The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture
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The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Raphel, Adrienne. 2018. The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41129119 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture A dissertation presented by Adrienne Raphel to The Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of English Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2018 ©2018 Adrienne Raphel All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisors: Elaine Scarry, Stephanie Burt Adrienne Raphel The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture Abstract This dissertation examines the crossword’s influence in modern literature and culture in three sections: history, literature, and praxis. I argue that while the crossword relies on surface-level connections as aesthetic form, as a cultural mode, by thinking inside the box, people use the puzzle to make connections with each other. I first tell the story of the crossword from 1913 to the present, charting the crossword's evolution from an afterthought in the newspaper to one of the main media moneymakers of the twenty-first century. Ultimately, I argue that the crossword has become a reflection and an emblem of contemporary leisure-class culture in both America and England. The second section argues that the crossword plays an evocative role as both formal figure and stylistic trope in modern and contemporary literature. I show the crossword's role in the creative processes of several twentieth- and twenty-first century authors, united by their interest in the puzzle’s addictive qualities and capacity to facilitate associative thinking. I track the appearance of the crossword in literary texts between 1913 and 2018, arguing that the crossword typically connotes intellectual prowess without emotional sophistication. This section also considers reading practices, comparing the reading of a crossword to the reading of literature by setting both in conversation with definitions of difficulty. To help understand the crossword itself as form, I provide a detailed taxonomy. iii The third section provides a study of the praxis of the crossword in contemporary life. It takes the reader behind the scenes of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, the nation’s oldest and largest competition of its kind. This section also presents a narrative account of a crossword-puzzle-themed ocean crossing on the Queen Mary II. I argue that although the crossword is by nature a solitary practice, the crossword brings people together in surprising and unexpected ways. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Crosswords: A History 16 Chapter 2. Crosswords and Literature 105 Chapter 3. Crosswords: A Field Guide 199 Chapter 4. Crossword Praxis, Part 1: Tournament of Champions 248 Chapter 5. Crossword Praxis, Part 2: 296 A Celebration of the Times Crossword, Daily Programme Bibliography 364 v List of Figures Figure 1. Crestos lovitxa Sirin, Vladimir Nabokov, 1926. Figure 2. “FUN’S Word-Cross Puzzle,” Arthur Wynne, 1913. Figure 3. Mini crossword, Joel Fagliano, 2015. Figure 4. Crosswordiness formula, Noah Veltman, 2012. Figure 5. René Magritte, La trahison des images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe), 1929. Figure 6. Le Corbusier, Vers un Architecture, 1923. Figure 7. Musée de la pipe et du diament, Saint-Claude, France. Figure 8. René Magritte, Les deux mystères, 1966. Figure 9. Charles Layne’s “Pipe,” 1924 Figure 10. Themeless Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 11. Theme Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 12: Fact-Finder Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 13. Wordplay Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 14. Architectural Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 15. Coca-Cola Crossword, 1925. Figure 16. Storyteller Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 17. Metamorphic Crosswords: Schematic Chart. Figure 18. “Untitled [Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2,” Jacob Stulberg, 2015. vi Acknowledgments First and foremost, I am endlessly grateful for the generosity and wisdom that my advisors–– Elaine Scarry, Stephanie Burt, Peter Sacks, and Louis Menand––have shared with me throughout this process. Professors Scarry and Burt have been guiding this project from the beginning, and have helped encourage and direct me through many twists and turns; as the project evolved into its current form, Professors Sacks and Menand have served as enormously valuable guides and peerless sounding boards. I am honored to call myself your student, and I am incredibly grateful for your support. Deep thanks to Jorie Graham. My thanks as well to Professors David Alworth, Daniel Albright, Daniel Donoghue, Philip Fisher, and Helen Vendler. Many thanks to Melanie Jackson for shepherding an inchoate project into creation. My