I’ve heard that having to have everything OK’d through CondéNet is a bothersome process for writers and editors at the magazine, and I assume this means the newyorker.com redesign can proceed faster and better than it would have otherwise. On, Dellinger! On, Eskin! On, Flash folks and interns! Lucia Moses writes for MediaWeek:

Condé Nast has transferred operations and maintenance of its individual magazine Web sites from its interactive unit, CondéNet, a change that will give those titles’ editors more flexibility in developing their sites, a corporate spokeswoman confirmed.
 
The 27 individual Web sites (not including the soon-to-launch Portfolio) for such titles as Glamour, Jane, and Vanity Fair, will now report to John Bellando, chief operating officer of Condé Nast. CondéNet will continue to run the commercial, or destination sites, like Concierge.com and Epicurious.com. Online ad sales functions will continue to be handled by CondéNet, with involvement by the Condé Nast Media Group and the individual magazine publishers.
 
The new reporting structure is a response to the growing development of Condé Nast’s individual magazine sites, many of which have been relaunched in the past year. The change will let the magazine editors move faster in developing their sites. Editors had been frustrated with the time it took to make changes to their Web sites, and felt that the prior reporting structure held back traffic growth of their sites.
 
“The magazine Web sites are under the auspices of their editors in chief for content, and having them closely aligned will be better for their development,” said Maurie Perl, senior vp, chief communications officer at Condé Nast. The change also will allow CondéNet to better focus on the commercial sites, she said.

Welcome! More, from Baltimore Broadway World (or something like that—it’s always so hard to ferret out the title on sites like this):

On November 16th, on what would have been his 117th birthday, the first official website for America’s greatest comic dramatist, George S. Kaufman, was launched.
 
The site – www.georgeskaufman.com – contains a wealth of information, graphics, and links about Kaufman, his life, and the Broadway classics he created with, among others, Moss Hart, Edna Ferber, and the Gershwins, such as You Can’t Take It With You, Dinner at Eight, and Of Thee I Sing. Included, of course, are some of his immortal witticisms, such as his comment on the much-altered film of his play Stage Door: “They should have renamed it Screen Door.” The website should be essential to theater scholars, students, fans of Broadway history, and anyone interested in a good laugh.
 
The George S. Kaufman website has been edited and written by Laurence Maslon, Associate Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and editor of the Library of America edition, Kaufman & Co.: Broadway Comedies. The Boston Phoenix called that 2004 volume “the best collection of plays that anyone’s put out in years” and it was enthusiastically reviewed in the New York Times by Woody Allen. The nine plays in that volume are highlighted on the website with full plot synopses, commentary, cast breakdowns, dialogue selections and links for each comedy: The Royal Family, Animal Crackers, June Moon, Once in a Lifetime, Of Thee I Sing, Dinner at Eight, Stage Door, You Can’t Take It With You and The Man Who Came to Dinner. In addition, another fifteen plays and musicals are profiled in section named “Critics’ Choice,” along with an extended catalogue of Kaufman’s lesser known works. The website is supplemented with a full biography, filmography, and archive section, which contains more than a dozen articles by Maslon, glossaries, and biographies of collaborators, all suitable for downloads. The web design is by Pink Rat, LLC.
 
Anne Kaufman Schneider, the playwright’s daughter and executrix of his estate commented, “I’m thrilled that my father and his collaborators are going to reach new generations of theatergoers and admirers of great comedy through the Internet. Not that my father would have known the difference between the Internet and a hair net, but I’m sure he’d have been thrilled, too.”
 
If Eugene O’Neill represents the tragic mask of American drama, George S. Kaufman can lay claim to its smiling counterpart. No other comic dramatist in America has enjoyed more popular success and perennial influence or has been more fortunate in his choice of collaborators. His particular brand of sharp comedy and satire produced forty-five Broadway comedies and musicals; also renowned as a humorist and wit, he was a charter member of the famed Algonquin Round Table. Kaufman was also the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for drama, including the first Pulitzer ever awarded to a musical.
 
Kaufman once remarked that “Satire is what closes on Saturday night,” but, ironically, there has not been a Saturday night since 1925 when a George S. Kaufman comedy hasn’t been playing somewhere in America.

Flanagan will no longer be contributing to The New Yorker, a well-substantiated report heard around these parts some months ago. As you know, I’m not in the business of rumor-mongering, hence the non-mongering of said rumor. But I’m quietly, not meanly, glad. Flanagan’s not an idiot, but she doesn’t belong in The New Yorker. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Some days later: I think the official word is that she’s no longer on staff, but will still be contributing occasionally. I stand by my first post! And to the reader who wrote asking why I’d refrained from mongering, maybe I should address that in a separate post. Aren’t there enough media gossip sites? Not a rhetorical question, necessarily—I really want to know.

