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Looked Into
'Imagine That Confronting You on a Newsstand!' Creative Editor Creatively Lampooned
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Flair, Fleur Cowles, S.J. Perelman
Jonathan Taylor writes:
The Daily Telegraph's obituary of the legendarily legendary editor of Flair magazine, Fleur Cowles, notes that she was the subject of a parodic piece in the New Yorker.
"The Hand That Cradles the Rock" (July 1, 1950), by S.J. Perelman, emits a chauvinistic condescension as it quotes at length an admittedly fawning portrait of Cowles ("'I'm just a generally creative person,' she says modestly"). But then follows a livelier speculative playlet, about an explosively innovative (and totally fictional) redactrix, Hyacinth Beddoes Laffoon, "queen-pin of the pulp oligarchy embracing 'Gory Story,' 'Sanguinary Love,' 'Popular Dissolution' and 'Spicy Mortician.'" The scene finds Laffoon, "chic in a chiffon dress for which she herself spun the silk this morning," in conference with the obseqious editorial assistants of her magazine, Shroud:
HYACINTH: First, these covers we've been running. They're namby-pamby, no more punch than a textbook. Look at this one—a naked girl tied to a bedpost and a chimpanzee brandishing a knout.
BUNCE: I see the structural weakness. It demands too much of the reader.
But wait, here's the beauty part—I mean, "The Beauty Part"—the full-length play that Perelman wrote his Laffoon character into, with five parts for Bert Lahr. Reviewing a 1992 Yale Rep revival, the Times said that "few flops have been as celebrated, mulled over and positively entitled to cult status," but suggests:
In contrast to the capacity for self-reproachment of genuine contemporary artists, currently evidenced by "The Player," the film about Hollywood backstabbing, and "Sight Unseen," the play about sham in the art world, Perelman's barbs about art as a commodity, the uncurbed need for self-expression and the mass marketing of culture -- or to be an exact Perelmaniac, "Amurcan Kulchur," are tepid indeed.
I wonder if that still the case, or might we benefit anew from a satire on
artists who do "collages out of seaweed and graham crackers," or who sculpture in soap on "Procter & Gamble scholarships"; writers like one Kitty Entrail, "an intense minor poetess in paisley," and suburban consumers (here Gloria and Seymour Krumgold) who commission a heat-resistant painting on Formica "as long as it doesn't clash with the drapes."
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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
That stuff about "The Beauty Part" is fascinating, thank you! The January 26, 1963, issue contains an interview with Lahr about the play.