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Best of the 02.02.09 Issue: Al Roosten and Army Cats
Filed under: Pick of the Issue Tagged: Adrian Tomine, art, Booker T. Washington, Caroline Kennedy, covers, illustration, Kelefa Sanneh, Larissa MacFarquhar, Laura Secor, Mohammed Tabibian
Martin Schneider writes:
This issue had Adrian Tomine's cover wryly commenting on the region's tough winter. (I'd like to say that this cover took me a while to get, because I wasted precious seconds looking for the Obama connection.) Candidates include Larissa MacFarquhar on Caroline Kennedy, Laura Secor on Mohammed Tabibian, and Kelefa Sanneh on Booker T. Washington. You guessed it—this post is not yet complete!
Martin Schneider adds: Having now looked at the issue more carefully, I'm going to single out Nancy Franklin's evocative roundup of the cable news coverage of the inauguration. It was funny (any sentence referencing Chris Matthews) and the ending had a nice jolt of earned profundity. Brava!
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Emdashes, founded in 2004 by Emily Gordon, 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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Some writing by Emily Gordon
- Review: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (for Newsday)
- Annotated slide show: a wet, festive 2009 Coney Island Mermaid Parade (for nycgo.com)
- Proposal: A better-looking MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: Does a redesign of The New Republic mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: four online obsessives and visual cataloguers, Kate Bingaman, Nicholas Felton, Ellie Harrison, and John D. Freyer (for Print)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Interviews: winning New Visual Artists Eleanor Grosch, Zigmunds Lapsa, Christian Cervantes, and Kate & Camilla (for Print)
- Profile: lindy hop legend Frankie Manning (for Newsday, with Robert Fouch)
- Feature: Rea Irvin, illustrator, bon vivant, and The New Yorker's first art director (for Print)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World by Julian Dibbell (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Dickens by Jane Smiley (for Newsday)
- Review: Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Report: The New Yorker's redesigned website (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
- Interview: Matthew Diffee on the appropriately inappropriate cartoons of the The Rejection Collection (for Print)
- Interview: Roz Chast on Brooklyn, pysanky eggs, and animation (for Newsday)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Interview: Edward Gorey (for Newsday)
More clips.
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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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Comments
I’m partial to TOTT pieces, especially ones that show an affectionate, but unsentimental, eye (and an ear) for the significant in the quirky. Nick Paumgarten writes great TOTT stories. Mark Singer was one of the best at it. (Where is he now?) This week’s issue of the magazine contains two standout TOTT pieces: Lizzie Widdicombe’s “Step On It,” and Ben McGrath’s “Third String Rummy.” Either one is worthy to be this week’s POTI. But if I had to choose, I’d pick Widdicombe’s story because it truly is, to quote one of the story's characters, “a fine Washington adventure.”