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
The New Yorker Is the New Spectacular, Also the Old Spectacular
Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: awards, cartoons, David Remnick, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Parker Society, Drew Dernavich, events, Harry Bliss, magazines, Mick Stevens, movies, P.C. Vey, poetry, Shouts & Murmurs, YouTube
I can’t help it. The Shouts & Murmurs pages of the New Yorker is standing on the pinnacle of sly humor these days. After last issue’s take on crushes (all of which I’ve experienced), and this issue’s review of another aspect of my life, there is no way to make it any better in the next issue. This particular section of the magazine has always been hit-and-miss with me – I’m often into it for just one paragraph before moving on – but they’ve now laid purchase to at least three solid, future months of my reading time. Genius.Beattie's Book Blog loves this Harry Bliss cover. How's your thumb, Harry?
Speaking of cartoonists, I'm extremely glad to report that three cartoonists from The New Yorker are nominated for the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Gag Cartoons: Drew Dernavich, Mick Stevens, and P.C. Vey. I might have my preference, but whichever way this one goes, it's pretty much in the bag for the magazine. Winners will be announced May 26, so place your bets, you crazy gamblers.
Also, I'm pleased that someone has assembled this bunch of video clips from the '20s, which will help set the mood for the next party with the Dorothy Parker Society, which is coming up on June 4 and will be fizzy fun. Go! Here are the details, direct from Parker Society impresario Kevin Fitzpatrick:
The 40th anniversary of Dorothy Parker's death is June 7. On June 4 the DPS is having an event to mark the anniversary is true Parker style: with a party at a Communist bookstore. It is Monday, June 4, at Revolution Books, 9 West 19th St, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. .... There will be talks, readings, and of course, drinking. It is FREE and open to the public. Why a Communist bookstore? Just listen when I read from Mrs. Parker's FBI file!So Adam Moss is many things, but the new David Remnick? What does that even mean? New York is like Spy's beautifully designed new website along with some Vanity Fair, New York Observer, and various beloved periodicals of New York's past stirred into a bright smoothie, and it's loads of fun. I read and use it often, if not faithfully. But would anyone want a DVD of the entire contents of the present-day New York, to cherish, cite, and reread? That's not what it's for, and that's all well and good. But it's an absurd comparison and I won't countenance it. Thank you, but the current David Remnick suits us very well.
Speaking of much-missed publications, won't someone please bring back those weekly single-page photocopied listings of movies and poetry readings that you used to be able to buy at newsstands for something like a quarter and pick up at good bookstores, respectively? The web and the barely tolerable Moviefone and Fandango still can't satisfy the city's critical need for both. When you're walking down the street, you don't want to press buttons through endless menus—you just want to know what's playing kinda near here pretty soon, or who's reading this week. Perhaps the newsletters could be digital holograms for the 21st century, hovering at will till you dismiss them and head for your cinematic or poetical fix.
Who she?
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
I 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.
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.
The Rossosphere
- Mick Stevens: I Really Should Be Drawing
- Resistance Is Fertile
- The essential Jane Grant
- Newyorkette
- Matthew Diffee's HuffPo blog
- Sasha Frere-Jones
- The New York Public Library records
- Map: Caption Contest Winners
- New Yorker haiku
- Between the Squibs
- New Yorker database
- Technorati: New Yorker
- Wikipedia: The New Yorker
- The New Orcer
- Access My Library
- New Yorker Comment
- Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
- Paul Noth's Pale Force
- The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s
- Link to suggest? Email it!
- I Hate the New Yorker
- Blog About Town
- Ben Yagoda's homepage
- Modern Spectator
- New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest
- Silence of the City
- Cartoonist Michael Maslin's homepage
- Chiasmus in The New Yorker
Comments
Hello, I'm a New Yorker fan in China, and your blog give me lots of stuff about New Yorker, so really thank you. I tried to read the fiction of each issue of New Yorker to improve my English. And that's really enjoyment. :)
Would me tell me a little bit about the history of New Yorker magazne?
Hi there! Thanks for reading the blog—glad it's not, uh, disapproved of in China. Here's a great place to start for New Yorker history; I also highly recommend Ben Yagoda's terrific book About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made. Those should keep you busy for a while!
I'm so sorry for the "disapproved thing"in China, well, the gov should find themselves something to do, hehe, though that did embarrassed me in occasions like this - some blogger outside of China replied to my comment:"You really in China? You really can view my blog?" hehe.
Thank you for the info, I'm do busy with that now.
Yes, "Crushes" was quite good.
At first I was put off by Harry Bliss' cover. I thought it was yet another dig at Abstract Expressionism, the kind of cartoon I've been seeing since I was a kid.
The Barbara Stanwyck article was very pleasant surprise.
And I just looked at a few of those Youtube videos from the Twneties and bought Ben Yagoda's book (ninety cents from amazon).
And I have to be at work in 25 minutes.