Inside Jacket

The idea for this post actually came to me while working on our Jules Verne feature awhile ago. I couldn’t help but think that his beard reminded me of a terrier’s chin.

My quirky mind went from there, matching authors with what I thought would be (or would have been) a suitable pet for them – based on appearance alone, of course.

So here you go, some of my author/pet pairings:

Jules Verne & Scottish Terrier

Agatha Christie & Pug Dog

Walt Whitman & Old English Sheepdog

Daphne du Maurier & Persian Cat

Dashiell Hammett & Partridge Cochin Hen

Malcolm Gladwell & Bichon Frise

J.K. Rowling & Afghan Hound

Herta Muller & Aye Aye Lemur

It was sad news to hear that Norval White, the original co-author of the AIA Guide to New York City, died at the age of eighty-three on Saturday of a heart attack in his home in the village of Roques, in southwest France.

In October, I wrote about Francis Leadon, who was hand-picked by White to serve as the AIA Guide’s newest co-author. (The guide, now in its fifth edition, will be published this June by Oxford University Press.) Leadon also shared with me, in a slide show, some of his favorite buildings and places in New York City.

And in April, the New York Times wrote about Leadon and White’s coöperative efforts to update the guide. White, who had retired in France, knew this guide would be his last, but, as the Times noted:

Despite the miles separating the guide’s two authors, Mr. White’s role is hardly insignificant. During his recent visit to the city, he blitzed around town, catching up with buildings and entire districts that had sprung up or had been transformed since his absence, notable among them the World Trade Center neighborhood, in preparation for writing an entirely new section on the area.

According to Caderbooks.com, these were the top 10 bestselling books (fiction) of 1910:

1. The Rosary, Florence Barclay
The Rosary is a warm and touching love story set in England circa 1909. Jane and Garth are in love, but as so often happens they are separated with obstacles to overcome. Florence Barclay tells their story with compassion and a deep understanding of her character’s innermost feelings and desires.

2. A Modern Chronicle, Winston Churchill
Honora Leffingwell is the original name of our heroine. She was born in the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century at Nice in France and she spent the early years of her life in St. Louis a somewhat conservative old city on the banks of the Mississippi River.

3. The Wild Olive, anonymous (Basil King)
A passage from the book: Finding himself in the level wood-road, whose open aisle drew a long, straight streak across the sky, still luminous with the late-lingering Adirondack twilight, the tall young fugitive, hatless, coatless, and barefooted, paused a minute for reflection. As he paused, he listened; but all distinctiveness of sound was lost in the play of the wind, up hill and down dale, through chasm and over crag, in those uncounted leagues of forest…

4. Max, Katherine Cecil Thurston
A young man discovers himself in Paris, in this poignant, hauntingly beautiful novel by Katherine Cecil Thurston, also author of The Mystics and more.

5. The Kingdom of Slender Swords, Hallie Erminie Rives
A passage from the book: In the first touch of the shore, where the Ambassador’s pretty daughter waited, Barbara’s problem had been swept away. Patricia had rushed to meet her, embraced her, with a moist, ecstatic kiss on her cheek, rescued the bishop from his ordeal of hand-shaking and carried him off to find their trunks, leaving Barbara borne down by a Babel of sound and scent whose newness made her breathless, and to whose manifold sensations she was as keenly alive as a photographic plate to color.

6. Simon the Jester, William J. Locke
A passage from the book: Tell him, my boy, that it’s against my custom to breakfast at afternoon tea, and that I hope his wife is well.” At his look of bewilderment I broke into a laugh. “He wants me to write a dull article for his stupid paper, doesn’t he?” “Yes; on Poor Law Administration.” “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do anything these people ask me. Say ‘No, no, no, no,’ to everybody.” “In Heaven’s name, Simon,” he cried, laying down his pencil, “what has come over you?” “Old age,” said I.

7. Lord Loveland Discovers America, C. N. and A. M. Williamson
A passage from the book: For a moment Loveland was more conceited than he had ever been in his life,—which is saying not a little. He told himself that the girl must have found out who he was, and that this was her artful way of scraping acquaintance. She had taken possession of his chair, with his name upon it, waiting for him to come and claim his property, and expecting the conversation which would be sure to follow.

