Customer Reviews

The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury

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This is a pleasant read, particularly for tbe regular New Yorker reader. It provides a good insight into the opinions and pretenses of educated, liberal-minded, and financially comfortable Americans of the '40s and '50s with regard to issues we learned about mostly through dull high school history lectures. Each chapter focuses on a particular theme of the era, such as McCarthyism, civil rights, household help, etc. All are well-written, but I think in some sections, the author draws a few too many psycho-babblish inferences.

The World Through a Monocle gives us an insightful synthesis of the major contradictions of the 1950s. Mary Corey skillfully interprets the ambiguities found in the pages of the New Yorker from 1946 to 1953. Rather than viewing that complex world through rose-colored glasses, Corey argues that the magazine reflected a telescopic view in which all aspects of the postwar world were present, but the lens magnified some facets out of proportion and others became so minuscule that New Yorker readers could not distinguish them.

It is clear Corey delights in the New Yorker world, but wants to understand it at a deeper level. Her lively prose draws the reader in and helps them understand the magazine's appeal to a newly status conscious and anxious population. We come to understand how socially conscious liberals who longed for both "social distinction" and "egalitarian democratic principles" could dismiss or misinterpret "significant power inequities that existed within postwar American society." Her chapters explore the complexities of anti-communism, race, class, gender and consumerism.

Her conclusion suggests that the children of 50s New Yorker readers become the counterculture rebels of the 60s. Rather than "fretting" about power inequities as their parents had, this generation openly rebelled against the materialism and economic privilege that shaped the 40s and 50s. Corey neatly maps the "constraints and ellipses of post war discourse." Her persuasive exposing of the lacunae of such a powerful segment of society raises provocative questions about our present social astigmatism.

Mary F. Corey has written an entertaining, well researched and, in its own delightful way, charming look at a magazine in the middle of the twentienth century. This is important because the magazine is the New Yorker and it reflects the attitudes and thoughts of a certain group of Americans of this period, a sort of floating liberalism. The author looks at the New Yorker's views of women, other races, communism and servants (among other subjects) in its fiction, articles and cartoons. New Yorker magazine does not necessarily come out all good in this but that is part of the pleasure of this book. It is not written as a form of nostalgia (although there is always a whiff present) but as a serious look at an important time in American history and what some leading writers and journalists were thinking and creating at this time. There is much positive among the negative and it does give the reader a real feeling for how important a magazine can be and, particulary, have been in the past. A very good book and an excellant look at an important magazine.

Corey's book examines the cultural assumptions of the New Yorker as a reflection of the divided heart of the liberal intelligencia--torn between altruism and social aspiration, the magnanimous and the material. The book is refreshingly free of both academic jargon and the elevated gossip that constitutes much of what has been written about the magazine. Her focus is on what's inside its pages--from the Talk of the Town to the fiction, cartoons, advertisements and features. It's all fertile ground for Corey's critical but always humane intelligence, which discovers in the contradictions of the magazine (and its readers) the seeds of discord that led to the rebellions of the 60s. Corey makes it clear that she is writing about a world she grew up in herself--the world of her parents--but she never lets her personal investment get in the way of her clear-eyed but sympathetic analysis. The writing is supple and elegant; the analysis origial, and she never forgets to let the alluring spirit of the magazine she both loves and deplores shine through. A terrific read.

Corey scans the arbiter of middlebrow American unflinchingly: the conflicts it both created and reflected at a particularly vital time in our history. By undercovering (and, in some cases, spelunking)the ambilvalence of the post-war haves, she puts a much-needed torch on & to the myth of the parthenogenetic 60s.

When I was growing up, in the 1950s I knew the entire collected New Yorker cartoons by heart; My father wrote for the New Yorker. Until I came of age, I read ony the cartoons and drooled over the ads. I didn't notice the curious paradox of pages of liberal thought combined with pages promoting liberal consumption of luxury goods. Mary Corey's book casts a cold eye on the glossy page, and describes what she sees. My father's generation may have had an inkling of the thicket they were in, and it behooves my generation to understand it, and not forget.

This is a serious look by an academic historian at UCLA. Although it is written in a readable and engaging style, she actually takes a serious look at issues such as racism and class divisions in the US during the mid-20th century as reflected on The New Yorker's pages. If anything, she could have dug deeper, but it is a fine book for both the historian and the interested general public. Fascinating look especially in the post-war period when so many social issues generally liberalized and the vocabulary of discourse subtly changed. Excelllent social and cultural history, done with the right credentials, but quite readable. There is some less serious discussion also, but for most of the lighter chatter about this fabled magazine you'll have to look to other authors. The famous light-comedy writer James Thurber's book (written in the 50s) on Harold Ross is very interesting and lively, but serious too. (For an anecdotal fun book about the New Yorker that does not very deep, read "Here at the New Yorker.")

Though begun in 1925, the New Yorker really came into its own following WW2, and in the 40s and 50s set its course through the major domestic and international issues of the day--the threat of Communism, war in Korea and racial discontent were as important to its readers as was life in the suburbs with its bored housewives and flippant domestics. It forced us to look at serious problems at home and abroad while it poked fun at our attempts to meet the challenges, and by doing so made us that much more aware.

Readership ran the gamut of liberals, patricians, idealists, intellectuals, activists and dreamers. And while it obviously held great appeal for the affluent and the avant-garde, it equally exhorted their social responsibilities. There was something for everyone and a forum for just about anything.

The New Yorker has consistently, and at times irreverently, recorded the evolution of the American spirit, more often than not in its fabulous cartoons!!!

This is book a purported cultural study of The New Yorker magazine during the decade or so following World War II. Actually, it's a polemic of the revisionist history cadre and is as turgid as a prosecutor's brief. The author cheerfully acknowledges the good advice she was given by colleagues, (and which she totally ignores): (1) remain curious about the past rather than judge it in the harsh light of' present-mindedness, and (2) conscience and compassion are essential to the practice of history. What we have is a 200 page diatribe against a popular magazine for shorting today's hot buttons such as the ethnic groups so vocal these days, for not being sufficiently anti-Communist during the McCarthy era, for not giving three cheers when Jackie Robinson was hired by Branch Rickey (author: it also failed to celebrate the fame and popularity of Rochester, Jack Benny's chauffeur who was twice as funny and twice as smart as his boss), and in general for being racist, class conscious and sexist. Terrible. How could so many readers have taken out subscriptions? Well, the author says the subscribers and the readers of The New Yorker, as well as its advertisers, its writers and its editors all suffered from the same benighted political incorrectness. Makes you stop and think. Couldn't any thinking Americans do anything right in that era? Who is it who has the wisdom to make these judgments about entire prior generations? (see advice item #1 above). Oh, and, World Was II was not a "good" war, and we should not have dropped the A-bomb. The author speculates about what she supposes was "nagging self-doubt" exhibited in the magazine. She ignores all cartoons and articles that do not support her political bias. The New Yorker did not invent ethnic humor nor is it the only publication ever to exhibit "smug satisfaction." The author obviously does not read the ads for fancy cars and expensive jewelry in today's magazines. And by the way, marrying young was not an invention of post-war America. What we now deplore (some of us) about The New Yorker's alleged elevation of the power of privilege over principle and of comfort over confrontation, will look pretty silly when this era is examined by future historians. The narrow-mindedness, the Puritanic holier-than-thou attitude, the political agenda, and above all, the total lack of amiability contained in this book make it a red flag in today's culture wars: Caveat lector. I'd rather remember Charles Addams' wonderful captionless cartoon of ski tracks dividing to go around a tree trunk.