Some months ago, an Emdashes reader in Grand Rapids, Mich., named Michael Zalewski (who isn’t related to editor Daniel, as far as he knows) wrote me this fascinating letter. I know at least one person who will find this very relevant indeed!
While on Cape Cod recently, I bought 1934 edition (second printing) of Alexander Woollcott’s While Rome Burns. Upon opening the book there were several New Yorker cartoons of Woollcott pasted to the inside of the book.
In addition, I found an envelope postmarked 4:30 p.m. 1933 Grand Cent. Annex N.Y. 14, addressed to John Stewart Mosher, Esq. of Philadelphia, Pa.
Inside the envelope was a letter on Alexander Woollcott stationery (more like memo pad—with address Four Hundred and Fifty East Fifty Second Street).
The letter is dated Oct. 3, 1933.
In type is following:
My dear Mr. Mosher:
I remember our meeting in the Cour Joffre.
I have just looked up “aestivating”. Thanks so much.
And it is signed in ink: A. Woollcott.

I am intrigued. Does this have any significance?
Sincere thanks.
Note: While the OED has no entry for “aestivating,” there is this definition for “æstivate, v.“: 1626 COCKERAM, Aestiuate, to summer in a place. 1742 BAILEY, Æstivate, to sojourn or lodge in a Place in Summertime. 1854 WOODWARD Mollusca (1856) 49 The mollusca..æ stivate, or fall into a summer sleep, when the heat is great. 1882 Pall Mall G. 1 Feb. 5 The snails of the equatorial region, though they do not hibernate, yet æstivate (if we may coin a word).” Update: I shared Zalewski’s letter with OED editor Jesse Sheidlower, who replied: “Oh, thanks for calling my attention to this. We do have evidence for (a)estivating now, and will likely add this when we revise the entry. What a great find, the letter!” I agree.

A learned reader who owns The Complete New Yorker was still unable to track down a story that’s haunting him. Can you help? We tried, too. No dice. Whoever writes in first with the correct answer, whatever it is, wins a copy of The New Gilded Age, in my opinion one freaking fantastic document of our times.
I read a New Yorker short story circa 1966 that has been haunting me ever since but have been unable to track down. All I remember (I think) is that it was about a summer romance in Brooklyn or some place like that, and it had a kicker of an ending in which it was revealed that the hero, who had been called by some more or less dashing name, was really named Howard. Then there was a sort of implication that the two lovers never saw each other again. In around 1979 I described this to Roger Angell, for whom it rang no bells. Then yesterday I was on a 9 1/2 hour flight from Rome and opened up NYer on DVD and searched consecutively for “summer,” “summer romance,” “Brooklyn,” etc., and looked at summaries for everything between 1960 and 1971, but had no luck. Do you have any suggestions?

Fantagraphics honcho Eric Reynolds writes from Seattle:
Hey, I read on your blog about the transition from subject to contributor. Dan Clowes might be another: he was profiled by Tad Friend a few years ago, and has done some commissioned comic strips for the mag. Although he may have actually been a contributor before he was profiled, I’m not certain…
Who’s got the answer? I bet someone does! Here’s a linky sidebar on newyorker.com about Clowes and his work.

Do it! Here’s how. True, you have to sign up, but it takes two seconds and it’s an adorable interface. Vote for a bunch of other things, too, of your choosing—or, if you prefer, of my choosing: various NPR and Guardian sites and podcasts, Threadless, Design Observer, Kinetic, The Office, The Museum of Kitschy Stitches, the Shortbus site, COLOURlovers, Beliefnet, Flickr, The School of Visual Arts, The Colbert Report, Salon, Moleskine, The Library of Congress, We Feel Fine, the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, the Poetry Foundation, &c. But this one isn’t optional! That’s how it’ll look when you’re done, after the jump (click to enlarge). Vote now; winners announced Tuesday, May 1, the same day as the National Magazine Awards—it’s a big, big day all around.
Update: Voting is now closed, but prayer, voodoo, and OCD tricks are certainly worth a try!

