Waubonsee Community College

The 40s, the story of a decade, the New Yorker ; edited by Henry Finder with Giles Harvey ; introduction by David Remnick

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illustrations

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non fiction

The 40s

864808795

the New Yorker ; edited by Henry Finder with Giles Harvey ; introduction by David Remnick

the story of a decade

The 1940s are the watershed decade of the twentieth century, a time of trauma and upheaval but also of innovation and profound and lasting cultural change. This is the era of Fat Man and Little Boy, of FDR and Stalin, but also of Casablanca and Citizen Kane, zoot suits and Christian Dior, Duke Ellington and Edith Piaf. The 1940s were when The New Yorker came of age. A magazine that was best known for its humor and wry social observation would extend itself, offering the first in depth reporting from Hiroshima and introducing American readers to the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. In this enthralling book, masterly contributions from the pantheon of great writers who graced The New Yorker's pages throughout the decade are placed in history by the magazine's current writers. Included in this volume are seminal profiles of the decade's most fascinating figures, as well as vital, seldom reprinted criticism. Perhaps no contribution the magazine made to 1940s American culture was more lasting than its fiction and poetry. Included here is an extraordinary selection of short stories by such writers as Shirley Jackson (whose masterpiece "The Lottery" stirred outrage when it appeared in the magazine in 1948) and John Cheever (of whose now classic story "The Enormous Radio" New Yorker editor Harold Ross said: "It will turn out to be a memorable one, or I am a fish.") Also represented are the great poets of the decade, from Louise Bogan and William Carlos Williams to Theodore Roethke and Langston Hughes

