The New Yorker Magazine

October 14, 1961, the complete issue in magnificent shape, as-new.  This is treasure.

The Garrett Price cover is a lovely autumn fantasy: a small girl floats through a dense field of windblown fall leaves beneath three brightly colored balloons, with scattered leaves picked out in autumnal reds, yellows, and browns against the muted blue-green background.

Here are a few of the reasons this issue is interesting: most importantly, this is a genuinely landmark issue. Beginning on page 52 is the first publication anywhere of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, presented complete in a single issue of The New Yorker. Spark's celebrated story of the charismatic, manipulative, and unforgettable Edinburgh schoolteacher and her chosen "Brodie set" occupies the great central body of the magazine. Few issues in The New Yorker's history have given such extraordinary space and prominence to a single literary work; the most famous comparison is the August 31, 1946 issue devoted to John Hersey's Hiroshima. This is the original appearance of one of the defining works of twentieth-century British fiction, before readers could encounter it in book form. Roger Angell transforms the Yankees-Cincinnati Reds World Series into Greek drama; Ved Mehta visits sitarist Ravi Shankar; A. J. Liebling considers William Randolph Hearst and W. A. Swanberg's Citizen Hearst; Mollie Panter-Downes reports from London on Britain, the Commonwealth, Europe, and the approaching royal visit to Ghana; and Robert M. Coates surveys an exceptional group of artists including Josef Albers, Agnes Martin, Zao Wou-ki, Vieira da Silva, and Bernard Reder. The issue also contains a particularly strong collection of period advertising, including the four new 1962 Ford Thunderbirds, Herman Miller's remarkably prescient advertisement for Charles and Ray Eames chairs, and a British Woollens fashion advertisement illustrated by Howard Terpning, and much more, as described below.  

The Complete and Utter Contents of This Issue

with grateful acknowledgment to Michael Palin and Terry Jones.

Comment

Donald Malcolm visits the headquarters of an anonymous write-in candidate for Mayor of New York, an "Indignant Citizen" whose ingenious solution to the city's school-funding problem is to combine the Board of Education and Department of Sanitation. The resulting budget, he reasons, will provide excellent schools, and if the money runs out, accumulating garbage will provide New Yorkers with a pungent reminder of the importance of education.

The Talk of the Town

Ved Mehta - "Sitarist." A visit with Ravi Shankar, in New York for a Town Hall concert. Shankar discusses Indian music and recalls among his more unusual undertakings setting Jawaharlal Nehru's The Discovery of India to music.

John Bainbridge - "Pioneer." A fascinating Cold War-period visit with Morton M. Rosenfeld, who specializes in "the art of atomic fallout shelters." Bainbridge inspects the blast-resistant underground shelter Rosenfeld built beneath his Mount Vernon home in 1955 and discusses his plans to market private and public shelters costing from $1,000 to $20,000.

Brendan Gill - "Write, Write, Write." Gill attends a Boston party celebrating Harvard University Press's monumental Adams Papers, projected to exceed one hundred volumes and span the years 1639-1889, and talks with editor-in-chief Lyman H. Butterfield about John Adams.

R. Schoonover and St. Clair McKelway. An overheard Washington Square observation from one roller-skating girl to another: "Sam can count up to a thousand, but he can't tie his shoelaces."

R. B. Heilman and John McCarten. "Gastro-Intestinal Intelligence" from Washington State, where the Rosario Inn advertises "Prime Roast of Beef, Served in Its Own Au Jus."

E. F. Richner and Burton Bernstein - "Manna." Second-hand American clothing shipped to Nigeria has been arriving with an unexpected bonus: dollar bills and loose change forgotten in the pockets.

Fiction and Features

Roger Angell - "Fall Classic." Subtitled "A Garland of Mixed Autumn Strophes Plucked After a Recent Evening of Aeschylus at the City Center, Followed Too Quickly by an Afternoon of Mel Allen and the World Series," Angell transforms the New York Yankees-Cincinnati Reds World Series into a Greek play, combining baseball, classical tragedy, and the voice of Mel Allen.

Muriel Spark - "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." The first publication of Spark's masterpiece, presented complete here in an exceptionally long single-issue appearance. This is where readers first encountered Miss Jean Brodie, the Marcia Blaine School, and the celebrated Brodie set.

At Edinburgh's Marcia Blaine School for Girls, the unconventional Miss Jean Brodie, perpetually and emphatically "in her prime," selects a group of favored pupils who become known as the Brodie set. Her influence extends far beyond the authorized curriculum and deep into their developing lives.

