Category Archives: The Squib Report

The “Mad Men” Files: Spoiler Alert

Martin Schneider writes:
In the most recent episode, “Ho Ho,” the wealthy scion of a shipping magnate (himself a friend of Bertram Cooper) hires Sterling Cooper to ensconce jai alai and el rey de la pelota—identified as “Patchy”—in the lucrative embrace of the American mass.
Somewhat improbably, Don is opposed to the account, as it will take advantage of a well-connected dupe. Upon hearing Don’s well-meant advice to drop the project, the scion intones, “If Jai alai fails, it’s your fault.” (James Wolcott cracks, “A heavy burden to lay on Don, or any man.”)
Considering that eleven years later, Herbert Warren Wind would be taking up the quixotic project to introduce Basque pelote sports to New Yorker readers, it’s safe to assume that jai alai never takes off.
Sorry for spoiling future episodes!
Relatedly, if you look at page 24 of the October 12, 1963, issue, there’s an advertisement for Florida that mentions jai alai. While far from a masterpiece, it does look considerably more modern than the stuff we see Sterling Cooper putting out. Time to step it up, boys (and Peggy).

Coyness Does Not Become You, New Yorker

Martin Schneider writes:
In the 1980s, John Allen Paulos invented the word innumeracy to describe people, on the analogy of illiteracy, who are not adept at thinking in numbers. I propose an addition: “iffashionacy,” the state of not understanding fashion very intuitively.
I’d like to make a confession: I’m an iffashionate. I don’t “get” fashion topics too much. It’s always an effort for me. It used to be that the Style Issue was simply “one to skip,” but today I look at it more like a safari in a strange and interesting foreign country.
I enjoyed Lauren Collins’s excellent article about Burberry, which is run by its creative and interesting leader, Christopher Bailey.
But something towards the end bugged me a little bit. There’s a paragraph that goes like this:

In 2005, Bailey’s partner, Geert Cloet, who worked as the brand director for Miu Miu, died, of a brain tumor. “Work was, absolutely . . . I buried myself in work,” Bailey told me. “I just kind of threw myself into things, because, you know, I think sometimes there’s a sense of failing.”

Hm. There’s something very subtle, and delicate, and incomplete about this handling of Bailey’s lost lover. Most obviously, the paragraph does not disclose the gender of Geert Cloet. Collins does not mention Cloet anywhere else in the article, and she also does not discuss Bailey’s love life in any other context that I could see. So readers, this is all we’re going to get. Time to play Sherlock Holmes.
To emulate Wimsatt and Brooks, we have to begin with a close reading of the text.
Key points: “Geert” is not a common first name in America, it does not obviously disclose gender, there are no personal pronouns to assist the reader, and the word partner, technically, also does not disclose gender.
(I shall do what Collins does not do, and assert that Geert Cloet was a man. But I should not have to rely on Google for that information.)
Partner, partner. Of course the word is a signal for homosexuality in our culture, and I’d lose credibility if I didn’t concede that it’s a pretty major clue.
The coding of “partner” here is pretty tricky. Anyone under the age of 40 (I barely qualify) probably takes the word to mean, effectively, “same-gendered lover,” and perhaps I’m showing my stodginess by making a fuss over it. But The New Yorker‘s readers are highly heterogeneous. How many older readers read the paragraph, assumed without undue reflection that Cloet was a woman, and kept reading? I would guess, more than you might think. For their lack of hipness, they paid in incomprehension.
The politics and rhetoric of homosexuality have gone through some major upheavals since the late 1960s, but right now it’s considered de trop to call attention to the fact of an article subject’s homosexuality, on the theory that overemphasizing makes it seem like a perversion or a physical deformity, when it should be treated on a much more matter-of-fact basis. So far, so good.
And in Collins’s defense, I also wouldn’t relish writing that “who is gay” clause either, and I can see why she opted not to write it. But there should have been some cleaner way of confronting the subject. You know, either bring it up, or don’t. But avoid this in-between.
One reason it bothers me is that the process of deducing that Cloet is a man also rubs up against a cliche about homosexuality. In my mind it takes shape like this: “Of course he’s gay, Bailey is a fashion designer—what did you expect?” Uhh, treatment of an individual as such? Not that spelling it out is all that much better, in a way I sympathize with Collins about that. But the act of deduction actually involves recourse to that stereotype.
In a lot of contexts, I’d argue that Bailey has a right to his privacy. The problem for Collins is, a big New Yorker feature article is not one of the contexts where Bailey can be accorded that privacy. One of the purposes of a feature is to bring the reader “closer” to an otherwise undisclosed subject, and tip-toeing around the question of his or her romantic life is iffy at best.
The real problem here is that the paragraph isn’t connected to anything else in the article. It’s dropped in before the finale to supply a bit of cheap emotion and depth. (A shame, because the rest of the article earns that depth properly. Bailey is an interesting guy.)
I use that word “cheap” advisedly, but I mean it quite straightforwardly—the reader is being asked to partake in Bailey’s grieving process while also being given next to no information about his beloved, aside from his/her occupation and Dutch name. It’s tricky—how much can we be expected to care, really, on a single mention like this?
The best-case scenario, for the reader, is to take in that grieving process, such as it is, and then look up from the magazine for a moment, stare into the middle distance a bit, re-read the paragraph, and conclude that Cloet is a man and that Bailey is gay. And that is a sub-optimal outcome.
Why not discuss it openly? It’s probably as interesting as anything else in Bailey’s life, which is, as already stated, plenty interesting.

