Scrutable Poetry Corner: "Guestroom Books" by Newman Levy

"Guestroom Books" by Newman Levy (The New Yorker, April 12, 1930).

Beside my chaste and downy cot
There stands a goodly number
Of stately tomes of prose and pomes
To lull the guest to slumber.

The verse of T. S. Eliot,
A copy of "Ulysses,"
As though to say "No place you'll stay
So cultured is as this is."

The works (in French) of Baudelaire,
And Keats "Epipsychidion"
And next to it The Holy Writ
Purloined, I fear, from Gideon.

A goodly and narcotic list
Of literary glories,
While down below my host, I know,
Is reading Snappy Stories.

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "The Big Game Hunter"

I was going to mention that Dr. Seuss draws his insects larger than they really are, but then I'd also have to mention their binocular vision, their dentition, and their unusual number of legs.

Actually, if you look at these creatures and manage to forget that they're "funny," some of them are downright scary!

The Drys Go Happily to Hell, Plus Cat Joke

In March, 1930, after ten years of expensive prohibition "enforcement" that did little except make bootleggers rich, Americans loudly debated whether to reform the Volstead act. It was obvious that people of all social stripes were still drinking almost as much booze as they had been previously, and it was obvious to most people that prohibition encouraged outright graft and corruption to the point where people just assumed that every cop (and government official) was on the payroll of crime syndicates.

But still the "Drys" held on. Powerful voting blocs had not yet reached the point of "repeal," simply asking for "reform." Magazines like The New Yorker had a field day with this whole debate, as often happens when opposing views become totally strident, polarized, pointless, and out of touch with reality.

So March 29, 1930 brings the first really great New Yorker cover that I've seen so far, drawn by Rea Irvin, probably the most constant contributor to the magazine since its inception. Just look at the happy grin of the "Wet" good-time girl falling to hell, and the awful drabness of the "Dry."

(As always, click for a bigger version)

I'm confused about the cat, though. Was this from some temperance meme of the day, or was the "Dry" a caricature of a notable cat-loving person, or did Irvin add it simply to add balance and humour to the cover?

We'll never know, but I DID find this great cat joke:

Amie Semple McPherson was an old time evangelist who was known for her dramatic sermons. Once she sent a little kid up into the choir loft and told him to release a dove out of its cage on cue.

So she was preaching away and said, "And the Lord will send a dove of peace..."

And the kid yelled out, "The cat just ate the dove. Should I throw down the cat?"

Someday...

(In reference to Reuben's practice of naming sandwiches after Broadway stars..."The Eddie Cantor Chicken Club," etc. The artist is Leonard Dove.)

A Plane in Every Driveway

Either folks in the early '30s were positively airplane crazy, or the companies that built airplanes wanted to manufacture that impression. Issues of The New Yorker have contained airplane advertisements from the late '20s, but by March 15, 1930, the trickle of plane promotion has become a flood.

Half of the advertisements are devoted to commercial flights, either for vacationers ("Havana") or commuters ("New York to Boston"). The commuter flights were surprisingly cheap ($11 or so) and seemed to involve some level of comfort: in-flight food, heated cabin, the works.

The advertisements for PRIVATE airplanes are far more interesting. It seems you could buy a plane for about $1000, and by folding up the wings you could keep it in an ordinary car garage. The implication, by 1930, really was that you could store and use a plane enough to make the price worthwhile...though they're a bit vague about what you'd actually use the plane FOR. And they tend not to mention picky things like "runways" and "engine maintenance" and "maximum load."

I'm looking at an advertisement for a personal open cockpit biplane from the Travel Air Company. It's the story of a man whose wife -- after landing the plane "on the lower lawn" -- finally talks her father-in-law into "going up." He has the time of his life and is an instant convert to private air travel...but he never says "Wait a minute...what do you guys use this thing for?"

And that IS the question. Why don't we each have an airplane in the garage? I suppose because few of us have "lower lawns" to use as runways, and neither do our workplaces. Maybe most of us are afraid of heights. Or maybe air congestion would be too difficult a problem to solve. Or -- most likely -- the growing passenger capacity of commercial air travel made private planes less essential to most of those who would have bought them.

Today I only know one person with a pilot's license. I'll have to ask him what he plans to use it for. I hope he'll have some insight into the practicality of air travel.

