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 Squib Report
X-Rea: Irvin Type Watch
Letters & Challenges
On the Spot
Eds. | Personal

War and Peace and Everything Nice

Filed under: Pick of the Issue Tagged: David Remnick, fiction, James Wood, Russia

For some reason, this little unsigned entry in the April 29, 1920 issue of Life magazine (which I just received after a successful eBay auction—I win all my auctions because no one else is ever bidding on what I want) reminded me of James Wood’s piece last week on the new translation of War and Peace.

The Constant and the Inconstant

The characters that one knows in books are more real and unchanging than those one knows in real life. Indeed, those one knows in real life are so unreal that a comparison of them with the ones in books is quite startling. The best friend you have had suddenly develops some quality that you have never suspected, and thenceforth he is quite a different person from what you deemed him. You yourself are often quite dissimilar from what you thought you were yesterday. You survived an unexpected test which you would never have believed possible or you yielded in a manner so absurd that you can scarcely credit it.

But David Copperfield is always the same. Elizabeth Bennet, Lear, Faust, Père Goriot, Ulysses—it makes no difference where you range—they are constant ones.

This is also a very good time to revisit David Remnick’s memorably fine essay on translation from 2005, in which Remnick conducts a thorough investigation into several of the translators Wood mentions, including Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Anyway, I have other Picks of this Issue, to be added to this post soon, for anyone who checks in several times a day. (Confidential to those people: I love you.)

0 comments

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, it may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Thanks for waiting.)

Your name

Your email address

Your website address

Remember personal info?

Your comments

New Yorker Cartoons for Presentations- Download Today

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

Affinities | Blurbs

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)

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
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