New Yorker December 7 1963 JFK Kennedy Updike Glenn Gould Yehudi Menuhin Muriel Spark Christmas

The New Yorker Magazine
December 7, 1963, the complete issue in nice shape.

The Christmas cover is by Ilonka Karasz, who turns a holiday tree market into a wonderfully dense field of color: shoppers crowd around fancifully decorated Christmas trees while enormous looping garlands, ornaments, and white bows seem to float overhead, filling almost the entire sky.

Here are a few of the reasons this issue is interesting:

This is an unusually historic issue of The New Yorker, published just two weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. John Updike contributes the issue's extraordinary Comment on Kennedy's assassination and the events from Friday through Monday, beginning with the strange altered quality of ordinary life after the murder and considering Lee Harvey Oswald, hatred, violence, democracy, and the national trauma. Later, Janet Flanner, writing from Paris, describes the extraordinary French grief over Kennedy's death, Charles de Gaulle's journey to Arlington, and the renewed sense of Franco-American kinship; and Mollie Panter-Downes, in her Letter from London, considers how Kennedy's death might alter Britain's debate over its independent nuclear deterrent.

Elsewhere, Lillian Ross brings Glenn Gould and Yehudi Menuhin together for a private showing of Gould's television film The Anatomy of Fugue; Susan Black begins a Reporter at Large investigation of professional burglars and burglary; fiction comes from Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ved Mehta, and Hayes B. Jacobs; and there are poems by James Dickey, Muriel Spark, Dorothy Gilbert, and Ted Walker. The cartoons are an exceptional group, including Charles Addams proposing a little capitalism in Santa's workshop, Saul Steinberg pairing a man with a dog dressed exactly like him, and work by William Steig, Mischa Richter, Alan Dunn, James Stevenson, and many more, all individually described below.

The Complete and Utter Contents of This Issue
with grateful acknowledgment to Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

Comment: John Updike writes on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the extraordinary events between Friday and Monday. He recalls a 1959 interview in which Lee Harvey Oswald remarked on hatred in the United States, and considers Oswald, Kennedy's death, violence, sacrifice, and democracy in the stunned aftermath of the assassination.

The Talk of the Town: "Ambassador," by Faith Berry and Calvin Trillin, is an interview with Carl Rowan, the former Minneapolis Tribune newspaperman who had become American Ambassador to Finland, discussing Finnish life, the country's strongly Western orientation despite its Soviet neighbor, American cultural influence, and the difficult questions Rowan encounters concerning American racial conflict.

"Higher and Lower," by Susan Black and Brendan Gill, talks with public-relations man Irving Weingarten about the surprisingly elastic meaning of a New York building's stated number of stories, comparing the Hotel Americana, Metropolitan Life Tower, Time & Life Building, Pan Am Building, Seagram Building, and numerous other Manhattan skyscrapers.

"Fugue," by Lillian Ross, describes pianist Glenn Gould privately screening The Anatomy of Fugue, a film made from an hour-long videotape recording, for violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Gould discusses and plays Bach and Paul Hindemith, including the fugue from Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata.

Fiction: "An Aging Head," by Sylvia Townsend Warner, concerns Georgina, recovering from influenza and weary of the attentions of her niece Antonia. Seeking red meat and male company, she summons her faithful admirer George for dinner, only to discover that her evening has inadvertently introduced George and Antonia to one another rather too successfully.

"Four Hundred and Twenty," by Ved Mehta, recalls the author's boyhood in Rawalpindi, India, and the prolonged comic warfare between his father's two office servants, Hindu Ram Sarn and Muslim Kasim Ali, whose quarrels encompass religion, cleanliness, beef eating, smoking, shoes, clothing, dignity, and finally an oversized uniform and turban.

"Birth of a Salesman, or Life Among the Box Writers," by Hayes B. Jacobs, recalls the author's year away from the University of Oregon working as a travelling salesman for Real Silk Hosiery Mills, attempting to sell boxes of stockings in the Northwest and discovering that pleasant conversations with prospective customers do not necessarily pay one's hotel and restaurant bills.

A Reporter at Large: "Burglary - I," by Susan Black, begins an extensive examination of burglars, burglary, and professional thieves. Among its cases is the ingenious young man who observes two German businessmen registering at the Plaza, obtains their room keys from different clerks, charges dinner, drugstore purchases, a haircut, shave, and manicure to one man's room, and eventually enters the room to burglarize it - unaware that a woman detective has been following him. The piece ranges widely through burglary history, methods, celebrated criminals, police work, and assorted memorable cases.

Letter from Paris: Janet Flanner reports the remarkable depth of French grief and shock following President Kennedy's assassination. She writes that Kennedy had been regarded as the actual leader of the Western alliance, describes France's temporary sense of vulnerability after his death, Charles de Gaulle's presence at Arlington, and the tragedy's unexpected restoration of feelings of Franco-American unity.

Letter from London: Mollie Panter-Downes writes about the repercussions of Kennedy's death in Britain, particularly the renewed question of whether Britain should maintain its independent nuclear deterrent or rely upon the American President.

