Does anyone know when James Wood’s first New Yorker review will run? Those who haven’t read The Broken Estate or The Irresponsible Self lately might welcome Garth Risk Hallberg’s refresher course on Wood’s approach in the form of a thoughtful critique of Wood’s takedown of DeLillo’s ambitious novel Underworld. Hallberg insists that Wood’s just not getting it. I found the book a little starchy, but I expected that going in. None of which is to say that it failed to meet its goals, exactly. I remain agnostic on the subject. How did Underworld go over out there?
Either way, I find it cheering to see such fervent advocacy for an admittedly difficult novel. Hallberg clearly loves the big ambitious fiction of DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and David Foster Wallace, references “Jonathans Franzen and Lethem” (endearing him to us, anyway), and treats his adversary (Wood) with due respect: “The essays on Chekhov and Mann in The Broken Estate should be required reading for any novelist.” I really like the flow chart Hallberg provides of “Literary/Critical Conflicts of the Past Two Decades,” with its droll “Darts of Disapproval” and “Rings of Harmony.” How refreshing to see (for instance) n+1, Dale Peck, and Cynthia Ozick diagrammed so saucily and succinctly! —Martin Schneider
Author Archives: Emdashes
If This Was Made for You, You May Be Made For Me
Can you imagine an expertly edited, magnificently pared-down, eight-minute-long version of His Girl Friday with not a word of dialogue? That’s no impediment for those who know every breath, carnation, siren, sigh, innuendo, newsroom bell, typewriter report, bang, cry, groan, and cock of the eyebrow. Go watch it at Bad for the Glass, where I found it, and which adds the comment: “This experimental edit of the film removes every word, leaving in only sneezes and grunts and Cary Grant’s delightful laugh. Knowing the film’s plot, the rapid edits are intriguing in places. And this shortened version helps you actually pay closer attention to Hawks’ marvelous visual staging, even in a setbound film like ‘Friday.'” The editing is by Valentin Spirik. Bravo.
This George Saunders Blog Will Surely Be Singular
The Millions kindly reminds us that New Yorker regular George Saunders is spending the week blogging at the Powell’s site. (We can even see where it all started; so much for the worry that the small moments of literary history may be lost in the digital age.) Judging from the first post, it should be a hoot.
Saunders is promoting his new book, The Braindead Megaphone; he’s doing a whole bunch of readings this month, some of which are listed in our Google Calendar. If you haven’t signed up for the jam-packed calendar yet, check it out here. —Martin Schneider
Joe Keenan Is a Finalist for the Thurber Humor Prize, and Other News
Excellent news. I’m in awe of the wit and dash in Keenan’s books, and interviewed him when the one he’s being nominated for, Lucky Star, was published. Though I bow to co-finalist Merrill Markoe, Keenan’s got my emphatic endorsement; these are spicily, sharply (hey, a cinnamon stick could be both) funny novels.
Which reminds me, in part because both writers are hilarious and gay, but mostly because I discovered them at the same time, that I recently read the newest Stephen McCauley novel, Alternatives to Sex. It’s great. The Object of My Affection, the movie with Jennifer Aniston and an especially toothsome Paul Rudd, was based on McCauley’s novel of the same name, and when I say based on, I mean loosely based on; read the book. It’s an endearing movie (I especially like the scene in which literary agent Alan Alda, fainting in the heat of a Brooklyn walk-up, asks for something to fan himself with and cries, “Get me a magazine! Get me The New Yorker!”), but by all means read the book.
Speaking of awards, today Tina Brown was named to the Magazine Editors Hall of Fame.
Finally, here’s a mini-tribute to the clever, convivial, and career-creating Franklin P. Adams. Alliteration is all right with me in certain contexts, and, fortunately, this is one of them.
Festival! Schedule! Here!
Note: If you’re looking for the 2008 schedule, you’re going to want to look here.
We’ve got it right here, right now. If you’re susceptible to hyperventilation, have a paper bag handy (low-tech, but it works), and also keep in mind that 10 percent of the tickets will be held back for purchase at Festival HQ. Now, feast your eyes on this! Everything below will be going out on Festival Wire later today, and you should sign up if you haven’t already, because otherwise you might miss out on something good. Like the surprise extra Judd Apatow event, for which you can warm up by visiting our Knocked Up round table and, I hope, expressing your superbad and supergood opinions.
