Author Archives: Emdashes

The New Yorker Is the New Spectacular, Also the Old Spectacular

The Paddle writes with approval:

I can’t help it. The Shouts & Murmurs pages of the New Yorker is standing on the pinnacle of sly humor these days. After last issue’s take on crushes (all of which I’ve experienced), and this issue’s review of another aspect of my life, there is no way to make it any better in the next issue. This particular section of the magazine has always been hit-and-miss with me – I’m often into it for just one paragraph before moving on – but they’ve now laid purchase to at least three solid, future months of my reading time. Genius.

Beattie’s Book Blog loves this Harry Bliss cover. How’s your thumb, Harry?

Speaking of cartoonists, I’m extremely glad to report that three cartoonists from The New Yorker are nominated for the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Gag Cartoons: Drew Dernavich, Mick Stevens, and P.C. Vey. I might have my preference, but whichever way this one goes, it’s pretty much in the bag for the magazine. Winners will be announced May 26, so place your bets, you crazy gamblers.

Also, I’m pleased that someone has assembled this bunch of video clips from the ’20s, which will help set the mood for the next party with the Dorothy Parker Society, which is coming up on June 4 and will be fizzy fun. Go! Here are the details, direct from Parker Society impresario Kevin Fitzpatrick:

The 40th anniversary of Dorothy Parker’s death is June 7. On June 4 the DPS is having an event to mark the anniversary is true Parker style: with a party at a Communist bookstore. It is Monday, June 4, at Revolution Books, 9 West 19th St, 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. …. There will be talks, readings, and of course, drinking. It is FREE and open to the public. Why a Communist bookstore? Just listen when I read from Mrs. Parker’s FBI file!

So Adam Moss is many things, but the new David Remnick? What does that even mean? New York is like Spy‘s beautifully designed new website along with some Vanity Fair, New York Observer, and various beloved periodicals of New York’s past stirred into a bright smoothie, and it’s loads of fun. I read and use it often, if not faithfully. But would anyone want a DVD of the entire contents of the present-day New York, to cherish, cite, and reread? That’s not what it’s for, and that’s all well and good. But it’s an absurd comparison and I won’t countenance it. Thank you, but the current David Remnick suits us very well.

Speaking of much-missed publications, won’t someone please bring back those weekly single-page photocopied listings of movies and poetry readings that you used to be able to buy at newsstands for something like a quarter and pick up at good bookstores, respectively? The web and the barely tolerable Moviefone and Fandango still can’t satisfy the city’s critical need for both. When you’re walking down the street, you don’t want to press buttons through endless menus—you just want to know what’s playing kinda near here pretty soon, or who’s reading this week. Perhaps the newsletters could be digital holograms for the 21st century, hovering at will till you dismiss them and head for your cinematic or poetical fix.

The New Yorker Conference, Through the Magic of Your Screen (and Me)

While it’s true that tickets are thoroughly sold out for this Sunday and Monday’s New Yorker Conference, the magazine is making several events available online. Stay tuned! Also, your punctuational, if not always punctual, reporter here will be attending at least some of the conference, so watch this space for commentary. I’ve found that live-blogging is not heart-healthy for at least this living thing, but I’ll play it by ear and by wi-fi signal.
If literary gossip is what you like—and you’re not getting it here, except about dead people—this will be fun: Richard Bradley’s sweetly juicy account of PEN’s black-tie event at the Natural History Museum. To paraphrase Lou Reed, who was there, and what did they wear? What did Calvin Trillin reveal about his grandchildren, what was up with moody Jay McInerney, and what did Bradley say to Henry Finder? As for Gore Vidal’s predictably saucy remark, Gawker has a slightly but notably different version. Ah, yes, these are the things we read instead of books, but only sometimes.

