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The Chicagoan: "No Obeisance to Park Avenue, Mayfair, or the Champs Elysees"
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Chicago, Jonathan Taylor, Matt Weiland, Neil Harris, The Baffler, The Chicagoan, The New York Times, The New Yorker
Jonathan Taylor writes:
I only just happened on this New York Times Book Review piece from a couple weeks ago, about The Chicagoan, a short-lived magazine launched in 1926 in ardent imitation of The New Yorker. (The article is by Matt Weiland, late of that Chicago institution The Baffler--or still of it? What is up with The Baffler, anyway?)
The University of Chicago Press is putting out a hefty coffee table book about the magazine, which was seemingly forgotten until some issues were unearthed by historian Neil Harris at the university's Regenstein Library. Harris notes that The Chicagoan was "an effort to counter the city's negative reputation" as "a place of raw commerce and crime--brawny, philistine, vulgar, and violent."
A gallery of Deco-mad covers and other images, PDFs from the book, including a lot more interior pages of the mag, and an interview with Harris, are at the publisher's site. It's all just too much to digest here. The attractions are clear: Be off, and be back to discuss!
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Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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Comments
Thanks for pointing this out, Jonathan. There was a spread on this in the U of C alumni magazine that I received a few weeks back - my eye was arrested by the images, but alas, I failed to read it.