Several years ago, after my father's death, I
inherited a collection that my grandmother had compiled over the
years -- a series of covers, and a few inside pages, of The Saturday
Evening Post, from the 1930s into the 1960s. Many of these
covers are original Norman Rockwells.
Rockwell, as you may know, was an American
illustrator who had a talent for capturing characteristic though idealized
scenes of American life. I've seen in this collection what I believe to
be many of the "set piece" images Nabokov may have been inspired
by as "starting points for his own ironic, and more realistic view of
American life, with all its commerciality, its ever-present subtext of
eroticism, particularly of girls, and male figures who were recognizeable
American types, drawn up to rather heroic proportions.
I'm going to be looking through this box of
covers shortly, in order to have some framed as prints for family members and
friends, and will keep in mind the print advertisement Nabokov refers to.
Nabokov also refers often to popular American photographic images from
the original, and very-good- for-its-kind, American family illustrated news
magazine, Life -- I mean the original Life, not the present
revived but inferior publication
I've seen several ad illustrations of disheveled
but handsome hubbies with breakfast trays in this collection, and will give
you the brand name of the product if I run across it. Companies often
have much of their advertising archived, and you may be able to
obtain a print, if it's from a company that maintains a good public
relations staff.
Unfortunately, since the American economy was
hijacked by executives who felt they needed seven and eight figure salaries,
some of the first departments and staff to be cut were the corporate library
and archive personnel. These departments were "overhead," and when operating
budgets are slashed, they are usually among the first to go -- and decades of
advertising images are dumped into the trash.
AB
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