But the melody lingers on, at least for cptave, winner of the eBay auction for the inaugural issue of The New Yorker. One might ask, does virtue indeed have its reward? Mr., Ms., Dr., Monsignor, Father, Sister, or Captain cptave, who has an approval rating of nearly 99 percent, has earned such praise as “you are dealing with the best,” “BEE-YOU-TEE-FUL,” and “A+++++++++++.” How much better does it get than that, at least without adding more plus signs? Well, despite my crushing bitterness at sitting out the auction of my dreams, I must honor my promise to salute the winner, and I do, I do tip my hat to anyone who’s willing to hand over $442 (the winning bid) for a rare treasure like this. Tremendous as the forthcoming archive of the entire magazine is, there’s nothing like holding an old issue in your hands, turning the pages, wondering at the more of-the-moment cartoons (the evergreen above is from said début issue), marveling at the full-page, brightly colored liquor and tobacco ads (“Yoo hoo, Ponsonby! Look at the present I just got…a bottle of Calvert Reserve!” cries a near-naked man running through the snow, to his butler), buying a war bond or two for good measure, and generally feeling like your grandparents, whether they read the NYer or not. My own well-preserved Olde Issue of December 12, 1942 (which features, among many other delightful things, Joseph Mitchell’s “Professor Sea Gull” and a poem titled “Oh, to Be an Amoeba”), gives me just this sensation. Well, I’ll face facts: I’m crazy jealous. But as the Rolling Stones once said, Though you can’t always get what you want, you can want it as vocally as necessary till the next auction comes along. Which, if things go well, will be in my lifetime.

Anyone who thinks old movies lack the level of sexual boldness to which they’ve become accustomed had better get over to Film Forum this month.

Newsday’s review, by my classy former colleague Blake Green, of the play The Talk of the Town (currently playing at the Algonquin’s Oak Room):

Featured are characterizations of Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, Edna Ferber, Marc Connelly and George S. Kaufman, well-known writers and personalities whose facile intelligence seems astounding compared with today’s celebrity culture.

In Act 1, the Round Table members are pleased with themselves, giddy—and witty—with anticipation, slinging familiar bons mots at each other, some spoken, some sung. Some things they actually said, some are crafted “to sound like they did,” Redington said the other day.

In Act 2, toward the end of the conclave’s decade, familiarity has bred contempt, cynicism has crept into the mix. Benchley, the humorist and critic, played by Jared Bradshaw, sings “The Man I Could Have Been.” “They’re moving away from each other, going their separate ways,” Dawes said.
…
The show’s creators, themselves Gotham denizens married 27 years, met in another life as jingle writers. Though successful (“Plop, plop, fizz, fizz”; “We’re American Airlines”), “we didn’t want to be old people in the jingle business,” Redington said.

Veterans of the music industry, they went back to writing and performing songs and, in the early ’90s, amused by a literary collection titled “The Algonquin Wits” (edited by Robert Drennan), decided they’d hit upon a good subject for a musical…. More.

One hundred and thirty original New Yorker covers! I saw the travelling exhibit of cover prints in Seattle, and it’s a beaut. I trust the folks at the Norman Rockwell Museum, where the collection of originals is on display till October 31, will know a bit more about the magazine than the gallery owners I spoke to out there, who were very friendly but didn’t know many details about individual artists or changes in cover art through the years. Everyone was having a great time talking about their memories of the covers there and others they remembered, though, and it was clearly a successful exhibit. They even gave out some fun promo stuff, left over from the party I just missed by having taken the special “turtle with a concussion” route from LaGuardia to the West Coast. Airdaze notwithstanding, I dug the Lufthansa puzzle.

As for the new show, here’s Daniel Oppenheimer in the Mass. Valley Advocate:

Historians, I predict, will look back at the history of America in the 20th century and write that The New Yorker magazine influenced our culture in two significant ways. The first influence was on the creation of attitudes and styles for perhaps the world’s first mass upper-middle class.

The other influence—which is really a tributary of the first—was on the popularization of avant-garde art styles. All the many isms of 20th century modern and postmodern art have made their way into The New Yorker maw, where they’ve been filtered through the magazine’s epic bemused-ness and emerged on the other side, on the covers and in the comics. Once there they’ve eased their way, like a bemused mint julep, into the gullets and aesthetical sensibilities of millions of people who aren’t quite ready to be at the crest but enjoy being in the hearty middle of the next new wave in art.

