RIP Roger Angell
Roger Angell, noted baseball writer for The New Yorker, has died at the age of 101. I had no idea he was still alive, but I used to read him regularly during the thirty or so years when I had a subscription to that magazine, before I finally canceled because The New Yorker became more and more political – and stupidly (although still somewhat elegantly) political at that.
Even before that happened, though, I increasingly found it hard to keep up with new issues, although it was always a treat when they arrived, glossy and sleek, in the mail. It was a weekly and I read almost everything in it for years and years and years, and it was hard to keep them from piling up as my life got busier.
Angell had that graceful, understated, and entertaining style for which the magazine used to be known (I almost wrote “style the magazine used to be known for,” but the long-departed editors of those days would not have liked that construction). Angell’s mother was at the magazine for ages as well, and his stepfather was well-known author E.B. White.
Those days are so long gone, but it was always fun to get the spanking new issue with its usually-clever cover and amusing cartoons. My favorite cartoons had these captions: “Does my body make me look fat?”; “You have his masterpiece. But then you know that, of course”; and “Mighty good eating for the [few] pennies it cost.”
Through the magic of the internet I can find those first two: this and this (scroll down for the 1976 one by Everett Opie). But I can’t find the third, which featured a strange spiked Dr. Seuss-like creature being displayed by the proprietor of a food store.
Here’s an example of the style of Angell’s baseball writing:
“Baseball is not life itself, although the resemblance keeps coming up,” Angell wrote in “La Vida,” a 1987 essay (as reprinted by ESPN). “It’s probably a good idea to keep the two sorted out, but old fans, if they’re anything like me, can’t help noticing how cunningly our game replicates a larger schedule, with its beguiling April optimism; the cheerful roughhouse of June; the grinding, serious, unending (surely) business of midsummer; the September settling of accounts … and then the abrupt running-down of autumn, when we wish for — almost demand — a prolonged and glittering final adventure just before the curtain.”
The curtain has finally come down on Roger Angell. RIP.
I suppose this is an RIP for The New Yorker, as well, even though it’s nominally alive.
Remnick’s New Yorker and Goldberg’s Atlantic are journalistic cloacae.
The New Yorker (far and away the most celebrated and the most distinguished American literary magazine of the last century) has indeed (without question thanks to David Remnick) become more and more (stupidly) political to the extent that relatively little of its content is of any relevance any longer to a cultivated reader. Sadly, the same politicization (or “wokeification”) has afflicted other formerly worthy periodicals such as National Geographic and Scientific American, not to mention Nature and the NEJM. It is all too sadly true (as Dennis Prager often writes) that leftism invariably destroys everything, doing so with what might be called the “anti-Midas touch”.
Regarding the New Yorker, Neo wrote:
“I finally canceled because The New Yorker became more and more political – and stupidly (although still somewhat elegantly) political at that.”
I used to read them too, although not as religiously or completely as Neo did. And I too got away from reading them, not entirely because they were too stupidly political, but because I found them insufferable arrogant. Like that famous cover than shows NY, then a truncated US beyond it. That is precisely how I perceived their understanding of NY and the rest of the country, and I was surprised — nay, shocked — that they would admit it on their cover. The New Yorker outlived itself. RIP Roger Angell AND the New Yorker!
Happy memories of reading Angell. Many’s the time I’ve retold his “Yo la tengo!” Mets story, from The Summer Game I think.
I’m sure most all here have seen the hardcover compendium, “The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker.” It covers the period 1925 – 2004. I’ve bought several copies as gifts. If you don’t have it on your shelf I recommend it highly.
It’s showing at Amazon for around $50, but I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than $25 for it. It’s not unusual to see it at variety or department stores.
“Season Ticket” is the best book on baseball I ever read. Lovers of baseball will miss him sorely.
Angell correctly calls baseball “our game”. Our game, invented in America, not an import from Europe which had its roots in kicking a skull around a millenium ago.
Neo, back in the early 1970s (my College years) I used to subscribe to New York Magazine because it was well written, yes it was somewhat limousine liberal but it wasn’t crazy and had some really good articles. The New Yorker as you say has gone so far left that I wouldn’t even take a free subscription to it
I recall from high school one of the sophisticated lay teachers (not much older than me) talked about The New Yorker and how it listed all the things to do in NYC. Living in Omaha, that was a wonder to me.
I subscribed for a time and, of course, loved the cartoons. Later on after my change to the conservative side, I saw the magazine as an insight into the liberal mind. I have a very distinct recollection of a story about Barack Obama and that it was clear to me that HRC was sunk as the nominee.
The decline of The New Yorker is, frankly, another marker in the decline of American civilization. I imagine today it is chock full of stories about climate change, covid and trans stuff. Junk.
Current issue:
“Vaid, a legendary organizer in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement, had an unerring sense of injustice and the overwhelming need to redress it.”