The “Mad Men” Files: It’s Different Inside

Martin Schneider writes:
I introduced a feature last year called “The Mad Men Files” (1 2), and I recently discovered a good occasion to try to spark it again.
For those who are completely up to date, I recommend a perusal of the Talk of the Town of August 3, 1963, which happens to contain two items that seem to relate to Season 3.
First, in Susan Black and Brendan Gill’s item about Radio City Music Hall, they note that “‘Bye Bye Birdie,’ the movie that played [the Hall] during Easter this year, holds the record for the week’s biggest gross—$233,825, with an attendance of 165,255.”
On the next page is a brief and rather lyrical item by Geoffrey T. Hellman, which is worth quoting in full:

Has Mr. Conrad Hilton, who is the chief of Hilton Hotels International (as well as domestic) and, in a way, a one-man Peace Corps, been bearing tall tales south of the Rio Grande? We are moved to this question by receipt of a multicolored postcard from vacationing friends in Acapulco (“The scenery from our patio is more beautiful than even Capri”) which bears a photograph of an irregularly shaped swimming pool and the legend “Las Brisas Hilton. Pink cottages and cocktail-sized pools surrounded by Acapulco Blossoms.” The pool, we should judge, is some eighteen feet long and about half as wide, or a good deal bigger than even a Yale Club Martini, said to be Manhattan’s most ample. What must the Mexicans think of us and our gringo guzzles? Let poetic justice prevail. It remains for Mr. Cesar Balse, of Acapulco and Mexico City, the lessor of the St. Regis, to launch in the King Cole Room a pool-sized Bloody Mary, properly celebrated on a postcard bordered by Orange Blossoms as big as the Ritz.

Why the sudden interest in Conrad Hilton and his irregularly shaped swimming pools? Well, there appears to be good reason to believe that the elderly reprobate Don befriends at the abandoned country club bar is none other than Conrad Hilton. (Given the notoriety of his great-granddaughter, a delicious commentary on the present day, if so.)
Given that Season 3 is set in 1963, it’s a resonant piece of prose, to say the least.

A Look Back: Pauline Kael, and David Denby’s Snark

Martin Schneider writes:
My Facebook friend Michal Oleszczyk, who once reminded us about Pauline Kael’s former apartment on the Upper West Side, yesterday pointed us in the direction of an unflinching reminiscence written by a fledgling film critic to whom Kael once showed unusual kindness. This is exactly the way I like to think of Kael, imperious but benevolent, possibly eccentric but supremely confident of her abilities and importance (check that closing line).
I really admire Ed Champion’s willingness to grapple with the fundamental questions surrounding writing, and his defense of David Denby’s Snark from several months ago certainly doesn’t detract from that admiration. Back in the day, I was a FameTracker devotee of long standing (username: DerKommissar), so I respect the uses of snark while also harboring concern over its excesses. Either way, Denby’s argument was almost certainly dismissed too quickly, and Champion’s article is a useful corrective. Note that Choire Sicha and Adam Sternbergh took the time to respond to Champion in the comments.

Infinite Summer: Location 3590

Yet Another Reason That Edmund Wilson Rules

Martin Schneider writes:
Courtesy of Russell Jacoby at Crooked Timber, an amazing card that Edmund Wilson sent to people asking him to do things.

Just marveling at the combination of wit and ego bound up in that! Wow. Love it.
I want one!

