Emdashes. Modern Times Between the Lines.
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Of Gentle Soul, to Human Race a (Tad) Friend
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: architecture, audio, Buffalo, Frank Lloyd Wright, interviews, Ira Glass, Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Orlean, Tad Friend
It’s Tad Friend’s turn on Mediabistro’s running interview feature; Julie Haire does the honors. I like this quote, among others: “Some people write by polishing each sentence as they go, like a jeweler. I tend to spend lots of time painstakingly making an outline that I realize, a dozen paragraphs in, makes no sense, and then I put my head down and type nouns and verbs and quotes in a kind of grumpy blur, hammering out an extremely rough, totally un-publishable draft that I then go over and over and over before I hand it in.” Some of his observations about research and reporting techniques sound a lot like Susan Orlean’s in the terrific recording An Evening with Ira Glass and the New Kings of Nonfiction, which is most definitely worth buying.
Hey, it looks like Friend and I might have lived in Buffalo at the same time. (He wouldn’t have been quite old enough to babysit me.) I was going to cite something about blizzards, one of which I certainly remember, but found this great pro-Buffalo-weather propaganda instead. I passed through the city recently, for the first time since my family moved away in the mid-’70s, and had dinner at a lively microbrew restaurant whose name I can’t remember, where college kids danced to a rooftop DJ; the cab driver who took me to my long-ago street (and to the zoo, and the park, and the museum—it was the kind of nostalgia joyride you see in the movies) told stories about white flight and floundering department stores as we glided past the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and pockets of prosperity. I’m of the opinion that you should go home again, given the shortness of things.
About us
Hello! We're a small band of culture writers, editors, and artists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, which spent its formative years as a New Yorker blog, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.
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Dashes, some say, “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like an em dash itself—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. All posts before October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.
The site was designed by House of Pretty with illustrations by Jesse R. Ewing.
Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (author of our web comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The Emdashes pencil logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Reviews: theater writing (for Time Out Chicago)
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, bon vivant, New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Slide show: the Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for NYCgo.com)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Homage: Celebrating lindy-hop legend Frankie Manning (for NYCgo.com)
- Inquiry: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Interviews: four up-and-coming designers under 30 (for Print)
- Profile: novelist and dance critic Laura Jacobs (for Newsday)
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