deep awe and thanks to my editor at Penguin Press, Will Heyward, for shaping these words into a book. Thanks to the fellowships that have provided generous support for this dissertation: the Dexter Summer Research Travel Fellowship, the Helen Choate Bell Term-Time Fellowship, and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the English Department. Thanks to the Jerry Slocum Collection of the Lilly Library at Indiana University for allowing me access to their treasure trove of puzzle materials. Thanks also to the New York Historical Society and to the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. I am humbled by the generosity and warmth the crossword community has shown to this project, and I have been honored to enter this world. Will Shortz has been an invaluable resource, as has Joel Fagliano; without their kindness and openness, this project would not have been possible. Many thanks to Deb Amlen, Ian Bogost, David Hague, Jim Horne, vii Natan Last, Caleb Madison, Brendan Emmett Quigley, Michael Sharp, Brian Skotko, Michael Smith, Anna Shechtman, David Steinberg, Jacob Stulberg, Ben Tausig, Finn Vigeland, and Ben Zimmer, among so many other amazing editors, critics, constructors, and solvers who have shared their wisdom and talents. Thanks to Alice Notley, Michael Silverblatt, and Stephen Sondheim for discussing crosswords and literature, and to Geoffrey Chalkley for the help with cryptic crosswords. Thank you to everyone involved in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Special camaraderie with all those who set sail in the 2017 New York Times Journeys crossword crossing on the QMII. Thank you to all my peers, colleagues, and friends who have provided help in myriad forms, especially Sara Deniz Akant, Amanda Auerbach, Eliza Davenport Holmes, Thomas Dolinger, Laura Forsberg, Walt Hunter, Jessica Laser, Jessica Lander, Jennifer Mackenzie, Jeff Nagy, Nicholas Nardini, Daniel Poppick, Mariam Rahmani, Sara Shaw, Christopher Spaide, Caitlin Tully, Lindsay Turner, Emmy Waldman, Alex Walton, Michael Weinstein, everyone in Jorie’s poetry workshops, and so many more. Thanks to Christopher Spaide for wordplay at every opportunity, and to Helen Cushman, Elizabeth Phillips, Christian Schlegel, and Erica Weaver for invaluable aid. Very special thanks to Emily Silk for her endless support. This project is dedicated to my family: to my grandparents, for their love of games, words, and community. Many thanks to Ben Raphel for being a champion throughout this process. Finally, and with infinite gratitude and love, to my parents, Neil Raphel and Janis Raye, without whom none of this would be possible. viii Introduction INTRODUCTION “I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose.” --Vladimir Nabokov It’s a good time to be a crossword. Millions in America and the UK encounter the crossword daily in newspapers––the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today; the Times of London, the Telegraph, the Guardian. Crosswords populate Harper’s, People, the Spectator, the New Statesman, Soap Opera Digest, and in-flight magazines like Sky. US and British publications alike also feature crossword blogs, with tips for solvers and explanations of the daily puzzle’s answers. Other countries have a fairly robust crossword culture—France, Italy, Germany; even China and Japan have crossword-like games that use characters rather than letters––but in the US and UK, the crossword has truly become a empire. There’s a robust cottage industry around the puzzle: crossword compendia, crossword-puzzle dictionaries, reference books; websites dedicated to archiving every clue used in every puzzle; crossword criticism. Designers have used the black-and-white grid as inspiration for clothing, jewelry, and home décor. And the decline of print media, if anything, has only strengthened the crossword’s hold. People spend more of their days arranging letters inside the box of a screen, and the crossword is no exception. In 2017, major social game developer Zynga partnered with People to launch Crosswords with Friends, an app that lets people compete against each other. In 2018, there were 350,000 subscribers to the New York Times’s crossword mobile app. T.S. Eliot did the crossword, as did W.H. Auden, as does Stephen King. Vladimir Nabokov wrote the first crosswords in the Russian language; Stephen Sondheim brought the cryptic crossword to American audiences. Actors Jesse Eisenberg, Jodie Foster, Vanessa 1 Williams, Elijah Wood, and Catherine Zeta-Jones are crossword solvers; Teri Garr both appears frequently as a crossword clue and solves regularly. Television hosts Rachel Maddow is an avid crossworder, as are Jon Stewart and Martha Stewart. Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton are aficionados of the form. The first crossword appeared in the New York World in 1913, on the eve of World War I and on the cusp of Modernism, and it is one of the most enduring forms in society today.