COMM 353: The New Yorker, the spirit of the times and the uncertainties of the 21st century

At the end of "Years With Ross," James Thurber has this assessment of the founding editor of The New Yorker:

H.W. Ross had a world and wealth of warming and wonderful things to look back upon as he lay dying. He had been a great success, he had made hundreds of friends and thousands of admiers, he had contributed soetmhing that had not happened before in his country, or enywhere else, to literature, comedy, and journalism, and he was leaving behind him an imposing monument. He had got his frail weekly off the rocky shoals of 1925 and piloted it into safe harbor through Depression and Recession, World War II, and the even greater perils of the McCarthy era. His good ship stood up all the way. (273)

In class during the next few days, we will unpack Thurber's statement. We'll see how well it holds up in light of other evidence we find, mostly on the World Wide Web, and we'll try to determine whether anyone can do today the same kinds of things Ross did in his day.

In class Tuesday, March 13:

We'll start by familiarizing ourselves with a website called Urban and Urbane: The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s, put up by students in American Studies at the University of Virginia at

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug02/newyorker/newyorkerhome.html.

By the way, this was a student project. Does it give you any ideas for our student project? Just askin'.

Read the Editor's Introduction and the thumbnails of the New Yorker staff. How did these people collaborate to create a magazine? Then we'll surf around the UVa website.

Ask yourself: (1) How was the New Yorker situated in the unique culture of its day? (2) How did that culture (*Zeitgeist or whatever you want to call it) differ from ours today? (3) In what ways was that Zietgeist like ours? (4) Who is responding to the spirit of our times in ways that are like the New Yorker? (5) What opportunities are there today to create something new, "that had not happened before in his country, or enywhere else, to literature, comedy, and journalism?" Keep these questions in mind. They won't go away. In the meantime, if you find something interesting that we ought to look at as a class, post a link as a comment to this post.

(*I'm throwing around a kind of a scholarly buzzword there, so maybe we'd better take a closer look at it to make sure we all mean the same thing by it. The Zeitgeist, according to Wikipedia, is the "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age." That's the literal meaning of the German: "Zeit" is their word for time, and "Geist" is the word for spirit. Wikipedia explains, "Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual, or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era." It's kind of pretentious, but it's late at night and I can't think of a better word at the moment.)

Find out as much as you can about the Roaring Twenties, the pop culture of the day, sports (Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb were at the top of their game in the 20s), "flappers," prohibition, jazz, movies and the literary scene especially in New York City. Post links to stuff we can all look at. Here are some good starting places:

• Directory of Roaring Twenties webpages by Jerrie S. Cheek of Kennesaw State University at http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/jcheek3/roaring_twenties.htm
  
  
• The Roaring Twenties: A Historical Snapshot of Life in the 1920's. http://www.1920-30.com/
  
  
• Wikipedia has a list of trends, events and a little bit of everything that shows what a bewildering period of change it was at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920s#Literature

As yourself the same questions: How did the New Yorker situate itself in its Zeitgeist? How did it change? What opportunities are there to do something similar in our time? Or are there any?