Word: hatting
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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What makes an editorial job on the weekly so desperate, said Maloney, is "the glum fact of the New Yorker's perfection; because perfection, in the mind of Harold Ross, is not a goal or an ideal, but something that belongs to him, like his watch or his hat." In 22 years, this has enormously complicated the once casual synthesis of the magazine: "Ross is no longer content with a profile; he requests also a family history, bank reference, social security number, urinalysis, catalogue of household possessions, names of all living relatives, business connections, political affiliations, as well...
EDNA'S FRUIT HAT AND OTHER STORIES (2 I I pp.) - John Pudney - Harper...
Edna asserted her new freedom at once. She insisted on wearing a dashing hat to Mother's burial. It was one of those flower-&-fruit affairs trimmed with poppies and cherries...
...Bird. But a thrush knew. "No sooner was the coffin grounded, than he was up on the brim of Edna's hat, his beak an inch from a purple cherry. . . ." For if Edna was odd, her hat was odder: the "goodness going up through her hair" had turned the trimmings to real flowers and fruit. The rest of the story reports how Edna earned her ?5 a week by exhibiting her unusual headgear in a publicity splurge that would have made Mother turn over in her grave. By the time she had been eclipsed by a woman...
Most of the 16 gently amusing stories in Author Pudney's book are prettily braided from the same wisps of fancy. For readers who find all whimsy emetic, Edna's Fruit Hat is no tonic. Others may find the whimsy effectively laced with the author's astringent loathing for British lower-middle-class gentility (the stories are laid in unspecified small towns in England). For Author Pudney deftly uses fantasy to show what devastating discomfort the intrusion of improbability can cause in the lives of people who mistake the prejudices of their social group for the laws...