by Tom Wolfe
Since the war, the suburbs of America’s large cities have been filling up with educated women with large homes and solid hubbies and the taste to … buy expensive things. The New Yorker was the magazine—about the only general magazine—they heard their professors mention in a … good cultural way. And now here they are out in the good green world of Larchmont, Dedham, Grosse Point, Bryn Mawr, Chevy Chase, and they find that this magazine, this cultural magazine, is speaking right to them—their language—cultural and everything—but communicating—you know?—right to a suburban woman. Those wonderful stories!
Well, first of all, The New Yorker is a totem for these women. Just having it in the home is, well, it is a … symbol, a kind of cachet. But more than that, it is not like those other cachet magazines, like Réalités or London Illustrated—people just only barely leaf through those magazines—The New Yorker reaches a little corner in the suburban-bourgeois woman’s heart. And in this little corner are Mother, large rural-suburban homes with no mortgage, white linen valances, and Love that comes with Henry Fonda, alone, on a pure-white horse. Perfect short stories! After all, a girl is not really sitting out here in Larchmont waiting for Stanley Kowalski to come by in his ribbed undershirt and rip the Peck & Peck cashmere off her mary poppins. That is not really what the suburbs are like. A girl—well, a girl wants Culture and everything, but she wants a magazine in the house that communicates, too, you know? And you don’t have to scour your soul with Top Dirt afterward, either.
Not only that—glorious!—the ads. To thousands of suburban women, The New Yorker is a national shopping news. Every issue of The New Yorker is a gorgeous picture gallery, edited not by Shawn but by the most gifted advertising directors in New York. Here are castles at Berchtesgaden, courtesy of Air France, balding biggies with their arms around golden girls at the ship’s rail at sunset, courtesy of Matson Line cruise ships, chauffeurs in leather boots and jodhpurs carrying cases of liquor out to Rolls-Royces beneath the glistening glass of Park Avenue at Fifty-third Street, courtesy of Imperial Whiskey, women of expensive languor sitting up in bed against a Louis XVI headboard with diamonds as big as a pig’s knuckle on their fingers and white Persian cats and small escritoires on their laps, courtesy of Crane writing paper—all of this great, beautiful stuff. The New Yorker grossed $20,087,952 in advertising income in 1964. New Yorker stock was selling at $132 to $139 in 1964. It was only $20 to $29 ten years ago. The magazine averaged 115 pages of advertising per issue last year. The entire magazine, editorial and ads, ran only 96 to 112 pages thirty years ago. The New Yorker’s advertising department is in a position to reject ads at will. In 1963 the magazine threw out all ads with a picture of women’s underwear on the grounds that too many of the ones the agencies presented struck a “sour” note and The New Yorker was tired of arguing each case individually.
The New Yorker has put out a booklet for advertisers—actually, The New Yorker’s “Department of Market Research” put it out. Marvelous! Very much like Good Housekeeping. The booklet is entitled “The Primary Market for Quality Merchandise.” On the face of it, the booklet is just a service to companies to show them where the “quality” buyers are concentrated in the country. The real idea apparently is to show advertisers that The New Yorker’s circulation is concentrated in the same places—these great beautiful postwar American metropolitan areas. Exquisite! They show that the New Yorker circulation runs along the same curve as the purchase of Cadillacs and Lincolns, fine jewelry and silverware in the wealthiest American suburbs. Exquisite! One may watch The New Yorker in the curve of beauty with Cadillacs, Lincolns, filigree bowls, Winslow table settings, on through the zoning commission Elysiums of Stamford and Newton Square.
