It’s going to be a great festival. From the NY Post:

The seventh annual weekend festival, which opens tomorrow night and comprises more than 50 events, will include an encore interview of Jon Stewart by New Yorker Editor David Remnick to benefit the U.S.O. When he signed up for last year’s chat with Stewart, Remnick says, “I didn’t know people still did a spit take. But I asked him some idiotic questions, and I ended up with water all over my shirt.” Which sounds less disturbing than another event, in which food writer Bill Buford “practically burned down a kitchen.”
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Remnick says the festival (which is “much better,” he says, than the similar program offered by The New York Times next weekend - your turn to throw down, Pinch!) is profitable and will be around at least as long as he is. “These things sell out at a rate that continues to astonish us,” Remnick adds.

To deal with that, the magazine will for the first time present Webcasts on newyorker.com, though they won’t be posted until next week. The Chast-Martin discussion will be streamed along with four other events, including Malcolm Gladwell’s talk on secrets.

Will Gladwell really be there, or will he amp up the secrecy by having someone else pretend to be him, while he in turn assumes other identities? I think instead there should be multiple Gladwells, like in Shall We Dance, when Fred Astaire dances with dozens of bemasked Gingers. I always wondered how they could keep their balance while holding those masks steady, not to mention how that swan-backed lady could dance upside down like that; she must have had a few tipping points in her time. The Post piece ends, amusingly:

The festival extends the magazine’s carefully nurtured brand, which is venturing in directions that might have disgruntled the editors Tom Wolfe dubbed “tiny mummies” in 1965. There’s a new board game, for instance. Can a John Updike action figure be far behind?

“It’s not a religion here,” says Remnick, who personally approves every coaster and shower curtain. “It’s meant to be fun as well as serious. So if there’s a great cover and somebody makes a poster of it and it’s done well, I don’t see how that stuff stops us from breaking the Abu Ghraib story.” The board game is based on a new feature that’s already become an institution: the back-page cartoon caption contest, whose fans are delirious bordering on psychotic. Just ask Mike Bloomberg.

“Mayor Bloomberg came up to me once,” Remnick recalls, “and he had a slightly accusatory look on his face, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ He said, ‘I keep sending in these cartoon captions and I never get in, and it’s starting to p - - - me off.’ “