By the way, if you like events that we like, and we think you do, you should sign up for the Emdashes Google Calendar. It’s got lots of stuff like this on it. Click to join.
Look for our full 2007 program schedule in the September 17th issue of The New Yorker, on newsstands September 10th. The Festival schedule will also be posted on the same date on festival.newyorker.com.
Tickets to all events may be purchased beginning on Saturday, September 15th, at 12 noon E.T. All programming is subject to change. Tickets available online at ticketmaster.com, at all outlets in the New York metropolitan area, or by calling 1-877-391-0545. Tickets will also be sold during the weekend at Festival Headquarters, located at 125 West 18th Street, and at event doors. All Ticketmaster orders are subject to service charges.
Come join us!
FRIDAY
OCTOBER 5
An evening of paired readings by writers whose stories have appeared in The New Yorker and conversations between writers on the themes that feature in their work; a New Yorker Town Hall Meeting on Iraq; an Errol Morris film project; and the second New Yorker Dance Party.
FICTION NIGHT: READINGS
Daniel Alarcón and Zadie Smith
7 P.M. Angel Orensanz Foundation ($16)
Junot DÃaz and Annie Proulx
7 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($16)
Jhumpa Lahiri and Edward P. Jones
7 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($16)
Karen Russell and Jonathan Lethem
7 P.M. Anthology Film Archives ($16)
Marisa Silver and Paul Theroux
7 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($16)
Ann Beattie and Jonathan Franzen
9:30 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($16)
FICTION NIGHT: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN WRITERS
Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk on Homeland
7 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($25)
Norman Mailer and Martin Amis on Monsters
9:30 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($25)
Lorrie Moore and Jeffrey Eugenides on Conformity
9:30 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
George Saunders and Jonathan Safran Foer on The Incredible
9:30 P.M. Angel Orensanz Foundation ($25)
Miranda July and A. M. Homes on Deviants
9:30 P.M. Anthology Film Archives ($25)
Donald Antrim and Colm TóibÃn on Mothers
9:30 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($25)
THE NEW YORKER TOWN HALL MEETING: IRAQ REVISITED
With Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, Jon Lee Anderson, David Kilcullen, and Phebe Marr. George Packer, moderator.
7 P.M. Town Hall ($16)
FRIDAY NIGHT FILM PROJECT
A conversation between Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch about Abu Ghraib, with clips from “Standard Operating Procedure.”
8 P.M. Directors Guild of America ($25)
A NEW YORKER DANCE PARTY
Hosted by Sasha Frere-Jones, with special guest d.j. Diplo.
10 P.M. Hiro Ballroom and Lounge ($20)
SATURDAY
OCTOBER 6
A day of interviews, panel discussions, and talks by New Yorker writers; Early Shift and Late Shift events, many of them featuring live musical performance, throughout the city; the inaugural New Yorker Debate; a sneak preview of the upcoming feature film “The Kite Runner?; a Saturday Night Special with David Byrne on urban bicycling; and humor events and free book signings at Festival Headquarters.
CASUALS
Wake-Up Call with Andy Borowitz
10 A.M. The New Yorker Cabaret at Festival Headquarters ($12)
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Neil LaBute and John Lahr
10 A.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($25)
Matthew Bourne and Joan Acocella
1 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($25)
Anthony Lane and Simon Schama
1 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($25)
Peter Sellars and Alex Ross
4 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($25)
IN CONVERSATION WITH
Seymour M. Hersh interviewed by David Remnick
1 P.M. Directors Guild of America ($25)
Steve Martin interviewed by Susan Morrison
4 P.M. Directors Guild of America ($25)
NEW YORKER TALKS
Sasha Frere-Jones: What Isn’t Hip-Hop?
2 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
Samantha Power: Darfur~Activism Without Action
4:30 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
PANELS
Outside the Box
With Jenji Kohan, David Milch, Ronald D. Moore, David Shore, and David Simon. Tad Friend, moderator.
10 A.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
Investigative Journalism
With Jane Mayer, James B. Stewart, and Lawrence Wright. Dorothy Wickenden, moderator.
