My Least Favorite New Yorker Cover Ever!

Don’t get we wrong. I love the New Yorker, one of the greatest magazines ever conceived. I love Harold Ross and everything about him - OK, he smoked way too much and paid the price by dying lung cancer far too early. I even love Barry Blitt’s cartoons. But this one is a bridge too far - instant TSD (Trump Stress Disorder) - an image I’ve been trying to suppress thinking about since 2016. ARGHHHH!!!

Well it least gives me an opportunity to talk about my favorite New Yorker covers. Here’s one by Saul Steinberg you already know about:

And here’s one you don’t:

A cover profile of Harold Ross as Eustace Tilley (note the cigarette), printed for the amusement of the staff and friends of The New Yorker. Contributions by the regular staff including Rea Irvin as “Penaninksky.” Originally a butterfly, the small spider to Ross’s left wearing a fedora is Alexander Woollcott, art critic, and with Ross, a fellow member of the Algonquin Roundtable, a legendary gaggle of reconteurs I can only wish to have been a member of. This is the scarcest, slimmest, “issue” ever printed. Only two copies are known, one in my collection (sans watermark), the other in the archives of The New Yorker, soon to be on display as part of the New York Public Library’s celebration of the centennial of the magazine in February 2025.

(above) Woollcott, photographed by the great Carl Van Vechten in 1939.

Periodically yours,

SL