Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines
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Looked Into
How to Read The New Yorker: An Illustrated Guide
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: design, GOAT, keeping up, movies, Profiles, reviews, Shouts & Murmurs, subscriptions, theater, TOTT
A subscription to any weekly magazine is a commitment. If you subscribe to more than one, it’s even more important to ensure you stay on top of your consumption. I’ve developed the following process to ensure a timely yet comprehensive digestion of the beauty and wonder that is The New Yorker. Here’s my 10-step approach to the 7 January 2008 issue. (Read on.)While I read the complete contents every week, or close to it, I certainly can't (and don't!) fault other people for doing less. (OK, I carp from time to time, but that's only when my patience is really being tested.) This is a magazine, after all! It should be an illuminating diversion, not a chore.
Champ's advice is similar to what I tell people who ask how to manage the overwhelmingness, as did my friend Stephen the other day (he got a subscription for Christmas). Skim the listings if you see live events in New York and the short movie reviews if you see movies anywhere; read Talk, Shouts, the cartoons if you like cartoons, the reviews of whatever interests you, and a long feature or Profile. I got an email from him just this morning, though, with this update: "actually, i've been meaning to write you to tell you that i DEVOURED the latest issue. like, read every article (almost). i'm LOVING it more than i expected." So as you can see, it's doable, even for busy actors, waiters, and other professionals!
Also, as I told Stephen, there's nothing like it for total absorption on the subway, at the post office, in the tub, and on the internet. (Then, after you've recycled, you still have the DVD archives if a missed piece is haunting you like the Telltale Heart.) As Champ writes: "If managed correctly, the above process of consumption should take about a week. In fact, that’s what you should aim for lest you become 'that' subscriber who’s hopelessly behind."
Amen to that. Thanks to Steve Heller for the tip!
Who we?
Emdashes, founded December 2004, is a place where keen and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas within the magazine, and events and conversations outside its pages. Learn more about us and our contributors.
We 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
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Events listed by the magazine
Web resources: New Yorker writers and artists
Books, Organizations, &c.
Edited by Martin Schneider, 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
- Resistance Is Fertile
- Mick Stevens: I Really Should Be Drawing
- Cartoonist Michael Maslin's homepage
- Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
- Sasha Frere-Jones
- Matthew Diffee's HuffPo blog
- The New Yorker Magazine in the 1930s
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- Paul Noth's Pale Force
- The New York Public Library records
- New Yorker Comment
- Chiasmus in The New Yorker
- Wikipedia: The New Yorker
- New Yorker database
- The New Orcer
- Silence of the City
- Between the Squibs
- Blog About Town
- Newyorkette
- New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest
- The New Yorker Forums
- I Hate the New Yorker
- Ben Yagoda's homepage
- Access My Library
- New Yorker haiku
- Modern Spectator
- Map: Caption Contest Winners
- Technorati: New Yorker
- Link to suggest? Email it!
Comments
Do I follow any kind of a pattern when I read The New Yorker? I’d like to think not, but I do tend to start at the back with the reviews. This tendency is often overridden by the irresistible urge to read a favorite writer – Ian Frazier, say, or Alice Munro – if he or she happens to have a piece in the magazine. I reserve GOAT for study while I’m in the bathroom or on a plane. But never in a bathroom on a plane. I guess that’s probably enough disclosure for now. It’s an interesting topic.