Frimbo book

[Lithonia Operator]

Over the years, several non-railfan friends, upon learning I like trains, have recommended the Rogers EM Whittaker essays that appeared in the New Yorker.

So recently I finally bought a book of the entire collection.

I'm disappointed. To be honest, I find a lot of it boring and pretentious. Whittaker amassed a truly staggering number of rail miles, and I'd love to have heard about his journeys in a straightforward down-to-earth telling. But using the alter-ego Frimbo character, and employing an odd point of view whereby some unnamed "we" relays Frimbo's tales as accounts told to this "we," well, it's tiresome. I put it down halfway through, and I'm not sure I'll ever go back.

There is definitely a lot of interesting railroad info contained in the pieces, but I just didn't find it a good read overall.

Have any of you folks read the essays? What was your opinion?

I'd heard so much about the essays, I was totally predisposed to like them. It's been a letdown.

[Overmod]

It's a lot like reading Beebe: the style is overdone, almost as though a subject like railroads can't be in The New Yorker unless there is some highbrow literary style in the mix.

Those familiar with what usually passed for prose in the magazine in those years will recognize it.

Perhaps a better 'feel' for his style is in the Decade of the Trains book.  You may still not like it then ... but you will have a fairer assessment.

[Flintlock76]

I'm assuming you're talking about "All Aboard With E.M. Frimbo?"

Well, it's a shame you were disappointed in the book.  I've got a copy and have re-read it several times and always found it very enjoyable and fun. But I suppose Whittaker's style doesn't appeal to everyone.

I do concur with Overmod though, "Decade Of The Trains, The 1940's" has some excellent writing by Whittaker about the American rail efforts during WW2.  The prose has almost a haunting quality to it, I find it hard to explain it any other way, there's no joking around or raconteur style of storytelling, in a real sense Whittaker's telling the story of a battle, the lead-up, the battle itself, and the aftermath.  

And if you don't like the writing in "Decade" there's always Don Ball's magnificent compilation of photographs of the railroads in action to enjoy.

[NKP guy]

   It's necessary to point out that All Aboard With E. M. Frimbo wasn't written by Rogers Whitaker alone; the co-author is Tony Hiss, a good friend of his.

   Yes, Decade of the Trains is a book with knowledgeable and beautifully written prose by Whitaker.  I also recommend, on a different topic altogether, his superb program notes in a c1975 Columbia record set of music from the 1920's.  Being a railfan of exquisite credentials and writing ability was just one of his many facets.

   He had a very important and responsible job during the War that concerned trains (just now I forget his title) and he was one of those countless people behind the scenes whose efforts and sacrifices helped us achieve victory.

   Whitaker was also a big booster of Broadway and personally helped Debbie Reynolds (among others) become a star.

   As for his work at The New Yorker, that speaks for itself.

   This is the first time I've ever read any criticism of All Aboard With E. M. Frimbo, I'll bet the pleasure ratio for this fine book (I love it!) is 1000 to 1, at least.  However, as perhaps Frimbo would observe, You can't please everyone and that's OK. 

   As I noted here once before, for a few years Rogers Whitaker used his vacation time to work as a waiter on several notable western cross-country trains.  He didn't need the money and he was in his 50's.  He did it just because he loved riding trains.  How I wish I could have done something similar.

   I miss him and his train-riding essays in The New Yorker very much, indeed.  There hasn't been anyone like him since, nor is it likely there ever will be again.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/12/obituaries/rogers-em-whitaker-writer-and-editor-for-the-new-yorker.html

 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1981/06/01/rogers-e-m-whitaker

  

[Flintlock76]

NKP guy

   He had a very important and responsible job during the War that concerned trains (just now I forget his title) and he is one of those countless people behind the scenes whose efforts and sacrifices helped us achieve victory.

He was a major in the US Army's Transportation Corps and assigned to the Office of Defense Transportation.  The ODT co-ordinated movements of troops and supplies, and had a mix of military personnel and civilian railroad executives, I think John Barringer was one of them.  

Definately a behind-the-scenes and unsung organization.  I don't think we'll ever know all the transportation miracles they pulled off.