PS: In the same issue of the magazine, the London correspondent laments the sorry state of air travel in England. Apparently the problem was that the airplane insurance was so high that each year's payment equalled the cost of the plane itself.

Scrutable Poetry Corner: "Spring Song" by Richard Peckham

Oh jeez, I can't wait.

The oily air is warm and sunny
And I am feeling fine but funny.
Break out the sulphur and molasses;
The boys and girls are making passes
On buses and beneath Childs' tables.
The pigeons on their copper gables
Bellow like amorous vacuum cleaners.
Our winter fare of rolls and weiners
No longer suits. Let's have some rhubarb.
The air today has got a new barb--
Not frost but blue and growling fire.
The veins that were as stiff as wire
Are gone as slow and soft as soup.
Leave off the coat and give a whoop.
A bowl of well-steeped calamus
Would make a dandy lunch for us.
Let's not go back to work today.
This weather takes the will away.
This is the time when girls begin
To fill their clothes as plums their skin.
O for a yard of grassy hummock
On which to lay the languid stomach.
O for a month to be just lazy,
Sung at by birds a trifle crazy.

(From the March 15, 1930 issue of The New Yorker. Richard Peckham was the pseudonym of Raymond Pekham Holden, who wrote a lot of poetry for the magazine during the '30s. I can't find a single biography online).

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "When Knights Were Afraid of Mosquitos"

May your New Year be as happy as a knight with a suit full of bug repellent!

Unearthing Forgotten Bits of Culture: William Lyon Phelps

Reading old issues of The New Yorker clarifies a lot of things about life in the '20s and '30s, but it also raises new mysteries. It was written -- obviously -- for people who knew the current events of the day, so things can be a bit muddy for the 21st century reader, especially when the writers neglect to provide Googleable clues.

Several months ago I solved The Mystery of Mitzi Hajos. This afternoon I solved The Mystery of Nothing Like It.

Written by Christopher Ward* in the March 8, 1930 issue, "Nothing Like It By W-M L-N PH-L-S" is obviously a spoof of a particular book reviewer. This reviewer is obsessed with his airtight Christian morality, and even more obsessed with his social connections; each review degenerates into a long-winded story about how he is on friendly terms with the author. He also makes some really terrible puns.

Most enjoyable is his "Faery Queene Club," which he offers membership to anybody who has read the poem, including a nine-year-old named Abram Goody who wants "a badge or something" ("No, Master Goody, the only reward is a consciousness of superiority to your parents and friends, and your name in this magazine"). He also gets a letter from a chorus girl:

I have read quite a lot of the book you give me. Its certainly wrote swell. Its away over poor little me. Anyhow I want to join your Fairy Queen Club. I suppose its like the others sos I can go there when the shows over and get a drink and see a little life. Ime getting along fine they have gave me a better part. Ime in the front row now. Let me know about the Club where its address is and everything.

Besides proving that people haven't changed much in the last eighty years, the spoof posed a mystery...who was W-M L-N PH-L-S? Obviously a '30s reader would know, but what about me?

I tried inserting letters into the blanks...obviously "Phelps," but what about "W-M" and "L-N?" "Wim Lon Phelps?" Nothing was working, so I tried reverting the spoof column name ("Nothing Like It") to what I assumed was the original ("Something Like It" or "As You Like It"). Nope, no luck.

Then I tried "The Faery Queene Club," and whoopee...it really existed, and was run by William Lyon Phelps, who wrote a regular column called "As I Like It" for Scribner's Magazine! More importantly, every mention of Phelps online waxes eloquent about his intelligence and fame, but they never ONCE mention his supposed pomposity.

So by writing this post I am not just crowing about my internet sleuthing...I'm also pointing out that William Lyon Phelps was once considered annoying enough to inspire a spoof column, and a very funny one indeed.

* Bonus Mystery: I assume that "Christopher Ward" was Christopher Lewis Ward, who was known for writing burlesques around that time.

Cock-Crow of the Bantam Car

I understand that '30s periodicals were not particularly sensitive -- offenses against God and Country excluded -- but I'm a bit surprised by the pictures in this March 1st, 1930 advertisement from The New Yorker. They represent the "American Austin" car as the victorious rooster in a bloody cockfight.

The rest of the advertisement is simply a list of statistics and celebrity endorsements. The cockfight metaphor is only addressed in the pictures. It's SO BLASE.