8. The Window at the White Cat, Mary Roberts Rinehart
A beautiful girl seeks the help of an attorney when her father vanishes. Soon, her aunt also disappears from a locked house in the dead of the night. The search leads to the infamous White Cat, a nightclub frequented by crooked politicians … and now, murder.

9. Molly Make-Believe, Eleanor Abbott
Molly Make-Believe was published in 1910. Carl Stanton suffers from rheumatism. He is bored, and suffering a great deal of pain. He has asked his fiancee to write to him while she is away, but her letters come infrequently. She sends him a ridiculous circular which she sees as fitting his passion for letters. He responds and a series of letters follow. Carl is no longer bored and he has gained something more that he never quite expected.

10. When a Man Marries, Mary Roberts Rinehart
A passage from the book: It is a great misfortune to be stout, especially for a man. Jim was rotund and looked shorter than he really was, and as all the lines of his face, or what should have been lines, were really dimples, his face was about as flexible and full of expression as a pillow in a tight cover. The angrier he got the funnier he looked, and when he was raging, and his neck swelled up over his collar and got red, he was entrancing.

I have some news, friends. This is my last contest. The end of the road. The last stand. El ultimo tren. The grand finale.

But do not despair! I’m leaving you in the capable hands of crack Book-Bencher Ian Crouch. I hope you will all support Ian in his task of finding ways to come up with the same high-level contests I was churning out week after week after week. It won’t be easy, but I’m sure he’ll find a way to approach my wit, charm, sophistication, and all-around competence. So good luck, Ian!

Where am I off to, you ask? Why, to write my memoirs, of course. Like any public figure, the first thing I will do when I leave office is publish a flowery tell-all. In fact, here is a sample, taken at random, from page three hundred and fourteen of my manuscript for “The Contest of Life”:

The last contest was the hardest nut to crack. I had grown used to doing them every Wednesday morning, at the crack of dawn when the sun came up. What had first started as a hum-drum routine had become a part of my life. When they were published, I looked on them like a mother hen admiring her fluffiest chick. Each cover represented a lifetime of work and experience, boiled down to choice selection. I awaited answers like a pimply high school junior who’s just asked his crush to the prom. I had to do something special for the last one. Something epic. Something that would not soon be forgotten. What’s more, I had a responsibility. I was a public figure, and I had to leave my mark. Aha! I had it! I’d make the last contest a collection of memoirs written by legendary, not-soon-to-be-forgotten public figures! Just like me! Good luck.

The author of the first fully correct response wins a copy of the new anthology “On the Money: The Economy in Cartoons, 1925-2009.” Submit your answers via e-mail, and in the event of confusion, consult our official rules. Ian will be announcing the winner early next week.

Nick Paumgarten has a great piece in the magazine this week about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Paumgarten writes: “With Mackey, it’s natural to wonder: is he at heart an entrepreneur, who discovered, in natural foods, a worthy vehicle for self-actualization and self-enrichment, or a missionary, who discovered in the grocery business a worldly vehicle for change?” A little bit of both, Mackey had responded, when asked by Paumgarten. “You know,” writes Paumgarten in a live chat we held this week, “That’s the question I went into this hoping to answer, and I found myself coming around to Mackey’s view that they needn’t be mutually exclusive, which is another way of saying that I didn’t quite find the answer, or that the answer is complicated enough to require, or inspire, such a long piece.” And well worth the read, I’d add.

Paumgarten also writes about a more embarrassing moment in Mackey’s life: “For nearly eight years, he had been secretly logging onto an Internet message board devoted to Whole Foods stock under the sock puppet, or pseudonym, ‘rahodeb’ (an anagram of Deborah, his wife’s name), praising his own company, disparaging Wild Oats, and throwing in a flattering remark about his hair (‘I think he looks cute’).” Two years ago, Harper’s Magazine (while I was an intern), ran a couple of Mackey’s posts in its Readings section, which I still remember because they were so funny:

Read more with a Harper’s subscription.