[Convicted One]

Lithonia Operator

I'm disappointed. To be honest, I find a lot of it boring and pretentious. Whittaker amassed a truly staggering number of rail miles, and I'd love to have heard about his journeys in a straightforward down-to-earth telling. But using the alter-ego Frimbo character, and employing an odd point of view whereby some unnamed "we" relays Frimbo's tales as accounts told to this "we," well, it's tiresome. I put it down halfway through, and I'm not sure I'll ever go back.

Some people read to gain knowledge, while others read to be entertained. It can be tedious having to dispense with a self flattering ego, when all you really want are facts.

I've seen some typify the presentation as a "cross between Winston Churchill  and W.C. Fields". Does that accurately sum it up in your estimation?

[MMLDelete]

Convicted One, I think that IS a good description of the style.

I hope no one was offended by my comments; I know it's no fun to hear someone badmouth something you like.

Since there are some positive appraisals here, I'm going to try to finish the book. Maybe my view will change by the end. Maybe the better stories are in the second half.

I do read for entertainment as well as information. But I guess this work was just not what I expected.

Yes, I should have mentioned Tony Hiss. Am I correct that he was/is the son of Alger Hiss?

[Juniata Man]

I've had All Aboard with E.M. Frimbo for about six years and periodically pull it off the shelf to read again.  I've always found most of the stories to be entertaining although there is a stinker or two.

Curt

[NKP guy]

Lithonia Operator

Am I correct that he was/is the son of Alger Hiss?

Yes, you are.  As an interesting sidelight, Alger Hiss was accused of passing secrets by Whittaker Chambers.  Ironic in light of later events, no?

And no one was offended by your comments, I'm sure.  

[samfp1943]

It has been years since I had read, or even thought about  All Aboard With E. M. Frimbo by Rogers Whitaker.       My family had purchased subscriptions to NewYorker Magazines for years; and I had read a number of the articles on 'Mr. Frimbo's' travels.  Being still (then) a teenager, I found them to be informative and 'obnoxious' at the same time.  I did not know why at the time, style(?) possibly; educational, certainly.  

I do appreciate the 'trip', back down memory lane; it gave me some insights to those previous times. Thanks, all.  

[Flintlock76]

This just in from "Magic Mike," our lost Wanswheel.

In case you're wondering what the connection is, you'll find out!

https---www.csmonitor.com-1981-0204-020433.html

[NKP guy]

Fascinating!

Thanks again, Flintlock!

[Flintlock76]

You're welcome NKP!

And a bit more from "Magic Mike," a personal appearance by Rogers Whittaker himself!

https---www.youtube.com-watch-v=HrXp-AD6xMY&t=10m50s

[MMLDelete]

Who is Magic Mike?

I'll check out the video.

[Convicted One]

Lithonia Operator

Who is Magic Mike?

He was a popular poster here who ran afoul of the forum rules, and was exiled.

[Flintlock76]

Convicted One

 

 

Lithonia Operator

Who is Magic Mike?

 

 

He was a popular poster here who ran afoul of the forum rules, and was exiled.

 

He went by the callsign "Wanswheel."  Miningman and myself call him "Magic Mike" because he had an amazing, astounding really, ability to come up with the rare, forgotten, and obscure.  

You've gotten just a taste of his talents in this topic's discussion.  Now he works through surrogates ( or minions ) like myself and Miningman.

[GeoPRR]

I knew Frimbo well.  He was a frequent passenger on private car tours I operated in the 70's, and all the regulars enjoyed his company.  He knew everyone in the railroad world, my little sphere, but the extent of his interests, accomplishments, and friendships is best remembered by me when I recall the memorial service after his passing, in a church on Park Avenue in New York.  There were people there I recognized from every walk of life - our rail crowd was just a small part.  It was the best, most joyous (if you can say that about such an event) memorial I ever attended.  Bobby Short played the piano.  Those were the days.

[daveklepper]

Thanks and thank Magic Mike

[NKP guy]

GeoPRR

It was the best, most joyous (if you can say that about such an event) memorial I ever attended.  Bobby Short played the piano.

   Bobby Short at the piano at his memorial service!  

   That about says it all.

   How very New York.

[charlie hebdo]

Overmod

It's a lot like reading Beebe: the style is overdone, almost as though a subject like railroads can't be in The New Yorker unless there is some highbrow literary style in the mix.

