Showing posts with label obituary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obituary. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Sight Unseen: Lea and Everett Raymond Kinstler's Copy of Here at The New Yorker by Brendan Gill

Brendan Gill's Here at The New Yorker was published in 1975 to celebrate the magazine's fiftieth anniversary. It served as my introduction to The New Yorker's rich history. Aside from the many artistic, literary, and corporate characters we learn about, there is Daniel H. Silberberg, whom Gill describes as "an advisor to both the editorial and business sides of the magazine." In a discussion of his work during the years under Harold Ross's editorial leadership, Silberberg is depicted in a portrait by the painter Everett Raymond Kinstler. 


On February 10, 1975, Gill inscribed a copy of the newly-published book to Kinstler and his wife Lea. It turned up on AbeBooks last month in a listing from Dave's Books of Brooklyn. It was illustrated only by a stock photo. This photo shows the wonderful dust jacket by Charles Addams, but the actual book that was offered for sale had lost this dust cover some time over the past half century. Of course, the endpaper still has the inscription from Gill and, priced at only $10.44, the volume was a piece of New Yorker history I felt I should buy—even sight unseen—in this, the magazine's centennial year.

Stock photo

Brendan Gill
AbeBooks listing accessed September 21, 2025

Brendan Gill
AbeBooks item description



Gill's inscription has been discolored, probably from his 1997 Times obituary being stored directly against it.


Kinstler's painting is reproduced on page 191.

Gill's stated concern that the picture credits treat Kinstler's portrait as if it were "a mere photograph" seems a little overblown to me:

Gill's obituary from the Times came loosely folded into the book:

Also found in the book is this short promotional biography of the artist with his portrait of John Wayne.




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Thursday, November 2, 2017

Remembering James Thurber

American humorist James Thurber was born on December 8, 1894 and died on this date in 1961. Here are three obituaries dating from the days after his passing. The authors are writer Lewis Gannett, sportswriter Red Smith, and New Yorker editor William Shawn who turns over more than half the printed page to the reminiscences of Thurber's friend E. B. White.

"A case could be made for the statement that Thurber is the most widely known American artist in the world today."
Lewis Gannett,
  "James Thurber:  'Pre-Intentionalist'"
Herald Tribune Books, November 12, 1962, page 5

"Jim Thurber was the greatest humorist of his time and probably, as the obituary suggested, America's greatest since Mark Twain."
Red Smith, "Jim Thurber"
The New York Herald Tribune, [November] 1961

"Certainly there will never be an issue of The New Yorker of which Thurber is not a part."
William Shawn
and E. B. White, "James Thurber"
The New Yorker, November 11, 1961, page 247


Note:  If you've got original art by the great James Thurber, I'd love to see it.


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Sunday, June 11, 2017

Lou Myers in Times Square

In 1973, Cullen Rapp, Inc., as agent for cartoonist Lou Myers, send art directors a mailer that folded out into a poster of Times Square. Such mailers were used to inform potential advertisers of the talents who were available for hire and to provide a showcase for them. Times Square in 1973 wasn't the sparkling, tourist-friendly haven it is today; it was teeming with seedy hotels, peep shows, sex shops, and X-rated movie houses. Myers shows us not only the bustling streets; he gives us cutaway views into the hotels and other businesses, treating each room as a freestanding cartoon panel. The result is overwhelming, a comic compendium of impossibly bizarre practices. Myers's 2005 obituary in the Times by Steven Heller makes note both of his risk-taking and of his success with corporate clients. This image of Times Square shows paradoxically that his talent was not only provocative, it was marketable.









Lou Myers
eBay Listing as of June 11, 2017

Lou Myers
eBay Item Description




Note:  Today Rapp Art represents Brian Ajhar, Seth, and Michael Witte, among many others.


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