As a former Dem, I love the arts and know how important the arts are to our culture. Now we are stuck was super hero movies and horrible music. China owns us.
The cartoons, yes, other content fell away decades ago. I was only a casual reader, at best.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/on-the-internet-nobody-knows-youre-a-dog
New Yorker 1993
From the (very) few times I have looked in recent years even the cartoons have gone way downhill.
https://cartoonbank.com/
“The New Yorker’s cartoon tradition started 90 years ago, in the very first issue, published on February 21, 1925. Since then, the magazine has featured more than 80,000 cartoons on its pages and now, every day, on newyorker.com, its apps, and across social media. Here on The Cartoon Bank, options abound! Along with the illustrations that first appeared in print, the online archive holds additional unpublished cartoons – more than 120,000 total!”
The New Yorker Cartoon Bank can be both searched and browsed. I tried to find a cartoon with the following metadata or text: Mighty good eating for the pennies it cost. But I had no luck.
During the first half of the 1970s, I regularly read the New Yorker and liked some of the cartoons, but I quit the magazine cold turkey, and haven’t gone back. After finding the Cartoon Bank, I browsed for quite a while, but the cartoons seemed decidedly unfunny. Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I’m relieved to find one less bit of nostalgia. Makes me feel a little less old.
I always liked George Booth’s cat cartoons– a good friend gave me a book of them for Christmas two years ago. FWIW, he’s still alive– at 95. I hope he’s still drawing cats.
I also have several books by Berton Roueché, a medical writer who had been a staff writer for the New Yorker for almost 50 years. The magazine had created a department, “Annals of Medicine,” just for Roueché, who published numerous accounts of medical detection that were eventually compiled into book-length paperbacks.
I used to enjoy reading the New Yorker for study breaks, but what turned me off it was its growing spitefulness in the 1990s toward those of us who would now be labeled deplorables. As for the “usually-clever” cover, the library where I had a part-time job during my grad school years canceled its subscription in 1995, when an April cover showed the Easter Bunny crucified on an IRS form (Easter fell on April 16 that year, with Tax Day the day before). Not even the sophisticates on staff thought that was the least bit funny. I suppose the magazine would now cancel the library.
Another example of exemplary sports writing in The New Yorker is John Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” Unfortunately, I never saw Teddy Ballgame play. I did attend the 1961 All Star game in Boston, but that was the year after he retired.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1960/10/22/hub-fans-bid-kid-adieu
Favorite Booth: Ip Gissa Gul
https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/ip-gissa-gul-george-booth.jpg
Back in the early-to-mid ’70s I used to really enjoy The New Yorker. I never subscribed, because it was just too much to read every week. And also because I was poor then and couldn’t afford it anyway. But I knew someone who subscribed and got his cast-offs. Then after adult life got going in earnest it just wasn’t part of my life.
Still, I always enjoyed the cartoons when I ran across them. They show up on Facebook from time to time. And sometime over the past few years something bad has happened to them. It’s partly the politicization we all lament, but, more fundamentally, they just aren’t very good–not clever or imaginative in any way. They’re gravely deficient in wit. And the art work has no character, no flair. A recent example: two women talking to each other. One says to the other something along the lines of “I just hope my daughter doesn’t have to fight for the same rights my mother did.” Setting aside the politics, there simply isn’t any humor in that. You could be 110% on board with that as a political statement and still recognize that it’s not funny. It’s not even much of an editorial cartoon.
I think the cartoonist who signs herself Roz is still there, and still funny. But I speculate that they have done some ill-advised diversity hiring, or just hiring for politics.
Or maybe it’s just young people. It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that there’s a measurable humor deficit among them.
Mac:
I used your cartoon example to do a test search of the New Yorker Cartoon Bank (cartoonbank.com). I selected the search label “all words” and entered this: mother daughter rights.
I’m pretty sure that the cartoon is number TCB-149742. The caption reads “For Mother’s Day, my mom would like the activism of her youth to not be for nothing.”
You’re right about the cartoon. Not funny, and the drawing couldn’t be more bland. I don’t have any idea what’s going on at the magazine, but it’s hard not to suspect that the cause of humor’s demise is wokeism. Maybe it goes beyond that? Anyway, it’s a curious trend. Someone should compare recent New Yorker cartoons to recent cartoons from Babylon Bee. Has good comedy become conservative?
For about a decade (1990 – 2000?) I subscribed to “Vanity Fair.” It had some excellent articles. Dominick Dunne wrote some great stuff there. Even when I began my subscription I’d have to turn through about 30 pages of fashion, perfume and cologne ads just to find the table of contents, but by the time I dropped my subscription the ads had taken over about 99% of the content. I’ve heard it’s gotten better in the past few years.
sdferr!! I was just about to go searching for that very same George Booth cartoon as my favorite ever. It was posted on my mother’s fridge for many years and still makes me laugh every time I see it. BUT it couldn’t be published today, could it?
sdferr,
This, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thagomizer
is my favorite caveman themed cartoon. Until just now searching for it I didn’t know that it spawned an actual, scientific name!