The Current Cover Is by Ivan Brunetti, and So Is This Event and This Book

From Fantagraphics comes this welcome news:

Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery Presents “Misery Loves Comedy: New Works by Ivan Brunetti”
May 19 through June 20, 2007, with Artist Reception June 8
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to debut the lively exhibition, “Misery Loves Comedy,” featuring new and recent work by Chicago-based artist Ivan Brunetti. The show opens on Saturday, May 19 and continues through June 20, 2007 at 1201 S. Vale St. in Seattle’s creative Georgetown arts community. The gallery hosts a festive reception for the artist on Friday, June 8 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.
This exhibition commemorates the publication of Misery Loves Comedy by Fantagraphics Books, an anthology of the first three issues of
Brunetti’s “Schizo” comic book and other works. Brunetti’s self-deprecating comic stories portray his emotional battles with depression, divorce and high anxiety, employing compelling dark humor and visual acuity. His therapist actually provides the book’s introduction. “I’m not going to explain things to readers,” Brunetti comments in a recent edition of Publishers Weekly. “I don’t know if I can explain them to myself.”
In addition to Brunetti’s new collection, Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books has published four issues of “Schizo” and two volumes of his gag cartoons, “Hee!” and “Haw!” Brunetti recently organized “The Cartoonist’s Eye” exhibit at the A+D Gallery of Columbia College Chicago and edited the companion bestseller “An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons and True Stories,” published by Yale University Press. He has drawn comics and illustrations for The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and Spin, among many others.
“I enjoy watching Brunetti suffer.” —ART SPIEGELMAN

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The Very Latest in Transportation Trends

From a Princess Cruises (I think) radio ad this morning, a loose paraphrase: “Cancel your flight to your vacation spot and take our boat! No waiting, no cancellations, no fuss! Get to the Caribbean the nicer way!”

So steamship travel is back—excellent—but surely cruise lines have security procedures, too? Oh well, I’m ready for my David Foster Wallace sensory overstimulation anytime. If obsequiousness bugs you (and it does me, too), just remember that after hours the cruise-line staff are debauching it up and making the Dirty Dancing set look like Mouseketeers. If you’re adventurous, you can seek them out and sing bawdy show tunes till dawn. Maybe not on the QE2, though, a solemn experience ostensibly promoted by the preppy (not to say tiny) mummies who appear in the ship’s New Yorker ads; after hours, the crew and passengers alike are safely stowed in their golden caskets. In the alternate QE2 ad strategy, regular folks have secret lives as onboard royalty. Indeed, the nautical romance of the neurotic has been well documented in psychoanalytic literature. That said, the boat looks absolutely fantastic, and I’m packed to sail. Luff up the tender!

Tonight, Tonight, You’ll See Gaiman, Wilsey, Ames, &c. Tonight

Take the cultural advice of The New York Times for once and do two New Yorker-y things tonight. From the Times‘s email newsletter UrbanEye:

Park yourself at 37 Arts, a gleaming new West Side performance complex, for a literary evening tonight. First up: the cartoonist Neal Gaiman, the African children’s book author Marguerite Abouet and Sean Wilsey, the author of “Oh the Glory of it All,” the poor-little-rich-boy memoir that Michiko Kakatuani called “by turns heartfelt, absurd, self-indulgent, self-abasing, silly and genuinely moving.” Then Mr. Gaiman joins Jonathan Ames, Pico Iyer and Edgar Oliver, the Poe of the East Village, to tell tales of home and travel for the Moth storytelling series. Just by staying in your seat you’ll seem erudite.

Sean Wilsey talk, 6 p.m, and the Moth readings, 8 p.m., 37 Arts, 450 West 37th Street, Clinton, (212) 560-8912; $15 and $30.

You Will Now Vote for The New Yorker to Win the Webby for Best Copy/Writing

Do it! Here’s how. True, you have to sign up, but it takes two seconds and it’s an adorable interface. Vote for a bunch of other things, too, of your choosing—or, if you prefer, of my choosing: various NPR and Guardian sites and podcasts, Threadless, Design Observer, Kinetic, The Office, The Museum of Kitschy Stitches, the Shortbus site, COLOURlovers, Beliefnet, Flickr, The School of Visual Arts, The Colbert Report, Salon, Moleskine, The Library of Congress, We Feel Fine, the Smithsonian Photography Initiative, the Poetry Foundation, &c. But this one isn’t optional! That’s how it’ll look when you’re done, after the jump (click to enlarge). Vote now; winners announced Tuesday, May 1, the same day as the National Magazine Awards—it’s a big, big day all around.
Update: Voting is now closed, but prayer, voodoo, and OCD tricks are certainly worth a try!