This is particularly strange because cockfighting was illegal in New York state in the 1930s, and I only know this because Morris Markey wrote a great piece about it ("Feathered Warriors") in an issue of The New Yorker just one month before. And while the magazine itself made lots of explicit (and complicit) mentions of the illegal liquor trade, the ADVERTISEMENTS never did so (though they did sell cocktail shakers and such).

In short, showing this cockfight imagery would have been akin to saying something like: "The American Austin: The best bootleg gin around!" They couldn't do it for booze...why could they do it for a bloodsport?

A Word to the Fellas Who Wear Trackpants

You're always proud of her.

Good cause you have too. Sitting beside her in the car...strolling down-town...stepping out together...you know you have a perfect right to take pride in her appearance. But how does she really feel about you? Very little gets by that appraising glance... How do you suppose you would look to yourself, as well as others, say, on fifty feet of film?

Your tailoring is good, unquestionably. Your feet are well shod. And the Stetson emphatically lends an air of distinction. Yes, you'll pass inspection. And down deep, there's a little, sneaking feeling that you may have caught a gleam of pride in her glance, too, when it happens your way. There's really nothing like a smartly proportioned Stetson to finish off any turnout.

(From the February 22, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, when women reclaimed their waists, regular folks had stopped investing money, and men STILL wore hats).

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "On Safari"

Presented without comment, a true story!

Sung by Libby Holman

Awww, I just love these slang-filled, over-alliterative '30s record advertisements from Brunswick.

Happy Because I'm in Love -- What a kiss can do to this mean, moanin' mamma! Lurid Libby admits a loss of reason in this--the confession of a conquered coquette.

More Than You Know -- Here's Libby giving some gent a break and some thousands of Holmanites the thrill of a life-time--on Brunswick Record No. 4613.

They're talking about the infamous Libby Holman, who you can hear sing "Primitive Man" here. It's such a cool song.

Burlesque, Then and Before Then

The state of burlesque occasionally appears in the pages of the old New Yorker, and every few years the reporters mention Minsky's. The Minsky Brothers kept a high-profile burlesque show going at the National Winter Garden, even through the late '20s and early '30s when the artform was unappreciated.

In the February 1st, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, theatre reporter Robert Benchley compared the cleaner Minsky style of burlesque with the "old Fourteenth Street or Old Howard days." Besides the somewhat "cleaner" costumes and a greater reliance on "effects," Benchley makes a (perhaps backhanded) compliment to the fuller figure:

The most noticeable change in burlesque...is in the structure of the ladies of the chorus. Gone are the leviathans of an earlier day, when women were women and gold teeth flashed like beacons above Scyllas and Charybdises which could sink a ship if given half a chance. The burlesque girls of today are agile wisps for the most part, although here and there one detects a form which, if given its quota of starches for a year or two, might approximate those which used to ply back and forth in irregular array behind Clark and McCullough, Tom Howard, and Jim Barton.

I love Robert Benchley's theatre reviews. "Scyllas and Charybdises?" Holy cow!

Anyway, Benchley goes on to say that what sets Minsky's burlesque apart from regular Broadway shows is the "informality in chorus dance routines." Each dancer can do whatever she wants "so long as they all get on and off the stage at the same time," though he bemoans their attempts at synchronized arm-raising.

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Whoopee!"

Who ever said Dr. Seuss wasn't a horndog?


From the January 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker. And, errr, "of its time."

"I Am Not Dumb Now"

I'm reading a biography of Helen Keller in the January 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker, and it lead me to this contemporary newsreel film.



Stunning, baffling, and beautiful.

The Unsolved Mysteries of Williamson and Voynich

As annoying as Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!" program can be, one of their comments has really stuck with me. During a program about cryptozoology, Penn said that there are enough real and established unsolved mysteries in the world that we shouldn't become obsessed with ones that are merely tenuous.

The obvious examples involve both the huge and the tiny things that science is actively probing: cosmology, subatomic particles, and genetic material. But I'm equally (if not more) fascinated by the little, somewhat mundane oddities that pop up now and then.

Just in case you are too, here's an example: Williamson's tunnels. In the early 1800s, a rich and somewhat eccentric Liverpudlian named Joseph Williamson started constructing huge, elaborate tunnels under his property.


Instead of being objects of curiosity after his death, they were mostly viewed with annoyance; they'd get in the way of new building projects, and housing developers would simply fill them up with rubble -- usually without telling anybody -- so that their new apartment buildings wouldn't fall into them.

