Emily Gordon writes:

We (that's the collective and the particular we) very much enjoyed our friend Ben Bass's writeup of the recent New Yorker Festival, an event he enjoys even more than we do--that's a fact, because while it was our fourth Festival, it was his sixth (consecutive). In fact, it was at the Festival two years ago that we first met him, and coaxed him to post about the people he met on line. Not online, but on line! More things should be conducted in person, and his post proved it.

Although Ben teased us that we might get a in-depth Emdashes post to supplement his review, and we hope that's true, we're enjoying reading the quickie version. Some highlights from his favorite events (links mine):

• "New Math," a panel discussion featuring baseball guru Bill James, FiveThirtyEight.com creator Nate Silver, Columbia University economist and Gang Leader for a Day author Sudhir Venkatesh, and University of Missouri statistics professor Nancy Flournoy. Moderator Ben McGrath, whose work I love in the magazine, was quietly hilarious and did a fine job. The discussion was surprisingly funny, occasionally thought-provoking, cordially informative and well worth attending. [For more about "New Math," read Emdashes editor Martin Schneider's wonderfully thoughtful and detailed review of the event.]
...
• "Master Class: Cartooning" with cartoon editor Bob Mankoff. I'm no cartoonist, much less one worthy of attending a master class, but I was all over the chance to hear an exemplar talk shop. Mankoff is not just the New Yorker's cartoon editor but one of the best cartoonists in the magazine. Those who suspect self-nepotism should know that of his over 900 New Yorker cartoons, many more of them appeared before he was named cartoon editor than since. For that matter, his cartoons are excellent, so who cares? Having seen Bob speak a few times before, I knew him also to be hilarious in person. He did not disappoint, drawing loud laughs from the capacity crowd in the Condé Nast Auditorium.
...
• "Master Class: Copy Editing" with Ann Goldstein, Mary Norris and Elizabeth Pearson-Griffiths, three New Yorker copy editors with nearly a century of experience among them. To the collected authors, editors, reporters, bloggers, English majors, and, yes, New Yorker staff writers in the room, it was pure catnip. Learning from some of the best in the business how they edit copy at the highest level of the publishing industry was a privilege and a joy. On the macro level, they took us through the Byzantine layers of the editing process, still governed by a superannuated, typewritten flowchart. As for the micro, they rattled off examples of New Yorker style, cited umpteen entries from its 2400-entry word list and invited us collectively to take the editing quiz that all prospective new hires must tackle. Undaunted, the audience passed with flying colors.

But you should read it all. Meanwhile, we're also awed and envious about Ben's recent and transcendent Steve Martin experience. Thermoses all around, ye enthusiastic and passionate men. (continued)

Martin Schneider writes:

It's not easy to out-Festival Emdashes—I always thought that I took the most exhaustive notes of anybody bar Rachel Sklar—but dang if Rozalia Jovanovic of The Rumpus didn't display as much enthusiasm, interest, and wit as a pack of Emdashers.

Her exquisitely detailed account of five New Yorker Festival events is a must-read for anyone who wants to relive or vicariously soak in the events of that wonderful weekend. Her use of full names at every conceivable juncture is mesmerizing and hilarious.

The papercut illos by Sybille Schenker are a perfect supplement to the text.

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Marin Schneider writes:

In 2000, the first year of the New Yorker Festival, Mark Singer interviewed Ricky Jay in the Milton Berle Room at the Friar's Club; on the Festival's tenth anniversary, the programmers had them recreate the experience in the much larger space of City Winery. The two men, palpably friends, have a kind of fraught rapport; Singer self-consciously leery of stumbling into secretive terrain, with Jay apparently willing to plumb same. Jay noted that Singer's 1993 profile did so much to elevate—and, in some sense, ruin—Jay's career as a cultish practitioner of sleight of hand and historian of same.

Jay cannot help but carry an air of mystery with him. Singer mentioned that his profile of Jay is the only one of his long career in which he did not know the subject's age or real name at the time of publication. As he put it, such information was irrelevant to the

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Emdashes is thrilled to extend its impressive list of august Festival reporters. Trained as a doctor, Jenny Blair has twice been recognized by the National Headliner Awards for Special Column on One Subject for "First Opinion," a column in the Hartford Courant describing her experiences in medicine. This is her first piece of writing for Emdashes—and, we hope, not her last.—Martin Schneider

Jenny Blair writes:

Any artist who lies awake wondering if his labors make any difference in the world ought to talk to Platon, the London-born portrait photographer. In his photography master class on the Festival's last day, there was little technical talk.* Instead, in a series of fascinating

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Pollux writes:

After the Simon Schama lecture last Saturday I sped over to the City Winery on Varick Street.

I had time to spare but I had been uncertain about routes and taxis, being a confused Angeleno in the Big Apple. When I got there around six o'clock, there was already a line forming outside of the event that would start an hour and a half later. It was a good indicator of the anticipation surrounding this event.

Several older gentlemen in line looked like Wallace Shawn imitators. One woman asked a gentleman in line if he was Wallace Shawn. "No, I'm not," he said.

"Oh, you have the same voice," she said. My first glimpse of the real Wallace Shawn was of the actor and writer descending the spiral staircase in the middle of the Winery.

I sat at a small circular table and was soon served by a City Winery waiter. The rumble of the nearby subway rattled the glasses of my table as I ate a modest meal and waited for Shawn and John Lahr, senior drama critic for The New Yorker, to come on stage. Table space was at a premium.

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