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Looked Into
I Wish I Could Limn-y Like My Sister Kate
Filed under: China, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Kolbert, energy, environment, labor, Newark, Peter J. Boyer, politics, video
As part of TNR TV's series about the new environmental movement, TNR reporter Dayo Olopade sits down with environmental activist Kate Gordon and policy specialist Bracken Hendricks to discuss whether "green jobs" can actually help solve the current economic crisis.Just in case you haven't read Elizabeth Kolbert's piece on the Danish carbon-footprint-reducers, by the way, it's really something special. (Warning: It will make you feel weird about flying.) The New Yorker has been doing a swell job upholding its reputation as a leading voice on the environmental crisis, I think. Its coverage of China has also been increasing dramatically, if I'm not mistaken--I can think of half a dozen recent pieces that are gradually mapping China's environmental, social, educational, athletic, architectural, financial, and musical life in intensely entertaining detail. (continued)
Best of the 1.28.08 Issue: Nudie Pix
Filed under: art, Barack Obama, Benjamin Franklin, books, Calvin Tomkins, Christoph Niemann, dance, Election 2008, George Bush, George Packer, GOAT, Grant Wood, Hendrik Hertzberg, Hurricane Katrina, illustration, Jill Lepore, Joan Acocella, Johanna Drucker, John Currin, John Kenney, Les Murray, Louise Erdrich, New Orleans, Philip Gourevitch, photography, poetry, politics, Ryan Lizza, The Heads of State, TOTT
In which the editor picks out a few choice cuts from the previous week's New Yorker.
There have been only a few instances that I can remember where I've blushed (hey, I'm a half-Canadian part-Midwestern Yankee Puritan) and turned the page rather than let my fellow squished subway-row-seatmate see the page of the New Yorker I'm reading. That was the case with Joan Acocella's review of the Playboy centerfold book a year or so ago (some Playmates appeared, small but round, in the accompanying photo collage),
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The Constant and the InconstantThis is also a very good time to revisit David Remnick's memorably fine essay on translation (continued)
The characters that one knows in books are more real and unchanging than those one knows in real life. Indeed, those one knows in real life are so unreal that a comparison of them with the ones in books is quite startling. The best friend you have had suddenly develops some quality that you have never suspected, and thenceforth he is quite a different person from what you deemed him. You yourself are often quite dissimilar from what you thought you were yesterday. You survived an unexpected test which you would never have believed possible or you yielded in a manner so absurd that you can scarcely credit it.
But David Copperfield is always the same. Elizabeth Bennet, Lear, Faust, Père Goriot, Ulysses—it makes no difference where you range—they are constant ones.
10.8.07 Issue: Suddenly There Came a Tapping
Filed under: fiction, Nancy Franklin, Patton Oswalt, Rebecca Mead, Tessa Hadley, TV, Zoe Heller
In which the staff of Emdashes reviews the high points and discusses the particulars of the previous week’s issue (or, occasionally, another edition).
Tessa Hadley's story “Married Love” started out comic and, by the end, worked in helpless regret. This is one of those stories where it's difficult to tell where the comic leaves off. The story reminded me of the flaky October-June marriage in Zoë Heller's Notes on a Scandal; these families could be neighbors. The standout article for me was Rebecca Mead's Reporter at Large, "Our Man in Pyongyang," about Bobby Egan, a New Jersey restaurateur who is our primary back channel to North Korea.
And if you were considering following Nancy Franklin's
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10.1.07 Issue: A Rush and a Push
Filed under: Christian Northeast, Jean-Claude Floc'h, Nick Paumgarten, Roberto Bolano
In which the staff of Emdashes reviews the high points and discusses the particulars of the previous week’s issue (or, occasionally, another edition).
Jean-Claude Floc'h is a discovery I attribute to The Complete New Yorker, so it was a treat to see his drawing of an old-timey golfer on page 24. My admiration for Floc'h suggests that I am bigger fan of the ligne claire style than I even realize.
I enjoyed Nick Paumgarten's excellent look at the Mannahatta Project, which answers all of the questions a reader could expect to have at the outset, and then some. Loved his description of New Yorkers as having "a kind of a superheated parochial self-regard." I applaud Paumgarten's desire and ability to come up with outsize formulations; it made the article more of a magnificent flower.
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Who we?
Emdashes, founded December 2004 by Emily Gordon, is a place where keen
and dedicated readers of The New Yorker, past and present, can
find related news and commentary: about people, subjects, and ideas
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Learn more about us and our contributors.
We welcome tips, questions, and comments about The New Yorker past and present, plus related events, links, typeface sightings, &c. To contact the magazine or send a submission, click here.
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This site is neither owned nor operated by The New Yorker magazine or Condé Nast Publications.
A few clips
- Report: Learning to read with comic books edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: The King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does The New Republic's recent redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Proposal: A more attractive MetroCard (for A Brief Message)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
Tell me more
They say that dashes “are particularly useful in a sentence that is long and complex.”
Emdashes—like em dashes—emphasizes what’s between: in particular, between the lines, covers, and issues of a magazine close to our hearts.
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