from-the-archives

Dead Poets: Poetry Hazardous to Lifespan

Sheila · 03/28/08 10:40AM

Being a poet might mean you die young. In fact, writing in general is not good for your lifespan, James Kaufman writes in his study of 1,987 authors from different cultures. Published in 2003, it's titled, "The Cost of the Muse: Poets Die Young." It isn't the first study to make such claims! The Education Guardian reports, "a 1975 study found that poets tended to die younger than fiction writers."

Black Monday: A Brief History of Crisis Headlines

Rebecca · 03/17/08 01:30PM

So this Bear Stearns thing is awkward. I know there's a bailout from the Feds and J.P. Morgan bought up all of Bear Stearns at $2 a share, which seems bad. But the way I really know it's bad is that the New York Times put it above the fold on A1 with an all-caps headline. But how bad is this crisis, in relative headline terms? I went to the archives to find out.

Nothing Ever Changes

Nick Denton · 03/13/08 12:36PM

The Lower East Side, a Manhattan quarter now overrun by bars for hipsters and drunken yuppies from Murray Hill, was once an authentic working-class neighborhood. And it had even more lager dens and other drinking establishments than it does now, as demonstrated by this 1882 map of New York's "liquordom". So shut up already about the ruin of the Lower East Side. [via Time Out]

Who Is Bear?

Nick Denton · 03/11/08 11:57AM

"As I have mentioned, the Bear and I were introduced through Sam, perhaps as a means to get me off his (Sam's) back, but I suspect more as a goodwill gesture toward Bear, whom even Sam kissed up to.

Classier Than Flying In To JFK

Nick Denton · 03/06/08 11:36AM

From the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of 1920s and 1930s travel posters, newly released to the web: the ocean liner from Le Havre to New York. Note the awning to shelter rail passengers from Paris as they embark.

Speed Not As Novel As Believed

Nick Denton · 01/21/08 05:41PM

Why does Diane Keaton have to kill our trend story? Adderall was looking good as the pill of choice of a new creative generation. And then the 62-year-old actress, who made her name opposite Woody Allen in moves such as Manhattan, spoils it all. On the Letterman show, on CBS, on Friday, she was reminiscing about the debut of her acting career, as part of the original cast of the musical, Hair, in 1968. Keaton, who was supposed to be promoting her new movie, Mad Money, blurted out that forty years ago she and her fellow actors received injections of a methamphetamine drug, much like Adderall. And we so hoped there was something new in the creative pharmacopeia. (In another of Allen's movies in which Keaton starred, Sleeper, at least the future had some medical advances, such as the orgasmatron.) After the jump, the clip from the Letterman show.

The lost art of flattery

Nick Denton · 01/05/08 07:13PM

The best nugget from Norman Mailer's personal correspondence: Tina Brown, the English editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, asked him to provide a reference for her green card bid. (It couldn't have hurt to have an endorsement from America's best writer, or someone who considered himself that.) For someone with such a reputation for pugilism, Mailer's letters are masterpieces of flattery. The writer, who died last year, produced the requisitely over-the-top letter to include in Tina Brown's immigration application, and appended an even more cloying cover note: "Don't believe a word of this. You are too attractive ever to let your head swell."

Choire · 11/08/07 11:15AM

Talk about noticing things tardily—but look how gorgeous the Esquire page design and illustration was in 1960! Holy mackerel. I would buy the holy hell out of that magazine. (Except the Gawker 1960 version would probably be all like, "Oh my God, who is this tired James Baldwin, selling out Harlem to the gentrifiers? And what is with all this white space? OMG, 'white space,' get it?" Sigh.) [Esquire.com]

abalk · 07/25/07 09:00AM

Sometime in the year 2050, you'll be able to explain to your gay husband's adopted children's adopted children that there once was a newspaper called the New York Times and also show them the documents that explain exactly how it went down the tubes. [NYT]