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
New Yorker Practically Tops GOOD List of Best Magazines; Also, Deadly Spiders
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: awards, Burkhard Bilger, magazines
2. The New YorkerThanks to Lisa Levy for the link! (By the way, what does "over-educated" mean? The world's great scientists, leaders, philosophers, &c., and your average cabin boy or housewife of many an era, would surely consider most of us disconcertingly under-educated.)
A rare cultural touchstone both relevant and revered nearly a century after its inception in 1925, The New Yorker has remained a beacon of intellectual clarity and incisive reporting to over-educated bourgeoisie far beyond the borders of Manhattan. With a design that has changed only imperceptibly over the decades (except for earth-shattering changes under mid-1990s editor Tina Brown,who allowed—gasp!—color and—the horror!—photographs), all that’s different at the magazine are the stories it covers. The New Yorker today is just as willing to publish a barely illustrated, three-part, 30,000-word jeremiad on climate change as founding editor Harold Ross was happy to devote an entire issue to one article on the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. This is not to mention the fiction, humor, poetry, criticism, and cartoons—all parts of a consistently brilliant editorial vision.
Also, in case this week's Burkhard Bilger story about venomous spiders is concerning you for any reason, here is the USA Spider Identification Chart, with suitably frightening illustrations; these are the spiders from which you, Ms. Muffet-like, should definitely run. The page includes an offer for a free spider identification poster of your own, and these good people will email you—as quickly as you may, unfortunately, need it—"Spider Bite FIRST AID information." Godspeed!
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
I agree on Esquire's quality. But your reference to the Little Miss made me wonder: why isn't "muffet" a common noun? There's muffin, muffineer, muffle and its variants, and even muffuletta. I think we need a muffet. Would you care to attempt a definition (other than "one afraid of spiders")?
I'll work on it! Meanwhile, don't forget "mufti," the word (I say affectionately) that John Lahr uses in just about every piece.
As a Miss Muffet, I agree.
BTW - "overeducated" is a word I've only ever heard in the USA. I just thought I'd throw that one out there. Perhaps it just means "over-rich", since only those with a lot of money to throw around can over-indulge in education? Whereas in France, you're in for free till you flunk or get a move on. (Freshman year at Paris-Jussieu was 4000 students, second year 2000, third year 1000, and fourth year 500. Which only leaves "undereducated" people, I suppose! That said, when your grocer can quote Rousseau or Racine, I think standards for the "undereducated" are actually rather high still.)