The story follows the girls from roughly twelve to eighteen and looks forward into their adult lives. Miss Brodie loves the married art master, Mr. Lloyd, but instead becomes involved with music master Mr. Lowther. Her increasingly elaborate attempts to shape the lives and romantic destinies of her pupils eventually center upon Rose and Mr. Lloyd, but it is Sandy who becomes Lloyd's lover. Sandy later converts to Catholicism, becomes a nun, and ultimately betrays Miss Brodie to the school authorities - not over her sexual conduct, but over her sympathy for Fascism, which proves sufficient to end Brodie's teaching career.

It is difficult to imagine a more evocative original setting in which to encounter Spark's work: not isolated from its moment in a later anthology or edition, but surrounded by the cartoons, criticism, automobiles, cosmetics, air travel, furniture, Cold War anxieties, and consumer culture seen by the very first readers of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Poetry

May Swenson - "Wind WSW 12." A poem evoking a hurricane at sea, beginning, "Slowly a floor rises, almost becomes a wall."

Gene Baro - "Flowers." A poem beginning, "Glass flowers, flowers of beads."

The Current Cinema

Brendan Gill - "Small Towns." Gill reviews Town Without Pity, Blood and Roses, and Splendor in the Grass.

Musical Events

Whitney Balliett ranges from the New York City Opera Company's Puccini Il Trittico - Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi - to jazz and "Jazz in the Garden" at the Museum of Modern Art. Among the performers and musical figures appearing in the piece are Frank Porretta, Vic Dickenson, Maria Di Gerlando, Christopher West, Arlene Saunders, Julius Rudel, John Alexander, Rouben Ter-Arutunian, Norman Treigle, Joe Thomas, Red Richards, Doris Yarick, Leonard Gaskin, Jackie Williams, William Chapman, and Buster Bailey.

On and Off the Avenue

Lois Long contributes the issue's shopping column.

The Wayward Press

A. J. Liebling - "Look at the Record." Liebling takes up W. A. Swanberg's biography Citizen Hearst and the remarkable newspaper empire of William Randolph Hearst. He considers Hearst's rise, the financial troubles that threatened the empire, its wartime recovery, and the peculiar economics of Hearst Consolidated, including the extraordinary case of the Detroit Times, which could produce a profit on the corporate books after having been purchased by a competitor and shut down. Arthur Brisbane, Al Smith, Sophie Tucker, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Phoebe Hearst, and others enter the discussion.

Letter from London

Mollie Panter-Downes reports on Britain's increasingly complicated relationship with the European Common Market and the Commonwealth. She covers the Conference of Commonwealth Parliamentarians at the House of Lords, including the imposing Odemo of Ishara, and discusses speeches by Duncan Sandys, Harold Macmillan, and Senator J. William Fulbright. She also examines anxiety surrounding Queen Elizabeth II's forthcoming Ghana visit amid deteriorating relations with Kwame Nkrumah, together with contemporary British politics and theatre.

The Art World

Robert M. Coates surveys an unusually attractive cross-section of the 1961 New York art world, encompassing Josef Albers, Vieira da Silva, Bernard Reder, Zao Wou-ki, and Agnes Martin, with Knoedler, Kootz, Sidney Janis, Betty Parsons, and the Whitney Museum among the galleries and institutions represented.

The Race Track

G. F. T. Ryall reports from the newly altered Aqueduct Race Track, where the saddling arrangements, walking ring, main track, winner's circle, and landscaping have all undergone changes since the July meeting.

Books

Books discussed or noted include Peter Matthiessen's The Cloud Forest; Mary McCarthy's On the Contrary; Ernest Becker's Zen, A Rational Critique; H. E. Bates's The Enchantress; Sacheverell Sitwell's Golden Wall and Mirador; Chester G. Starr's The Origins of Greek Civilization; Richard Collier's The Sands of Dunkirk; John Selby's Madame; Winfield Townley Scott's Exiles and Fabrications; and Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff's The New Politics: America and the End of the Postwar World.

Fascinating Vintage Advertisements

A spectacular vintage print ad for the 1962 Ford Thunderbird, a two-page color spread introducing "four new Thunderbirds" for 1962: the limited-edition Sports Roadster, Landau coupe, four-passenger Hardtop, and Convertible. The dramatic central image shows the bright red Sports Roadster beside a banked test track, with the other three models pictured below.

Herman Miller / Charles and Ray Eames - An exceptional full-page advertisement devoted to Eames chairs asks, "IN 2061 ONE OF THESE CHAIRS WILL STILL BE FAMOUS. WHICH?" The copy identifies the molded plywood chair as Charles Eames's "immortal chair" and confidently predicts that one day it will be priceless, surrounded by a marvelous assortment of molded plywood, fiberglass, plastic, wire, and other Eames seating.

