Maisel’ takeover, megafans and mealy cookies In this reality, perhaps Roth would later write of a funny woman who “wore Dior and massacred mustard packets.” (It’s no “ eat green salad and drink human blood,” but that’s probably for the best.) Then again, one has the feeling that Midge would take the lead here, picking a restaurant where she knows the chef or slumming it spectacularly at Gray’s Papaya. But it’s also possible he took her out around Connecticut, where he kept a farmhouse since the early 1970s. Roth was known to visit Barney Greengrass as well as an unnamed Italian restaurant in the West 40s, an Indian place on Broadway and Nice-Matin on the Upper West Side. I’m feeling lunch for these two, given that Midge works at night. We appreciate creator Daniel Palladino and Amy Sherman-Palladino’s restraint at not doing more name-dropping by way of explanation.

More than likely, another celebrity made the shidduch - maybe Ann Landers or James Baldwin. It’s possible that these two met at a sort of Hollywood or New York society party maybe it was a radical chic shindig at the Bernsteins. the two different forms for G in “Gang” and “Great”.Well, it’s not the bottom line for us, who are left wondering exactly how these two came together - and what they could possibly have in common. Some of the details appear to be customized anyway, see e.g. The sample in the One Line catalog from 1971 doesn’t show any swashes, but these might be custom additions. A possible candidate is Caslon Contempo by Photo-Lettering, Inc. The exact typeface has not been identified yet. Reading Myself and Others, an anthology of essays published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1975, was the last in this specific design, but Roth continued to be associated with bold swashy Caslons. Interestingly, this visual identity was maintained for subsequent books by other publishers, too, including UK editions by Jonathan Cape - it’s not the identity of the publisher, but really one of the author.

The jacket design is credited to Paul Bacon. The first one in this series of hardcovers is the novel Portnoy’s Complaint, published by Random House in 1969. It consists of a bold condensed Caslon variant with swashes, set center-aligned, with the title and the author’s name separated by color. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.Īll of Philip Roth’s books published between 19 carry the same typographic signature. Portnoy’s Complaint, first US edition, Random House, 1969. These are the most common typefaces in the database, but there are many more.Haas Inserat-Grotesk / Neue Aurora VIII (48).

Portnoy's complaint first edition