The March 13 issue of The New Yorker ran 204 pages, and running between these tropical forests of ads is a single thin gray column of type, editorial matter. The pattern now, usually, is that there are full pages of editorial matter, prints, and cartoons, only for the first fourth of the magazine. After that, typically, practically to the end of the magazine, will be a full-page ad on one page and two columns of ads and one column of print on the page facing it. This thin connective tissue—the column of print—seems to grow paler and paler all the time, in actual physical appearance. And sure enough it has. Yes! Several years ago The New Yorker shifted its printing operation from the Condé Nast Press in New York to the Donnelly Press in Chicago. At this juncture they made the connective tissue, the print, paler. They “leaded out” the lines a fraction of an inch, put more white space between them. This made the ads—beautiful lush ads!—stand out more, especially in cases where, for technical reasons, the blacks in the ads could not be made as intense as the blacks the New Yorker presses were running. The palest possible print! Like a modest silver-plated setting for … jewels.
One of The New Yorker’s former editors said—he couldn’t help it—he said, “Every time I see those little skinny strips of type running on and on through those big fat gorgeous ads—all I can think of is, well, I sort of want to cry—all I can think of is all those little shabby men slaving away every week over their little albino columns that nobody is going to read.”
Shabby little men? What is he talking about? It is impossible for the men, these dedicated men who put out The New Yorker, who—who—whuh—well, it is impossible, genetically impossible, for them to be … shabby, or anything close to shabby. Yes! It looks like Shawn has a complete genetic program under way to make certain that Harold Ross’s New Yorker is preserved … in perpetuity.
But! How can one possibly understand The New Yorker’s eugenics without actually seeing something like the magazine’s fortieth anniversary party in the St. Regis Hotel’s Roof ballroom. It is a closed affair. People who thought of inviting outsiders were gently, firmly warned not to. Our Thing! All these men and women from the editorial and the advertising departments are up there on the twentieth floor at the St. Regis, in the ballroom, amid so much … effervescence, amid a lot of cherub decorations and a lot of snug windows on the Fifty-fifth Street side, looking down upon the City Lights. A society band is on the bandstand, and they are playing a lot of this … current … as they say, pop music, twist music or frug music, or whatever one calls it. But—marvelous! —they have the society-band knack of reducing everything to the most wonderful woodwind toot-toot boopy sort of … well, swing, from out of the 1930s. There are tables with white tablecloths all around the edge of the dance floor, and everyone is having drinks or dancing or having some of the buffet, so much fine ham and turkey and aspic and these carapaced rolls. Some of the younger people are even doing some of these dances, such as the twist and the frug—but the main thing is that everyone is together up here—everybody—from both editorial and advertising, all these so-called shabby little men who turn out the so-called albino columns of print in the magazine and these dapper people who manage one of the great advertising empires in journalism, these very-well-turned-out people like Hoyt (Pete) Spelman, an advertising executive, all there in the St. Regis Roof ballroom—happy fox-trot!—for the fortieth anniversary of The New Yorker.
Yes! The music stops, the bandleader stops his men, then turns around with the bandstand full-moon smile, then turns to his men, and they start playing “Happy Birthday,” that good reedy woodwind society-band way, the reedy toot. And up from one side comes—indeed, it is him, Mr. Fleischmann, bringing in the cake. Mr. Fleischmann, of the family with the bakery fortune, founded The New Yorker with Harold Ross. He sank the money into it, and Ross turned out the magazine. Mr. Fleischmann is seventy-nine, and at his side, right at the elbow, with that old cake moving along on the silent butler, is his forty-threeyear-old son, Peter Francis Fleischmann. Peter is … straight as an arrow. He wears a lighter blue suit, good worsted, as he is now past forty, of the shade known as headmaster’s blue. The woodwinds are toot-toot-booping “Happy Birthday,” and everyone is standing up amid the stagy valances and white tables, and the first emotion is very sentimental. But next suddenly one feels …
