Category Archives: New York Times

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Book Ads in the NYTimes, 1962-1973

I missed it when it ran this summer, but in June Paper Cuts, the Times book blog, posted a slideshow of old book ads from what it called the “Golden Age” of book advertising.

Included are ads for a bunch of heavy hitters like Susan Sontag, Edna O’Brien, Cormac McCarthy, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and Donald Barthelme. I’m not sure I’d call it a Golden Age–the books may be impressive, but the ads seem to have thrived then as now on hidebound cliché*. But there’s some good stuff there, and more than a few signs of the time: overt sexism, boomer self-importance, and everybody’s smoking.

Unfortunately a number of the images are poorly reproduced. Seems a shame, for a slideshow, especially one so otherwise intersting. Maybe we should all chip in a few bucks and get Paper Cuts a new scanner.

* A cliché, I know.

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New York Times, why do you hate me so?

We used to pick up The New York Times at the corner store every Sunday. We moved last September, though, and no store within walking distance carries it. So we signed up for home delivery. That was almost five months ago, and they haven’t yet figured out how to get us the paper.

We only subscribed to the Sunday edition, which presents a (very) slight challenge in that the Sunday paper is delivered over two days: the magazine and some other sections on Saturday, the remainder on Sunday. But still, it’s been five months, and their track record sucks: Sometimes no paper at all. Sometimes nothing on Saturday, then half the paper on Sunday. For a while we got nothing on Saturday and two identical half-papers on Sunday. For a few happy months we actually got the paper as expected, half on each day. Then last week we got nothing at all, and this weekend we got nothing on Saturday followed by two Sunday halves.

Before we moved our Sunday ritual was to sink into the paper (“like slipping into a warm bath,” as Tom Wolfe said) over a leisurely breakfast. Now our ritual is to call subscription services, wait forever, and then struggle with a sullen and uncooperative Times customer service person.

Though it isn’t perfect, I love the Times, and would really like to have it delivered. But five months of effort was too much, and after yesterday’s snafu we gave up and cancelled our subscription. Or tried anyway–I expect they’ll screw that up too.

Driving your customers crazy isn’t a good policy under any circumstances, but it seems particularly unwise when your industry is in a death spiral. I have no doubt that eventually the Times will figure out how to transition to a healthy online business model. But in the meanwhile you’d think they’d make it as easy as possible for people who want to give them money for the print edition to do so*, instead of shooting holes in the bottom of their sinking ship.

* The other possibility: this is all William Safire’s doing.

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Shelby Lynne, Grammarian

From a New York Times Magazine story on torch singer Shelby Lynne:

“Do you know the difference between the words ‘bringing’ and ‘taking’?” she practically whispered into my sleeve, as if not to embarrass me. “Because you just used one of them incorrectly.” I do know the difference, and though I couldn’t remember what I said, I agreed with her anyway, dizzied by the sudden altitude of the conversation. Lynne then proceeded to conduct a sobering mini-symposium on grammar: subjective and objective cases; “begging” versus “raising” the question; parts of speech. “It’s all about using the proper pronouns,” she asserted with the calm authority of a linguistics maven promoting her latest book on NPR.

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NYTimes Buzzwords 2007

The “Word of the Year” roundups just keep coming. Grant Barrett’s guide to this year’s award season starts with Webster’s nomination of “grass station” on October 31st* and runs through the American Dialect Society’s 18th annual WotY vote, to be held January 4. It includes a full 17 events, including The New York Time‘s Buzzwords 2007 piece, also by Grant, which came out today and is the best of the lot so far.

Grant makes no pretense at being complete or authoritative, though as a professional linguist, author of The Lexicographer’s Rules, and host of the radio show “A Way With Words” he’s more qualified than most to do so. This is a list of words and phrases that caught the eye of someone whose business it is to pay attention to such things, and it’s a welcome change from the typical pseudo event.

Most importantly, Grant has a good eye, and ear. Earmarxist, crowdsource, and ninja loan are delightful, as are most of the others on this list.

* Amazingly Webster’s New World doesn’t seem to have a blog entry or even a press release about it. Here’s a newspaper article.

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NYTimes: Not Fucked Up

I have separate feed pages set up to follow media and language blogs, and was amused to see The New York Times pissing off both camps earlier this week.

The cause was a review by Kelefa Sanneh of a show by the Toronto band “Fucked Up,” which the Times decided to print as “********”.

Language Log, Languagehat and mediabistro were all full of sturm und drang over the asterisks, for reasons that didn’t make sense to me. Language Log seems to think the Times is being inconsistent, because they once printed the word “shit” when quoting a verbal attack on Eliot Spitzer’s dad. But a dispute involving public figures should be treated differently than punk music reviews. I think both punks and politicians would agree on that. Mediabistro, too, harps on “glaring inconsistencies.” Languagehat calls it “absurd censorship,” without giving a reason. With all due respect to Lenny Bruce, it’s been a while since you were striking a blow against censorship by saying the word “fuck.” While the Languagehat post is terse and unenlightening, the comments on it are far more thoughtful, and worth reading.

I love that The Gray Lady is doing such great things with digital media, and that they seem to be shedding their fear of the future. But the Times should always retain an element of old fashioned propriety, for nostalgia purposes if no other. It should always have a slight Man Men air about it, and holding itself to outdated standards of propriety is a fine way to accomplish that.

And it’s hardly an impediment to good journalism. In fact, the Times writers must love this shit–a little modesty is the perfect setup for fey wordplay and a wink at the reader. Language Log’s own Geoff Nunberg must have thoroughly enjoyed referring to the documentary film Fuck as “the film that dare not speak its name.” Who are we to take this away from him, or the Times writers?

The only criticism that made any sense to me is that it should have been rendered F****D Up, or at least ****** **. In the interests of clarity.

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Wordie hearts vajayjay

Stephanie Rosenbloom of the The New York Times has an excellent piece about the word “vajayjay,” a euphemism for vagina coined on “Grey’s Anatomy” and popularized by Oprah Winfrey.

There was some gnashing of teeth on Wordie when vajayjay was first listed a few months ago, but the word fills a linguistic void, according to Rosenbloom: There are a slew of lighthearted euphemisms for male genitalia (enough to constitute a Monty Python song), but fewer for the female equivalent, and fewer still that aren’t vulgar or sexist.

Rosenbloom takes a silly word as an occasion to talk to some serious linguists and writers on some interesting topics. Well worth the read.

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NYT: More on Dying Languages

The Times ran another interesting piece on dying languages this weekend, this one full of examples from various near-dead languages. My favorite illustrated how the same construct can be used for different purposes in different languages. For example, in Rotokas, a language used in Papua New Guinea, doubling a word is used to indicate repetition:

tapa = to hit
tapatapa = to hit repeatedly

kopi = a dot
kopikopi = spotted

kavau = to bear a child
kavakavau = to bear many children

But in Eleme, a Nigerian language, a similar doubling pattern is used for negation:

moro = he saw you
momoro = he did not see you

rekaju = we are coming
rekakaju = we are not coming

You’ll also learn a variety of useful words for describing castrated reindeer. Worth a read.