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
Happy February 21st! And What's Your Favorite Cartoonist Quirk?
Filed under: Seal Barks Tagged: Barbara Smaller, Carolita Johnson, cartoons, Charles Barsotti, debut issue, Gahan Wilson, Matt Diffee, Michael Maslin, newyorker.com, pigeons, William Hamilton
I shouldn't have to tell you what day this is, but in case you're still in the dark, let this lovely reminiscence enlighten you.
Meanwhile, over at the New Yorker cartoon blog, Michael Maslin has been doing a bang-up job as Cartoonist of the Month. All of his posts so far are worth reading (and seeing!); here's his partial list of favorite things—visual, conceptual, ocular, sartorial, mechanical, typographical, architectural, nasal, and feline—about his comrades' cartooning. Off the top of my head, I'd add Carolita Johnson's befuddled boyfriends, Gahan Wilson's noses (human and otherwise), Charles Barsotti's beards, Barbara Smaller's lamps, William Hamilton's gravity-defying bosoms, and Matt Diffee's pigeons, among others. How about you?
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
I'd definitely add Crawford's bedroom scenes (most featuring men not getting lucky)! He's putting together a whole book of them!
Jack Ziegler's things falling, flying through, or appearing in thin air...Sam Gross's frogs...Victoria Roberts's couple...Frank Cotham's living--rooms...and let's not forget Michael Maslin's own gentlefolk.
George Booth's befuddled dogs. Roz Chast's book titles. Lee Lorenz's willowy babes, and his pudgy dogs impersonating people.
Carolita's referring to Michael Crawford, in case you didn't catch that!
A few more: Leo Cullum's hairstyles, Mick Stevens's mini-paintings, Victoria Roberts's foliage...
The man in Victoria Roberts' cartoons who is always thinking, but never speaks....
... and I forgot to mention the googly eyes in Michael Maslin's cartoons ...
Got to admit to a hankerin' for Kim Warp's fern fingers. What is up with those? So I asked her, and it's not really a conscious act on her part. I personally have to confess to not to finishing a neck now and then. (In fact, there's a floating head in one of my early truly loopy efforts.)