Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines
Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
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Headline Shooter
Seal Barks
Eustace Google
Looked Into
Pencil It In
Filed under: Eustace Google Tagged: Complete New Yorker, E.J. Kahn Jr., in memoriam, jazz, music, TOTT, William Shawn
Michael Leddy at the site Orange Crate Art (clearly, someone I would enjoy talking to) wonders if the author of a 1953 Talk of the Town about pencil use at the Eagle Pencil Company might, by virtue of the story's eloquent phrasing ("We ducked as lead flew about us") and its attention to pencils, have been longtime editor William Shawn. In fact, according to the Complete New Yorker, it's by E. J. Kahn, Jr. Here's the abstract.
Leddy also notes the sad passing of Mona Hinton, the wife of Milt Hinton and a friend of Leddy's family, who died on May 3rd. He quotes the Hinton website:The Hintons first met at Milt's grandmother's funeral in 1939 and were inseparable for the next 61 years. Mona traveled extensively with Milt throughout his career. She was the only spouse on the road with the Cab Calloway Orchestra in the 1940s, where, according to Milt, she was extremely helpful in finding rooms and meals for band members especially when the band worked in small towns during the Jim Crow era. During the '50s and '60s when Milt was working day and night in the New YorkWi studios, Mona kept the books and made often complicated transportation arrangements. And during the last two decades of his life, Milt and Mona got to travel to jazz festivals and clinics around the world — first class.
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.
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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)
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.
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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
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Comments
Thanks for the author id! I'll add it to my post.
The paragraphs reporting Mona Hinton's passing are from a press release at milthinton.com -- there's a link at the end of the post.
Duly tweaked! Thanks for letting me know. And nice photo of a pencil on your site, too. I used to work at The Nation in the copy department, and we had a Very Small Pencil Collection—pencils so small that if you dared to put them in the electric pencil sharpener they would probably be swallowed up or dissolve. That collection had a proud history.