I guess that’s a thing. The Good Place had a great little scene on it:
https://youtu.be/yL8Y3CCESqk?t=26
Cornflour, thanks, yes, that is definitely the cartoon. I didn’t mangle the caption totally beyond recognition.
I did an image search for Roz cartoons. I recommend it. She is truly funny. I deeply love this one, “the mind-body problem” (Pinterest link, hope it works):
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/b0/19/b1/b019b139a52a47e9e308ae16a0e52022.jpg
I also like The Little Engine That Wouldn’t (dubious url again, sorry if it doesn’t work):
https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.collageplatform.com.prod/image_cache/2020x1160_fit/5398bf13a9aa2c28658b4568/d88fd7c6cffb862477a76f73ef0bbfb0.jpeg
Mac:
I just searched The New Yorker Cartoon Bank (cartoonbank.com) for all the cartoons done by Roz Chaste. She’s been extraordinarily prolific: 1382 cartoons in the database. I can’t even imagine doing something like that.
I browsed her cartoons for a while, and the quality was consistently high. I was worried that wokeism might have degraded her sense of humor, but even cartoons from the last month were funny.
Thanks for the recommendation.
@ gmmay70 > “The Good Place had a great little scene on it:”
That is a very strange show. While visiting one of our sons, I watched the first ans last episodes of the first season (he filled me in on the major points from the interim). I understand it’s still going, despite the “spoiler” at the end of the first season.
I also was a regular reader of the New Yorker, being the middle-man bweeen my sister and the library sale boxes, until I just couldn’t keep up anymore, and also lost my interest in their hard-left turn into what we can now identify as Wokeness (and not a few outright pornographic stories and pictures).
Finally just took my last three or four sacks and dumped them in the trash.
I did enjoy the cartoons, and have a fun parlor game which has a deck of “blank” NY-style cartoons for which the players compete in providing captions.
Well, looking at the piece on Ad Reinhardt, you may find this little bit by the late comic book legendary Wally Wood of interest:
“22 Panels That Always Work”
https://cloudfour.com/thinks/22-panels-that-always-work-wally-woods-legendary-productivity-hack/
Comics have, historically, been very low rated on the “graphic art” spectrum, but there have been some remarkably talented people in the medium. Offhand, the only one I would rank higher than Wood is Will Eisner, who pretty much created modern comic book storytelling in the post-WWII “The Spirit” comic book, unifying story and art as few have ever managed. Among other things, he created impressive visual shorthands for advancing the story rapidly, despite having major limits on his processes. Not for nothing is the comic-book version of the “Oscar” named the “Eisner” award.
Note that there was an unfortunately horrible movie made in the 2000s based on the character, which failed on every level to capture the … “spirit” of The Spirit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(comics_character)
It should not be even considered as having anything to do with the character.
(It’s dismaying that it was such an abortion, given that artist Frank Miller was the director, and one expected a lot more from him — he seemed to fail to grasp anything about The Spirit that made him unique, despite being a talented and very experienced artist himself, and having had two successful movies — 300 and Sin City — related to his works). In the mid-80s he was responsible for the major “upgrade” of Batman to the modern much grittier version, via “The Dark Knight” miniseries. It was easily one of the most important comic releases of the 1980s.
Never been much on baseball myself, but this seemed interesting about Elio Chacon — particularly the very very last entry (but read them in order):
https://www.ultimatemets.com/profile.php?PlayerCode=0038&tabno=7
Speaking of Booth cartoons, yes, he was a major contributor to the best cartoons. Part of his charm lie not so much in his jokes themselves, but in his drawings. I recall one cartoon — I cannot for the life of me recall the joke, but I very very much recall that there was a dog just incidentally in the picture — not a part of the real joke — and the look on the dog’s face was remarkably funny. I laughed more at the dog than at the joke.
I still have a number of collected “Best of” New Yorker cartoon books for different years from the 50s, 60s, and 70s in my library. Haven’t looked in years, but they are there.
PA Cat,
I’m sure you’re familiar with Bernard Kliban’s work.
Speaking of dogs just incidentally in the picture of a cartoon, anyone here heard of Joe Martin?
http://www.mrboffo.com/joe.html
I believe every panel of Mr. Boffo had “Weederman the Wonder Dog” in it somewhere. He was often barely in frame and his expressions were often hilarious.
Correction, “has.” Apparently Joe Martin is still churning them out!
Here’s a nice story about his house in Maine:
https://downeast.com/our-towns/roger-angell-favorite-maine-place/
Roz Chast has also published some books:
https://rozchast.com/books.shtml
I read Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? and thought it was quite good. Poignant.