52
PARTISAN REVIEW
called Karl Hofer "probably the best-rounded German painter of his
generation" and found in his work "a mixture of beauty and terror,
of grace and agony that makes it curiously representative of his whole
generation," (5) saluted John Carroll as "a diabolically good
painter" and observed of one of his nudes: "The modelling of the
trunk and the beauty of its outline takes the breath away."
The clearest evidence of the class nature of the
New
r
orker
is, of
course, its advertising. Its readers are expected to buy Paris gowns,
airplanes, vintage wines, movie cameras, Tiffany jewelry, air con-
ditioning, round-the-world trips, et cetera. Interlarded with the adver-
tisements are various "departments," devoted to practical advice on
the great problem of upper class life: how to get through the day
without dying of boredom. Here the class character of the
New
r
orker
emerges with brutal effect. After reading Mr. Coates' tender little
stories, after the drolleries of Thurber or White-so fine and free, so
independent of sordid commerce-it is somehow shocking to come
upon a two column discussion of imported olive oil. From the cloud-
land of fantasy one drops abruptly to the dollars-and-cents earth· of
luxurious living. One lands with a bump. It would almost seem that
the people for whom Messers. White and Thurber write must be an
altogether different set from those to whom Messers. Saks and Tiffany
address their advertisements.
Judging from the
New rorker's
"departments," its readers travel
a good deal, are fussy about restaurants and clothes, and follow closely
the more fashionable sports, namely: golf, polo, football, squash
raquets, tennis, yachting, and horse-racing. They take a well-bred in-
terest in books, music, art, the cinema and the the.atre. Their standard of
living includes custom-made shoes at $50 and boots at $100 (trees:
$30), satin curtains at $120 a pair (not including the labor). jaguar
hunting in Brazil at $1250 per month per person, fireside seats covered
in saddle leather ("with hand-colored decorations celebrating the
chase") at $45, and visits to Baron Pantz's Austrian castle ("The
entrance fee of $1,000 entitles you to go to Mittersill at any time ...
at a flat rate of $10 a day.")
But even such celestial creatures, like all the rest of us, have their
problems. Really quite odd problems. Nature, the incorrigible, is
usually involved. Sometimes the question is how to get closer to her.
They buy, at $5 each, painted metal trumpet-vine blossoms, which
they fill with sweetened water and thus attract humming birds. Or
they install beehives ($21 each) in their windows and watch the bees
through a glass panel. More often, the problem is how to thwart
nature. They solve the dog-vs.-rug problem with Dog Tex, "a pure,
almond-scented liquid." To keep from being awakened too early-
in the city by street noises; in the country, by starlings-they buy small
