Emdashes. Modern Times Between the Lines.

Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule
Before it moved to The New Yorker:
Ask the Librarians archive

About Emdashes | Email us

Features & Columns:
Headline Shooter
On the Spot
Looked Into

Letters & Challenges
Sempé Fi: Cover Art

Seal Barks
Eustace Google

X-Rea: Rea Irvin Type
The Squib Report
In Memoriam
Personal

Michael Berube on the Race Donnybrook that Would Not Die

Filed under: The Squib Report Tagged: Michael Berube

Martin Schneider writes:

I've been a fan of Michael Bérubé's since I was in college (graduated 1992), and was charmed to have a brief exchange with him several years ago about an essay of his that apparently only I liked, about 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which he argues persuasively that the extremely common default reading of the movie, which involves some variation on the idea that HAL "goes crazy," is indisputably contradicted by virtually everything that happens in the movie, and that the movie is really a political movie about the Cold War military-industrial complex. It's an eye-opener.

Anyway. Bérubé's exhaustively hyper-droll style always brings a smile to my face, even when he writes 2-3 times more than my attention span can handle (he kissed the Blarney Stone). Today he turns his attention to his only appearance in The New Yorker, a relatively dusty (1995) look at Cornel West and a few other African-American intellectuals who became more prominent in the mid-1990s.

Be forewarned; his post of today is not for everybody. I like Bérubé because he chases down a lot of nuance in people's arguments that other writers wouldn't bother with; plus he's funny in a way that no academic of my knowledge is. But not everyone will take him the same way.

0 comments

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, it may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Thanks for waiting.)

Your name

Your email address

Your website address

Remember personal info?

Your comments

About us

Hello! We're a small band of media enthusiasts, culture addicts, and journalists based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Emdashes, formerly a New Yorker fan site, is our collection of conversations—mostly civilized—about magazines, movies, politics, design, punctuation, and other things that stir us.

You'd like to know more about the writers and artists and what our column titles mean? We live to serve!

We welcome tips, questions, comments, and corrections, and are always on the lookout for ardent, obsessive new contributors. Click here to email us.

We host occasional book giveaways. Publishers, please email us for our postal address.

Our favorite things | Compliments and press

Tell me more

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

Writing on theater: reviews (for Time Out Chicago; imperfect but workable search results)
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)