—I do—and some people really love Galway Kinnell, like this woman here.
In other news, have you heard about the the Baby Daddy Theory of Poetic Influence?
Meanwhile, via Mike Lynch, a cartoonist named Roy Delgado has so far submitted 19,000 cartoons to The New Yorker (by his estimate), all rejected.

Or at least their voluminousness: What with the elections, the issue close of the magazine where I work, the story I was writing for same, the reading of the Roz Chast compendium, candy corn, a family episode, getting all my shoes repaired, Heartbreak House, the world suddenly lousy with enraging words and phrases, and the Grey Gardens DVD extras, legitimately New Yorker-related links have been piling up like so many leaves in a drainpipe. But like the rains that swept the city today, taking care of the last few hangers-on among the branches, so shall the next few posts dispose of these links, which are kind of tormenting me with their unpostedness. Telltale heartthrobs, if you will.
 
While you’re waiting, my friend Lisa Levy, who’s working on a very impressive book, reviews Courtney Love’s scrapbooky memoir for Salon.

In the current issue of The Advocate, the Yale law professor comments on the galling story first recounted in Lauren Collins’s September 25 Talk:

I first encountered this story in The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, a section to which I repeatedly turn for consolation after confirming that I have once again failed to win the Cartoon Caption Contest. I found the story oddly riveting. A spin through the blogosphere showed I was not alone. Why was the incident so compelling to so many? I came up with three answers.
 
First, the gays on the plane expected equal treatment. When Varnier was woken from his happy slumber on his boyfriend’s shoulder and told to “stop that,” he didn’t know what “that” meant. Before that rude awakening, he didn’t think of his “kissing” and “touching” as extraordinary. It was less like a gay kiss-in than a 1980s straight honeymoon.
 
The right to canoodle is not in the Constitution. The couple’s assumption that they had that right, however, marks a milestone in gay rights. When I teach gay history to my students I tell it as a history of weakening demands for conformity to straight norms—the demand to convert, the demand to pass, and the demand to cover. Through the middle decades of the 20th century gays were routinely pressured to convert to heterosexuality, whether through psychoanalysis, electroshock therapy, lobotomies, or even castration. After the rise of the gay rights movement the demand to convert shifted in emphasis toward the demand to pass—we were told that we would not be witch-hunted out of our closets so long as we spent our entire lives in them. And at the turn of the millennium the demand to pass is shifting toward the “demand to cover”—sociologist Erving Goffman’s phrase for how people experience pressure to downplay known stigmatized traits, even after we reveal them. Gays are increasingly told that we can be openly gay so long as we don’t “flaunt” our sexual orientation by being too “flamboyant,” too “militant,” or, as in this case, too “public” in our displays of affection for each other.

In other news, Robert Gottlieb’s son, Nicky Gottlieb, is the star of a new movie about life with Asperger Syndrome, directed by daughter Lizzie Gottlieb; the true complexity of women in James Webb’s novels; Truman Capote’s stuff is being auctioned off by Johnny Carson’s second wife; Ved Mehta returns to Arkansas for a visit; and the late Art Schroeder of Walnut Creek once dazzled Dorothy Parker on the dance floor.
 
If you’re thinking of bidding in the Capote free-for-all:

Among the other 337 lots is the tuxedo Capote wore to his famous Black and White Ball ($4,000 to $6,000), a 7.05-carat fancy colored diamond and emerald ring Joanne Carson received from Capote ($20,000 to $30,000); Capote’s passport ($1,000 to $1,500); a signed Richard Avedon portrait of Capote ($800 to $1,200) and a Courreges windbreaker he wore to Studio 54 with a “VIP complimentary drinks” ticket still in the pocket ($300 to $500).

A terrific find from We’re Going to the Pictures:

Michael Silverblatt and a young Los Angeles writer, Chuck Wilson, talk with revered film critic Pauline Kael in a 1991 interview about her book, Movie Love (the 11th and final collection of the film reviews she wrote for The New Yorker) on KCRW Radio in Santa Monica from the bookworm archives. A real treat.
 
