Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976 (23 page)

 

 

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Georgi M. Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union 1953-55. The British troops White refers to were stationed in Malaya during the late forties and in the fifties to fight Chinese Communist guerrillas.

 

 

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British philosopher and mathematician (3rd Earl Russell). His appointment as professor of philosophy at City College of New York was rescinded when Jean Kay, a taxpayer protesting his appointment, brought suit in New York's State Supreme Court against the Board of Higher Education and Justice John E. McCeehan ruled in her favor. Spearheading the opposition to Russell, William T. Manning, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, had sent a circular letter to the New York newspapers denouncing Russell's appointment. The case created public debate not only over Russell, but also over issues of academic freedom.

 

 

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A pseudonym used by White.

 

 

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Chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee. This committee, set up as a standing committee of the House of Representatives in 1945, investi-gated charges of Communist influences in government and other areas of American life (such as the motion picture industry). White, as a teenager, once took Thomas's sister Eileen to a tea dance; for an account of that date see “Afternoon of an American Boy” in
Essays of Ê Â. White.

 

 

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Stevenson was the Democratic nominee for President in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower the Republican nominee.

 

 

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White admired Henry David Thoreau, author of
Waiden
, perhaps more than he did any other writer. In the following pieces and in “A Slight Sound at Evening”
(Essays),
“Waiden”
(One Man's Meat),
and “The Retort Transcendental”
(Second Tree),
White records his appreciation for
Waiden:
“the book is like an invitation to life's dance.”

 

 

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Joseph McCarthy, chairman of the Senate's Government Operations Committee. McCarthy held publicized hearings accusing people of sympathizing with the Communist Party. He was censured in 1954 by Senate colleagues. White frequently spoke out against McCarthy and his tactics.

 

 

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Dean Acheson, Secretary of State 1949-53. Although he helped create the Cold War policies of containment of communism (“negotiation through strength”), he was attacked during the McCarthy hearings for refusing to fire any of his State Department subordinates. “I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss,” he said.

 

 

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Franklin P. Adams's column “The Conning Tower” ran in
The New York World
and later in
The New York Herald Tribune.

 

 

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Henry A. Wallace, Progressive Party candidate for President in 1948. Originally a Republican, Wallace had been a Democrat as Secretary of Agriculture ('933-4°). Vice President of the U.S. (1940-44), and Secretary of Commerce (1945-46).

 

 

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Nazi Germany.

 

 

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Polls had predicted Republican candidate Thomas Dewey's election, but Democratic candidate Harry Truman won despite competition from the Progressives (Henry Wallace) and Dixiecrats, which had threatened to drain Democratic votes.

 

 

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The International Photo-Engravers union was on strike against six New York newspapers from November 30 to December 9, 1953.

 

 

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Landing Craft Tank. See pp. 298-99 in
Letters of E. B. White
for letters discussing this piece. After he wrote it. White found out that the landing craft was headed not for the mill at Bucksport, Maine owned by Time-Life, but rather for a mill in Brewer, Maine.

 

 

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Bendix Home Appliance Co. produced home laundry equipment.

 

 

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Time magazine frequently coined words in this manner. But that was not their only sin. Retaliating for
Fortune's
1934 profile of
The New Yorker,
Wolcott Gibbs in a parody profile of Henry Luce,
Time's
editor, imitated
Time's
inversion of normal sentence structure: “Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.”

 

 

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Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain 1937-40. His policies of appeasement of the Germans (“peace in our time”) such as the 1938 Munich Pact, though supported by many at the time, failed to discourage Hitler's expansionism.

 

 

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Germany invaded Poland on September l, 1939. Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3.

 

 

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Meeting place for the United Nations.

 

 

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Unesco: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

 

 

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Maiaryk, Czechoslovakia!! minister for foreign affairs, represented Czechoslovakia at the San Francisco Conference of the United Nations in 1945 and managed to remain in power after the Communist coup in February 1948. He died March 10,1948, from a fall from an apartment window in Prague; the Communist government announced it as a suicide.

 

 

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Hector McNeil, Minister of State for Great Britain, headed the British delegation to the U. N. Andrei Y. Vishinsky was Foreign Minister of the U.S.S.R.

 

 

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Chain of food stores.

