Word: shawn
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ross's liability was a firmly shut mind, Shawn's has been one that some times remains too charitably open. The Greening of America, with its pot-scent ed praise of youth (who in turn greeted the book with the immortal tribute "Oh, wow!"), made many readers wonder if the magazine had suffered a touch of sclerosis. The frontispiece, "Talk of the Town," turned suddenly from boutique prattle to sometimes perceptive, some times ponderous essays about Nixon, Watergate, Cambodia, Agnew or poli tics in general. The New Yorker's sol emn discovery of causes was often over...
Still, these are relatively minor blemishes - perhaps the result of any enterprise that seeks, as Shawn has put it, "to create 52 works of art per year." It is unsurprising that errors are commit ted; it is astonishing that so many of those issues were - and are - art works...
...York magazine, then the Sunday supplement of The New York Herald-Tribune. His first installment was headlined "Tiny Mummies! The True Story of The Ruler of 43rd Street's Land of The Walking Dead!" It was a great piece, nasty and accurate. "The Ruler of 43rd Street" was William Shawn. The New Yorker's editor, whom Wolfe called "the museum curator, the mummifier, the preserver-in-amber, the smiling embalmer" of the magazine. Wolfe later explained that he wrote the piece as outrageously as he could, trying to be as sensational as The New Yorker was staid. A sort...
Truth and Beauty. A glum view of life at The New Yorker! Gill does not dwell on this paradox, but it is not hard to explain. Ross, Shawn and the rest have successfully set up as taste makers over a 50-year period when cultural presumptions have changed horrendously. The New Yorker remains a throwback to Matthew Arnold's Victorian faith in a secular religion of truth and beauty. Eustace Tilley, the magazine's monocled symbol, is clearly an Arnold disciple turned dandy. To be impeccable, graceful and hard-hitting all at the same time is demanding work...
These are dangers that Gill's book does not always sidestep. In truth, he sometimes rushes to embrace them: "It is obvious that the New Testament would make far more satisfactory reading if it had been the handiwork of Matthew, Mark, Luke and Shawn...