The World Through a Monocle : The New Yorker at Midcentury

by Mary F. Corey

Today The New Yorker is one of a number of general-interest magazines published for a sophisticated audience, but in the post-World War II era the magazine occupied a truly significant niche of cultural authority. A self-selected community of 250,000 readers, who wanted to know how to look and sound cosmopolitan, found in its pages information about night spots and polo teams. They became conversant with English movies, Italian Communism, French wine, the bombing of the Bikini Atoll, prêt-à-porter, and Caribbean vacations. A well-known critic lamented that "certain groups have come to communicate almost exclusively in references to the [magazine's] sacred writings." The World through a Monocle is a study of these "sacred writings." Mary Corey mines the magazine's editorial voice, journalism, fiction, advertisements, cartoons, and poetry to unearth the preoccupations, values, and conflicts of its readers, editors, and contributors. She delineates the effort to fuse liberal ideals with aspirations to high social status, finds the magazine's blind spots with regard to women and racial and ethnic stereotyping, and explores its abiding concern with elite consumption coupled with a contempt for mass production and popular advertising. Balancing the consumption of goods with a social conscience which prized goodness, the magazine managed to provide readers with what seemed like a coherent and comprehensive value system in an incoherent world. Viewing the world through a monocle, those who created The New Yorker and those who believed in it cultivated a uniquely powerful cultural institution serving an influential segment of the population. Corey's work illuminates this extraordinary enterprise in our social history.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 25, 1999

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it took me a year and a half to get through this (long intervals passed between mostly self-contained chapters), I found it quite rewarding. I come from a family of New Yorker readers going back a couple of generations. Mary F. Corey focuses on the magazine of the late 1940s and the 1950s, and describes how people who grew up in rural areas, and came to pursue careers in cities (and similarly upwardly mobile children of immigrants) used The New Yorker as a guide to learn how to become affluent urbane intellectuals. Sometimes it felt like she was describing my grandparents. Different chapters focus on the magazine's often (perhaps even usually) contradictory takes on communism (a big topic at mid-century, of course), race relations, class and feminism.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtful and incredibly detailed. I am vaguely obsessed with the New Yorker (it's merits and its flaws and the people who've contributed), so it's no surprise that I enjoyed reading this.

CN: quotes to demonstrate racism that include unredacted racist slurs

[Mike Medeiros · Rating 2 out of 5]

Being practically a life long New Yorker reader I have always enjoyed accounts of the inner workings of the magazine and the legendary staff members that contributed to the creation and sculpting of the unique institution it has become.
This is not one of those books.
Instead this tediously lists, mostly through quotes from the fiction and cartoons, how the magazine has dealt with changes to society and the world through the post World War II period.
I rarely don't finish a book or skip pages but in this case I made an exception.

[Hubert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book to read if you're into The New Yorker. If you're not, though you might be bored. A bit of an insider's journey.

After finishing it, I was actually quite impressed overall. The author takes a mid-50s post-WWII critical eye towards American society, as revealed through close reading analysis of the stories, articles, cartoons, and other well-known columns in the magazine ("Shouts and Murmurs," "Talk of the Town"). Each chapter is organized through specific issues that come up in the magazine: race, gender, Red Scare, class.

Overall the magazine, according to the author, strikes a fine balance between gently satirizing the lower- and lower-middle classes, women, Blacks, while enabling a smug genteel liberalism reflected in the client reader base.

The analysis certainly wanted me to read some of the stories that were shown in these 1940s/50s issues of the magazine!

I can't believe it took me 13 years to finish though. I think I was initially not so into the book, but it grew on me over time.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am currently reading a couple of books, jumping from book to book. Mary F. Corey's The World Through the Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999) is a look at New Yorker magazine and how it came to represent a generation of urbane intellectuals. Reading like a revised thesis the book looks at the editors under Herbert Ross and E.B. White and readers of the magazine to understand how this community developed in the period after World War II. It is an interesting subject that somehow loses its gloss in Corey's hands.

[Devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite professor wrote this! Recommended for liberal elitists and history nerdz everywhere!

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Devon said it best: "recommended for liberal elitists and history nerdz everywhere."