Pollux writes:

"But how so transparently charming a novel can also exercise a peculiar allure and even emit disturbing danger signals may serve as an entrée into post-war American culture..." So writes Stephen J. Whitfield on his landmark commentary on Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye.

Stephen J. Whitfield's article for the December 1997 issue of the The New England Quarterly, called "Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye," is considered one of the Journal's most popular articles.

And, in light of Salinger's recent passing, Louis Menand will be interviewing Whitfield in a new podcast.

Read Whitfield's fascinating article, listen to the podcast, and join the discussion today!

A: Jonathan Taylor writes:

I was pained by Patricia Marx's shopping column on Brooklyn in the March 8 issue, but she was correct to highlight the thrilling tours of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (also the subject of a 1982 Talk piece by Bill McKibben).

But that didn't prepare me for these pictures from a tour of Cincinnati's never-completed subway (via Lawyers, Guns & Money)—they're a must see.

Jonathan Taylor writes:

• Via the neatly searchable archive of the Harper's Index, they are:

  (Jan. 1993) Percentage of New Yorker articles since Tina Brown became editor whose first sentence includes a person's name: 70
  (July 1996) Chances that a cartoon in The New Yorker's Women's Issue was drawn by a man: 5 in 6

• In the Times Book Review, Craig Seligman shares some (self-) revealing recollections of St. Clair McKelway, on the occasion of a new collection of McKelway's New Yorker reporting.
• At the Edge of the American West, a historian's reflection on Paul Krugman's comments about studying economics versus studying history in the recent New Yorker Profile of him—with some spirited exchanges in the comments. Coincidentally, "Undercover Economist" Tim Harford's latest column in the Financial Times illustrates the persistence of long-ago history in contemporary outcomes.
• Continuing on the history tangent, I was delighted to see Adam Cohen's Times Editorial Observer appreciation of the BBC Radio 4 program (and podcast) "In Our Time," in which Melvyn Bragg harries his academic guests into distilling great topics in civilization into their pithiest essence. (Will Self also wrote about "In Our Time" recently in the London Review of Books.) WNYC's Laura Walker wrote a letter to the Times defending U.S. radio against the suggestion that it doesn't host such erudite discussions. But Walker's counterexamples are telling: All the topics are basically contemporary; none represents the undiluted interest in the past that "In Our Time" exhibits.
• I reviewed Country Driving, by Emdashes fave Peter Hessler, at Bookforum.com.

Pollux writes:

Paul Goldberger, architecture critic at The New Yorker, appeared tonight on CBS' 60 Minutes, which ran a story on the delayed and knotty redevelopment of the World Trade Center. In 2004, Goldberger published a book, Up From Zero, on the attempts to revitalize a site that remains disputed land entangled by conflicting visions and lethargic bureaucratic machines. As Scott Pelley remarks on the story, "failure has many architects."

Pollux writes:

The newly published Reporting at Wit's End: Tales from The New Yorker collects the essays of New Yorker reporter St. Clair McKelway (1905-1980), who wrote for the magazine from the 1930s to 60s. At a hefty 620 pages, Reporting at Wit's End is a substantial contribution to classical American journalism and New Yorker history.

McKelway's pieces pulsated with the power of the personalities he profiled. McKelway wrote pieces on figures like Stanley Clifford Weyman (born Stephen Jacob Weinberg), a "dedicated imposter." Weinberg, like many rogues and con men, tinkered with his name, posing as "Royal St. Cyr only when he wished to drum home to himself and other people the notion that he was a lieutenant in the French Navy, which he wasn't." In 1940, McKelway profiled and radio commentator Walter Winchell, who, "although he has never been shot at and has been beaten up only twice, he is always expecting to be attacked."

With an introduction by Adam Gopnik, Reporting at Wit's End is the best tribute (who needs another statue in a park?) and service that can be made to a writer of St. Clair McKelway's caliber.