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Looked Into
The Chicagoan: "No Obeisance to Park Avenue, Mayfair, or the Champs Elysees"
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Chicago, 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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Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: 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)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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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.