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Joe Keenan Is a Finalist for the Thurber Humor Prize, and Other News

Filed under: Headline Shooter Tagged: Algonquin, awards, books, Franklin P. Adams, Joe Keenan, movies, Stephen McCauley, Tina Brown

Excellent news. I'm in awe of the wit and dash in Keenan's books, and interviewed him when the one he's being nominated for, Lucky Star, was published. Though I bow to co-finalist Merrill Markoe, Keenan's got my emphatic endorsement; these are spicily, sharply (hey, a cinnamon stick could be both) funny novels.

Which reminds me, in part because both writers are hilarious and gay, but mostly because I discovered them at the same time, that I recently read the newest Stephen McCauley novel, Alternatives to Sex. It's great. The Object of My Affection, the movie with Jennifer Aniston and an especially toothsome Paul Rudd, was based on McCauley's novel of the same name, and when I say based on, I mean loosely based on; read the book. It's an endearing movie (I especially like the scene in which literary agent Alan Alda, fainting in the heat of a Brooklyn walk-up, asks for something to fan himself with and cries, "Get me a magazine! Get me The New Yorker!"), but by all means read the book.

Speaking of awards, today Tina Brown was named to the Magazine Editors Hall of Fame.

Finally, here's a mini-tribute to the clever, convivial, and career-creating Franklin P. Adams. Alliteration is all right with me in certain contexts, and, fortunately, this is one of them.

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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

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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)

More clips.

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
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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.

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