James Wolcott awards a Tip of the Hat (not a Wag of the Finger) for background information on his recent column on Mort Sahl to “a now mostly forgotten New Yorker writer named Robert Rice” for his July 30, 1960, profile of Sahl. Wolcott, who calls the piece “fascinating,” notes that Rice also wrote a profile on Nichols and May; I would only add that he did others on Dave Brubeck, Leonard Bernstein, and Branch Rickey, as well as a whole slew of enthralling-sounding NYC-related profiles (or rather, Profiles) and stuff in other departments.
Is anyone out there familiar with Rice? We’d love to hear about it. Perhaps he was the Calvin Tomkins or Lawrence Weschler of his day! —Martin Schneider
Monthly Archives: August 2007
Jeffrey Frank’s Playlist, a Police Cloud, and Magazine Pests
Today at Largehearted Boy, Jeffrey Frank, New Yorker senior editor and author of the new novel Trudy Hopedale, picks a bunch of tracks his characters—”Trudy herself–a woman of a certain age who loves giving parties and has local talk show–and Donald Frizzé, a young historian who’s probably best known for appearing on television rather than for anything he’s actually written”—might have as their soundtrack. Frank has a little riff on each choice, from Elvis Costello to Sam Cooke to the great Alison Krauss. If this were a podcast, I’d download it—for now, I’m reading the book. Here’s the David Sedaris blurb: “Another triumph from one of America’s most reliable and inventive comic novelists. Trudy Hopedale is understated, cunning and relentlessly funny.â€
More reviews: The Imperfect Parent considers the beautiful new children’s book by Christoph Niemann, The Police Cloud. At the Chicago Tribune, Christy Lemire has a welcome meditation on the movies coming out this summer by women directors, and why there still aren’t enough of either.
Finally, in his Bakersfield, California, newspaper column, Herb Benham takes a new switch to the old “New Yorkers are infesting my house” horse. Someone could assemble a tiresome anthology of identical postwar, post-Wolfe pieces twitting the magazine’s insular elitism (I’d like to see Katherine Boo’s report on Louisiana mothers or George Packer’s investigation into the dangerous lives of Iraqi translators in a magazine matching the world Benham sketches: “Pour me a Boodles and tonic and open up my place at the Hamptons”), even as the frazzled subscriber curses his habit. Volume two would be devoted to the irony-impaired.
You’re never going to win me over comparing The New Yorker to a cockroach, even if the little bugger is “as much a fashion accessory as it is a literary magazine, suggesting that the subscriber might be a person of sophistication and breeding,” as Benham writes of the magazine. After decades of family conditioning and fearsome resistance, I’ve seen the light, and know no one should keep stacks of magazines in their house; organizing manuals advise clipping the pages you want and recycling the rest. (This is also one of the many arguments for getting hold of The Complete New Yorker.) Meanwhile, it’s just not that hard to keep up with the gist of each issue at the very least; time on public transportation helps, but Benham probably has to drive a lot. May I recommend the audio version?
Breaking: James Wood to Join New Yorker Staff
This just in, from the Times: “James Wood, a senior editor at The New Republic, where he has been the literary critic for the past 12 years, is leaving to become a staff writer at The New Yorker…. At The New Yorker, he will be one of several staffers who write about books.” Congratulations, New Yorker—Wood is a gentleman and a scholar. I had the pleasure of working with him (and his wife, the talented Claire Messud) when I was an editor at the Newsday book section. First Ryan Lizza leaves TNR, now Wood; is this like an NBA trade, and next thing we hear two New Yorker staffers will be moving to Washington?
8.6.07 Issue: Death Bee Not Proud
In which various Emdashes contributors note what we liked in last week’s issue.
New department alert! Never before has an issue of The New Yorker boasted a Dept. of Entomology—until now. I think Elizabeth Kolbert’s blend of the personal and the scientific is a model of the genre. Also, if you’re looking at Michael Specter’s spam damnation and wondering who or what Nanospore LLC might be, here’s your answer. I can never recall whether Nanospore’s debut illustration was under Shawn or Ross.
I noticed in Peter Schjeldahl’s review of the Sara and Gerald Murphy show that the vaunted department is referred to as a “Profile”—that capital P surprised me; has it been uppercase for long? Librarians? (I guess it was always u.c. Maybe it just looked weird because they had it as “1962 New Yorker Profile” where it made it seem that the final word just had to be l.c. File under “Things only a copy editor would ponder.”) Paul Goldberger’s review of the Times‘ gleaming new digs makes me want to take a tour of the premises—and Bloomberg HQ, too. —Martin Schneider
New Blogs at The New Yorker: Hertzberg, Goodyear, & More
As Chicago once sang, it’s getting bloggier every day: newyorker.com has added blogs by Dana Goodyear (“Postcard From Los Angeles”) and Hendrik Hertzberg. The latter, which so far lacks a catchy name—will it be a regular feature? perhaps we can look forward to short stints from other regulars?—is so far a zippy, multi-day report from YearlyKos.
