Attempted Bloggery: The New Yorker: "Something Different"

Friday, August 6, 2021

The New Yorker: "Something Different"

"Let's get something different." It is the characteristic tribal cry of the advertiser.

Maybe it is. "Something Different" was published by The New Yorker's business office in August of 1927 when the magazine was just 2 ½ years old. It describes itself as "An Exhibit of 80 Advertisements which have appeared from time to time in The New Yorker." From time to time? How nonchalant!

Cover by Julian de Miskey

The cover design does not even include the book's title, but instead a longish quotation from "The Mikado" (1885) that also appears at the top of the title page. It's hard to read it without beginning to hum along. Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta was still wildly popular in 1920s New York, but it's difficult to see what particular relevance these lyrics from "A More Humane Mikado" have to the mission of this volume, which is to direct more upscale advertising to the magazine. It's almost as if the business department couldn't settle on a single title for the book, so it went with two. Most likely the quotation is meant to signal a certain level of urbane sophistication that suggests a bond between The New Yorker and its would-be advertisers. The book's cover, by Julian de Miskey, illustrates the antic goings-on in the town of Titipu.