2012 Atlantic Journalism Awards Finalists
Attachments
| Slug/Label | A Century Of Frye |
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| Date Aired or Published | April 21st |
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Short explanation of the story and how it developed: ‘A century of Northrop Frye’ was a special issue of Salon, the Telegraph-Journal’s weekend fine art and culture supplement, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Northrop Frye, Canada’s greatest literary theorist. A notoriously esoteric literary theorist, Northrop Frye isn’t the easiest figure to make appealing. His work and ideas are still very important, but they are dense and difficult. This special issue attempted to use its presentation of the stories in such a way as to ingratiate readers with Frye like no one had before – making it fun, friendly and fascinating. The anchor for this was the two-page centre spread ‘The Mind the Myth and Moncton’ -- a collaboration between our art and culture editor, Mike Landry, and Moncton-born illustrator, Jesse Jacobs, an award-winning cartoonist (Gene Day Award for Canadian Comic Book Self-Publisher, 2008)whose book ‘By This Shall You Know Him’ was released in 2012. Landry researched imagery and facts, and had Jacobs draw Frye on a tour of his old Moncton haunts using quotes from Frye’s writing. It was the first time in the paper’s 150-year history that it published such an illustrated feature. To illustrate one of the drier parts of the section – a two-page feature of memories of Frye from around the world – Mike Landry sourced archival caricatures of Frye. This lightened the text-dense pages, but also spoke to Frye’s intellectual celebrity and how often he was characterized in newspapers and magazines. Coordinating the photography for an international figure like Frye meant booking photographs in Virginia and Toronto. Landry also worked with the University of Toronto Archives to find the ideal photograph for the front. A special cartoon from Salon’s regular cartoonist Colin Smith was also commissioned for the issue. And, in all, 20-some contributors were involved in putting the special issue together, which took about a month to do. |
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