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Sempé Fi (On Covers): Voilà, la Mer!

Filed under: Sempé Fi Tagged: art, beach, covers, Denzel Washington, Jean-Jacques Sempé, John Travolta, Pollux, Sempé

Pollux writes:

He's jumped in. His socks, cap, shoes, glasses, shirt, pants, backpack, and bicycle lie strewn on the beach behind him. And now what? He's shivering in the cold water, the sun is concealed by rain-heavy clouds, and the beach is empty and forlorn.

Such is the vision presented in Jean-Jacques Sempé's cover, called "Jumping In," for the June 22, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. Sempé's human figures are always minuscule, but the little boy on this cover is smaller still, composed as he is of the thinnest strikes of the pen in the face of engulfing watercolor spills of green, white, and purple that comprise clouds, sea, and sky.

And now what? It's not the best day for going to the beach. Perhaps he would have been better off staying home and reading Tintin comic books or going to the movies to see some utterly mindless thriller starring a subway car, a subway train dispatcher played by Denzel Washington, and John Travolta in Swordfish-mode again.

But summer is about trying new things, even if it involves some discomfort in the form of a freezing Atlantic. Sempé's cover for the April 8, 2002 issue of The New Yorker offered a similar vision of a person wading into a wide ocean, but the figure on this 2002 cover is older and much more content to simply wade in. He's not going any farther. This was a five-minute expedition, only involving the removal of shoes and socks.

But Sempé's younger figure on this 2009 cover is much more daring, although a little uncertain. Such is youth, a mixture of daring and uncertainty.

The sea beckons. How far will you go?

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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

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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)

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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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