Although it’s a rare Talk I don’t enjoy, I could do with fewer “society” pieces like this week’s report, by Lauren Collins, on the making of a saucy short film (to promote the novel The Manny) by a gaggle of fun-loving wealthy types, who hired actors and comedians to play various parts in the book. I last had this mildly uncomfortable feeling when I read Rebecca Mead’s dishy Talk about a party hosted by Cindy Adams. TOTT, as most readers know, began as a frothy, cheerful sort of section, which didn’t take itself too seriously and often made references only a handful of amused insiders would get. It’s grown up a bit since then, and it’s a treat to read precisely because of pieces like—off the top of my head—Michael Schulman on a cooper from Colonial Williamsburg on a visit to hipster-colonized Williamsburg, Mead on Workman’s workingman naps, my friend Tom Bartlett on cardboard box haiku, or Ben McGrath on pretty much anything (with a smattering of borderline cases).
Of course, there’s a place in the magazine for reporting on exclusive parties and functions, awards dinners, benefits, and so on, especially when there’s something notable, funny, or quirky about them. But anecdotes about things like the Manny shoot, which seems more TMZ than Metropolitan in any event, make me slightly itchy; don’t we read about Tinsley Mortimer enough in Gawker as it is, and isn’t that fact enough to prevent her appearance in TOTT? Filmmakers who consider the addition of a dwarf to their cast instant hilarity should probably not be dignified with mentions, either.
There are plenty of ways to be local, timely, and urbane, and The New Yorker has already mastered them—I’ll read Collins’s exemplary and impishly detailed reporting about subjects like the furrier to the hip-hop celebrity world anytime—but events like this seem at once too prepackaged and too slight for coverage in a section (or even, as Harold Ross first imagined it, almost a magazine within a magazine) that thrives on telling jewels of stories, so nearly overlooked, sparklingly well.
Author Archives: Emdashes
O Caption! My Caption! Winner #99 Speaks
As the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest creeps inexorably toward #100, intrepid Canadian intern John Bucher continues the renewed tradition of interviewing the clever and astonishingly elite contest winners.
David Wilkner, trolling for the next Big One
Congratulations to David Wilkner (above), of limerick-worthy Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for taking the prize in Cartoon Caption Contest #99—a Leo Cullum illustration of a doctor advising a glum and projectile-pierced cowboy—with the line, “I’d like to get your arrow count down.†Although this contest number has special resonance for Canadians—it’s Wayne Gretzky’s sweater number—David and I discussed things even more vital than hockey. Fishing, for one. —JB
One thing I always wonder about contest winners is whether the caption comes to them quickly or slowly. Which was it in your case?
My “arrow count down†caption was the first one I thought of that Monday morning while online, and it took three to five minutes to compose. I normally come up with a couple of captions that I like the first day, but by the end of the week I will have added ones I think are much better. I hardly ever submit an early one, but I knew this one fit the New Yorker mold of a professional person using his “professionspeak†in an absurd situation. I go to my doctor once a year for a physical, and, of course, he always wants to “get my weight down,†my “cholesterol down,†my “drinking down,†etc.
What process is the devising of a funny caption most like?
Fishing. You’re sitting in the boat waiting for something to bite inside your head. There are days when you catch nothing, or fish so small you throw them back, while searching and waiting for the “big one†you hope is lurking just below the surface.
I really study the cartoon and its makeup, and then follow my thought trail, which may draw from personal experiences or lead to something dealing with irony or an abstract idea. If I’m not getting anywhere I’ll even consider hackneyed phrases. I try to let the cartoon take me down its path to its “rightful†caption rather than forcing one on it.
What kind of relationship do you have with a) The New Yorker and b) its cartoons? How far back does the connection go?
I’ve been hooked on New Yorker cartoons for most of my adult life. As a long-time subscriber, I’ll cut out the cartoons that make me laugh the hardest and tape them on top of each other at my place of work so that people can flip through them. My mother compiled many scrapbooks of her favorites. She passed away five years ago, and would have been ecstatic to know that I won one of these contests.
Of the ones you cut out and post at work, can you winnow out three favorites? What, specifically, do you find funny about them?
1. The classic “I’m sorry, Sir, but Dostoevsky is not considered summer reading. I’ll have to ask you to come with me†cartoon of the beach patrol officer accosting the bewildered tourist; it’s by Peter Steiner. I read a lot of Dostoevsky in my twenties, and like the hilarity of the officer extending his authority into the realm of seasonal reading.
2. The Henry Martin cartoon of the explosion with the title: “Tim, a walking time bomb, met Ed, an accident waiting to happen.†This may be my favorite of all time, because it has no characters or quotations. It’s merely two volatile clichés in a head-on collision.