yes! confidence. The New Yorker’s eugenics! There is Raoul Fleischmann’s progeny, Peter, at his side, and Peter is not just along to be with Dad; he is also treasurer of The New Yorker. Of course, it used to be even more solid. Stephen Botsford used to be president of The New Yorker … “Happy Birthday.” Toot-toot boopy and the band men may be aging 1930s musicians, woodwinds toot-toot-boopy, but that … swing goes out like a supersonic industrial tool bath, out upon not just the old great tiny giants of American Culture but their sons and daughters as well. Brendan Gill, Mollie Panter-Downes, Janet Flanner, Winthrop Sargeant, Robert Coates; they worked under Ross himself, and they are still here—Shawn has faith in them. And not just them, however, but—heritage!—people like Susan Lardner, niece of Ring Lardner and daughter of The New Yorker’s former television columnist John Lardner. And—Donald Ogden Stewart, Jr., son of Donald Ogden Stewart, an American humorist of the 1920s and 1930s; Tony Hiss, son of Alger Hiss; Michael Arlen, Jr., son of Michael Arlen, the author of The Green Hat and one of the most sophisticated writers of the 1920s with one of the most sophisticated styles of life—even in the brief, bad days of the Depression, Michael Arlen had style. There was still such a thing, such a mode for him as evening clothes time; he had style, that was the—well, the atmosphere, the kind of tone that one can preserve. Yes! The toot-toot-boopy supersonic industrial tool cleaner bathes everyone—vibrating!—in the eugenic heights of the St. Regis Roof, with the city lights stretched out like an open box of Loft’s candy down below. But why simple similes for such a night? The genetic convolutions build up, build up, like Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings of waves and wavelets washing up, washing up, washing back off the beach, meeting, convoluting, building up again, with weight, a … natural force. John Updike is not actually here in the room, nor is Linda Grace Hoyer. One remembers! They wrote the two short stories in that one issue last month, March 13, and—too beautiful!—Linda Grace Hoyer is John Updike’s mother, Mrs. Wesley A. Updike. Her maiden name was Hoyer, and John’s middle name is Hoyer. They are modest, for if they wished to, they could appear in The New Yorker as Linda Hoyer Updike and John Hoyer Updike. That could mean so much to women who say to themselves if only they could be close to their sons—for here are mother and son writing … together. Overpowering eugenic advantage!
And all the while it keeps rolling up, rolling up, the cake—well, the cake is shaped like The New Yorker magazine; it is a thick magazine, and in bas-relief on the icing is the face of Eustace Tilley, the dandy looking at a butterfly through a monocle, the New Yorker symbol. One candle is on it. The band builds up to a toot-toot-boopy-rat-tat climax on the woodwinds and the drums. An old band member in dinner clothes rolls the drum, looking inimitably cool. Peter Fleischmann says a few words, in the voice of the genetic combination, nothing emotional, but That Voice. And Raoul Fleischmann himself blows out the candle on the cake—and everyone is standing and applauding, the applause piles up like—genes!—clap clap clap clapat pat pat pat pat pat pat. One can envision William Shawn patting the arm of one of his beautifully stuffed chairs in his Fifth Avenue apartment, pat pat pat pat pat pat pat. Pat, he can keep time with one of these … so fine! … Dixieland records there on the hi-fi. He could sink into the stuffing. He could get up and go over to the piano and play along with the record, as he sometimes does—he does it very well!—but tonight he will just relax. Forty years. William Shawn does not go to these celebrations. Celebration, like good blood, should be in the … heart. And the true focus of celebration is that the future is certain. Bunny Berrigan is right in the middle there, in the middle of “I Can’t Get Started,” that wonderful light zinc plumbing sound of Berrigan blowing through a trumpet. Those other trumpet players, like Harry James, they never played the real “I Can’t Get Started.” No—I’m—sorry—Mr.—James—but—I—am—afraid—you—are—not—Forty-third—Street—material—how—is—Mrs.—James—Chorus, chorus, a bridge, and The New Yorker will never be caught out, caught short. Shawn, it is said, has picked his own successor, just as Ross would have wanted it. And—the final brick in the indestructible structure!—one can afford an exclamation point in the privacy of certitude!