10 A.M. Highline Ballroom ($25)
Casualties of War
With Major L. Tammy Duckworth, Captain (Ret.) Dawn Halfaker, and Colonel John B. Holcomb. Atul Gawande, moderator.
1 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
Superheroes
With Tim Kring, Jonathan Lethem, Mike Mignola, and Grant Morrison. Ben Greenman, moderator.
1 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($25)
Costume Design
With Colleen Atwood, Patrizia von Brandenstein, Patricia Field, and William Ivey Long. Judith Thurman, moderator.
4 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($25)
BOOK SIGNINGS
(Please note the schedule of book signings at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Noon to 5 P.M. Festival Headquarters (free)
EARLY SHIFT
Fiona Apple talks with Sasha Frere-Jones:
A Conversation with Music
7:30 P.M. Brooklyn Lyceum ($35)
Anna Deavere Smith talks with John Lahr:
A Conversation with Performance
7:30 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($35)
An Evening with Sigur Rós
7:30 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($35)
Eugene Levy talks with Susan Orlean
7:30 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
Rosanne Cash talks with Hendrik Hertzberg:
A Conversation with Music
7:30 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($35)
Saturday Night Sneak Preview: “The Kite Runner”
Khaled Hosseini and Marc Forster talk with Jon Lee Anderson.
7:30 P.M. Directors Guild of America ($25)
SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL
David Byrne Presents: How New Yorkers Ride Bikes
David Byrne will host an evening of music, discussion, film, readings, and surprises dedicated to the advancement of bicycling in New York City, including talks and performances by the Classic Riders Bicycle Club, Jan Gehl, Calvin Trillin, Paul Steely White, Jonathan Wood, and the Young@Heart Chorus.
7:30 P.M. Town Hall ($16)
THE NEW YORKER DEBATE
Resolved: The Ivy League Should Be Abolished
With Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Gopnik. Chaired by Simon Schama.
8 P.M. New York Society for Ethical Culture ($20)
CASUALS
New Yorker Parlor Games with Henry Alford
8 P.M. The New Yorker Cabaret at Festival Headquarters ($25)
LATE SHIFT
Yo La Tengo talk with Ben Greenman:
A Conversation with Music
10 P.M. Brooklyn Lyceum ($35)
John C. Reilly talks with Dana Goodyear
10 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($35)
Bill Nighy talks with Michael Specter
10 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
Dick Dale, Billy Gibbons, Vernon Reid, and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez talk with Nick Paumgarten:
A Conversation with Music
10 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($35)
SUNDAY
OCTOBER 7
A day of About Town excursions and events throughout the city, including a free demonstration of the new sport parkour; talks by New Yorker writers; a series of Master Classes in poetry, profile writing, and photography; and a humor event and free book signings at Festival Headquarters.
CASUALS
Bagels with Bob
With The New Yorker’s cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff.
10 A.M. The New Yorker Cabaret at Festival Headquarters ($12)
ABOUT TOWN
Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Mike Novacek talks with Burkhard Bilger
Burkhard Bilger and Mike Novacek will lead a backstage tour of the American Museum of Natural History, followed by brunch in the lab.
11 A.M. American Museum of Natural History ($60)
Come Hungry
Calvin Trillin leads his seventh annual walking tour of Chinatown and Little Italy, sampling his favorite eateries and culminating in a dim-sum feast.
11 A.M. Ticket buyers will be contacted as to the starting point. ($100)
Inside the Artist’s Studio: Jeff Koons talks with Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian
Calvin Tomkins and Dodie Kazanjian will accompany Jeff Koons on a guided tour of his studio, concluding with brunch with the artist.
11 A.M. Ticket buyers will be contacted about the location. ($80)
The Next Century’s Newsroom: A tour of Bloomberg L.P. headquarters
Paul Goldberger will lead a visit to Bloomberg L.P.’s state-of-the-art newsroom, followed by brunch in the building.
12 noon. Bloomberg Tower ($60)
Parkour New York: David Belle talks with Alec Wilkinson
David Belle will discuss, and demonstrate, parkour, the sport he created. Parkour is a system of leaps, vaults, rolls, and landings designed to help a person surmount any obstacles in his path.
