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BOHEMIANS, BOOTLEGGERS, FLAPPERS, AND SWELLS by Graydon Carter

BOHEMIANS, BOOTLEGGERS, FLAPPERS, AND SWELLS

The Best of Early Vanity Fair

edited by Graydon CarterDavid Friend

Pub Date: Nov. 3rd, 2014
ISBN: 978-1594205989
Publisher: Penguin Press

A collection of a wide range of Vanity Fair articles ranging from 1914 to 1936, when the Great Depression forced the magazine to merge with Vogue.

Some of these pieces are curiosities, while others capture a peculiar zeitgeist: America during wartime, the Roaring ’20s, the Depression. Others simply provide an example of the range of powerhouse writers who contributed to a magazine that captured the tastes and travails of a certain kind of middle-class urbanite. One weakness comes in the editing. Current Vanity Fair editor Carter contributes the introduction, but the narrative presents the articles without commentary despite the fact that many of them call out for annotation to provide context. The book does include notes on contributors at the end, but these would have been better placed as part of a brief commentary before or after each selection. Regardless, there is a remarkable range to the pieces, whether in the form of celebrity profiles, essays on politics and economics, or snatches of journalistic observation from the era. Among the many eminent writers who provide contributions are F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, P.G. Wodehouse, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Jean Cocteau, T.S. Eliot, Walter Winchell, Ford Madox Ford and Bertrand Russell. A series of Dorothy Parker “Hate Song” poems take aim at (and hit) targets ranging from men to actresses to relatives to offices. Not all of the pieces stand the test of time—the casual sexism of the era comes out loud and clear in many of the pieces, for example—but even those that do not hold up well serve as useful historical documents.

Whether read from cover to cover or dipped into occasionally, this collection serves as a fine primer to one magazine’s contribution to a golden age of American magazine writing.