Or not. I could be wrong. Make up your own mind at the Norman Rockwell Museum’s new exhibition, The Art of The New Yorker: Eighty Years in the Vanguard (the second half of the title would seem to cut against my claim that the New Yorker was a popularizer). And hash it out in the accompanying series of discussions with New Yorker artists and writers.

Tomorrow Françoise Mouly and Peter De Sève (of iPod Man fame) are speaking at the museum from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at a special media preview luncheon. It’s a great museum; if you live in the Berkshires (you lucky retriever) and there are any seats left, go there for me, would you? And Stockbridge is a gorgeous weekend spot. Hike a spell and have lunch at the Red Lion Inn, which I first visited when I was 11. I checked a few summers ago—it’s still good.

Categories: NYer, Covers

And now, tonight’s incredible headliner….Johnny Lethem and the Go-Betweens!

On “Lavender,” [Robert] Forster also rhymes “well-read” with “good in bed” to describe the same woman. The group’s audience tends to fit at least one of the above categories; novelist Jonathan Lethem, for example, deems the Go-Betweens his favorite band. “I must admit that we were on the bus going through Europe the other day, and I looked around and saw the four of us, all with our heads in books,” McLennan says, adding, “I guess that’s better than having porn on.” What has he been reading? “A lot of contemporary Australian fiction. I’m also thoroughly enjoying a collection of Anthony Lane’s writing about film for the New Yorker. It’s a good tour read, because War and Peace can be tough going after a couple of vodkas—or maybe not.”

That was Johnny Ray Huston in the SF Bay Guardian. From the other, British Guardian, via Kottke: Malcolm Gladwell’s workspace, which will no doubt remind you of this week’s David Sipress cartoon set in a caffeinated hotspot. The cheery Korenish guy says to Mr. Laptop, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I could borrow a little work?”

In New York magazine, Francine du Plessix Gray and Sean Wilsey tell Boris Kachka all about their parent-paring memoirs.

And now, you might well ask, nay, have already asked, how is the début fiction? I’m reading it, in between bouts of radio loyalty, so rest assured you’ll know what I think as soon as I do.

Categories: NYer, Gladwell, Jonathans, Lethem, Wilsey, Cartoons, Extracurricular

Speaking of substances, yesterday I thought I’d buy a highlighter pen, for distinguishing the entries in my datebook (yes, there are PalmPilots; also, I’ve had three and they all had meltdowns; yes, I dropped one on the sidewalk) that are unignorable from those that are merely suggestions. I couldn’t find one, but there were yellow highlighter pipes. This will not aid memory retention in local Parsons students, I fear.

Here’s New Yorker cartoonist Matthew Diffee with one of his inexplicably rejected cartoons, from last week’s supercalifragilistic Rejection Show (which Diffee co-founded, along with cheerfully deadpan host Jon Friedman). I strongly suggest you go next month—I laughed very, very, very much. I also saw drawings by aforementioned nice guy Eric Lewis and their genial colleague Drew Dernavich, and just about every cartoon was wicked funny (if I said every cartoon was, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?). Thanks to Tim Siglin for the excellent photo! Click on it to travel to the land of Flickr and see it at a proper size. Here’s another good one—of Friedman pimping Combino the terrifying new Rejection Show mascot, with whom I would be afraid to slow-dance even for a prize, but a brave fellow held him close for nigh upon three minutes. He’s a better man than I.

Also representing graceful non-success were the hilariously bitter Mike Albo of Underminer fame—who read the most absurd dump email from a three-night stand I’ve ever heard—and Andrea Rosen, who is always awesome, and who got rejected from the reality show she created and had to suffer the further indignity of seeing her then-boyfriend, a bartender at Galapagos, be made producer. Anne Altman’s cat-toilet-training documentary, not schadenfreudistic enough for America’s Funniest Home Videos, prompted something wildly pre-human in all of us, and that was good. I also dug, and ogled, handsome devil Nick Stevens, who almost became the new Marv Albert (without the little problems) via ESPN’s Dream Job. Unfortunately, he drove all the judges out of their minds without intending to, since ESPN insisted on running a promo twenty times a day featuring Nick crowing “Ramalama ham-jam!” It got on their nerves, for some reason. But he triumphed anyway, by telling the story so excellently. Really, it’s an evening that can’t miss. The best part is that you feel so supremely exultant in non-rejectedness, since there’s nothing like being part of a giddy, laughing crowd to realize you’re the successes and those visionless suits (and hipster bartenders) are the losers.