1 P.M. Event location to be announced. This event is free and open to the public.
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Rachel Brand, Neal Katyal, and Jeffrey Toobin
1 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, and David Denby
4 P.M. Directors Guild of America ($25)
NEW YORKER TALKS
Jerome Groopman: What Is Missing in Medicine?
10 A.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
Oliver Sacks: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
1 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise: A Multimedia Tour of Twentieth-century Music
4 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
MASTER CLASSES
Seminars for people with advanced interest in the topic.
Poetry: Robert Hass and Katha Pollitt [link mine]
10 A.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
Profile Writing: Susan Orlean and Mark Singer
1 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
Photography: Mary Ellen Mark and Martin Schoeller
4 P.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
BOOK SIGNINGS
(Please note the schedule of book signings at the bottom of this e-mail.)
Noon to 5 P.M. Festival Headquarters (free)
FESTIVAL HEADQUARTERS
Is your favorite event sold out? Head to Festival Headquarters, located at 125 West 18th Street (between Sixth and Seventh Avenues). There you can:
*Purchase last-minute tickets. Tickets to ALL events will be sold at Festival Headquarters, beginning on Friday and continuing throughout the weekend.
*Purchase limited-edition merchandise, including Festival T-shirts and posters as well as books and DVDs by New Yorker writers and artists and Festival participants.
*Attend book signings and other Festival events, as listed.
*Get additional information on Festival programs.
Festival Headquarters will be open on Friday, October 5th, from 3 P.M. to 6 P.M., on Saturday, October 6th, from 9:30 A.M. to 6 P.M., and on Sunday, October 7th, from 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M.
Tickets will also be sold at the doors to each event one hour before start time, with the exception of Behind the Scenes at the Museum, Come Hungry, Inside the Artist’s Studio, and the tour of Bloomberg L.P. headquarters. Cash only.
BOOK SIGNINGS
Saturday, October 6
12 P.M.
Junot DÃaz ~ “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
A. M. Homes ~ “The Mistress’s Daughter”
1 P.M.
Annie Proulx ~ “Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2”
Paul Theroux ~ “The Elephanta Suite”
2 P.M.
Miranda July ~ “No One Belongs Here More Than You”
George Saunders ~ “The Braindead Megaphone”
3 P.M.
Salman Rushdie ~ “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”
4 P.M.
Atul Gawande ~ “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance”
5 P.M.
Orhan Pamuk ~ “Other Colors: Essays and a Story”
Sunday, October 7
12 P.M.
Robert Hass ~ “Time and Materials”
Katha Pollitt [link mine] ~ “Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories”
1 P.M.
Joan Acocella ~ “Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints”
Alex Ross ~ “The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century”
2 P.M.
Jeffrey Eugenides ~ “Middlesex”
Jonathan Lethem ~ “You Don’t Love Me Yet” and “Omega the Unknown”
3 P.M.
Neil LaBute ~ “Wrecks: And Other Plays”
Judith Thurman ~ “Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire”
4 P.M.
Jeffrey Toobin ~ “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court”
Calvin Trillin ~ “About Alice”
Tickets to all Festival events may be purchased beginning on Saturday, September 15th, at 12 noon E.T. All programming is subject to change. Tickets available online at ticketmaster.com at all outlets in the New York metropolitan area, or by calling 1-877-391-0545. Tickets will also be sold during the weekend at Festival Headquarters, located at 125 West 18th Street, and at event doors. All Ticketmaster orders are subject to service charges.
The 2007 program schedule will appear in the September 17th issue of The New Yorker, on newsstands September 10th. The Festival schedule will also be posted on the same date on festival.newyorker.com.
What’s Gotten Into Alex Ross?
I don’t mean to embarrass him, but he’s on fire lately, and read that aloud the way Peter Gallagher says it to Laura San Giacomo in sex, lies, and videotape. I just finished Ross’s piece “Appalachian Autumn,” which is wrongly not online, and that’s two in a row he’s knocked out of the park—and I don’t use baseball metaphors. This is not classical music reviewing. This is serious essay-writing almost not of this century, with enough pop-culture references woven in, like a subtle gold thread rather than crude paisleys of hey-kids-the-YouTubes, to satisfy the most egalitarian omnivore. If Justin Davidson can start doing more music-themed reporting for the magazine to complement Ross’s reviews and meditations, I’ll be playing very happy tunes on my new ukulele.
