Emdashes—Modern Times Between the Lines

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Before it moved to The New Yorker:
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Best of Emdashes: Hit Parade
A Web Comic: The Wavy Rule

 

Emily writes:

Of the assorted Mad Men recaps I read every week, New York magazine’s are often my favorite. I interrupt myself to say, though, that the first one I read each week, and very nearly hyperventilate while waiting for, is Mark Lisanti’s matchless, dirty Mad Men Power Rankings, which are less recaps than they are manic fanfic, or meta-dystopias, or thought balloons kidnapped from the dank shadows of the writers’ room.

Then, throughout the week, I savor the Slate TV Club dialogues, which I love; letter-writing and -answering is still such a civilized form, and the correspondents’ sign-offs always make me laugh. Plus, the Slate trio (Michael Agger, John Swansburg, and Julia Turner) often cite reader comments and research, which is classy. You’d be a fool to miss James Wolcott’s (and others’) recaps at Vanity Fair, which include a playful plaint on the weary burden of recapping that is, as a friend of mine says, “the stuff of an S. J. Perelman Greatest Hits.” In the same column, Wolcott writes, elegiacally, of Sally:
I hate seeing Sally cry; there’s something so pure and defenseless about her plight. She’s either going to evolve into a saint forged in suffering or develop telekinetic powers and turn their next residence into a house of flying daggers, converting her mother into a lovely order of shish kabob. Either way, we’re pulling for you, Sally! Your tears shall not spill in vain!
I also enjoy the Lemondrop recaps, which have an appealing carefree zest but are sometimes a little sloppy. I can wait a few episodes to catch up with the Movieline recaps and Entertainment Weekly’s “Mad Men Central,” though I relished EW’s “‘Mad Men’: Unpacking ‘The Suitcase.’” Correct me if I’m wrong, but is EW a couple of episodes behind? Think of the people, like me and Duck Phillips, prone to the shakes!

Anyway, back to the always expertly composed and deeply considered writing on the show from New York. I thought this was an especially elegant, and relevant—see (continued)

Pollux writes:

While waiting for the arrival of a female urologist, George Christopher (played by Ted Danson) flips through an issue of The New Yorker in the latest episode of HBO’s Bored to Death, “Make it Quick, Fitzgerald.”

Danson’s character is a magazine editor (of the fictitious Edition), and thumbs through the issue of The New Yorker with apparent relish.

We see a fairly convincing New Yorker cover, featuring what appears to a cyclist rendered in strong shapes and bold colors. If this is an actual issue, my apologies, Emdashes readers. If it is, it isn’t a recent issue. Doctors never keep their piles of magazines up-to-date. (continued)

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A review of Legend of the Guardians by my favorite film critic, MaryAnn Johanson. (continued)

Martin Schneider writes:

Another New Yorker Festival has come and gone, and it must be said it was a good one. We posted last week about the existence of Fora.tv's pay-per-view videos of a good number of the events. After the jump we post some tasty snippets to whet your appetite. (continued)

Jonathan Taylor writes:

Tomatesalacreme.jpg

At the markets here in New York, there are still plenty of tomatoes to be had, but you can tell the season is on the wane. Thank God. I am tired of summer's tyranny of ingredients over the cooking process, of avoiding actual cooking due to the stifling weather—and simply tired of all the tomatoes, however delicious for eating raw or cooked into a simple pasta sauce.

It is time, in autumn, to reacquaint ourselves with the civilizing process. A tomato dish that I made both Saturday and Sunday is the way to bid a fond but firm farewell to the tomato, and submit nature to the genius of cookery. In other words, the tomatoes are cooked with cream. It is also a recipe whose modest nature and brusque expression are foreign to the didacticism and the sentimental mugging found in so much food writing these days.

First, the recipe, and then some notes on its source: (continued)

Jonathan Taylor writes:

Tonight in New York City at 8:00, 92 Street Y hosts Lydia Davis for "An Evening of Madame Bovary."

Kathryn Harrison's Times review of Davis's new translation of Madame Bovary makes a great case for (re)reading the novel, but doesn't really flesh out why Harrison finds Davis's translation choices so convincing. "Faithful to the style of the original, but not to the point of slavishness, Davis's effort is transparent," she writes, but that only raises questions of the sort the translator herself will probably address tonight.

Davis is not only a translator of Flaubert, but a fellow novelist (something often overlooked in the attention to her distinctive short fiction), who, within her essential novel The End of the Story, writes about the process of constructing a novel with the something like the meticulousness of Flaubert's that Harrison describes. A good recent interview by the Rumpus does justice to The End of the Story. (continued)

Emily Gordon writes: Martin and I will be here all weekend, writing leisurely and more-in-depth-than-ever-before reviews of the festival events we’re catching. If you’re still coming down from the high of The Social Network and want real-time bursts of us, you can get that by following us on Twitter. Angel investors: we’re still hearing offers. Devil investors: we’re flexible. (continued)

Martin Schneider writes:

There's only one day of the year we can run that headline, and today is that day.

Emily and I will be attending events all weekend. I'll be at tonight's "Living History" event with E. Annie Proulx, E.L. Doctorow, and Peter Carey, and I'll be seeing Bill Simmons and Neil Gaiman, among others. Emily will be at the James Taylor, Pee-Wee Herman (they're listing it as "Paul Reubens," and we get that, but hey, it's The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway!), and Sympathy for Delicious events, and other ones too. And we may have guest writers weighing in.

Remember: as it did last year, the New Yorker Festival is offering a small number of tickets to all events during the weekend, so a lucky few of you will still get in!

Here's to another great festival! See you there! (continued)

2008 Webby Awards Official Honoree