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ESKY

Name: ESKY
Author: Hugh Merrill
ISBN: 0-8135-2165-3

THE EARLY YEARS AT ESQUIRE

by Hugh Merrill ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1995

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Journalist Merrill (The Blues Route, 1990) records the early days of erstwhile publishing phenom Esquire magazine. Esky, the pop-eyed, mustachioed personification of the periodical, is now mature enough to join AARP and start collecting Social Security, but in his youth he was quite the rakish one. As Merrill tells it, Esquire was launched in 1933 as a journal to sell haberdashery, whiskey, and other gents' furnishings, and it was an instant hit. Its recipe—a mix of equal parts social and sartorial usage, big-name authors and burlesque bawdy—was formulated by owner and publisher David Smart, a Chicago slicker (and publisher of menswear catalogs, including Gentleman's Quarterly) and founding editor Arnold Gingrich. Producing a sort of Police Gazette with snob appeal, Gingrich snared the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Dos Passos, all on the cheap. He placed them cheek by jowl, so to speak, first with the streamlined, airbrushed Petty Girl and then with the even more popular Varga Girl, both prototypical images of impossibly leggy Barbies for Men. RisquÇ cartoons abounded. The formula was unbeatable—so much so that the postal authorities took umbrage and revoked the magazine's mailing privileges. It took the Supreme Court to free the Varga Girl. Merrill tells the Esquire story with wide-ranging aplomb and occasional redundancy. Though he strains a comparison of Tina Brown's editorship of the New Yorker with that of Gingrich at his magazine, it may be fairly surmised that Esky was Eustace Tilley's oversexed first cousin and perhaps a distant ancestor of that rabbit in the tuxedo who has an even more robust libido. (Playboy's Hefner worked at Esquire in his youth, Merrill informs us.) The Varga Girl is now a photograph, and old Esky seems to be celibate, but the elderly rascal in his day provided good reading and mindless ribaldry; and he had an attitude. (b&w illustrations)

Pub Date: July 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-8135-2165-3

Page Count: 220

Publisher: Rutgers Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.