The Press: A Geezer Named Seidlitz

Last January, Hearst's King Features Syndicate decided to run an advertisement in Editor & Publisher for Westbrook Pegler's column. It began digging around for quotable puffs, had trouble finding any. Few people had ever said anything good about Pegler, who so seldom has anything good to say about anyone else. Finally, at the syndicate's prodding, Pegler remembered that "an old geezer named 'Seidlitz"—meaning, as everybody knew, of course, Literary Critic Henry Seidel Canby—had once cast him a few pearls of praise.

Digging out an eleven-year-old copy of the Saturday Review of Literature, the syndicate found that Canby had indeed lauded the "homely...

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