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Best of the 01.19.09 Issue: The United States of Tara and a Poem Called "Eh?"
Filed under: Pick of the Issue Tagged: Barack Obama, Guy Billout, Judith Thurman, Samantha Power, Tad Friend
Martin Schneider writes:
This issue had Guy Billout's cover with Obama (or an Obama-esque figure) parting the political seas of red and blue. Candidates include Tad Friend on marketing movies, Judith Thurman on Scrabble, and Samantha Power on Gary Haugen. Our crack team will be weighing in shortly!
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They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.” Emdashes—like em dashes—provides a thoughtful pause amid the hubbub.
Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
The site is designed and maintained by House of Pretty and illustrated by Jesse Ewing for Inkleaf Studio. Additional drawings are by Carolita Johnson and Pollux (who also draws our daily comic, "The Wavy Rule"). The kissable Emdashes logo is by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Proposal: a better-designed Metrocard (for A Brief Message)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: 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)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Micro-essay: on saving time through inspiration (for A Brief Message)
- 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)
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Comments
I think this week it’s a toss-up between Thurman and Friend. Friend’s piece is full of great quotes and is very funny. I e-mailed it to a couple marketing friends of mine, and to our middle son, who really enjoyed Friend’s “cable guy” article a couple of years ago. But … when all is said and done and the tiles are toted up, POTI this week has to go to Thurman’s “Spreading The Word,” does it not? I mean, if the test of a great piece is whether it catches your attention and holds it, in spite of the subject matter, well, as Pauline Kael would say, that’s not nothing! I cannot abide Scrabble. Nevertheless, I loved Thurman’s piece for the writing, which combines words, quotes, and ideas in heretofore unheard of and beautiful combos, e.g., “At lexulous.com, you can choose a practice game against the computer, although, compared with Maven or Quackle, the Agarwallas’ digital mastermind is a nitwit who leaves the triple-word scores undefended, offers lame hints, misses bingos, and squanders the blanks, and whom I beat at least half the time.” The surreal reality of a sentence like that trumps whole essays by Jill Lepore!