Ratskunk
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Apropos of John Cheever's Rolex...
John Cheever and his Rolex Day-Date on the cover of Scott Donaldson's John Cheever biography.
If the Rolex fan reads the biographies, journals and letters of John Cheever the Rolex fan will be rewarded with sundry tidbits regarding John Cheever's Rolex Day-Date (given to Cheever on the occasion of the 1980 New Yorker Magazine Rolex advertisement); John Cheever's feelings about his Rolex range from pride, gloating and even a betrayal of self. One such tidbit is from a letter (The Letters of John Cheever, ed. Benjamin Cheever) that reminds the reader that Cheever owns a $6,000 Rollex [sic]...
The John Cheever Rolex advertisement was the subject of an essay "The Distractions of John Cheever" (Writing for The New Yorker: Critical Essays on an American Periodical, 2015, pages 137-158 [Tamara Follini]); most-likely the only Rolex advertisement to get the ivory-tower (egg-head) treatment; the abstract of the essay is enclosed. The John Cheever Rolex advertisement is featured in the essay.
This chapter considers John Cheever's Rolex advertisement, which can be read as the writer's comment, poised between self mockery and self congratulation, on his lifelong tussle with the marketplace and the conditions of magazine publication, considering Cheever's engagement with The New Yorker. While this was an affiliation from which Cheever frequently benefited, it was also one increasingly marked by financial frustration, creative limitation, and personal discord with the editors with whom he was most closely associated. More damagingly, Cheever's reputation, both during his lifetime and in subsequent decades, was perceived as so deeply entangled with that of the magazine that the association undoubtedly hindered, and may continue to unsettle, a just evaluation of his work.
The John Cheever Rolex advertisement for many reasons is my favorite Rolex advertisement.
They found it and brought it gingerly to the surface. And when on dry land they held it in their hands, they gazed at it with stupefaction.
They found it and brought it gingerly to the surface. And when on dry land they held it in their hands, they gazed at it with stupefaction. The Rolex "Professor of Milan" advertisement was one of the most popular (and reproduced) advertisements of the Rol...
Pretty ‘fishy’ story
“For the watch that had lain on the sea bed a whole week was still keeping perfect time. Incredible? Not at all. The watch was a Rolex Oyster Perpetual. The waterproof Oyster case had protected the movement from salt water and the clinging; insidious sand...
The 1952 Tudor Trial of Destruction advertisements...trivia: C. Walter Hodges.
As mentioned in my original-post Tudor had a kind of similar and contemporary advertising campaign to the Rolex "Fantastic Story" advertising campaign called the "Trials of Destruction"; no big news as Rolex and Tudor fans will be well-acquainted with the...
Apropos of John Cheever's Rolex...
John Cheever and his Rolex Day-Date on the cover of Scott Donaldson's John Cheever biography. If the Rolex fan reads the biographies, journals and letters of John Cheever the Rolex fan will be rewarded with sundry tidbits regarding John Cheever's Rolex Da...