Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
Our Daily Comic: The Wavy Rule
Archive: Ask the Librarians
Send us a question!
Frequently:
Headline Shooter
Seal Barks
Eustace Google
Looked Into
"Shawn didn't talk that way"
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Bob Balaban, Ken Auletta, movies, Roger Angell, Truman Capote, William Shawn
'Capote' figure called un-Tru
Oscar handicappers are calling Philip Seymour Hoffman the man to beat for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in "Capote." But old hands at the New Yorker are rankled by the movie's take on the magazine's late and beloved editor William Shawn, as played by Bob Balaban.
Longtime New Yorker contributor Roger Angell notes that the film has the painfully shy Shawn holding a press conference "and talking about how to make [Capote's book] 'In Cold Blood' more newsworthy. Shawn never did anything in his life to make something more newsworthy."
In the movie, Shawn also accompanies Capote to the execution of the murderers. "He was too nervous to travel, by and large," Angell tells us.
Writer Ken Auletta likewise took exception with the brusque and terribly social Shawn of "Capote."
"I don't believe he would have had that kind of breathless quality [Balaban has]," Auletta told us yesterday at a Newhouse School panel. "Shawn didn't talk that way. He held writers' hands. He held Capote's hand, and nurtured him and supported him."
Shawn's actor son, Wallace, couldn't be reached yesterday, but we're sure he'll have some thoughts.
About us
Hello! We are media enthusiasts and culture addicts—not to mention classically trained (as we like to say) professional journalists. This is our collection of generally civilized conversations about magazines, movies, politics, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
You'd like to read more about us individually? That's so nice! Here you can learn a lot more about the Emdashes team, the mysterious-sounding names of our daily and non-daily columns, and our guest contributors.
We welcome tips, questions, and comments, and are always looking for ardent new contributors who care about letters (postal, typographical, admiring, literary, and tough-love). Here's how to contact us.
Occasionally, we host book giveaways, and review books here as often as we can. Publishers, please e-mail us and we'll send you an appropriate mailing address.
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
No fear
Everything you tell or send us is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
T-shirts! The Emdashes Emporium at CafePress.
Comments
Angell drives me nuts - when I first started reading his memoir pieces in the NYer I thought they were satiric fiction, they were so over the top pretentious. But when I read them as satiric fiction, I kind of love them . . . But I also like the retrospective characterizations of Shawn that emerge now and then in the NYer. I like too the idea of a shy celebrity, or a shy boss.