My newspaper column this week: a little politics, a lot of memories

[flowomo]

taking a break from political issues this week (well, everything is political, including this, in parts). Comments welcome.

also available online at:
www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/10/27/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt


Magazines spur memories
By Rich Lewis, October 27, 2005

One of the most famous scenes in literature comes early in Marcel Proust’s “Swann’s Way,” the first volume of his “Remembrance of Things Past.”

OK, you probably haven’t read it, and neither have I, except for a few pages.

But in that scene, the narrator nibbles a bit of cake soaked in tea and is immediately overwhelmed by memories of the past.

“I feel something start within me,” he says, “something that leaves its resting-place and attempts to rise, something that has been embedded like an anchor at a great depth.”

It turns out the cake reminds him of a similar treat his aunt used to feed him long ago and the taste becomes a doorway to the past.

You can get the book if you want to know more, but that scene popped into my mind a few weeks ago when the American Society of Magazine Editors unveiled its “Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years.”

Like the high-brow cake, the middle-brow covers sparked in me a flood of memories and feelings, some sharp and some vague, spanning most of my life.

We are saturated with images from the day we open our eyes — from television, movies, newspapers, billboards and, yes, magazine covers. Most of them evaporate without a trace, but a few become permanent markers of our personal travels, trials and triumphs. “Oh, that was the year I graduated from high school.” Or “Geez, I was so in love with her then.” Or “Yikes, I can’t believe I wore that for a whole year.”

Things like that.

The 40 covers have that effect. They were chosen from 444 entries representing 136 magazines published between 1965 and 2005. The judges were 52 magazine, design, art and photography editors.

I don’t remember all the covers; some I never saw; and some of them leave me cold. But a bunch of them really did make “something leave its resting place” in my mind.

The No. 1 cover, for example, was the Jan. 22, 1981 issue of Rolling Stone. It showed a naked John Lennon wrapped around and kissing Yoko Ono. You know the one.

Later on the same day that picture was taken, Dec. 8, 1980, Lennon was shot and killed outside his hotel in New York. Rolling Stone had been planning to publish the cover to go with an ordinary piece on the couple, but the murder turned the picture into a sad and unexpected tribute.

When I saw the cover again, the shock of the shooting came back — and yes, like so many others, I first heard the news from Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football. It also brought back a flood of memories about The Beatles and their times.

You surely would respond to different covers and in different ways than I did, but here are some of the others that made me laugh, feel sad or wistful as the times and circumstances in which I first saw them emerged from their “great depth.”

The No. 2 cover was the August 1991 Vanity Fair — Demi Moore, pregnant and naked. I remember thinking then — boy, the boundaries have all been erased.

No. 6 is the chilling New Yorker cover that came out right after 9/11. It’s all black, with an almost invisible, shadowy image of the Twin Towers in the center. It is the only magazine cover my wife and I have ever put in a plastic protector and stored among our personal papers.

Lots of people were angry and outraged by cover No. 7 — but the January 1973 National Lampoon made me laugh uncontrollably then, and still does now. It shows a hand holding a gun to the head of a bewildered dog. The caption says: “If you don’t buy this magazine, we’ll kill this dog.”

It still captures for me the irreverent boundary-pushing of the 1960s and early 1970s — and how much I looked forward to National Lampoon each month. That kind of dark humor is common now — but it was a new thing when that cover hit the stands.

At No. 12 is Time Magazine’s “Is God Dead?” cover. No picture; just those words. In April 1966, that was a shocking proposal and, as a sophomore at a Catholic high school, I remember the long and vigorous conversations it sparked.

The wonderful Life cover from 1969 showing an American astronaut walking on the moon brings back memories of the excitement surrounding that achievement — and is a sad reminder of how space exploration stories later became mostly about tragedy, failure and indifference. So much seemed possible in 1969.

And with apologies to my conservative friends, the Nov. 13, 2000 cover of The Nation, depicting George Bush as Mad Magazine’s legendary Alfred E. Neuman still pretty much says it all for me. Neuman’s famous question, “What, me worry?” was transformed into a button on Bush/Neuman’s lapel that declared, “Worry.” I still do.

Other covers in the Top 40 involve people like Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Princess Di, Playboy bunnies, Ellen DeGeneres and a picture-taking gorilla. Topics include the beginning of life, the war in Vietnam, the Nixon tapes and Apple computers. You can see all 40 online at http://nile.doceus.com/editorial/top40covers.htm.

It’s a huge slice of four decades of cultural cake.

And one nibble will be enough to bring back long-lost memories for just about anyone.

Rich Lewis' e-mail address is [email protected]

[occuserpens]

1. weaponizing Proust

I think that Hitchens et al found the way to weaponize Proust. One can call their writing style associative: no visible logic, just ideological associations.

[flowomo]

2. Weapons of Mass Deconstruction?

n/t

[occuserpens]

3. kind of

[Neil Lisst]

4. I had forgotten we learned it from Howard Cosell.

I haven't watched NFL football regularly in over 20 years, and I had completely forgotten about where I was or what I was doing when we learned of his murder.