears much earlier) The New Yorker ran the following cover:

http://www.newyorker.com/images/covers/2008/2008_02_11_p323.gif

I am perhaps also permitted to hark back to the simple, elegant, and endlessly moving New Yorker cover after 9/11:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Spiegelman-cover.jpg

Hope that helps!
—MCS

1 comments

Comments

Heartless Martin! Don't make us go to Babelfish (OK, I also have a translation widget, but who knows how good it is?)—give us a hint of what's within!

EmilyFebruary 13, 2008

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