Word: godey
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...JOHN GODEY 316 pages. Putnam...
...Pelham one two three" is New York City subway jargon for the train that sets out from the Pelham Bay Park terminal in The Bronx at 1:23 p.m. In John Godey's "What if...?" exercise, the front car of such a train is hijacked by four highly organized, submachine-gun-toting terrorists. They hold the motorman and 16 passengers hostage while their leader negotiates with the city government for a $1,000,000 ransom. The hostages do not panic; after all, they represent that well-rounded social group - a call girl, a wise old man, a black militant...
Heaven and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority know that Godey's plot is not far removed from the reality of the contemporary urban nightmare. But Godey tries to whip up extra credibility by introducing each new twist in the drama with a flourish of fact-filled three-by-five cards. Want to know how many miles of track there are in the New York subway system? Where Alfred Ely Beach's 1867 private subway tunnel is? What it means to "jump a block"? Maybe not, but Godey is going to tell you. He cannot even write a scene about...
...careful reading of the "second-rate" literature of the period, which he rightly believes is more likely to yield a reliable impression of the period's deepest social concerns than would its high art. So the popular novels and writings of William Wirt, Simms, Sarah Hale (of Godey's Lady's Book) and a great many others are subjected to a close scrutiny the likes of which their poor authors probably never counted on. One reason this method is so productive is that the authors were by and large men and women engaged in public affairs, in business, government...
...Singer turned out a home model for $125 (average U.S. family income in the 1850s: $500), began one of the world's first installment plans to buy machines. By the time Singer died in 1875, his company was a $22-million-a-year business. Commented Publisher Louis Antoine Godey of Lady's Book, America's first fashion magazine: "Next to the plough, [the sewing machine] is perhaps humanity's most blessed instrument...