Infinite Summer: Location 3158

I Want to Read Pauline Kael’s Review of “Garp,” As It Happens

Martin Schneider writes:
I recently established contact with a cousin of mine on the West Coast I barely know—I’m not entirely sure we’ve met even a single time. How did we make contact? Why, he tapped me on Facebook, of course! It’s funny how family traits run kind of deep—he’s a theater critic with a strong interest in classic and foreign movies; judging from certain references he’s made just in the last couple of weeks (J. Hoberman, Proust, Jules et Jim), he’s probably has more in common with me than 90% of the people I’d count as volitional friends.
So I wasn’t entirely surprised when he recently linked to a friend of his, applauding his pilgrimage to 333 Central Park West, otherwise known as the former home of Pauline Kael. Kael doesn’t get enough mention on Emdashes, but I know Emily and I both love her. Is this address widely known? I had never heard it before but I wouldn’t be surprised if hard-core Kael fans are well aware of it. I may drop by myself!
Here’s a pic, taken by Michal Oleszczyk:

Infinite Summer: Location 2009

Martin Schneider writes:
Note: I’m participating in Infinite Summer, the widespread Internet book project dedicated to reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. For more information, consult my introduction. My strategy has been to avoid lengthy commentary but instead list quintessentially Wallacean vocabulary and note other oddities, including Kindle typos.
Not much to say. Proceeding nicely, if slowly. Elements still accruing. Very impressed with the confidence of Wallace’s authorial voice, it’s like he’s constantly idling in a Porsche, knowing he can rev up to any speed he needs, whenever he wants.
The Wardine section is difficult to follow and perhaps mildly offensive, but you really have to admire the guts of any white American author who would put such a section in his novel. It reminded me of “Authority and American Usage,” Wallace’s essay about the grammar wars, reprinted in Consider the Lobster, specifically the section in which he describes the process of emphasizing to an African-American student the pragmatic importance of adopting Standard Written English (which speech duly gets him into trouble, much as the Wardine section threatens to get him into trouble).
The other thing I wanted to say is that I didn’t think the Schtitt-Mario section was very good. Wallace wants to introduce a perverse idea about the infinitude of embracing boundaries (or something), and I thought it could have been done better.
Onward!
location 1124: howling fantods, thanks to a certain DFW-dedicated website, a phrase famously associated with Wallace. I was not familiar with the word fantods. You?
location 1136: twitter
location 1155: phylacteryish
location 1158: nubbin of neck
location 1257: fair-diametered
location 1279: grille’d
location 1289 (endnote): ‘drine-stimulation
location 1292 (endnote): injury-‘scrip
location 1299: paragraph on “giving yourself away,” major theme for the whole novel.
location 1318: quail, used as a verb, nice.
location 1379: chiffonnier
location 1393: apocopes
location 1417: so-calledly ‘Recon-figured,’ not sure I like this, so much
location 1432: bluely
location 1454: pertussives
location 1455: megaspansules
location 1463: nebulizer
location 1470: opioid, someday someone will write a paper about DFW’s fondness for words with too many vowels crammed together like this.
location 1488: bolections
location 1489: reglets
location 1494: [[V]], Kindle’s representation of \/. Hmmm.
location 1520: G. Ford-early G. Bush, no, not that one. Sigh.
location 1525: homolosine-cartography
location 1525: optative, since there is a perfectly appropriate word optional, this strikes me as practically a solecism.
location 1530 (endnote): UNRE-LEASED, Kindle typo
location 1530 (endnote): Iimura
location 1530 (endnote): incunabular
location 1530 (endnote): pertussive
location 1530 (endnote): Concupiscence
location 1543: technical feck, cannot overstate how much I enjoy that turn of phrase.
location 1547: Cornell University Press, I do work for them sometimes.
location 1580: muscimole
location 1704: Dretske
location 1789: synclinal
location 1794: duBois-gesture, anyone know?
location 1812: and meant it: these three words embody the DFW touch.
location 1882: Lebensgefährtins, the word, meaning “significant other,” is given in the feminine form, a possibility the definition DFW provides seems to rule out. The proper word is Lebensgefährtes. Puzzling.
location 1888: leptosomatic
location 1904: plosivity
location 1946: Cantorian, of course, DFW would write extensively about Cantor in Everything and More.

Sarah, Sarah, Quite Contrarah

Martin Schneider writes:
A few quick thoughts, in no particular order:
She’s seen her last presidential ticket.
I don’t think there’s a scandal brewing.
Assuming she does not seek political office, her decision and her statement reflects more poorly on John McCain than it does on Palin herself.
For all the talk of how much liberals despise her, let’s remember that her only triumph as a national political figure came when she boasted at length about her ability to attack those loathsome Democrats.
I have a hunch she’ll change her mind and serve out her term.
There’s been a lot of talk about Todd Purdum’s Vanity Fair profile of Palin, but it’s also an excellent moment to revisit Philip Gourevitch’s article about her from last autumn.