Echoed from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

Earlier on Emdashes: A Goldmine of Pauline Kael Reviews

Or whatever you want to call a motley stew of simmering links about upcoming events (3), no-longer-missing critics (1), cartoonists (4 or 5, if we count the cover artist), poets (2 or 3, if we count Alice Quinn, who I figure must be a poet herself; anyone know?), Seattle bands (1), and sobering movies (1). Here goes:
Roz Chast feels nervous about Halloween, so do something much more fun with her next week and see her at Symphony Space talking about her big, glimmering new collection, Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978-2006.
On Monday at the Barnes & Noble Union Square’s Upstairs at the Square, Nell Freudenberger and Howard Fishman (who debuted at the Algonquin once upon a time, and has been known to play Pete’s Candy Store) chat with Katherine Lanpher, 7 p.m. This is going to be a crazy night—man, I love Fishman’s music, haven’t read Freudenberger’s novel yet—so get there early. The last one was packed and not a little giddy.
Here’s Stephen Holden’s Times review of The Bridge, the documentary about Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers that has its roots in Tad Friend’s 2003 story “Jumpers.” As I’m sure you remember, Sleater-Kinney were also inspired by Friend’s piece.
Speaking of Tad Friend, I’m overjoyed to report that Nancy Franklin is just fine, and was just taking a well-deserved vacation. She’ll be back on TV (reviewing it, that is) shortly. That is great news. Again, no disrespect to Friend, whose writing I admire and enjoy. But there would have been riots if Franklin had left for some reason, and I would be at the head of them, brandishing old TV antennae and a large banner with two sad drama faces on it. That’s how ugly it could get, so thank goodness we don’t have to see anything like that, or be jailed for obstruction of editorial administration. (I’ve been in jail once before, so I could take it if I had to, but those plastic handcuffs are chafey.)
Alice Quinn talks to one of my favorite poets and teachers, Galway Kinnell, and they both talk to Philip Levine (with whom I didn’t study), in an interview that appears only on the New Yorker website. There’s even audio of a Phil and Galway reading. I get to say “Phil and Galway” because I paid NYU quite a few dollars for the pleasure of their company for three years. And well worth it, too.
The family of classic New Yorker cartoonist Whitney Darrow Jr. just donated more than 1,000 of his original drawings to Princeton, which I just visited for the first time last weekend. Now I’d better go back and see both those archives and the Virginia Snedeker show, which is up till November 26, so we can all go.
More about this later, but remember that funny Talk by Ben McGrath about The Corduroy Appreciation Club? There’s a corduroy-appreciating party coming up in New York on November 11, 11/11 being “the date which most closely resembles corduroy.” Stay tuned for more.
Finally, comedian and newly anointed New Yorker cartoonist Pete Holmes was recently interviewed on Gothamist. Here’s an excerpt:

I read on your site that you’ve been submitting cartoons to The New Yorker. What other places have you been submitting to or been featured in?
I just sold a couple holiday cartoons to Cosmo Girl, which is such a different audience. I think the average New Yorker is a person with a beyond college education, and now I’m looking at readers that are either not beyond junior high or creepy forty-year-olds reading Cosmo Girl. It gave me confidence in cartooning because that was my first real magazine sale. But, this past Thursday, The New Yorker bought my first cartoon, which is a huge milestone.
 
You were submitting to the New Yorker in person, but I imagine that most of their submissions are unsolicited.
My friend Matt Diffee, who’s a cartoonist over there, told me people send in blind submissions. So there’s some guy in Wyoming sending in cartoons. I can’t say this with any authority, but I think that that submission has less of a chance of getting in. There’s a huge advantage to living in New York and being able to go in face to face with the editor. It allows you to get feedback and, I don’t do this, but maybe you could push more for him to reconsider something that he doesn’t like. Thirty years ago you couldn’t walk into the New Yorker. That’s a huge privilege and it’s certainly helped me along my way. Every week I got guidance, art lessons, and critiques from some of the best cartoonists in the world.
 
What sort of feedback would they give?
With me, it was, “We like the jokes, it just looks like you drew it with your foot.” They had a hard time with my drawing. It got to the point where, every week, I’d come in with a different style. It’s like stand up comedy: they don’t want anybody to force anything. They want your voice to be true and they want your drawing style to match your joke style.
 
How long have you been drawing cartoons in general?
I loved drawing as a kid, but never considered it as a profession until I got into college. In college, it’s the most accessible foray into comedy. You can be at home, you draw, it’s supposed to be funny, and you give it to the newspaper. It’s a safe way to start. When I got into stand up and Improv, I became more interested in the immediate, risky, and exciting world of live comedy. When I met Matt Diffee at a show at UCB, I figured, “Why not try and get back into it.” It meshes well with the stand up lifestyle. If you have a show at ten o’clock on a Friday, that’s all you have to do. You work from ten to eleven, so why not sit around the rest of the day thinking of something absurd and draw it?

Ed Sorel reviews the new Charles Addams bio by Linda H. Davis (for the New York Observer), and what do you know, so do I (for Newsday). It’s called Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life, and the illustrations alone are worth the price. Later: Janet Maslin is getting in on the action and reviewing it, too (for the NYT, natch).
Film Forum now has a podcast.
I would never bash a Canadian if I could avoid it, but this CBC commentator must have been living on Mars since 1925 to write these words:

I opened a recent New Yorker, a men’s magazine whose front section is annoyingly insular and almost hick and whose back half has some good reporting. Staring at me was Steven Spielberg, a 59-year-old man in a baseball cap, who makes movies for the child in every adult. He was shilling for the Gap. “Gap is collaborating with (Product) Red® and the world’s most iconic brands to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.”
 
Readers were told that if they bought a “Gap (Product) Red® item, half the profits will go directly” to the AIDS fight. Then came 28 Gap ads in a 97-page magazine with slogans including “Can a T-shirt top change the world?”

Also, it really says “T-shirt top”? That seems unlikely.