All right, Wilseyists, I promised, and I try not break promises, especially to you. Here’s Sean Wilsey’s book tour schedule. Just promise me in return that you won’t creep him out with any excessive stalking, OK? Gifts of whimsically packaged Jelly Bellys, good; lurking in his shrubbery paparazzi-style, bad. Jot this down on a notecard if you’re afraid you might mix them up.

For this show, ‘Rejection’ leads to success [Daily News]
Cartoonist speaks about modern life through quirky drawings [Nice profile of Matthew Diffee and his cartooning process and also the NYer’s rejection process, Fort Worth Star-Telegram]

Because I, a person so concerned with the suffering of others that I routinely save spiders and flies from the certain death or, at the very least, reduced standard of living that would result from their being trapped indoors, cannot bear to think of you experiencing the gooberosity that I have begun, masochistically, to invite into my otherwise socially fruitful life by waltzing into various tangentially magazine-related scenarios (like this one), declaring myself a New Yorker bloggist, and turning into a media-circus freak before my very eyes. Trust me, you don’t want the agony. I’ll bear it for you, as though it were a hairshirt made of itchy pencils and tiny, biting Gopniks. You can have faith that when next you think of me, I’ll be writhing in a bar somewhere attempting to speak full English sentences to people who, before this mad experiment, would not have reduced me to gibberish. Reporting is pain, by Jove, and I want more of it!

Because yesterday, I went on the Algonquin Round Table Walking Tour with the Dorothy Parker Society‘s tireless and terrifically well-informed Kevin Fitzpatrick (and a dozen or so extremely pleasant walking companions). We walked, we barely escaped an especially greasy-smoky street fair; we saw the places where magazines were made, follies were performed, and livers were shot. We talked, we didn’t get rained on, and, thoroughly ravenous, we went back to the hotel for a late lunch at the round table, yes, the round table, and most of us had very small hamburgers (three), named after Dorothy Parker and served with very small bottles of ketchup. I reprised my coconut martini from the night I haven’t written about yet, in which I dined alone and met a French movie star who was not doing a very good job remaining incognito. I petted Matilda, the hotel cat, who has an entitled yet gracious air. It was a good day. I’ll write about it in more detail in the next few days. I might as well throw in that other Algonquin post too, since it features a review of their steak sandwich (preview: yum). Did I mention I hobnobbed with un homme francais fameuse? I mean fameus? Oui, I did. The coconut martinis were helpful in that enterprise. They have a pineapple wedge.

From the Eugene Register-Guard:

Pulitzer Prize winner on campus Tuesday

Louis Menand, the author of “The Metaphysical Club,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that explores American pragmatism, will speak at 8 p.m. Tuesday, in 182 Lillis Hall, 955 E. 13th Ave. Admission is free. Menand is the 2004-05 Kritikos Professor in the Humanities.

A professor of English and American literature and language at Harvard University, Menand also is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a contributing editor for the New York Review of Books. “The Metaphysical Club” won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2002.

In his Kritikos lecture, Menand will trace the history of American universities, with a special focus on humanities departments. He will examine current pressures and “threats” affecting the liberal arts and the humanities, and will speculate on their future.

Menand also will speak in Portland on Thursday, this time on “The Story of the Soup Cans.” He will discuss why Andy Warhol’s 1962 exhibit of paintings of Campbell’s soup cans was an important event in the intellectual history of the Cold War. The Portland lecture is at 8 p.m. in the Mayfair Ballroom of the Benson Hotel, 309 S.W. Broadway.

The Kritikos professorship was created through a private gift, matched by state and National Endowment for the Humanities funds, to bring speakers to Oregon who share “a commitment to intellectual honesty and freedom” and “a recognition of the worth of open and honest civic discussion and critical analysis of differing viewpoints and values.”

For more information, call the Oregon Humanities Center, 346-3934.

Pulitzer Prize Winner on Campus Tuesday [Register-Guard]