 

 

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Following a student revolt in Budapest in October 1956 that resulted in the formation of a new government headed by Imre Nagy, Soviet tanks entered the city on November 4, crushing Hungary's brief revolution. The emissary is probably ta l Maleter, a general of the revolutionaries, who was arrested by the Soviets while on a mission negotiating Soviet withdrawal from Hungary.

 

 

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The Wild Flag.
(Boston: Houghton, 1946).

 

 

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Henry Allen, White's indispensable helper on the Maine farm.

 

 

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During the Apollo u mission, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin took the first steps on the moon July 20,1969 (“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”).

 

 

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Finnish long-distance runner, winner of nine gold medals in the 1920,1924, and 1928 Olympics.

 

 

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The Bikini Islands in the Pacific were the site of two peacetime atomic bomb tests in July 1946 (“Operation Crossroads”).

 

 

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The Skating Club of New York sponsored a sold-out international ice-skating show March 13,1935 at Madison Square Carden benefiting Bellevue Hospital Social Relief Service. Vivi-Ann Hulten was the Swedish skater, Louise Bertram and Stewart Reburn the Canadian skaters. Maude Adams was an American actress who played Peter Pan on stage in 1905.

 

 

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Robert Edwin Peary, arctic explorer who reached the North Pole April 6,1909.

 

 

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White said of Fred, “Of all the dogs whom I have served I've never known one who understood so much of what I say or held it in such deep contempt.” Fred was a main character in several essays: “Bedfellows” and “Death of a Pig”
(Essays)
and “Dog Training” and “A Week in November” (
One Man's Meat).
Fred was a spirited individualist and White continued to admire him long after his death in 1948. The “dog in the sky” Fred and White are discussing in this piece was the first animal launched in a space capsule (the Soviets' Sputnik 2, November 1957).

 

 

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Herbert J. Phillips and Joseph Butterworth were dismissed because of membership in the Communist Party; Ralph H. Cundlach, who denied that he was a member, was dismissed for “neglect of duty” and an “ambiguous” relationship to the party. Three other professors who admitted that they were once members of the party but had left it were placed on probation. The University of Washington's president was Raymond B. Allen.

 

 

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Dwight D. Eisenhower was president of Columbia University from 1948 to 1952; in 1950 he took a leave of absence from Columbia to serve as Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1952 he was elected President of the United States.

 

 

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Evans hosted “The Last Word” on CBS; Bernard's article in the New York
Times,
“Good Grammar Ain't Good Usage” (17 Jan. 1957: VI, 20), brought a number of responses from readers, some of which the
Times
printed (10 Feb. 1957: VI, 15).

 

 

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Winston's advertising jingle was “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.”

 

 

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Walter Winchell, news commentator.

 

 

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German ocean liner (originally “Vaterland”) that was turned into an Allied troop transport during World War I, then into a transatlantic passenger liner. It was scrapped in 1937.

 

 

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Over 300,000 Allied troops were evacuated from France at this seaport in May 1940. France surrendered to Germany in June 1940.

 

 

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Winston Churchill. Prime Minister of Great Britain 1940-45.

 

 

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Harold Ross, editor of
The New Yorker
from its founding in 1925 to his death in 1951.

 

 

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White's grandson Steven White.

 

 

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Fictional character representing
The New Yorker;
his portrait is reproduced each February on the cover of
The New Yorker
on the anniversary of its founding.

 

 

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Indoor track competition at Madison Square Garden sponsored by the Millrose Athletic Association.

 

 

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Robert Moses, New York City's Commissioner of Parks.

 

 

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Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior 1933-46 and director of the Public Works Administration 1933-39.

 

 

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The silver badge was for “A Winter Walk,” published in
St. Nicholas,
June 1911: 757; the gold badge was for “A True Dog Story,”
St. Nicholas,
Sept. 1914: 1045.

 

 

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“Bantam and I,”
New York Evening Post
17 Nov. 1913: 10.

 

 

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“The Twentieth Century Gets Through,”
New York World 4
Dec. 1949: 13.

 

 

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H. G. Wells,
Mind at the End of Its Tether
(London: Heinemann, 1945).

 

 

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Harold Ross founded
The New Yorker
in 1925 and was editor until his death. Katharine and E. B. White maintained a close personal friendship with Ross in addition to working with him at the magazine.