Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
Our Daily Comic: The Wavy Rule
Archive: Ask the Librarians
Send us a question!
Frequently:
Headline Shooter
Seal Barks
Eustace Google
Looked Into
Simon Rich and Malcolm Gladwell: "Busted" and...Busted?
Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: Malcolm Gladwell, Shouts & Murmurs, Simon Rich
When I was eighteen and Simon Rich was fifteen we were both in Mr Young's homeroom and he really wasn't the "sitting silently in the corner" type. I distinctly recall him showing off his juggling moves.Ha! Writers do so love that "shy little me" voice. Still, as commenter ostap points out, "Showing off juggling moves in home room is entirely consistent with sitting in the corner at parties." But what's with that (not Constant) Reader commenter? Sheesh.
Meanwhile, those meanie scientists are after Malcolm Gladwell again. (The subtitle: "Sorry, Malcolm, but the Tipping Point Might Be More Myth Than Math." He's a first-name monolith!) Is it me or do Gladwell's books get treated like original science more than they should be? I regard it as a compliment—Gladwell is so darn good at popularizing, explaining, and repackaging original work mostly done elsewhere that people feel the need to pick apart his theses.
Let's look at one line from the article: "In reality, tipping—experiencing that exponential growth—is very difficult." How this represents a debunking is beyond me. Show me the passage where Gladwell says tipping things is a piece of pie, and you win, Ad Age! (But you can't.) —Martin Schneider
[There's at least one of Gladwell's theses that is surely undebunkable! Also, I liked this comment on the Yglesias post: 'The best part, though, are the key words on the side: 'Children; Teen-agers; Baseball; Erections; Mothers; Concerts; Popularity.' From now on, I'm restricting my reading to only what comes up from a Google Alert on those seven words." —EG]
About us
Hello! We are media enthusiasts and culture addicts—not to mention classically trained (as we like to say) professional journalists. This is our collection of generally civilized conversations about magazines, movies, politics, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
You'd like to read more about us individually? That's so nice! Here you can learn a lot more about the Emdashes team, the mysterious-sounding names of our daily and non-daily columns, and our guest contributors.
We welcome tips, questions, and comments, and are always looking for ardent new contributors who care about letters (postal, typographical, admiring, literary, and tough-love). Here's how to contact us.
Occasionally, we host book giveaways, and review books here as often as we can. Publishers, please e-mail us and we'll send you an appropriate mailing address.
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
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)
- 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)
- 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)
No fear
Everything you tell or send us is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
T-shirts! The Emdashes Emporium at CafePress.
Comments
It doesn't matter to me that Simon Rich wasn't being strictly autobiographical. But the comments on that post are hilarious, as are the keywords that someone mentioned.
But, strangely enough, it does matter to me that Simon Rich graduated college in 07. At least according to Gawker?
I feel that if he's that young, the piece actually ought to be funnier. It's funny for someone older, but the young I hold to higher standards, for some reason . . .
He's really, really young. That said, I got his book Ant Farm, which collects a bunch of pieces like this (most of them have been or will be Shouts, I think), and it was incredibly funny. I just loved it. I wanted not to, what with the recent Harvard graduation, but I did, and I wanted to give it to everyone I know. Check it out sometime—it's a hoot, believe it or not.
To The New Yorker,
Your article on Mort Zuckerman is the most sycophantic slavering I have read in years. I’m not talking about just inside The New Yorker. I mean anywhere.
I’ve read almost every word of The New Yorker since I got my first subscription in 1998, but this article was so bad and so pointless that I am considering canceling the subscription: the choice to publish such pap reflects that poorly and deeply on the whole magazine.
Could you do me a favor and ask Seymour Hersh, Nancy Franklin, Joan Acocella and Louis Menand what they thought of the piece? I can’t imagine any of those writers ever turning out such obscenely self-important celebrity sluttery.
When I say “Fuck you,” I also mean it.
Fuck you Mort.
Fuck you Nick.