3. An illustration by Michael Crawford of a Swiss Army knife, but with fourteen corkscrews and no other options—the “French Army knife.†It’s so much fun to make fun of the French!
If you could have one thing in your home autographed by its creator, what would it be?
That’s easy! The print of the Leo Cullum cartoon I won in last week’s contest. It hasn’t arrived in the mail yet. Beyond the home, I’d have to say a Degas pastel of a ballerina in motion that I saw at the Providence Museum of Fine Arts last year. It was so perfect!
What, to the best of your knowledge, were you doing at 11 a.m. on February 17, 1986?
Skiing down the slopes of Killington with my two young daughters and wife.
Other Emdashes caption-contest interviews:
- Robert Gray, winner #106 (“Have you considered writing this story in the third monkey rather than the first monkey?”)
- David Kempler, winner #100 (“Don’t tell Noah about the vasectomy.â€)
- Richard Hine, winner #98 (“When you’re finished here, Spencer, we’ll need you on the bridge-to-nowhere project.â€)
- Carl Gable, winner #40 (“Hmm. What rhymes with layoffs?â€)
- T.C. Boyle, winner #29 (“And in this section it appears that you have not only alienated voters but actually infected them, too.”)
- Adam Szymkowicz (“Shut up, Bob, everyone knows your parrot’s a clip-on”), winner #27, and cartoonist Drew Dernavich interview each other in three parts: One, Clip-On Parrots and Doppelgangers; Two, Adam and Drew, Pt. Two; Three, Clip-On Parrots’ Revenge
- Evan Butterfield, winner #15 (“Well, it’s a lovely gesture, but I still think we should start seeing other people.”)
- Jan Richardson, winner #8 (“He’s the cutest little thing, and when you get tired of him you just flush him down the toilet.”)
- Roy Futterman, winner #1 (“More important, however, is what I learned about myself.”)
Hersh, Not Squirrels: Remnick at ASME Was “the Conscience of the Conference”
An editor friend writes:
“How many of you got into journalism because you wanted to be an editor at The New Yorker?” David Remnick asked as he began a talk entitled “The Importance of Great Reporting” at an ASME conference for about 50 junior editors earlier this week. Two hands went up. Things didn’t get much better during the Q. and A., when one of the attendees asked Remnick if he ever worried about reader exhaustion. The implication being, You know, these loooong stories about the water shortage, global warming, war war war—whew, I’m tired!
Remnick’s response: “I don’t.” (And now I’m paraphrasing.) “Because if I start worrying about cutting our 10,000-word Seymour Hersh article on Abu Ghraib down to 5,000, then it’s 3,000, and then before you know it, we’re doing feature articles on squirrels.”
He was essentially the conscience of the conference. Later on the in session, he remarked, “Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away” to ensure your journalistic credibility. He also mentioned two words, one German, one Yiddish, I believe. The translation boiled down to: The key to great reporting is “the ability to sit on your ass.”
J.B. Handelsman, 1922-2007
I was sad to learn that longtime cartoonist and cover artist John Bernard (Bud) Handelsman, whose style will be instantly recognizable to readers of the magazine, died earlier this week. You can see some of his work on the Cartoon Bank and in his Comiclopedia bio. On his blog, cartoonist Mike Lynch has a tribute and more biographical information about the New Yorker, Playboy, and Punch artist.
Update: There’s now a slide show of his cartoons and a reminiscence by Nancy Franklin on newyorker.com. The Associated Press also has an obituary, which includes this quote: “‘Bud Handelsman found a way to combine the traditions of the New Yorker cartoon and editorial cartooning and make of it something totally his own,’ David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, said in an e-mail. ‘At its best, his work had political bite and, at the same time, a real humanity and wit. Everyone at the magazine—editors, writers, artists, and readers—will miss him and will miss his unique voice.'”
Dept. of Comings and Goings
The breeze is blowing through 4 Times Square, as elevators go up and down and doors open and close. For instance, George Packer’s new blog on newyorker.com, “Interesting Times,” has launched, and its title promises news good and bad, alarming and amusing. And in first person, no less! You know whose blog I’d like to read? Michael Specter. He has an incredible range of interests and approaches to his subjects, has scintillating anecdotes he can toss off as lightly as a pair of bedroom slippers, and travels like a fiend. How about it? It could be called (drawing from pieces past) “Search and Deploy,” “The Long Ride” (written en route to and from assignments), or perhaps simply “I Am Specter.” If this is in fact in the works, fear no moles, royal denizens; I thought of it my own self.
Anyway, you’ve no doubt read of Dan Baum‘s departure from the magazine, and the end of his and Margaret Knox’s New Orleans blog; the late blog is lauded here on The Wayward Episcopalian, within a long list of excellent resources on the city’s quick destruction and slow recovery.
