I didn’t do much over the Thanksgiving break (thankfully), but I did manage to read Volume One of the Uncollected Stories of J. D. Salinger – a bootleg edition of old magazine stories that had not been published in book form. Some were fantastic, others weren’t. Of note here was one character wishing himself to be elegant and suave, "like a magazine illustrator." Ahhh, to be back in the days when illustrators were household names and featured in high society gossip columns. Oh well.Of absolutely no interest to anybody that hasn’t just read the uncollected stories of J. D. Salinger...If you go to Salinger.org you can see a few of the original illustrations that accompanied these stories -- none of which are particularly inspired, including this pre-Catcher in the Rye depiction of Holden Caulfield.
As an aside: Can we insert “swell’ back into our vernacular? And call each other “grand” and “marvelous”?