—his successor, it is said, is Roger Angell. Heritage! Genes! Harmony! Ross! Roger Angell is managing editor under Shawn just as Shawn was managing editor under Ross. He has just passed forty and thereby earned his worsteds, and he looks … comfortable, and—the Ross cachet that man has! Angell is the son of Katharine Angell and the stepson of E. B. White. Katharine Angell was one of the original staff members of The New Yorker, starting right there in 1925 as assistant to the literary editor. And the next year, 1926, she hired one of the greatest of the tiny giants, E. B. White, “Andy” White, he was called. They grew close right there in the offices of The New Yorker. Roger, her son by her first marriage, was very young at that time, and he grew up in the household, the atmosphere, of Katharine Angell and Andy White, both of whom were, you know, just like this with Harold Ross, right from the beginning. It all locks, assured, into place, the future, and pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat patclap clap clap clap clap clap clap, Raoul Fleischmann watches a single wisp of smoke cuneycuneying up from the candle he blew out, up from the silent butler, toot-toot-boopy-clap City Lights pat pat pat Bunny Berrigan! Berrigan hits that incredible high one, the one he died on, popping a vessel in his temporal fossa, bleeding into his squash, drowning on the bandstand, like Caruso. That was the music of Harold Ross’s lifetime, the palmy days, the motion of life. Don’t talk to one about heat, hot music, the heat of the soul; it was Harold Ross’s lifetime, and here, on that phonograph, those days are preserved. Berrigan! Fats! Willie the Lion! Art! Satchmo! The Count! Harold Ross! pat pat pat pat pat pat pat pat, four-four, we were all very hippy along the Mississippi in naughty naughty naughty oughty oughty oughty-eight. Done and done! Preserved! Shawn, God bless you! Pat pat pat pat pat pat pat.
Also by Tom Wolfe
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965)
The Pump House Gang (1968)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970)
The Painted Word (1975)
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)
The Right Stuff (1979)
In Our Time (1980)
From Bauhaus to Our House (1981)
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987)
A Man in Full (1998)
PRAISE FOR Tom Wolfe’s Hooking Up
“In this millennially minded assemblage … the grand impresario of new journalism revisits some of his favorite targets … . Pleasures are to be had here—notably Wolfe’s recent, previously audio-only novella, Ambush at Fort Bragg.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“As the pieces included in Hooking Up clearly demonstrate, he never lost his faultless reporter’s nose for a great story. Or a fur-flying, gunsa-blazin’ dogfight.”
—Matthew DeBord, Salon.com
“His discourse on the Jesuit priest and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is a surprising pleasure. Its irony and zest alone make one hope that Wolfe stays at his keyboard for many more years to come.”
—Karen R. Long, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
“Wolfe proves he’s still the merry prankster of journalism … . When Wolfe leaves the pulpit for the pavement, his X-ray eyes still crinkle with wonder at every hilarious sideshow of the great American carnival. No one tells it better.”
—Kyle Smith, People Magazine
“Turn to the three essays grouped under the title ‘The Human Beast,’ and you will be in Wolfe heaven. The first of these … is an exuberant history of the birth of Silicon Valley … . ‘Digibabble, Fairy Dust, and the Human Anthill’ moves from the semiconductor industry to the Internet and then, by a kind of intuitive leap, to neuroscience and sociobiology. ‘Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died’ delves into brain imaging and the genetic determination of character. Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, closet Catholic Marshall M
cLuhan, and scientist Edmund O. Wilson (“Darwin II himself”) are the pivotal figures in these two essays.”
—Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times
“Wolfe’s insight, his bravura style, his fun tales, and his seamless writing skills are all on display … . It’s immensely rewarding.”
—G. William Gray, The Tampa Tribune-Times
Afterword: High in the Saddle
The storm broke immediately after the publication of the first installment, “Tiny Mummies,” and went on for months. There were many bizarre moments and odd touches, but one stands out most vividly in my mind to this day: J. D. Salinger checked in.