But I’m burying the lede: I’m very glad to see that Nancy Franklin is back with a critical yet empathetic review of John From Cincinnati and a salute to The Sopranos. What’s more, one of my favorite New Yorkerites, David Owen—whose book about the evil Educational Testing Service, None of the Above (which is much meatier than the current cover design would have you believe) actually changed my life back in 1988—has a typically meticulous and engagingly written story in this issue about architecture and the structural engineer Cecil Balmond (sadly, not online). All that plus an especially fine Talk section and Calvin Trillin’s remarkable Canada Journal has me whistling this week. I don’t approve of whistling or humming for no good reason, but such circumstances provide an allowance.
Speaking of structural engineers, the life of William LeMessurier, whose obituary is in the Times today, has a New Yorker connection: the magazine was the first to do an extensive report (by Joe Morgenstern in the May 29, 1995 issue) on the bolstering of LeMessurier’s Citicorp building, which the engineer oversaw with heartening care. From the obituary: “He once told a class at Harvard: ‘You have a social obligation. In return for getting a license and being regarded with respect, you’re supposed to be self-sacrificing and look beyond the interests of yourself and your client to society as a whole. And the most wonderful part of my story is that when I did it, nothing bad happened.’ â€
Taxi! Lou Romano’s Animated Cover
Our smart friend in comics sends this link from the cheerful and visually pleasing Cartoon Brew; click on the post to see the current New Yorker cover in all its deep rainy blue and bright yellow glory. Amid Amidi (who recently provided me with a copy of the animated version of James Thurber’s great “The Unicorn in the Garden”) writes:
Congrats to Lou Romano who painted the cover for this week’s New Yorker. Various illustrators who work in animation, like Peter de Sève, have done New Yorker covers before, but could this be the first time a trained animation artist has done a cover in the mag’s eighty-plus year history? The New Yorker is also selling prints of Lou’s cover here.
I think the implicit message in Romano’s cover is, If you want to be happier than Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross at the end of The Graduate, skip the bus and hail a cab instead. The triumphant last scene in Valley Girl comes to mind, too. I like how the skyscrapers here seem like a small crowd of friendly elders seeing off the newlyweds with benevolent pride.
Ian McEwan Is Everywhere
Within a day of purchasing it, I scarfed down Ian McEwan’s newest novel (novella is possibly more apt), On Chesil Beach. I would explain that it’s about inexperienced British newlyweds thrusting and parrying on their 1962 wedding night, but then devoted New Yorker readers already know this. (Here’s a swell PDF version of the New Yorker excerpt; here’s hoping you have the required fonts.)
I’d quite forgotten that the first chapter of McEwan’s Enduring Love also appeared in The New Yorker, but the Complete New Yorker confirms (May 19, 1997). In his enthusiastic review of Chesil, Emdashes fave Jonathan Lethem proposes sending McEwan’s opening chapters, “like Albert Pujols’s bats,” to the literary equivalent of Cooperstown; I’d wager it’s Enduring Love he is thinking of first and foremost. Point being, The New Yorker has offered first-rate McEwan before. As for Chesil, I’d aver that you have to go back to his also-possibly-novella Black Dogs to find its gemlike equal in McEwan’s oeuvre.
McEwan also pops up in D.T. Max’s fine “Letter from Austin” about the Ransom Archive. Apparently TPTB in Texas slot working writers into various levels akin to blue-chip stocks: we’re told that McEwan is rated as a worthier investment than Martin Amis, David Foster Wallace, and—gasp—J.D. Salinger! (Surely Chesil shores that status up, but have these arbiters read Saturday?)
In any case, last Friday, I caught McNally Robinson‘s presentation of Doug Biro’s movie about On Chesil Beach (talk about innovative cross-promotion) at the Two Boots theater. The event started with a dramatic reading of a scene from the book by talented actors Darrell Glasgow and Jessica Grant, a rare treat. After the quite skillful movie, National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman led a rousing discussion about McEwan and Chesil Beach with director Biro and novelists Colum McCann and Kathryn Harrison (New Yorker contributors both).
If you missed that event, you can always go to the screening at Labyrinth Books on Wednesday, June 19. It should be good fun!
Note: For anyone eager for insights into On Chesil Beach, the June 3 edition of the New York Times Book Review podcast features a lively chat with McEwan, in which the author discusses the new book and his (very very) early fondness for the Rolling Stones.