Introduction / David Remnick -- pt. 1. The war -- A note by George Packer -- Notes and comment : September 2, 1939 / E.B. White -- Paris postscript (On the fall of France) / A.J. Liebling -- Letters from London (On the Blitz) / Mollie Panter-Downes -- Survival (On Lieutenant John F. Kennedy) / John Hersey -- Cross-Channel trip (On D-Day) / A.J. Liebling -- The suspended drawing room (On post-Blitz London) / S.N. Behrman -- D Day, Iwo Jima / John Lardner -- Letter from Rome (On V-E Day) / Philip Hamburger -- Hiroshima / John Hersey -- pt. 2. American scenes -- A note by Jill Lepore -- Notes and comment : July 3, 1943 / E.B. White -- The old house at home (On McSorleyʹs Old Ale House) / Joseph Mitchell -- Opera in Greenville (On a lynching trial) / Rebecca West -- Letter from a campaign train (On the 1948 presidential campaign) / Richard Rovere -- Symbol of all we possess (On the Miss America Pageant) / Lillian Ross -- pt. 3. Postwar -- A note by Louis Menand -- Notes and comment : November 1, 1947 / E.B. White -- Greek diary : communists, socialists, and royalists / Edmund Wilson -- The birch leaves falling (On the Nuremberg trials) / Rebecca West -- The beautiful spoils : monuments men (On Nazi art theft) / Janet Flanner -- Come in, Lassie! (On the Red scare in Hollywood) / Lillian Ross -- Letter from Washington (On the North Atlantic Pact) / Richard Rovere -- Die Luftbrücke (On the Berlin airlift) / E.J. Kahn, Jr. -- pt. 4. Character studies -- A note by Susan Orlean -- Notes and comment : April 21, 1945 / E.B. White -- Pollen man (On Walt Disney) / St. Clair McKelway and Harold Ross -- Rugged times (On Norman Mailer) / Lillian Ross -- Lugubrious mama (On Edith Piaf) / A/.J. Leibling -- Gossip writer (On Walter Winchell) / St. Clair McKelway -- Goethe in Hollywood (On Thomas Mann) / Janet Flanner -- La France et le vieux (On Marshall Pétain) / Janet Flanner -- The hot Bach (On Duke Ellington) / Richard O. Boyer -- From within to without (On Le Corbusier) / Geoffrey T. Hellman -- The great foreigner (On Albert Einstein) / Niccolò Tucci -- The years alone (On Eleanor Roosevelt) / E.J. Kahn, Jr. -- El Único Matador (On Sidney Franklin) / Lillian Ross -- pt. 5. The critics -- Notes and comments : December 12, 1948 / E.B. White -- Books : a note by Joan Acocella -- Ernest Hemingway crosses the bridge (On For whom the bell tolls) / Clifton Fadiman -- Why do people read detective stories? ; Jean-Paul Sartre : the novelist and the existentialist (On The age of reason) / Edmund Wilson -- Review of Lord Wearyʹs castle (On Robert Lowell) / Louise Bogan -- The sanctified sinner (On The heart of the matter by Graham Greene) / George Orwell -- Port and nuts with the Eliots (On ʺNotes towards the definition of cultureʺ by T.S. Eliot) / W.H. Auden -- Orwell on the future (On Nineteen eighty-four) / Lionel Trilling -- The current cinema : a note by David Denby -- The great Hildy (On His girl Friday) ; Zanuckʹs Joads (On The grapes of wrath) ; Charlieʹs Hitler (On The great dictator) ; Childe Orson (On Citizen Kane) / John Mosher -- Pre-Eisenhower (On Casablanca) ; Blood and premiums (On Double indemnity) / David Lardner -- Very rare vintage (On The lost weekend) ; None better (On The bicycle thief) / John McCarten -- The theater : a note by Hilton Als -- The boys in the back room (On The iceman cometh by Eugene OʹNeill) ; Well worth waiting for (On Death of a salesman by Arthur Miller) ; What a wonderful war (On Rodgers & Hammersteinʹs South Pacific) / Wolcott Gibbs -- Art & architecture : a note by Peter Schjeldahl -- Assorted moderns ; Georges Braque, and the American abstract artists / Robert M. Coates -- Rockefeller Center revisited ; The architecture of power / Lewis Mumford -- Musical events : a note by Alex Ross -- Copland and Shostakovich ; Current and recurrent (On Bernstein, Toscanini, and Armstrong) / Robert A. Simon -- In the hills (On Tanglewood) ; May Day at Loxford (On Benjamin Britten) / Philip Hamburger -- The violin and Szigeti / Winthrop Sargeant -- Feminine fashions : a note by Judith Thurman -- On the retail customer ; On ready-to-wear clothes ; On American milliners ; On French fashion ; On college clothes / Lois Long -- pt. 6. Poetry -- A note by Dan Chiasson -- Home song / E.B. White -- The unknown citizen / W.H. Auden -- The ritualists / William Carlos Williams -- Night journey / Theodore Roethke -- Barroom matins / Louis MacNeice -- The end of the world / Malcolm Cowley -- The blind sheep / Randall Jarrell -- The lovers / Conrad Aiken -- Sunday-morning prophecy / Langston Hughes -- A poet speaks from the visitorʹs gallery / Archibald MacLeish -- A hundred minnows / Mark Van Doren -- The triumph of education / Howard Nemerov -- At the fishhouses / Elizabeth Bishop -- Aspects of Robinson / Weldon Kees -- Awaking / Stephen Spender -- At yearsend / Richard Wilbur -- What I know about life / Ogden Nash -- The bight / Elizabeth Bishop -- Song for the last act / Louise Bogan -- pt. 7. Fiction -- A note by Zadie Smith -- The second tree from the corner / E.B. White -- The jockey / Carson McCullers -- Graven image / John OʹHara -- The patterns of love / William Maxwell -- Act of faith / Irwin Shaw -- The enormous radio / John Cheever -- My Da / Frank OʹConnor -- The mysteries of life in an orderly manner / Jessamyn West -- Symbols and signs / Vladimir Nabokov -- The lottery / Shirley Jackson -- The beginning of a story / Elizabeth Taylor -- The ladder / V.S. Pritchett

Forties