In which some or all of the staff of Emdashes (me, the masterly Martin Schneider, and cherished intern John Bucher), put the blue ribbons on last week’s Wilburs.
I’ve got to give it to Larry Doyle’s Shouts, “Share Our Joy,” for signaling the magazine’s elegant long jump into true interactivity with a) a story that has ersatz links in it, 2) the actual links in the story online, and 3) additional web content now featured, subtly and tastefully, under selected print stories (the more the better, in my opinion). For instance, Peter Schjeldahl’s Edward Hopper review has an accompanying slide show, noted right after the print story, just where it’s needed. Jill Lepore’s “The Meaning of Life” was an intense pleasure to read: informative, bold, and dreamy, all at once. Anthony Gottlieb’s review of books about atheism was a highlight, too, and prompted a pleasant memory of Paul Bloom’s terrific Atlantic story “Is God an Accident?” I loved these Barsotti, Crawford, and Talk, to a deathless libretto from my own educational era: You know the one: “The macaroni’s soggy,/The peas are mushed,/And the chicken tastes like wood.” —EG
Best somewhat creepy lactic metaphor: no, not the milk of human kindness, but this one, by Anthony Lane in his Talk about the French elections. “Awaiting your hero for more than two hours is no hardship to the faithful; standing for two hours without earplugs, however, while the cream of soft Euro-rock is hosed into your consciousness, is another matter.” —JB