Now a small group of volunteers is slowly and methodically uncovering the tunnels, and they're discovering that they're much deeper -- and they travel much farther -- than credible sources would have indicated. It's incredibly difficult for an underfunded handful of people to clear out uncounted tonnes of compressed rubble, but they're slowly making their way through the tunnel network, finding new things all the time.

The mystery isn't just the EXTENT of the tunnels, it's also "Why were they built in the first place?" Nobody really knows yet, but maybe if they travel far enough they'll eventually get some clue. Until then: unsolved and really cool.

A second mystery is one I just learned about tonight, thanks to a brief article in the January 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker. In 1912, book-dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich publicized the existence of a book that has become known as the Voynich Manuscript.


People have been trying to decipher the manuscript for almost 100 years, but they still can't crack its bizarre cypher. If the book isn't simply an elaborate hoax -- which it doesn't seem to be -- then it was written in the 15th or 16th century. It appears to be a biological, astrological, and alchemical treatise and is full of bizarre illustrations, including chimerical plants and naked women bathing in funnels and tubes.

Want to read it? Think you can solve the mystery? Check it out here. And I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing FAR more fascinating than bigfoot or The Ghost of Henry VIII.

Impromptu Caption Contest for Cynical People Who Believe That Nastiness Is It's Own Reward!

The New Yorker's Shy Date with Modern Dance, 1930

Unless in reference to the latest hotcha dancefloor moves or the hottest entertainers at nightclubs, The New Yorker didn't say anything about dance. The closest they ever got was a somewhat irreverent look at Isadora Duncan's achievements...after she'd died.

So imagine my surprise to find, after all my recent modern dance bloviating, a tiny article called "On With the Dancers" tucked into the January 18, 1930 issue.

Our dancers of today are notable for the minimum of dancing in which they indulge. Their performances have become attempts at drama-in-petto, with almost no display of terpsichorean virtuosity. Dancing that is dancing does not really exist on the stage that devotes itself to the incohate form known as "the dance." (This is to be pronounced as if it were a sacred matter, or at least one not totally intelligible to the laity.)

It's sort of amusing to have The New Yorker accuse somebody ELSE of being snooty, especially in the same paragraph as the word "terpsichorean," but it's interesting (if not surprising) to read somebody from almost eighty years ago saying the same sort of thing that I've been saying all month, only shorter and with even less tolerance for the art.

The pseudonymous author divides 1930s dance performances into four categories. The first are the people who star in musical shows (Jack Donahue, Bill Robinson, the Astaires), "and consequently have no aesthetic status whatsoever." The second is exemplified by Anga Enters, who apparently acted out musical scenes in a form of pantomime.

The final categories are the type of modern dance we're accustomed to. The third is allegorical, modernistic, and intended to evoke a state of mind using "poses, of which there is not, apparently, an unlimited variety." The author is particularly critical of Martha Graham's use of "uplifted eyes to complete her pictures." Today's equivalent, I suspect, is the yearning reach-and-grasp.

The fourth category is the athletic "neo-ballet" school, which uses some traditional "moves" but still tries to escape convention. The author mentions Helen Tamiris (simply "Tamiris" back then).

And what was the author's conclusion, way back then?

If you happen not to be in sympathy with the bodily expression of moods, music, or dramatic concepts, it all will seem like a lot of fussiness in which music is supplemented by something extraneous and dancing is reduced to posturing. If the form interests you, you will discover in the activities of the Dance Repertory Theatre, and those who are going in the same direction, a sincere endeavor to make of "the dance" an entity capable of standing on its own legs--and what legs some of them are!

Ahem.

Talkies and Continuous Showings

In 1930 -- several years after the arrival of the talkies -- The New Yorker continued to make references to the phenomenon, indicating that talking pictures were still a bit of a novelty. Here's a cute story from the January 11, 1930 issue:

No doubt about it, the talkies do complicate life. A talkie-goer has made this complaint: The other day she arrived in a theatre just before the conclusion of the feature picture. In the old days, to remain in pleasant ignorance of the outcome, she would have had merely to lean back and shut her eyes. Now, in addition to doing this, she has to put her fingers in her ears.

To understand this you need to recognize that movie theatres at the time showed "continuous showings." Unlike today -- when your ticket only buys you admission to a single showing of a film -- the early theatres repeated the same program all day: for example a newsreel, then a cartoon, then a short subject, then the feature film...and then right back to the newsreel again. You could watch the film multiple times if you wanted, though I imagine the ushers -- another bygone aspect of movie theatre culture -- would kick out loiterers, snoozers, and groping flappers eventually.

