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I Reviewed Those Two "Jeopardy!" Books

Filed under: Personal Tagged: Bill Murray, books, clips, movies, TV

...and here's the review. Note that I do not make light of the breast cancer diagnosis of one author's girlfriend, which is more than the Times Book Review can say. Isn't it odd that Jeopardy! winner-loser-winner Bob Harris has the same name as the hero of Lost in Translation? Or was that on purpose, Sofia? Should we be reading something into this about the search for answers in a Babel of mixed signals and missed connections?

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"It's actually important to know who history's great geniuses were, that some cancer is treatable, or that the civil rights movement happened"

I'm sure he's knowingly engaging the well, yeah reaction, but does it really go far enough ? Does he ever come to terms with the realization that formulating your thoughts on these rather untrivial subjects 'in the form of a question' (or developing mnemonics for them) is silly to the point of injustice ? Doesn't the tenor here really communicate, textually, Jennings' Mormon placidity, which is so immediately apparent and unsettling onscreen?

(I can't help but think of Dickens' Mr Gradgrind whenever such plentiful ladels of Facts are distributed, as in Jeopardy.)

z.b.s.November 07, 2006

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I'm Emily Gordon, reachable at emily@emdashes.com.

I'm an editor at PRINT magazine in New York City. I've worked at The Nation, Newsday, PEN America, and Legal Affairs. I've written for the NY Times Book Review, Salon, The Washington Post, The Village Voice... continued

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A few clips

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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)

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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.

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Written and edited by Emily Gordon (plus various guest contributors), 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.

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