British Woollens, illustrated by Howard Terpning - A handsome full-page fashion advertisement depicting an elegantly dressed couple examining artwork and promoting British wool fabrics as possessing "Many are the elements of absolute perfection."

TWA - A wonderfully elegant Royal Ambassador service advertisement for Europe, with a chef drawn by Ludwig Bemelmans, promising first-class service rivaling "the world's finest hotels."

Helena Rubinstein - A striking color advertisement for the new Herbessence Collection, with a glamorous model posed beside a large white unicorn against a medieval tapestry depicting the legendary animal.

Elizabeth Arden - A brilliantly colored "Ah look. The Gala Look" cosmetics advertisement, with Arden cosmetics arranged as an extravagant still life against an intense blue background.

Chevrolet - A full-page color advertisement for the new Jet-Smooth 1962 Chevrolet, showing an Impala four-door Sport Sedan against a highly stylized blue and purple cityscape.

Cinzano - A bold modern color advertisement for Cinzano vermouth, dominated by oversized bottles of Italian and French vermouth against a nearly black background.

Courvoisier Cognac - Napoleon receives the Queen of Prussia at Tilsit in a reproduction of a historical painting, paired with Courvoisier's "The Brandy of Napoleon" campaign.

Canadian Club - A dramatic two-page color advertisement showing Copenhagen's illuminated Tivoli Gardens from above, with a Canadian Club bottle superimposed over the nocturnal scene.

Cartoons

Robert Kraus - "Somehow I never figured him the type to go down with his ship." Pirates in a lifeboat watch their captain disappearing with his sinking vessel.

Dana Fradon - Women tourists watch an Indigenous woman weaving a rug while signs at the loom identify "Warp" and "Woof" with appropriate arrows.

Barney Tobey - "Oh, here's Mr. Griffin now, just back from lunch." A receptionist announces Mr. Griffin to a waiting businessman as Griffin staggers drunkenly through the doorway.

Robert J. Day - "Watch it, Harry! You've hit the subway again!" A construction worker warns a steam-shovel operator who has accidentally excavated part of a subway car, complete with commuters.

Alan Dunn - "Have you ever thought of being thrown open to charity?" A young woman makes the suggestion while taking tea with an elderly woman in her mansion.

James Stevenson - A motorist approaching a "Deer Crossing" sign discovers three deer driving a convertible across the highway.

Warren Miller - "There it is again! That damned, goofed-up corporate image of ours." A husband wakes his wife to show her the laughing, whirling corporate apparition haunting him above their bed.

James Mulligan - "Explain that our generator is out of order." A group having trouble with a television set asks a drummer to transmit the message.

Claude Smith - Burglars enter the Chase Manhattan Bank and emerge for their getaway carrying modern paintings rather than sacks of money.

Dana Fradon - "Come to bed, dear. After all, it doesn't have to be another Sermon on the Mount." A minister's wife tries to persuade her husband to abandon the sermon over which he is laboring late at night.

Whitney Darrow, Jr. - "He's not don't walking!" A woman reprimanded by a policeman for walking against a DON'T WALK signal points indignantly toward a man crossing the street.

Joseph Mirachi - "Et tu, Marjorie?" Coach Baker discovers that his own wife is leading the students hanging him in effigy.

Robert J. Day - "On your mark, get set, bargain!" A National Labor Relations Board mediator, stopwatch in hand, starts a grim-faced labor-management bargaining session as though it were an athletic event.

Stan Hunt - "He's on the launching pad. I'll see if I can catch him before he blasts off." A woman on the telephone describes her enormous businessman husband as he prepares to leave for work, translating the Space Age into domestic life.

Anatol Kovarsky - A man carries an unplugged television set toward a repair shop while, impossibly, a Western movie continues playing on its screen.

Ed Fisher - A fireman slides down the firehouse pole past a prominently placed vertical sign reading "THINK."

Robert Kraus - Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where Eve has found a new way to tempt Adam: she has baked the forbidden fruit into an apple pie and is wafting its aroma toward him.

Taken as a whole, this is one of those issues in which The New Yorker becomes more than a magazine containing an important literary work. This is the place where Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie first entered the world, encountered by its original readers amid the cultural landscape of October 1961 - Cold War fallout shelters, Ravi Shankar, the World Series, Hearst's newspaper empire, Britain's argument over Europe and the Commonwealth, contemporary New York art and music, Eames furniture, Detroit's new 1962 automobiles, transatlantic air travel, luxury cosmetics, cognac, and vermouth. For a Spark collector, this is not simply an issue containing the work; it is its original publication, surrounded by the moment into which it was born.