Articles from 1922
Unearthed by a team of underpaid urban anthropologists digging all hours in the skankiest and most vile of magazine repositories was this single page of feminine poesy representative of an obscure, forgotten genre of Twentieth Century prosody that celebrated a brash cast of woman that was once known as a Flapper.
Alas, the name of the poet has been lost to time.
New Fashioned Girls (Flapper Magazine, 1922) Read More »
Here is an interview with Izzy Einstein (Isidor Einstein, 1880 – 1938): Prohibition agent and master of disguise:
A day with Izzy would make a chameleon blush for lack of variation…
He prepared himself to move in high, low and medium circles – on the excellent theory that the taste for liquor and the desire to sell it are no respecters of persons – and in all those circles he has since been whirling with rapidity and a quick-change adeptness.
Izzy Einstein: Prohibition Agent No. 1 (Literary Digest, 1922) Read More »
In the war society of the South, religion played a leading roll… The Methodist and Presbyterian churches cut themselves away from their Northern brethren and cast their fortunes with the Southern cause… The churches of the South entered so whole heatedly into the cause of the war that they were invariably closed by the Union commanders. Throughout the war many revivals, special prayer meetings, and fasts were held for the success of Southern arms… The army was swept by religious fervor. All regiments departing for the front were consecrated. Many clergymen joined the army as chaplains… .
Click here to read about the chaplains in the Confederate Army.
Christianity in the Confederate States (Confederate Veteran, 1922) Read More »
James Joyce (1882 – 1941) refers to many different subjects in this 1922 interview, among them was Ulysses, his recently released book. The interview was written by Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982); avant-garde writer, illustrator and playwright.
The 1922 New York Times review of Ulysses can be read here…
An Interview With James Joyce (Vanity Fair, 1922) Read More »
James Joyce (1882 – 1941) refers to many different subjects in this 1922 interview, among them was Ulysses, his recently released book. The interview was written by Djuna Barnes (1892 – 1982); avant-garde writer, illustrator and playwright.
The 1922 New York Times review of Ulysses can be read here…
An Interview With James Joyce (Vanity Fair, 1922) Read More »
France has discovered Lafayette in this age only because America never forgot him
The attached article reported that the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de Lafayette, 1757 – 1834), who seemed heaven-sent when he appeared in Philadelphia in order to aid the Americans in their revolt against the British, had been largely forgotten by the French in the Twentieth Century. Indeed, the French were baffled to hear his name invoked as often as it was during the period of America’s participation in the World War One.
It was said that during the war some disgruntled wit in the American Army woke up one morning in the trenches and grumbled: Alright, we paid Lafayette back; now what other Frog son-of-a-bitch do we owe?
Oddly, there is no mention made whatever of that unique trait so common to the Homo Americanus- selective memory: during the 1870 German invasion of France there seemed to have been no one who recalled Lafayette’s name at all.
French Amazement at American Esteem of Lafayette (Current Opinion Magazine, 1922) Read More »
This gag concerns itself with another kind of American Expeditionary Force; when Pershing’s Doughboys left, they were replaced by the American tourists. The U.S. had had invented a new category of tourist that the world had never seen before, and they must have been a site to behold: middle class tourists.
There is another article on this site (click here) that states a popular belief held by the Europeans of 1919 that American men were all clean shaven, tended to sport gold teeth, and were most easily recognized by their big tortoise shell glasses (a strikingly accurate description of this site’s editor!); however, this is the first visual manifestation of this caricature that we could find. This Punch cartoonist did not simply believe that this was a fitting description of the white guys, but black guys, too -and the white women as well; an entire nation resembling Harold Lloyd.
Click here to read about Punch Magazine.
American Tourists Lampooned by Punch (Punch Magazine, 1922) Read More »
A shewed observer of fashion, Mary Alden Hopkins (1856 – 1930) noted how the Victorian dinosaurs who lorded-over the male-dominated, pro-corset fashion industry had attempted (unsuccessfully) to manipulate and coerce the shoppers of the early Twenties to reject the Chanel-inspired revolt that the young flappers were currently enjoying.
How can I sell these styles?…the flappers won’t buy them.
The Plot to Restore the Corset (The New Republic, 1922) Read More »
A profile of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887 – 1940), Jr.; National Hero of Jamaica. During his lifetime Garvey worked as a publisher, a journalist, and an entrepreneur. A devoted Black nationalist and a black separatist, Marcus Garvey was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He rubbed a good many white folk the wrong way and this article from The Literary Digest covers much of his activities leading up to 1922.
Marcus Garvey: The Negro Moses (Literary Digest, 1922) Read More »
E.B. Osborn of the London Morning Post reviewed H.L. Mencken’s book, The American Language
…Americans show superior imaginativeness and resourcefulness; for example, movie is better than cinema…The American language offers a far greater variety of synonyms than ours; transatlantic equivalents for drunk are Piffled, spifflicated, awry-eyed, tanked, snooted, stewed, ossified, slopped, fiddled, edged, loaded, het-up, frazzled, jugged and burned.
Read about the Canadian Preferences in English…
– from Amazon: A Decade-by-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century
American English is Better Than U.K. English… (Literary Digest, 1922) Read More »
