Word: yorkerisms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lamas & Top Hats. At his side one of the world's two American-born reigning princesses* became Sikkim's Queen. Ex-New Yorker Hope Cooke (Sarah Lawrence '63) became Her Highness Hope Namgyal, Gyalmo (Queen) of Sikkim. She wore a pearl chaplet, a red bhakku over a white silk gown, and high-heeled shoes for the occasion. Her vast hazel eyes downcast, she whispered "Thank you, thank you," as a parade of lamas and top-hatted guests pressed forward to present the royal couple with cards marked with mystic symbols and heaps of white scarves for good...
...precisely the perfect qualifications for a museum custodian, an undertaker, a mortuary scientist. Thirteen years ago, upon the death of Harold Ross, precisely that difficult task befell William Shawn: to be the museum curator, the mummifier, the preserver-in-amber, the smiling embalmer-for Harold Ross's New Yorker magazine...
Breaking the Rules. If some readers had a hard time following the meaning of this convoluted prose, one reader grasped it immediately. The man described in the ad as the "embalmer" came suddenly to life and grabbed the phone. It was midnight, but New Yorker Editor William Shawn put in a call to Jock Whitney, publisher of the Herald Tribune, and said he was worried about the upcoming story...
Horsehair Stuffing. Wolfe obviously felt at home with The New Yorker. His article reveals few inside secrets,* but with customary hyperbole he captures some of the magazine's musty-fusty atmosphere: the multicolored memo paper serving a variety of subtle editorial purposes; the ritual cocktails at the Algonquin Hotel, to which no newly hired staffer dare come until he is formally-but oh so casually-invited; the religious regard for the offices of deceased or departed writers, in which all the original bric-a-brac is kept reverentially in place...
Wolfe describes the area around Shawn's own offices as a Whisper Zone: "a kind of horsehair-stuffing atmosphere of old carpeting, framed New Yorker covers, quiet cubicles and happy-shabby, baked-apple gentility." Within 40 feet of Shawn's office, says Wolfe, everyone whispers in imitation of their sibilant boss. "He always seems to have on about 20 layers of clothes, about three button-up sweaters, four vests, a couple of shirts, two ties, it looks that way, a dark shapeless suit over the whole ensemble, and white cotton socks...