I mention this because I don't know if many people are aware that the continuous showing method ever existed. What's more, I can't even find out when it ended...it was certainly happening in the '50s (I'm sure that Wally and Theodore alluded to it in "Leave It To Beaver," which is probably where I first heard about it), and it certainly ended before I was a child (in the early '70s).

So I wonder: when did theatres switch to the current method? And why?

Incidentally I AM old enough to remember when theatre seats had ashtrays build into their arms. I can also remember the playing of the national anthem before the feature began: after the coming attractions, the curtain would lower, and then as it rose the anthem would begin to play. We'd all stand up and sing. The curtain would come down at the end, then finally rise at the beginning of the feature.

Hard to imagine that today, somehow.

The Eldritch, Stygian, Cyclopean Horrors of H. P. Lovecraft

I have been slogging my way through a giant 1000-page collection of H.P. Lovecraft's better (or at least "more significant") stories. This is the first time I've read his work in many, many years.

I realize now that I actually didn't read as many Lovecraft stories as I thought I did, and that the ones I DID read I tended to skim. Patience, experience, context, and age are allowing me to better enjoy his strengths and tolerate his weaknesses...but I still have to restrain that skimming urge.

What have I learned so far? Lovecraft was far more creative than I ever gave him credit for. While he tended to use the same techniques over and over again, his actual IDEAS -- the "hooks" in the stories -- show a lot of variety.

I'm also surprised at how GRUESOME his work was. The stereotype of Lovecraft is that his protagonists always faint before they can fully describe the final horror (he even manages to turn Harry Houdini into a shrieking wimp in "Under the Pyramids"), but for the most part this isn't the case. Stories like "The Outsider," "The Shunned House," and "Cool Air" pull no punches when it comes to the climax, and "In the Vault" is one of the few stories I've ever read that has managed to shock me.

He was extremely creative, yes, and he doesn't entirely deserve the "tease" label he's been saddled with...so why is this compendium of stories so often infuriating?

A few reasons. Lovecraft's racism is well documented, and though his eugenic beliefs were more-or-less of his time, it's still maddening to read about the evolutionary and cultural "degeneracy" that his characters keep harping about.

Something else his characters harp about is the oh-so-scary "cyclopean masonry" in virtually every story. It comes up so often -- and is presented as so disturbing -- that I wonder if Lovecraft was confused as to what it actually WAS: big hunks of rough limestone built into a wall. Disregarding the fact that there is nothing intrinsically sanity-blasting about that sort of architecture, you really have to wonder how all his characters knew what the style was CALLED. Did YOU know what "cyclopean" meant? Did more people in the 1920s know what it meant? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, this ties into the prevalence of Lovecraft's lasting legacy: the ubiquitous Necronomicon, the supposedly-rare arcane book of evil and forgotten knowledge...which at least one character in each of his later stories has managed to read at some point. And we're not just talking about occultists and folklorists, we're talking about ORDINARY people. In "At the Mountains of Madness," both the geologist and the BIOLOGIST in the doomed Antarctic expedition have read the book cover-to-cover. Rather than provide atmosphere and depth, the constant citing of the Necronomicon just makes it seem increasingly pedestrian; who can be intrigued by a Book Of Forbidden Knowledge that everybody has read?

My final criticism only applies to two stories so far: "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Shadow Out of Time." While most of Lovecraft's stories contain a fair amount of movement and action ("The Shadow Over Innsmouth" in particular), those two stories appear to be flimsy excuses for Lovecraft to say "Look at this detailed biological and cultural description of these monsters I made up!" They're dull expository sandwiches: two thin slices of plot surrounding thick, fifty-page examinations of the life and times of creepy pseudo-vegetables. Somebody should have just given Lovecraft a sketchbook for his birthday.

I started reading this collection with low expectations, so despite some extremely long and dry sections I am pleasantly surprised by Lovecraft's work. I am particularly in love with "The Colour Out of Space," which I think is the perfect collection of all of Lovecraft's strengths.

But for your own sake I recommend -- as always -- that you do NOT read all of his work in a row. You may find yourself turning into a fish-monster, losing your sanity, and screaming "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!" in the night, which would be too much for even fearless Harry Houdini to bear.