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Looked Into
Coming Soon: David Remnick's Biography of Obama
Filed under: Eds. Tagged: Alfred A. Knopf, Barack Obama, books, David Remnick, Emily Gordon, Pollux
Pollux writes:
As announced in the New York Times, Alfred A. Knopf will be publishing David Remnick's biography of Barack Obama on April 6, 2010.
The book, entitled The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, has been in the works for a while, as Emily reported here at Emdashes in 2008.
(continued)
Emily Gordon writes:
We're running this nifty photo collage, which our designer friend Jennifer Hadley (creator of the original Emdashes logo) created last year for a significant milestone, to wish The New Yorker's editor many happy returns of the day. The image is made up of magazine covers and other images (including a Russian postcard) from Remnick's birth year, part of the environment of word and image that formed an editor perfectly suited to both a righteous tradition and a challenging new age.
Who could have predicted how the picture of print media would change? Thankfully, we still have great magazines to celebrate, and as always but especially today, the one whose host we toast is The New Yorker.
(continued)
This Seems as Good a Time as Any
Filed under: Eds. Tagged: David Remnick, Harold Ross, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, William Shawn
to tell you that we think "The Editors of The New Yorker," Pollux's drawing of Harold Ross, William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, and David Remnick, is so suitable for framing that it's already framed, and available from those clever ducks at CafePress. Buy one for your favorite New Yorker lover and hang one in your office to remind yourself that you won't let your standards slip, economy be damned. These five wouldn't stand for it, and, with them keeping watch, neither will you! --E.G.
(continued)
Happy 10th Anniversary, David Remnick!
Filed under: Eds. Tagged: celebrations, circulation, covers, David Remnick, Eustace Tilley, subscriptions
Remnick has much to celebrate after 10 years: circulation of The New Yorker has risen by 32 per cent, to more than 1m copies a week; re-subscription rates, at 85 per cent, are the highest in the industry; and despite the conventional wisdom that young readers don't have the attention span to do more than blog, text and twitter, the magazine has seen its 18-to-24 readership grow by 24 per cent and its 25-to-34 readership rise 52 per cent. Twenty-four of its 47 National Magazine Awards were awarded under Remnick's tenure. Perhaps most reassuring of all, The New Yorker's balance sheet has moved from red to black - although its private ownership precludes him from revealing how much profit it makes.Let's hope he's celebrating today and not just fielding calls about the cover; that's what the animatronic Eustace Tilley is for. (continued)
Nicely Put: On Paul Muldoon
Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Alice Quinn, David Remnick, Harold Ross, Paul Muldoon, poetry, William Shawn
The New Yorker, which I've now read for nearly 40 years, is surely publishing better poems now that Paul Muldoon has taken over for Alice Quinn. His selections are interesting, witty, striking, running the gamut from free verse to traditional poems. Quinn's poems were often self-indulgent, sentimental, mannered, boring.That's from Chasing the Blues, and that's a fine site, by the way. I'm so happy I happened on it. I would argue there are many exceptions to the note about Quinn's taste, but I'm not here to argue; I'm here to be glad we're not said fools, often the very people who don't read poetry because—we know the real reason, right? It's too much work to worry about whether you'll understand it. Be brave, prosey people! (continued)
This is just another sign of the magazine's revival under David Remnick, who has returned it to the best days of Shawn and Ross, and perhaps surpassed them. Too bad this excellent, wide-ranging cultural treasure keeps improving in a climate of anti-intellectualism and short attention spans. I often hear quite well-read folks say they no longer read the New Yorker, or just glance at the cartoons. Too bad, you fools.
Who we?
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.
We welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.
No fear: Everything you say or send is off the record unless we ask for your permission to use it.
This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.
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.
Tell me more
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.
Primary sources
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Web resources: New Yorker writers and artists
Books, Organizations, &c.
Founded by Emily Gordon, edited by Martin Schneider, designed by House of Pretty, and illustrated by Inkleaf. Additional drawings by Carolita Johnson. Kissable pencil girl by Jennifer Hadley, based on a 1943 Dorothy Gray ad.
The Rossosphere
- Resistance Is Fertile
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