Life, 1929-02-22 · page 12 of 36
Life — February 22, 1929 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two cartoons and a poem. The upper cartoon shows a man and children viewing grotesque face masks or heads through a window, with the caption "You must sort of half close your eyes to see these art pictures." This satirizes modernist or abstract art as incomprehensible nonsense requiring self-deception to appreciate. The lower cartoon depicts a furniture showroom where a former snake charmer now works as a window demonstrator, surrounded by customers examining furniture. The joke plays on the absurdity of career transitions—a snake charmer's skills have no obvious application to furniture sales, suggesting desperation or poor job matching. The right column features "Ballad of the Gentle Reader," a poem by Arthur Guiterman critiquing various literary trends and pretentious writers of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
10 A Short History of Automobiling The Israelites seck for new parking space. 7 2 @ Phoenocian sailors get at least five hun- dred miles to a galleon, . 8 «6 Jacob ascends on high. o «© e@ Caesar crosses river by means of Fords. a © @ Spanish Inquisition prison officials are all equipped with chains. e 8 °* The Lucretia Borgia filling station dis- penses a powerful mixture. e 8 Queen Elizabeth considers getting an Essex. 7 28 6 Paul Revere goes by the lights. eo ee e ‘Woman in Ny v. Y., puts out her hand when making a left-hand turn. Parke Cummings. Sayings of a tabloid reporter—“I used to be a newspaper man myself.” Give a business man enough rope and he'll be tied up at the office. CLE “You must sort of half close your eyes to see these art pictures.” Then there was the Scotch kid who shot his parents so he could go to the Orphan's picnic. The former snake charmer who got a job as a window demonstrator. Ballade of the Gentle Reader \ I'm weary of all the crew So praised for their “wonderful style’; Your self-made psychiatrist, too, Provokes my cbullient bile; T won't walk a fifth of a mile For “Loves of the Icthyosauri”; Creator of fiction worth w T want you to tell me a story. Biographies touted as “true” I'd sink in the mud of the Nile. Grave-robbing Hyena, beshrew Your novel on Thomas Carlyle! These tales of neurotics are vile, And “whimsies,” the full repertory, May sleep in the dingiest file. T want you tell me a story. With “slices of life” I am through, And bid them goodbye with a smik; To books with a purpose, adicu, The devil may take the whole pile! Were I on the loneliest isle, Your chronicles dismal and gory I'd feed to the first crocodile. I want you to tell me a story. L’Envor Genius! I pray you, beguile Our drearness with color and glory: Lend me your glamorous wile: I want you to tell me a story! Arthur Guiterman. comicbooks.com