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 Questions People Ask
Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: books, Cartoon Caption Contest, cartoons, comics, Dan Baum, Emily Flake, James Wood, Liesl Schillinger, movies, New Orleans, newyorkette
What's James Wood going to be like as a New Yorker critic?
Are film bloggers Stepford Critics?
How is New Orleans doing, and does medication help?
Is L.A. really a shallow wasteland, or does it just look that way?
Whose "deadpan sensibility and plump line drawings" does Liesl Schillinger praise in the Times?
What does newyorkette think of the latest issue?
Is the board game based on the Cartoon Caption Contest any fun to play?
Love is the answer—I wonder what the question is? (Printed on the yellow plastic Ziggy comb I found on the soccer field in elementary school)
If you have answers, please send them to letters@emdashes.com.
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
Bill James (baseball smartie) years ago reported the following chain of graffiti:
1. "Jesus is the answer."
2. "What is the question?"
3. "Who was Matty and Felipe's brother?"
One thing about the cartoon caption game: I'm finding it very difficult to plan to play it!
Boy, that Los Angeles piece was dreadful. And oh so unique...
I didn't like those quotes in the Washington Post article. Was the article trying to be sensationalistic, or is that supposed to be acceptable public comment?
Evan, I can 't agree! I thought the L.A. piece was hilariously written. Most of the funny/sad details, aside from stuff like the Juicy Couture plastic-surgery victims, could have been observed from in any crappy apartment in any city.
James Wood is going to be brilliant. The only reservation I have arises from the change he made to the name of his great Tolstoy review, which appeared in the February 5, 2001, issue of The New Yorker under the lovely title, "At Home In The World." Inexplicably, when Wood included the review in his collection, "The Irresponsible Self," he changed the title to "Anna Karenina and Characterization." The magazine's editors are going to have to keep a sharp watch on Wood to make sure he doesn't go academic on us.