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Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Hendrik Hertzberg, in memoriam, Jonathan Schwartz, Kate McGarrigle, music

Emily Gordon writes:

I should have known Hendrik Hertzberg would be a Kate McGarrigle fan, and here is his heartfelt, ardent tribute to her. I heard about her death on Jonathan Schwartz's timeless, dreamlike radio show last weekend and have had her songs caught in my head, even more than usual, since then. "And it's only love, and it's only love,/That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out."

Hertzberg wrote this (and more--read all of it) as a Carnegie Hall program note for a McGarrigle Christmas show, and I think it's just right:

The songs and singing of the McGarrigles have turned out to be a font of consolation: a pool of sweetness, a well of sadness, a geyser of exaltation. They have music to suit every stage of love and life. And they are the muses and matriarchs of an extraordinary family circle--a raffish orchestra of parents, siblings, offspring, exes, friends, and collaborators. We, their fans, are part of this circle, too. There are enough of us to assure our uncompromising heroines of a livelihood, but not so many that we risk the loneliness of a crowd.

Every stage of love and life--including this one, the unreal, suspended sadness of hearing one of your favorite voices on the radio and in your thoughts, and knowing the breath and mind behind that voice are gone.

1 comments

Comments

Hertzberg also wrote movingly about Loudon Wainwright and fatherhood on newyorker.com some months ago.

BenFebruary 08, 2010

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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)

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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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