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Video: Remnick Remembers Yeltsin

David Remnick speaks energetically and eloquently to a silent, invisible NBC News interviewer about the late Boris Yeltsin; Remnick pronounces “Chechnya” just like a Russian (as far as I can tell), and Eustace Tilley provides quality control from his shoulder like either a stern angel or an impudent devil. If you leave the MSN site running after the Yeltsin segment but switch windows on your browser, as I did, you may be startled by some disgruntled snuffling; that’s the next segment, in which “for the first time ever, the rare and elusive Borneo rhino is seen on video in the wild”; its nostrils are impressive.

NYC 4/25: Jane Kramer Moderates “At Home in Europe”

An event co-sponsored by PEN and the NYU Creative Writing Program:

April 25 | At Home in Europe
With Marguerite Abouet, Geert Mak, Zafer Åženocak, Janne Teller, Ilija Trojanow; moderated by Jane Kramer of The New Yorker
When: Wednesday, April 25
Where: Hemmerdinger Hall at NYU: 100 Washington Square East
What time: 3–4:30 p.m.
Over the last decade, Europe has undergone some of the most radical changes in its recent history. These writers take a look at the impact of multiculturalism, migration, and economic and other social shifts, and discuss their implications for the stability of individual countries and the creation of a broader European identity. Ilija Trojanow has undertaken a reverse migration of sorts, leaving Europe to settle in various places in sub-Saharan Africa and then chronicling many of these far-flung corners of the world. Geert Mak is a journalist, historian, and author of the forthcoming In Europe: A Journey Through the Twentieth Century. While working as a macroeconomist for the United Nations, Janne Teller lived in Dar-es-Salaam, Maputo, Brussels, and New York and much of her writing focuses on European and multicultural identity. Zafer Åženocak has written widely on the issues of diversity in Germany, the Turkish diaspora, and the short distances and large fears of a globalizing Europe. Marguerite Abouet left Abidjan, Ivory Coast at the age of 12 to study in France. Her graphic novel Aya details the promising, prosperous period of the 1970s in Ivory Coast.

As always, if anyone can go (I’ll be at work) and can write up a quick review of the event, I’ll be delighted. Also, you’ll want to read my friend Kazim Ali’s galling account of a recent episode on his university campus in this free society of ours.

Hans Koning, 1921-2007

From the Times obituary:

Hans Koning, whose outpouring of more than 40 fiction and nonfiction books ranged from exotic travel to erotic trauma to a withering indictment of Christopher Columbus, died on Friday at his home in Easton, Conn. He was 85.
His daughter Christina Koning confirmed the death, but declined to give a cause.
Mr. Koning wrote novels, plays, screenplays, travel books, young adult books and many magazine articles, particularly for The New Yorker. He also did translations. His stated goal was to reflect on injustice and the essential state of being human “in a hidden way.” But his strongly leftist politics were seldom camouflaged. Cont’d.

One Thing I Haven’t Seen Mentioned in the Virginia Tech Coverage

The local cell-phone networks were jammed throughout the day. Students couldn’t call each other, administrators couldn’t call faculty, parents couldn’t call kids. Even if the university had set up an emergency text-messaging system, it might not have been functional. Hasn’t the technology evolved at all since Sept. 11? How many years have they had to address this?
If you can stand the sadness of hearing some pretty beautiful singing by one of those people killed with a readily available gun (“He didn’t look fidgety,” explained the gun store owner about the killer), listen to some songs, like a wittily acoustic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” performed by one: the clearly talented Daniel O’Neil, a graduate student and songwriter.