They join George Packer’s blog, “Interesting Times“; Steve Brodner’s art and observations at “Person of the Day“; Andy Borowitz’s Onion-esque The Borowitz Report; Sasha Frere-Jones’s impressionistic photo blog; Alex’s Ross’s “The Rest Is Noise“; and, of course, Gladwell.com.
Though Dan Baum’s (and Margaret L. Knox’s) New Orleans Journal is now defunct, I’m glad it’s still online at the site for people to read through and respond to. Meanwhile, some of the new features have their own blogrolls; glasnost!
7.30.07 Issue: Let Me Take You To Monkeytown
The best of last week.
As previously noted, this issue further establishes The New Yorker as the primate-ary reporter of Monkey News after the Ricky Gervais podcast and, of course, Baboon Update. (With some competition from Gorilla Gazette, Lemur News, Primate Eye, and The Simian, perhaps.)
Aside from that, I particularly liked Peter Schjeldahl on Courbet; Ben McGrath on the new prosthesis technology we’ll be needing more and more of the longer we stay in Iraq; Glyn Maxwell’s “Element It Has”; Lizzie Widdicombe on a steam-pipe-explosion evacuation procedure at Grand Central; the BEK, Mick Stevens, and Bob Mankoff cartoons I mean drawings (and several others—it was tough picking favorites this time); and the provocative cover by Anita Kunz, which isn’t quite in Spiegelman shock territory but was certainly being talked about. I know—I heard it with my very ears! —EG
Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Again, Non-Working Cell Phones
From the Times coverage: “Cellphones in the area were disrupted after the collapse, possibly because antennas were overloaded with calls.” As I’ve asked before, how long have we had since September 2001 to address this problem again?
You Might as Well Sue 3: Dorothy Parker Trial’s Dramatic Conclusion (For Now)
You’ve got to read Kevin Fitzpatrick’s wrap-up of the Dorothy Parker copyright trial, in which experts and cranks take the stand to argue the definitions of poems, “non-poems,” letters, free verse, unfree verse, triolets, doggerel, “little exercises,” wisecrackery, squibs, and pedestrian prose, and who did what illegal thing to whom. Not to mention a bizarre Lillian Hellman rumor that Kevin calls “the craziest tale I’ve ever come across in my nine years of running this Web site” (for the Dorothy Parker Society of New York). Sample dialogue:
Also for a second day, girls with glasses will be happy to know that “News Item†[link mine] was read in court again. This time by Dannay, who rushed through it to ask what Silverstein thought of it: “it could go either way,†Silverstein said, “as a poem or not.†Danay asked him if “News Item†– probably Parker’s most famous piece — was a poem or not. Silverstein said “News Item†“is a wisecrack, not a poem.”
And:
This was the beginning of one of my favorite parts of the trial, reading Dorothy Parker’s own words into the court record. The first instance of this was a slam-bang selection, taken from one of the brightest spots of her career, when she was Constant Reader for The New Yorker. Silverstein, in a monotone, was asked to read from the January 7, 1928 issue. Part of what Parker wrote:
“There is poetry, and there is not,†Parker wrote. “You can’t use the words good or bad, about it. You must know for yourself. Poetry is so intensely, so terribly, personal. A wise man, a very wise man – well, Hendrik Willem Van Loom, if you must have names – once said to me that if you have any doubt about a poem, then it isn’t a poem. Poetry is for you, for you alone. If, for you, it’s poetry, it will deluge your mind, drain your heart, crinkle your spine. It doesn’t matter whose it is.â€
It’s an Alice in Wonderland postmodern circus! Quite the opposite of Not Much Fun.
Meanwhile, C. Max Magee finds himself distressed by a missing New Yorker (“Being the best magazine in the world, the New Yorker is guaranteed to provide me with at least one transcendent reading experience per month…”), then finds himself not missing it as much as he thought he would (“I sometimes fantasize about the day I’ll decide not to renew”). Don’t leave the clan, C.M.—we need you!
Your Happiness Needs Emily Flake
Happy 30th birthday, Baltimore City Paper, which is also home to Emily Flake—about whom I am unreservedly enthusiastic (and there are fewer things in that category than you might imagine)—as well as Tim Kreider, whose comic has a fantastic title that I like to invoke almost daily: The Pain—When Will It End?
So Emily Flake has an event coming up on August 9 to celebrate her new book, These Things Ain’t Gonna Smoke Themselves: A Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Love Letter to a Very Bad Habit. You’d do well to go. Here are the details:
Happy Ending (upstairs lounge)
302 Broome St. (bet. Forsythe & Eldridge)
Look for the pink awning that says “Health Club”
happyendinglounge.com
August 9th, 7-9 PM