Emdashes. Modern Times Between the Lines.
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Before it moved to The New Yorker:
Ask the Librarians archive
About Emdashes | Email us
Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into
Sempé Fi: Cover Art
Friday Afternoon Guest Post: Cartoonists Under the Microscope
Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: Bob Mankoff, Bruce Eric Kaplan, cartoons, Glen Baxter, Matthew Diffee, Richard Cline, Roz Chast, Sam Gross
Martin Schneider, our trusty Squib Reporter, writes:
Peter Carlson of The Washington Post looks at the selection process for New Yorker cartoons. (I should have remembered Emily’s mention of it; in any case, Kottke jogged my memory.) Like everything else about The New Yorker, it seems to boil down to an emphasis on quality while policing the boundaries of good taste.
New Yorker cartoons stand for something in a way that not even the magazine itself always does. Speaking only of public perception here, I think they stand for a certain kind of ineffable gnomic brilliance—that’s if you like them. If you don’t, they’re all incomprehensible non-jokes in which people who look too much like Dick Cavett make non-quips about Connecticut—hey, we’ve all been there. I think somehow Richard Cline got singled out as representing the insularity of the magazine’s cartoon culture, which is unfair both to Cline and the rest of the diverse cartoonists (think of Glen Baxter, for one).
Cartoonists mentioned: Roz Chast, Matthew Diffee, Bruce Eric Kaplan (BEK), Sam Gross—indeed, we “see” the editors evaluate a new one of Chast’s. The piece even comes with a cartoon by Mankoff of the selection process! Surely a first. We may need to hold a caption contest or call to arms the Radosh street team.
About us
Hello! We're a small band of culture writers, editors, and artists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, which spent its formative years as a New Yorker blog, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
Want to know more about the people who contribute to Emdashes, and the secret meanings behind our column titles? All about us.
We welcome tips, questions, comments, and corrections, and are always on the lookout for ardent, obsessive contributors. Click here to email us.
We host occasional book giveaways. Publishers, please email us for our postal address.
Our favorite things | Compliments and press
Looking for The New Yorker magazine? Kudos on your classy taste. Here's how to contact The New Yorker.
Tell me more
Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Reviews: theater writing (for Time Out Chicago)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: 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)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
Blogroll highlights
- Box Office Boffo
- World of Pollux
- Jonathan Taylor
- Carolita Johnson
- Songs for blogroll lovers (more links)
- Follow us on Twitter
- Befriend us on Facebook
- Get a t-shirt at the Emdashes store
No fear
Everything you tell or send us is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
Comments
Ah, the requisite “indeed”! :)
Personally, I don’t see what’s so incomprehensible! However, I did show my “Take my coffee, it’s worth $5” cartoon to Kosta, the manager of my local diner (he likes to keep up with my successes), and this conversation ensued:
- So, this guy, he’s a rich fellow.
- I guess so.
- And this other guy, he’s a bum, he has no home, he lives on the street.
- Uhuh…
- And the rich guy is giving him his coffee.
- Yes.
- Nice guy. Very nice.
And that was that. I begin to think there are people who get cartoons, and people who just don’t. My mother, for example, never ever EVER gets cartoons. Not unless they’re really crude, mean, and in bad taste, of the NY Post type. Go figure!