Those familiar with what usually passed for prose in the magazine in those years will recognize it.

Perhaps a better 'feel' for his style is in the Decade of the Trains book.  You may still not like it then ... but you will have a fairer assessment.

 

Like Beebe on speed. 

[Miningman]

 

Rogers E. M. Whitaker, who died on Monday, May 11th, at the age of eighty-one, was best known to New Yorker readers for his many appearances in The Talk of the Town under the thin disguise of E. M. Frimbo, world’s greatest railroad buff. Less visible until now has been the fact that in his fifty-five years at this magazine Whitaker’s presence and intelligence permeated almost every part of The New Yorker, contributing to, among other things, the way this page looks and reads. The semi fictional Frimbo, dapper and impeccable in his black homburg, the tails of his old tan mackintosh swirling in the steam hissing from a mighty locomotive, sometimes seemed larger than life. The real man was not always as endearing, but he had more sides to him and he attained greater stature. 

Rogers Whitaker was born in Arlington, Massachusetts, on January 15, 1900. His father, Charles Harris Whitaker, was a vivid man, a lecturer on architecture, who crossed the Atlantic fifty times on steamships, and who, as editor of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects, was an important figure in American architectural publishing. When Whitaker was nine, his father told him he was old enough to travel by himself on trains. At the end of Whitaker's sophomore year at Princeton, his father declined to pay any more tuition fees and gave him forty dollars and letters of introduction to three New York publishers. The young Whitaker's reaction was to plunge into publishing, dedicate himself to his work, learn whatever he could. "Work, for the night is coming" was one of his watchwords. From then on, he cherished his ability to pay his own way, and always dressed like someone with a large private income. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken an interest in his wardrobe; one of his handmade Bernard Weatherill tweed sports coats, with buttons on the sleeves that really button, has gone over to its Costume Institute. 

When Whitaker got to New York in 1920, he immediately adored it. He felt, as so many did then, that he had permanently acquired the freedom of the city — to go anywhere, at any time of the day — and that intelligence, wit, and a certain blend of tolerance and nerve would see him through any situation. He lived in a theatrical boarding house, down the hall from Mae West, and, later, in a Greenwich Village apartment with fifteen Persian cats. He sold advertising for a trade magazine, and he worked at the Times checking bridal announcements for hoaxes placed by rejected suitors. In 1925, he bought the first issue of The New Yorker and decided he had found the place where he wanted to work. A year later, he landed a job here as head of the makeup department, and he spent six years laying out each issue and refining the format. During this time, he also helped found our fact-checking department, teaching checkers that a fact is only as pure as the disinterestedness of its source. Then, as chief proofreader and head of the copy desk, he worked to develop the editorial query as an instrument for polishing a writer's intentions. Eventually, he was made an editor and worked directly with writers. Harold Ross bragged about Whitaker's eye for the bad, the flat, and the inapposite in a piece of writing, and attributed much of the magazine's early success to Whitaker and his colleague Hobart Weekes — two men who together could tussle with the prose of a loosely trained newspaperman and turn it into language. Whitaker was a big man — six feet two and built like an ex-football player. He had pink cheeks, a large head, large features — except for narrow, hooded eyes — and a large stomach. He got handsomer with age. He spoke in a sort of gruff drawl. Some of the thirty or more writers Whitaker worked with over the years were scared of him, but many of them felt blessed. "He always got my point, and he was always interested in what I was trying to say," one of those writers has said. "He showed enormous courtesy to my writing." 

Another writer recalls, "He had such superb confidence in the language that it never crossed his mind it might be impossible to say whatever it was I was trying to say. So when I floundered he just fixed the sentences. 'There's always a way,' he would say, and then he would find it.”

"He had something of the great, crusty authority of Dr. Johnson," still another writer has said. "Our phone calls were a genuine education. His attention to grammatical detail ultimately had a kind of moral force, because to his way of thinking each issue of the magazine had to be as nearly perfect as possible. It might be the only copy of the magazine some reader would see.