The Sky Line: Lewis Mumford ranges through architecture and urban design in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, and elsewhere, discussing such figures as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, H. H. Richardson, Bernard Maybeck, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and buildings including the Hallidie Building, Monadnock Building, Pan Am Building, and Crown Zellerbach Building.

The Theatre: Edith Oliver reviews Next Time I'll Sing to You and The Ginger Man.

Musical Events: Whitney Balliett covers a remarkably broad musical field including the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Orchestra U.S.A., Third Stream music, the Concert Opera Association, and performers and composers including George Szell, Gunther Schuller, Gerry Mulligan, Eric Dolphy, John Lewis, Jim Hall, Connie Kay, Richard Davis, Lev Oborin, and many more.

The Current Cinema: Brendan Gill considers Ladies Who Do, Clear Skies, and Russian films.

The Art World: Robert M. Coates discusses an extraordinary roster of modern artists and sculptors including Käthe Kollwitz, Auguste Rodin, Lyonel Feininger, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, Jean Arp, André Masson, David Smith, Edgar Degas, Graham Sutherland, and others.

The Race Track: "Puddle Jumpers," by G. F. T. Ryall, reports that Chateaugay will be idle for the winter while his troublesome ankles are treated, with trainer Jim Conway expecting him back in form for the Metropolitan Handicap.

Books: Anthony West considers books and authors including Mark Twain, John O'Hara, Colin Wilson, Samuel Selvon, C. Northcote Parkinson, Walter Jackson Bate, Brendan Gill, and Geoffrey Hellman, with titles including Mark Twain's San Francisco, New York Landmarks, The Age of Napoleon, The Innocent Dreamers, I Hear Thunder, Dead Calm, and John Keats.

Poetry: "The Driver," by James Dickey; "On the Lack of Sleep," by Muriel Spark; "Freighters At Night," by Dorothy Gilbert; and "Carp," by Ted Walker.

The Cartoons: Alan Dunn: "We had a marvellous lunch. She told me so many things not to tell you I don't know where to begin," as a young woman rushes in to speak with her mother.

Charles E. Martin: "Now the gods are angry about neo-colonialism," as South Seas islanders watch a volcanic eruption.

Mischa Richter: "I haven't the heart to tell him there's no such place as Shangri-La," at a travel agency.

William Steig: "When I speak of mankind, one thing I don't mean is womankind," as men converse over drinks in a restaurant-tavern.

Charles Addams: "I've been thinking. This year, instead of giving everything away, why don't we charge a little something?" Santa Claus addresses the elves around the conference table in his workshop.

Saul Steinberg: A man in a suit and hat walks his dog, which is dressed exactly like him.

Joseph Mirachi: "I just can't make up my mind. They all look so good," says an indecisive customer in a liquor store.

James Stevenson: "I don't like it already," says a husband in a plush theatre before the performance has even begun.

Stan Hunt: A man shaving rehearses increasingly diplomatic ways of telling his boss, Mr. Whitbeck, that the Huntington account does not belong in his department.

Barney Tobey: "Man does not live by pemmican alone, Baby," says an Indian chief to a maiden beneath a crescent moon.

Robert J. Day: An artist has completed an enormous abstract painting by making swirling footprints across a canvas roughly the size of the floor.

Claude Smith: "What I hate about trees is they're always in the way!" complain golfers surrounded by palm trees.

Chon Day: "Well, shall we count our blessings?" Two priests contemplate the money from their collection baskets.

Robert Weber: "Waiter, are you mad at me?" asks a man sitting alone at an empty table in a formal restaurant.

Fascinating Vintage Advertisements: The issue is packed with wonderful Christmas-season advertising. The first is a vintage print ad for Paxton cigarettes, demonstrating its "Humiflex Plastic Pack" by plunging the package into water. There is an elegant Germaine Monteil cosmetics advertisement dominated by a glamorous black-and-white portrait; a beautifully staged Manhattan/Viyella fashion ad with an elegantly dressed couple and their dog; a spectacular Christmas Black & White Scotch advertisement built around enormous three-dimensional BLACK & WHITE lettering, the famous black and white terriers, hanging colored ornaments, and a formally dressed couple; a striking Miss Dior by Christian Dior perfume advertisement; and a beautifully spare Crane's Fine Papers Christmas advertisement in shades of red and pink.

Especially noteworthy is the Tiffany & Co. Christmas watch advertisement: thirteen wristwatches are arranged around a circular display like the hours of a clock, with two jeweled bracelet watches forming its hands, beneath the line "In time for a Merry Christmas." Among the watches represented are Rolex, Patek Philippe, IWC, and Movado.

There is also a wonderfully surreal Je Reviens Perfume by Worth advertisement in which a woman's face is framed by an enormous clothes hanger and perfume bottle, and a handsome color advertisement for the 1964 Mercury Park Lane, emphasizing its unusual luxury interior and Breezeway rear-window design.

A remarkable issue: an Ilonka Karasz Christmas cover, an historic John Updike Comment written in the immediate aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination, eyewitness cultural responses from Janet Flanner in Paris and Mollie Panter-Downes in London, major fiction and reporting, a superb cartoon roster, and unusually beautiful Christmas advertising.