A Bull in the Typography Shop Review

• Published in: New York Times
• Main Authors: Updike, John, John Updike's most recent novel is "Rabbit at Rest."
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 16.12.1990
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: Bruckner, D J R; Goudy, Frederic; UPDIKE, JOHN
• ISSN: 0362-4331

Even now, in this handsome volume (printed in Japan in a digitized version of Bodoni, a face Goudy despised) meant to be a tribute, [D. J. R. Bruckner] allows a mysterious note of cavil and reservation to sneak in when praise is called for. For tribute, he cites the barbed compliment with which George W. Jones gave Goudy a gold medal in 1921: "Fred Goudy never did any harm to typography." Mr. Bruckner, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, himself confides, "Goudy's printing and typography, his design of pages and magazines and books, would never have earned him a place in the history of design or printing." On the remaining matter of type design he asks, "Was Goudy the greatest American type designer or the most prolific?" and then after paragraphs of waffling says that "it seems merely silly to deny" that he was the former. On individual letter forms Mr. Bruckner can be quite acerb ("incongruous,""hodgepodge," "open and rolling to the point of annoyance"), and he relays what was the prevailing complaint about Goudy: "Critics of Goudy are fond of saying that all his types are advertising faces."