Also, since this is a special Alex Ross post, which I do less often than I should, I should mention that Farrar, Straus was handing out an advance pamphlet sort of thing at the BEA for the forthcoming The Rest Is Noise (smart thinking, to call your blog something that actually works as a book title!), and the book looks incredibly elegant. It goes without saying that the writing within will match the cover, but I’m in the business of looking at stuff like book covers, and yow, exciting, wow.
Unrelated: This seems like as good a place as any to say that I saw and dug Superbad (as did David Denby); when I saw it, the whole theater full of remarkably varied people of both sexes laughed delightedly almost as one. As regular readers remember, there was a wee debate here not long ago about all things Apatow, romantic comedies, and gender generally. And I’m here to say: Give me the Seth Rogen of Superbad over the Rogen of Knocked Up; give me the Jack Black of School of Rock over the Black of (shudder) Holiday. Let these guys be who they are in all their raunchy innocence, and don’t insult filmgoers’ knowledge of the world by tying bonnets on adolescent boys like piglet Wilbur in the baby buggy.
Happy 100th Birthday, William Shawn
Emily asked me to write this post yesterday. By chance, a few hours earlier, I had been watching a recent movie about a magazine editor. You know which one I mean: The Devil Wears Prada, with the delightful Meryl Streep portraying Miranda Priestly, the undelightful editor of Runway. She’s tyrannical, perverse, charming, disdainful, and petulant—a fine movie villain, all the more potent for our knowledge that, as is not the case with Darth Vader, something very much like her is actually out there.
The movie (can’t speak for the book) largely accepts Priestly’s view of the world. Stanley Tucci’s Nigel intones some fol-de-rol about the superiority of fashion over art. Indeed, there’s only one force external to Priestly in the entire world that the movie posits as unquestionably superior to the values of Miranda Priestly: The New Yorker. (We know this because it is the ambition of Anne Hathaway’s beleaguered assistant, Andy, to work there. She is putting up with Miranda Priestly to work there.)
William Shawn was the anti-Miranda Priestly. I can’t think of anybody who tried harder to make The New Yorker a magazine to provide solace and comfort in a world too often dominated by the values of, ah, Runway—than William Shawn.
William Shawn was born one hundred years ago today. His name was Chon then.
I sometimes find Shawn a difficult literary-historical figure to like. (You know you’re in trouble when they hire Bob Balaban to play you.) Obviously intelligent and discerning, Shawn was also reportedly highly phobic and fussy. He was the kind of person, I suspect, who used excessive diffidence as a means to get his way. In accounts of him, he comes off as prudish and secretive as well. I point out these traits because—I mean, what goes into a great magazine editor? Who are the great magazine editors-in-chief in this country, anyway? The New Yorker aside for a moment, it’s a fun parlor game. Clay Felker? Kurt Andersen? I.F. Stone? Harold Hayes? Hugh Hefner? Ben Sonnenberg? George Plimpton? (We can expand the field a bit to include Henry Luce.)
It’s interesting to me that in among all these outsize figures is this small, mousy fusspot, and he just might be the best of the bunch. You have a picture in your head of what constitutes a brilliant magazine editor, and Shawn’s there to prove that it might be totally wrong.
The most economical way to express Shawn’s expansive cast of mind is to present a simple list, the Profile subjects for a single year. Here’s 1975. There are 34 other years like it.
Erskine Hamilton Childers, president of Ireland
Henri Langlois, film historian and collector
Jim Hall, jazz guitarist
Shirley Verrett, opera singer
Nam June Paik, a pioneer in video art
Rev. Edward Thomas Hougen, Orange, Mass. (pop. 6,188)
Betty Parsons, N.Y. art dealer
Cary Grant, movie actor
Michel Guerard, French chef
John Crosby, founder, Santa Fe Opera
apples
Jess Stacy, jazz pianist
Philip Barry, popular playwright
House of Baedeker, German travel-book publishers
Carmen Santana (fictitious name), a welfare mother
Robert Freitas, official, baseball minor leagues
I.I. Rabi, physicist (two parts)
Harvey Phillips, virtuoso tubist
Clarence “Ducky” Nash, voice of Donald Duck
To the least parochial editor who ever lived, on his hundredth birthday, here’s to you.