In 1934, Whitaker while continuing to serve The New Yorker in other capacities, began forty-six years of covering college football for the magazine — signing his columns “J.W.L.” because an early managing editor liked the look of these letters. Whitaker bought a huge pair of binoculars and wore a vest of real tiger skin under a big raccoon coat to Princeton games. He preferred to write about colleges that didn't give athletic scholarships, because he enjoyed watching games played without hope of reward or fear of punishment. Harvard's head coach, Joe Restic, said last week, "Whenever I talked to him, I felt I was talking to another coach — one who appreciated that  when football is played by young people who love competition it serves them well the rest of their years.

In the early thirties, Whitaker had taken on another chore for the magazine, which lasted forty years — going to supper clubs and cabarets and writing short reviews of them for the Goings On About Town section. (From 1943 to 1963, over the initials R.E.M.W. or R.W., he also wrote about these clubs and cabarets in the column Tables for Two.) Whitaker found that he liked nothing better than dining in the Persian Room, taking in the midnight show at the Copacabana or the late show at the Blue Angel, and then trundling off to an after-hours spot in Harlem or the Village before diving into a big breakfast of turkey hash and orange muffins, ducking into a hotel barbershop for a quick shave and a shine, and reporting to his desk promptly at 10 a.m. He quickly made friends with the musicians and comics he wrote about, and he was often invited to climb on a train with Duke Ellington when the Ellington band went on tour. He helped a number of performers — Harry Belafonte, Debbie Reynolds, Orson Bean, Jonathan Winters — get their first Broadway-musical parts. He gave Cy Coleman, the composer of "Little Me," "Sweet Charity," and "Barnum," his first rave when Coleman was a very young jazz pianist. "Growing up," Coleman has said, "I had always wanted to be a concert pianist, and Whitaker's praise really got me started on a career I wasn't yet quite sure I wanted. It sent me spiralling in a strange way." (Coleman later wrote "On the Twentieth Century" with Whitaker in mind.) Whitaker also gave Lenny Bruce his only good notice when Bruce first opened at the Blue Angel. In the night-life world, for reasons that are lost to history, he was known as Popsie. "Popsie Whitaker reigned supreme," Bobby Short has said. "He was one of the few who knew, one of the few wise men I've met, and it was gratifying to know we were getting across to someone as intrinsically stylish as he was. The little blurbs he wrote were actually brilliant reviews that exerted a terribly important influence, because in two or three words he had it out flat exactly what you were up to. If you were bright, you picked it up and went on from there." 

During all these years, Whitaker never stopped taking train trips whenever a moment opened up — an evening ride to Philadelphia, a weekend ride to Chicago and St. Louis, a week of rides in Switzerland or India or Japan or New Zealand. His totals were staggering— 2,748,636.81 miles by train formally accounted for (and he confided a few months ago that he was at least several years behind in his arithmetic), seventy-eight trips across the Atlantic, twelve across the Pacific, but in his view he was always only doing something sensible and practical. “If I rode around in a Buick all weekend," he used to point out, "no one would say a word." 

And Whitaker put his knowledge of trains to good use. During the Second World War, the United States Army commissioned him in the rank of major in the Traffic Control Division of the Transportation Corps, so that he could help plan the routing of troop trains. (Trains accounted for more than ninety-seven per cent of the troop movements in this country during the war.) In 1970, he was a key witness at an Interstate Commerce Commission "train-off" hearing that denied the Penn Central Railroad permission to discontinue all thirty-four of its long-distance passenger trains west of Buffalo and Harrisburg. In the mid-seventies, he worked as a secret consultant to Paul Reistrup, then the president of Amtrak: Whitaker would ride on troublesome trains and report privately on their problems. "Service is better today because of the work Frimbo did," Reistrup has said. "It was really beneficial to riders — particularly in scheduling and marketing. He would tell me it was no wonder our morning train to Princeton had no business, because there was no evening train back from Princeton. Our schedulers had never round-tripped it. I spotted him one day when he was on an unannounced trip out West — he booked tickets under forty-eight different aliases, so no one would know what he was up to — and I thought he was sort of nodding off. Only to be expected, at his age, I said to myself. Then he looked up and saw me, and I noticed that he had his pocket watch — set, as always, to New York time — in his hand. ‘Just judging our speed by timing the catenary poles,’ he said. He never earned his living on railroads — though for a couple of weeks in the summers of 1957, 1958, and 1959 he volunteered his services as a dining-car steward on the Western Pacific's Cariboo Country Special — but whenever I talked to him I thought I was talking to a real railroad man, and, specifically, to an employee of the New York Central passenger department. Each railroad had its own personality in the old days, and the Central had real class. It wasn't uppity, like the Pennsylvania.”

