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Michael Leddy at the site Orange Crate Art (clearly, someone I would enjoy talking to) wonders if the author of a 1953 Talk of the Town about pencil use at the Eagle Pencil Company might, by virtue of the story’s eloquent phrasing (“We ducked as lead flew about us”) and its attention to pencils, have been longtime editor William Shawn. In fact, according to the Complete New Yorker, it’s by E. J. Kahn, Jr. Here’s the abstract.

Leddy also notes the sad passing of Mona Hinton, the wife of Milt Hinton and a friend of Leddy’s family, who died on May 3rd. He quotes the Hinton website:
The Hintons first met at Milt’s grandmother’s funeral in 1939 and were inseparable for the next 61 years. Mona traveled extensively with Milt throughout his career. She was the only spouse on the road with the Cab Calloway Orchestra in the 1940s, where, according to Milt, she was extremely helpful in finding rooms and meals for band members especially when the band worked in small towns during the Jim Crow era. During the ’50s and ’60s when Milt was working day and night in the New YorkWi studios, Mona kept the books and made often complicated transportation arrangements. And during the last two decades of his life, Milt and Mona got to travel to jazz festivals and clinics around the world — first class.

Comments

Thanks for the author id! I’ll add it to my post.

The paragraphs reporting Mona Hinton’s passing are from a press release at milthinton.com — there’s a link at the end of the post.

Duly tweaked! Thanks for letting me know. And nice photo of a pencil on your site, too. I used to work at The Nation in the copy department, and we had a Very Small Pencil Collection—pencils so small that if you dared to put them in the electric pencil sharpener they would probably be swallowed up or dissolve. That collection had a proud history.

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