Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
Weekly: Pick of the Issue
Bimonthly: Ask the Librarians
Submit a question for the next column.
Frequently:
Headline Shooter
Seal Barks
Eustace Google
Looked Into
Despite the obvious thrill I get from new things, I also love discovering things late. It guarantees non-currency—all the copycat hype has subsided, and there's just you and the thing, meeting in the shadows like the Lady and the Tramp, sharing a solitary spaghetti after the world has moved on. This is happening to me with Eugene Mirman, who's hardly old news, but is new news to me, and I'm drunk on the comedy, the voice, the Emo Phillips admiration ("I was playing tennis, and this girl said to me, she said Emo, wanna double up?"), the Christian anti-gay-marriage phone-company calls ("I'm just more worried that a sandwich would marry a bear").
From a 2001 (see what I mean?) interview with Chunklet; link mine:
Besides Eugene Mirman, what’s the best thing to come out of Russia?
I’ll tell you what it’s not: communism. That’s a bullshit system of government. I don’t know. Probably caviar, smoked fish. Depressing literature? Pushkin? Daniel Kharms. He’s an absurdist author from the ‘20s and ‘30s. Mostly it’s a kind of attitude. I find that there are three kinds of Russian people. Some who will be like, “The world is cold, wet misery.” And others who are more like, “The world is cold, wet misery, who wants to go see a movie?” And there are those who are simply somewhat upbeat, “Let’s have some chicken and wine!” I’m somewhere between the last two. The best exported thing was an optimistic outlook on dreary things. I’m slowly recovering from this election, while my American counterparts are still throwing up in the streets.
My tardiness aside, Mirman is, of course, more famous than ever. Check the site for his tour schedule and his regular Wednesday-night gig at Cinema Classics (11th between 1st and 2nd). I wonder where he's from in Russia? I didn't see any mention of a town.
Who we?
Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.
We welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.
No fear: Everything you say or send is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.
A few clips
- Report: Learning to read with comic books 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: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- 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 (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)
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to my heart.
Primary sources
The New Yorker
Events listed by the magazine
Web resources: New Yorker writers and artists
Books, Organizations, &c.
Edited by Martin Schneider, designed by Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
The Rossosphere
- Resistance Is Fertile
- Mick Stevens: I Really Should Be Drawing
- Cartoonist Michael Maslin's homepage
- Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
- Sasha Frere-Jones
- Matthew Diffee's HuffPo blog
- The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s
- The essential Jane Grant
- Paul Noth's Pale Force
- The New York Public Library records
- New Yorker Comment
- Chiasmus in The New Yorker
- Wikipedia: The New Yorker
- New Yorker database
- The New Orcer
- Silence of the City
- Between the Squibs
- Blog About Town
- Newyorkette
- New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest
- The New Yorker Forums
- I Hate the New Yorker
- Ben Yagoda's homepage
- Access My Library
- New Yorker haiku
- Modern Spectator
- Map: Caption Contest Winners
- Technorati: New Yorker
- Link to suggest? Email it!
Comments
Yeah, Mirman's very funny. And I don't think you're coming that to the game.Re: Emo--I saw him at a club in NYC about 20 years ago. You know the cliche that "I laughed so hard my sides ached"? This was true for me that night, the only time in my life that has happened.