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The December 4 Issue Is Scaring Me
Filed under: Pick of the Issue Tagged: Elizabeth Kolbert, Margaret Talbot, Nancy Franklin
It is just so good. So good, in fact, that it threatens to be a CGI—a Completely Good Issue, from GOAT to reviews (I'll leave out the Caption Contest since there's an element of randomness and bafflement to that)—and there's been more than one CGI in the past few months. What's more, there's a pleasing plethora of women contributors to this issue, and between Elizabeth Kolbert's transcendent picture-book review (with a kicker that will squeeze your heart like a fistful of Play-Doh) and Margaret Talbot's Bratz story, there appears to be some kind of writerly celebration going on. A gleeful Munchkin song on the departure of the Wicked Witch of the West? Whatever it is, it's music to my ears. All that's missing is Nancy Franklin—as the DJ says in Valley Girl, "Like, come back soon, y'know?"
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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.
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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
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Comments
Yeah, I noticed that too! Hmmm. The only thing that brought me down was learning about that "Happy to be me" doll! Not that I loved Barbie either. I was more of a "Dinah" girl. She looked kind of like The Bionic Woman.
I especially liked the juxtopositioning of the profiles of Bob Fass and Lou Dobbs. The contrast—not only between the two individuals but between the cultures into which each falls, and the societal-political transitions that each represents—is as timely as it is poignant.
The bratz story was a great read (feels like that has been few and far between for me lately, at least in this magazine), but the end of the Kolbert's picture book article made me roll my eyes to kingdom come. Goodnight Moon was a favorite of mine as a young kid, and I'm afraid that now, whenever I read it to my own kids, I will fear my mortality all over again. Thanks, Liz!