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Breaking: Summer Fiction Issue Not Nearly Long or Difficult Enough to Last 2 Weeks
Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: books, Charles D'Ambrosio, D.T. Max, Dave Eggers, David Hoon Kim, Denis Johnson, Edwidge Danticat, fiction, Gary Shteyngart, Jeffrey Eugenides, Junot Diaz, letters, Marisa Silver, Miranda July, Roger Angell
It's Thursday, and I'm finished. The issue is spent. I am at sea without an issue to paddle with—I'm almost Paddle-to-the-Sea! Fiction editors, this is the best you could do? Let half a dozen rich and juicy stories about doomed ne'er-do-wells on Hawaii beaches and toothy movie stars on planes and wild Dominican daughters and ghostly girls and physics—and a dessert plate of petits fours of poignant movie stories that have only wet my whistle—slip down my gullet like so many fresh oysters, and I'm supposed to be set till next Monday? No. I am done, and bereft, like that Inconvenient Truth polar bear with no ice floe in sight. And mixing metaphors like a fruitcake (examples abound above). You see what this is doing to me?
Of course, there were the other articles. And they were alarmingly quick treats, too, and moving (Edwidge Danticat) and fascinating yet troubling (the nicely titled "Final Destination"; I still don't understand why this guy won't put these incredible archives online), and other stuff I'll get into later; lord knows I've got time. I need another dense Middle East piece to make me feel better informed and appropriately challenged yet alarmed anew about my inadequate knowledge of the issues' intricacies, and determined to go back to that NYRB primer I've dipped into less than I should have in the past ten years. With more than a week to go, I need something that would take a day or two to work on. I mean it; I miss it!
I guess this is what the new fiction podcasts are for, to ease the shakes, although curiously the word "podcast" (and please correct me if I'm wrong) hasn't actually appeared in the magazine to advertise the podcasts, or maybe the type is just extra-small. In any case, I'll be diverted by some of your multimedia gewgaws, fiction editors. (This savvy Canadian law professor would recommend I do so, I think.) But don't think I'll forget that you've made an issue that, while meaty and delicious as a Second Avenue Deli brisket sandwich, R.I.P. deli and cud-chewing brisket source, is not time-consuming enough for the time in which I have to consume it.
Here's a funny fact: I think I may be Danticat's first publisher. She had a pared-down, urgent poem called "Saw Fish Soup" in The Columbia Review when I was editor, and I still remember it.
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Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: 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)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- 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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Comments
Register, Emdashes 2Q2007:
BLOCK THAT METAPHOR! 6/7 1
Just sayin'.
I've been getting some emails about how postal I've apparently gone, but it was just a bad day, really; even I have them. And do you notice that I loved the issue?
Anyway, I also wanted to point out that I went back to check on the print preview for the new weekly fiction podcast, and as I half-suspected but was too full of Mexican jumping beans to look up properly at the time, the word itself does appear—just smaller and less prominently than I think this very good news deserves. That's all. I'm in a better mood now. I still have nothing to read till next Monday, aside from the more than 17 million books (yes, there is a source) in the Library of Congress and the umpteen inadequate magazines (mine excepted) floating around. Ah well, I'll probably live.
I once knew a Modern Letters student who literally did go postal: after graduation, she became a mailman, and then got put in a mental institution when she tried to kill her family with a huge knife. Now that's going postal!
Don't be silly! I'm sure I'm not the only one to love it when you get emotional on us!
Aw, thanks, Carolita. I'm happy to say that the (retired) mailman I know best is beloved by many thousands of lindy hoppers across the world, and, to my knowledge, hasn't killed anyone, except possibly by military command.