The Grillers

The Grillers JOHN ABBOT CLARK …

Years of Helen Hokinson cartoons have shamed the “old lady in Du- buque” into being Babbitt Junior’s streamlined mother before she is Babbitt Senior’s sentimental pioneer mother. In the 1950’s the “old lady” reads the svelte perfume and cuisine ads in the New Yorker with the same romantic Bovarysme with which she read Sears, Roebuck ads in 1925. It is Gaylord’s favorite magazine, just as much as the Chamber of Commerce bulletin was George Babbitt’s favorite … As a New Yorker by birth, who lived most of his life right here in the Dubuquizat:ion of Manhattan, I am interested neither in whimsy, nor charm, nor art of living, nor the onion soup served in the East Fifties but am obsessively in- terested in the price of hogs in Iowa I intend to talk of nothing else except hogs to the next Iowan who arrives at Grand Central reading the New YoTker and who tells me in a voice of urbane banter, “I am a bittersweet observer of life’s little ironies. Why have you no feeling for nuance?”

JC

About the Author

John Abbot Clark

The Grillers JOHN ABBOT CLARK …

Years of Helen Hokinson cartoons have shamed the “old lady in Du- buque” into being Babbitt Junior’s streamlined mother before she is Babbitt Senior’s sentimental pioneer mother. In the 1950’s the “old lady” reads the svelte perfume and cuisine ads in the New Yorker with the same romantic Bovarysme with which she read Sears, Roebuck ads in 1925. It is Gaylord’s favorite magazine, just as much as the Chamber of Commerce bulletin was George Babbitt’s favorite … As a New Yorker by birth, who lived most of his life right here in the Dubuquizat:ion of Manhattan, I am interested neither in whimsy, nor charm, nor art of living, nor the onion soup served in the East Fifties but am obsessively in- terested in the price of hogs in Iowa I intend to talk of nothing else except hogs to the next Iowan who arrives at Grand Central reading the New YoTker and who tells me in a voice of urbane banter, “I am a bittersweet observer of life’s little ironies. Why have you no feeling for nuance?”