At the end of 1975, Whitaker retired as an editor and, at the age of seventy-five, settled down as a full-time reporter. He wrote Talk of the Town pieces and pieces for the Times, Travel & Leisure, and The Official Railway Guide. In addition, he wrote a book, "Decade of the Trains: The 1940s;" he was consultant editor to “Fodor’s Railways of the World;” and he wrote the foreword, the song blurbs, and the singer’s biography for the forthcoming "First Blossom Dearie Songbook." Not long before his seventy-seventh birthday, he test-drove a moped in Central Park for another piece. A Baltimore & Ohio railroad car was named in his honor; a musical comedy about him — "Frimbo" — played last fall in Grand Central Terminal; and last October the National Association of Railroad Passengers presented him and Frimbo with a joint certificate of appreciation for “their vital contributions” to passenger service.

At the end, there was yet another transformation — one that surprised those who had never seen sweetness in Whitaker. His greatest strength for many years — his pride in making his own way in the world — had also kept him at a distance from some whose company he might otherwise have enjoyed. He was stubborn, and he could often be harsh and wounding. But when he was hospitalized with cancer a few months ago and started to lose a great deal of weight he somehow at the same time shed the large burdens of hurt and suspiciousness he had carried ever since he was yanked out of Princeton. He endured a great deal of pain in the hospital without complaint, and the Whitaker of the final days was a tiny, bright-eyed man — alert, valiant, courteous, and endlessly kind.

 

 

[Flintlock76]

Miningman

he also helped found our fact-checking department, teaching checkers that a fact is only as pure as the disinterestedness of its source.

True words of wisdom for this contentious day and age.

[jtrain1]

I agree that All Aboard is dull as dish water.  But I like Frimbo's definition of a car.  It's nothing but a rolling sneeze!

[Flintlock76]

Sorry to report this folks, but "Miningman's" been "Wanswheeled," that is, exiled for 165 years, give or take a few.

No reason given.  I'd hate to think it was because of his posting of a forty year old obituary of a former "New Yorker" staffer who I'm sure the current "N-Y" staffers never heard of or could care less about.

C'est la vie.  

[Juniata Man]

I'm reminded of the old song "I've been thrown out of better joints than this."  

 

Flintlock76

Sorry to report this folks, but "Miningman's" been "Wanswheeled," that is, exiled for 165 years, give or take a few.

No reason given.  I'd hate to think it was because of his posting of a forty year old obituary of a former "New Yorker" staffer who I'm sure the current "N-Y" staffers never heard of or could care less about.

C'est la vie.  

 

[NKP guy]

   Maybe it's simply a function of getting older (and older), but it seems to me that step-by-step this hobby of railfanning, in all of its aspects, is getting to be less fun.

   I'll miss Miningman just as I miss Mike because, to name just one reason, they posted a good deal of the best stuff to read, look at, and ponder on this forum.

   Sigh.

[Flintlock76]

I don't know if it's less fun, fun is what you make it after all, but there are some around who seem to prefer looking for the worst of everything and spoiling the rest for others.

Kind of like the persons, and we've all met them, who suck all the life out of a room just by their walking into it.

I always try to remember a line from that great Bogart film "Action In The North Atlantic" where First Mate Bogart says to his captain:

"The difference between you and me Skipper, one of the differences anyway, is you remember the grief, I remember the fun!"

[Convicted One]

Flintlock76

"The difference between you and me Skipper, one of the differences anyway, is you remember the grief, I remember the fun!"

Shame to see Miningman gone now too.

Question, are these guys actually 100% banned? Or have they just been subjected to "moderated" status where their posts are subject to moderator review first, and they are just unwilling to kneel before the authority?

[Flintlock76]

100% banned.

I've been moderated myself, long story, PM me if you want the details, but mine only lasted two weeks until they realized I wasn't going to throw any more bombs. 

I was very angry at the time.

[MMLDelete]

I have to assume that Miningman was banned because he violated a rule about copying and pasting copyrighted material??

Seems like a warning, and dictating that it come down, would have been sufficient.