(January magazine also has a tribute to Shawn today.)
—Martin Schneider
A Reader Asks: What Was That Old New Yorker Story I Can’t Get Out of My Mind?
A learned reader who owns The Complete New Yorker was still unable to track down a story that’s haunting him. Can you help? We tried, too. No dice. Whoever writes in first with the correct answer, whatever it is, wins a copy of The New Gilded Age, in my opinion one freaking fantastic document of our times.
I read a New Yorker short story circa 1966 that has been haunting me ever since but have been unable to track down. All I remember (I think) is that it was about a summer romance in Brooklyn or some place like that, and it had a kicker of an ending in which it was revealed that the hero, who had been called by some more or less dashing name, was really named Howard. Then there was a sort of implication that the two lovers never saw each other again. In around 1979 I described this to Roger Angell, for whom it rang no bells. Then yesterday I was on a 9 1/2 hour flight from Rome and opened up NYer on DVD and searched consecutively for “summer,” “summer romance,” “Brooklyn,” etc., and looked at summaries for everything between 1960 and 1971, but had no luck. Do you have any suggestions?
The Halberstam Tribute Tour
Martin Schneider writes:
David Halberstam was probably the first serious American nonfiction writer I read, so news of his sudden death in April came as quite a shock to me.
I didn’t become a serious reader until college, but I read Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game and The Powers That Be as a teenager, and both books had a profound effect on me. I don’t think I’ve ever read a better nonfiction book about professional sports—a subject I cared a lot about at the time—than The Breaks of the Game. The Powers That Be seemed likewise world-changingly important. There are many situations and stories from those books I can still summon at will.
I wasn’t certain whether Halberstam had been published in The New Yorker, but in fact, he was: the archive contains two items by him in the 1990s, one on Michael Jordan and one on Robert McNamara. I don’t know about Jordan, but there probably wasn’t a more qualified person in the world to discuss McNamara.
For all of these reasons, I was glad to see that a group of esteemed writers has volunteered to promote Halberstam’s posthumously published book The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War for Hyperion. The group includes Frances FitzGerald, Alex Kotlowitz, Cynthia Gorney, Neil Sheehan, Joan Didion, and Gay Talese, and the tour kicks off with seven events across the country on a single day. Here’s the schedule:
Halberstam Tribute Tour
9/25/2007
Adam Hochschild and Geoffrey Wolff
Portland, ME
Dexter Filkins, Frances Fitzgerald, Leslie Gelb, Lt. Gen.
(Ret) Harold G. Moore, Don Oberdorfer, and William Stueck.
New York, NY
Cynthia Gorney
San Francisco, CA
Anna Quindlen
Milwaukee, WI
Alex Kotlowitz
Chicago, IL
Bill Walton
San Diego, CA
Ward Just
Martha’s Vineyard, MA
9/26/2007
Neil Sheehan and Jim Wooten
Washington, DC
9/27/2007
Paul Hendrickson
Philadelphia, PA
9/30/2007
Nathaniel Philbrick
Nantucket, MA
10/3/2007
John Seigenthaler and John M. Seigenthaler
Nashville, TN
10/4/2007
Samantha Power
Boston, MA
10/15/2007
Joan Didion, Robert McNeil, Jon Meacham, and Gay Talese
New York, NY
More details at Hyperion and at the Emdashes Google Calendar.
For Lovers of Sassy, an Entire Issue
From GetTrio, the source of that mesmerizing James Laughlin and Brendan Gill video earlier this month, this welcome news for Sassy appreciators of all micro-generations:
Fashionista.com has scanned in the entire November 1992 issue of Sassy. Sure, there were snaps of the hunks from Beverly Hills, 90210, but…a cheat sheet of "all the cool women running for congress"? A rundown of the 7 "most innovative colleges" in America? It was big stuff in 1992 — and a far cry from the current CosmoGIRL! fare ("Rate your prom date!" "Are you addicted to kissing?").