—Martin Schneider
Gopnik, City Dogs: Schine On, You Crazy Diamond
Sewell Chan writes in City Room, the New York Times‘s Metro blog:
“May I say, I’ve never known such a well-behaved group of dogs at a literary reading,†Adam Gopnik, the author and New Yorker writer, said this afternoon after the novelist Cathleen Schine read from her latest book, “The New Yorkers.â€
Ms. Schine’s audience was unusual: about 80 humans and about half as many dogs, who had gathered in the courtyard of the Museum of the City of New York. There were a few yelps, barks and howls, but otherwise the audience was rather subdued.
…
Mr. Gopnik, who has written about his children’s experiences in Paris and New York, compared the outlook of dogs and children. “For dogs and for children, New York is their nature, not their culture,†he said, adding: “The improbability, the impossibility of New York is never something that strikes dogs or children. To them it is simply the jungle, the forest where they live.†Cont’d.
It’s an odd coincidence in a month of odd coincidences: just yesterday, I found my copy of Schine’s terrific novel The Evolution of Jane in a box of books, and set it aside to mail to my dear young cousin Jane, herself an exceptionally evolved creature. I interviewed Schine (who is, as you surely know, the former wife of David Denby) when Evolution came out, and she was a lot of fun to talk to. Someday I’ll have more of my clips up, but it will require quite a bit of scanning stamina.
6.11.07 & 6.18.07 Issue: Happy “Four,” Miranda July!
What to read in last week’s issue before you let the recycling algore-ithm turn it to colorful pulp? Every Monday, we at Emdashes—archive maven Martin Schneider, intrepid intern John Bucher, and I—review the issue’s high points.
GOAT has a fine Bruce Davidson sixties-era photograph of a sinuous black man leaning on a Chevrolet, his son clutching his leg—a captivating contrast of masculine and feminine.
My prurient thanks, also, to Adrian Tomine for his world-be-damned cover girl on a double-decker New York sightseeing bus, her nose in what can only be (given the paperback’s telltale stripes on a clean white field) the classic Little, Brown edition of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Sigh. —JB
This has come up in the comments, but I really liked D. T. Max’s piece on the Ransom Archive. If it whetted your appetite, check out Ted Bishop’s Riding with Rilke, a travel book by a motorcycling literary scholar in which it serves as the destination—just don’t go in expecting a lot of Rilke. I also enjoyed Miranda July’s cunning tale “Roy Spivey.” I notice that the New Yorker lists “armpits” as one of the few (seven) keywords associated with the piece—possibly a New Yorker first! —MCS
I think I knocked the wind out of myself with my panicky post about finishing the double summer fiction issue a week too soon. I’ve got a few more picks to round out my rant, but in the meantime, I’ll quote an ad from the issue in question, to set the mood for this week: “Nothing relaxes like cocktail piano…nothing!” —EG
Tina Brown: “Blondes Are More Interesting, It Seems”
They sure are when they come in the form of such accomplished women as Lesley Stahl and Tina Brown. Last night I ventured to the Union Square B&N to witness a “chat” between Stahl and the former New Yorker editor; the latter is, of course, promoting her incipient blockbuster, The Diana Chronicles (currently #7 on Amazon). This being Brown’s first book ever, not to mention her first book signing ever, it made for quite a heady event.
As the rain came down, in between wincing at the overamplified Pat Metheny music and pouncing on a slew of 48-cent Penguins at the Strand stall (I collect them), I had the good fortune to enjoy a solid hour of intelligent, delicious repartee about, like it or not, like her or not, one of the most fascinating figures of our time: Princess Diana.
I would not have been quick to grant Diana such a grand appellation, but Brown quite simply won me over. For her part, Stahl had clearly done her homework, found the subject matter riveting, and betrayed every sign of wanting to have a ball. “Should I keep dishing?” she kept asking the audience. “I should?” Normally I disavow the dishy, but her enthusiasm was infectious—dish on!
Stahl called Brown’s book “an autopsy of the monarchy under Queen Elizabeth,” and it’s easy to see why. Having worked at the Tatler during Diana’s formative first years as Princess, and having written one of the most important pieces of the Diana canon, “The Mouse That Roared,” for Vanity Fair in 1985, shortly after taking over the editorship there, Tina might well be the most qualified person in the world to discourse on the subject. If the book is half as engaging as last night’s chat, it’s going to be the best beach book in years.
During the Q. & A., someone asked Brown to draw out the parallels between Diana and Hillary Clinton. To her credit, Brown demurred—while acknowledging that both women contain compelling contradictions (“You know, blondes are more interesting, it seems,” she hazarded impishly), the chasm between the senator with the voracious intellect and the scarcely lettered socialite
When Brown signed my copy of the book (see above), I told her what an effective advocate for the book she is. Apparently, she took my words to heart: When I got home and switched on the TV, what’s the first thing I see? Brown entertainingly explaining Diana to Anderson Cooper. [And last night, she was on Charlie Rose. —Ed.] You’re welcome!
—Martin Schneider