Re: OT Dr. Magel's alphabet book (was Re: A prioi vs. A posteriori ?

James Landau wrote:
  (big snip) 

 Could this be _The Ultimate Alphabet_? Now that you mention it, I remember
that only a few years later there came out a book called _The Ultimate
Alphabet_, whose author was named Mike (I think his last name was Wilks or
Willis or something), that also had a contest around it.

 Exactly. (Like you, I'm still not sure of the author's name) I googled for
"Alphabet Book" and got nothing but school primers; now I'll try this. And when
the weather warms up, go out to the shed to see if I can find it.
  (more snip)

 Unlike Dr. "Maggel" (1985), which seemed to still have some of the lingering
spirit of the seventies in its spirituality, with all the funky elf shit, _The
Ultimate Alphabet_, published a little later, had an aura of new-wave style
eighties scientificness and modern cosmopolitanity to it, with a
Reagan-upbeat-global-economy all-you-can-eat bounty of plenty of words from
each letter to enjoy.
  Well, I don't know if I'd go _that_ far :-)))))


 Amazingly, around the same time as the other two, a third book devoted to
alphabetic paintings came out, called _Animalia_. My sister had that one. It
showed a Herman-Miller-like love of painting animals. It made a huge splash at
the time with nothing but acclaim and its 26 paintings were often reproduced
and posted up around libraries and art clinics. I still find the _Animalia_
paintings up somewhere every now and then. How was it that three books with the
idea of alphabetically-themed paintings came out in the same frame of time?

 The genius of Marketing. Same reason we have a bunch of TV shows about
forensic Crime Scene Investigators (the only thing I watch on commercial
TV...well, I do look in now and then on Joe Millionaire in hopes that he's
taken off his clothes, but that's neither here not there...............)

Reply