Emdashes. The New Yorker between the lines

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Michael Leddy at the site Orange Crate Art (clearly, someone I would enjoy talking to) wonders if the author of a 1953 Talk of the Town about pencil use at the Eagle Pencil Company might, by virtue of the story’s eloquent phrasing (“We ducked as lead flew about us”) and its attention to pencils, have been longtime editor William Shawn. In fact, according to the Complete New Yorker, it’s by E. J. Kahn, Jr. Here’s the abstract.

Leddy also notes the sad passing of Mona Hinton, the wife of Milt Hinton and a friend of Leddy’s family, who died on May 3rd. He writes:
The Hintons first met at Milt’s grandmother’s funeral in 1939 and were inseparable for the next 61 years. Mona traveled extensively with Milt throughout his career. She was the only spouse on the road with the Cab Calloway Orchestra in the 1940s, where, according to Milt, she was extremely helpful in finding rooms and meals for band members especially when the band worked in small towns during the Jim Crow era. During the ’50s and ’60s when Milt was working day and night in the New YorkWi studios, Mona kept the books and made often complicated transportation arrangements. And during the last two decades of his life, Milt and Mona got to travel to jazz festivals and clinics around the world — first class.
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From today’s New York Post (via MediaBistro): “Tina Brown has turned to legendary avant-garde design firm Number 17 to handle her new yet-to-be-named Web venture, a news-aggregation service that is being backed by her longtime friend, media mogul Barry Diller.” I can attest both to No. 17’s design acumen and their laudable foosball hosting and playing skills.

Elsewhere in design, journalism and political science double major (and keyboard player) Teddy Applebaum, given the challenge of a mock blow-in card, struggled among various versions of Rea Irvin’s New Yorker typeface and their cost (“oodles of cash”), and had to settle for a poor imitation. Occasional spelling oversights aside, I think the kid’s got something, don’t you?

Speaking of blow-in cards, there was an eloquent defense of them in Wired some months ago that I keep thinking about, and not just because of the witty execution. It seems the cards really bring in the dough, and in these uncertain times, that’s something we’ve got to support (as this Jack Ziegler cartoon suggests), right? Or at least not judge too harshly, especially when in the forest, which could probably use more edifying reading material, anyway.

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Benjamin Chambers writes:

One of the sweeter pleasures of paging through the Complete New Yorker is looking at the dated advertising, especially when a copywriter describes, with a flourish of trumpets, amenities we regard as either standard or puzzling.

For example, if you’d been looking for a quiet, upscale hotel in 1958,

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Martin Schneider writes:

If this video doesn’t make you think of George Price, well, it certainly should.


More after the jump.

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You can move on to the book collections of Carl Sandburg, Susan B. Anthony, and noted fallen rhymester Tupac Shakur. These and other literary libraries are on the Lilbrarything group I See Dead People[’s Books]. A perfect way to fill in those gaps in your shelves! (Thanks to the indispensable Very Short List for the link.)

On the other hand, space may be tight, and life is certainly short, so you could also get rid of books instead—or at least contemplate the bookshelf with half an eye to getting rid of them,

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