Continue reading →

Why, the kind with a mom like mine. From this morning’s mail (I like the idea of email coming in tidy, triumphant bursts throughout the day, like the old postal mail, rather than alarmingly incessantly):

I’ve been keeping the April 10 2006 New Yorker on my bedside table, because I like to contemplate the cover (people looking across city rooftops; each rooftop has a Scrabble tile on it). Switch to…yesterday. I had just finished reading George Packer’s scathing article in the current N. Yorker about our betrayal of Iraqi translators etc loyal to US forces. Then Packer appeared on Charlie Rose – same topic – and again on Terry Gross, ditto plus his thoughts on the Surge, troop withdrawal etc.

Switch back to…the April 10th ’06 issue. I idly glanced at the Index. Ha! a “Letter from Iraq,” by George Packer, titled “The Lesson of Tal Afar,” about Col. H.R. McMaster’s efforts a year ago to embed troops in an Iraqi community and “really listen to people,” rather than move in, shoot up the bad guys, and then leave. “Is it too late for the Administration to correct its course in Iraq?” asks the subtitle. Same Packer, same arguments, same frustrations, same war only worse – ALMOST EXACTLY A YEAR LATER! So now I have the Scrabble cover plus the vet cover on my table, for reference in the spring of ’08.

Europhile Bailey Alexander writes:
Cherie Emily,
My name is Bailey Alexander and my husband and I live in Paris with a second home in Malta, but still manage a business in Seattle, albeit long distance. I rarely go back to the States, but I love reading the blogs, like Wolcott’s, your own, Glenn Greenwald, and Daily Kos.
My point? Well, I’ve always been a fan of The New Yorker as well as Dorothy Parker, certo, but why the conspicuous absence of our/America’s greatest comedic writer, Dawn Powell? She was the real deal, where Dorothy was more of an “It” personality. Dorothy could do the quip, the perfect short story every now and then, but Dawn did the novel. The novel.
Gore Vidal and Hemingway always acknowledged her as our finest satire queen and give/gave her the due she deserves, but why don’t you? Your site could prove the perfect position to launch Powell from cult status to religion, n’est pas?
She was not celebrated by the publishers of her time because she didn’t write about the war, but rather chose to focus on women and men on the make in New York, mostly from the Midwest, basically, most of those that made New York happen, culturally. She was the original doyenne of Greenwich Village; her satire is unmatched by or rather only equaled by Evelyn Waugh, etc.
Just curious.
A fan.
Bailey Alexander
Send letters for publication to letters@emdashes.com. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, please let me know. Emails to my personal account are never published without permission.

Emdashes reader Tom McDonald notes:
I was tickled to see a piece in praise of Lawrence Weschler’s 1982 book, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin, in The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly. Maybe it was just a slow week for the Seattle art scene, I don’t know. My own copy of the book has a folded-up copy of the mid-to-late 1990s New Yorker “follow-up” article by LW on RI.

Ed O’Connell of Martha’s Vineyard asks this provocative question:
I’m a New Yorker reader of limited tenure with a question that may expose an embarrassing degree of naivete and/or paranoia but, of course, I’m compelled to ask: is there an inside joke at the magazine about using the same unusual word in different articles throughout any one issue? For example, in the 1/29/07 issue, Schjeldahl on the Art World and Denby on Current Cinema both use the fairly unusual word “deracinated.” I have noticed this in past issues from time to time with other unusual words and have wondered if this is the work of a playful editor or merely coincidence. Thanks in advance for any insight.
It goes without saying that no one on the magazine’s staff would ever declare this to be true on the record, even if such twins were planned; after all, word repetitions are one of the things copy departments try to prevent. (In the brief and surreal, though existentially crucial, period in which I freelanced at Lucky, searching for “reps”—multiple instances of “ladylike” and “foxy,” most likely—was one of my oddly enjoyable tasks.)
Still…things like this, bets and dares and japes, have been known to occur in the magazine world. Perhaps there will be an update. Wait and see.
Send letters to the editor to letters@emdashes.com. As always, nothing is published without permission, so rest easy, paranoiacs.