The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age
From 1926 to 1935, a group of Midwestern writers, editors, and artists published a magazine strikingly similar to this one. The Chicagoan ran profiles, reviews, and editorials, interspersed with cartoons, and presented breezy dispatches on local events in a section that no one seemed embarrassed to call �Talk of the Town.� This volume, subtitled �A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age,� offers a sample of the contents, including one entire issue, and has an excellent introductory essay on the magazine�s chaotic history. The publication�s art work was strong, but its writing lacked the consistency of tone that might have lent the project coherence. Many authors seem to have been beset by second-city syndrome, and the most entertaining bits today are those in which they spoof their own anxieties about Chicago�s rough-and-tumble reputation. In one cartoon, a pet-store owner tries to sell an older woman a parrot formerly owned by a local d�butante. The customer�s response? �But I already have a parrot that swears.�Copyright ©2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker