Monthly Archives: September 2007

Dear Internet, Thank You For These New Yorker Covers

This is almost as good as the half-buried treasure chest of Pauline Kael reviews we discovered last year. From Weblogsky:

I’m discovering online info about old, out of print “golden age” comic books, including whole issues scanned from rare copies and posted as jpgs. While looking for old favorites, I found Cover Browser, which has a bazillion covers, including quite a few for the comics I was looking for, the American Comics Group’s Adventures Into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds. Magazine covers including Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mad Magazine, Fate, and The New Yorker.

A little plea—don’t let anything happen to these beautiful archives, o men of law. Please don’t.

I Can’t Wait for Google Ransom Note

Google recently came out with a bunch of improvements to its Book Search.
I went over and typed in “New Yorker” in the search field. The New Yorker, as in the magazine, actually comes up in the results. When you click on it, among the elements on the page is this peculiar image:

googlenyer.JPG

I can’t decide if I find that obscurely chilling (it’s all dismembered!) or an intriguing example of impromptu art.
Or both.
—Martin Schneider

Celebrating Koren, YouTubiness, Muldoon, and More

Congratulations, Edward Koren, on earning the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts! Here’s more. And good news—Bruce Eric Kaplan has a graphic novel out, Edmund and Rosemary Go to Hell, which I would love to see.
Noted earlier, but the magazine is “quietly” building up its YouTube account. Subscribe today; I did! And watch Dan Baum’s New Orleans videos. The musical ones will make you want to dance.
Ted Genoways at VQR notes that Paul Muldoon can be added to the list of non-American poetry editors in America.
ZP at I Hate The New Yorker (a witty title, considering), whom I was delighted to finally meet last week, has views on the Style and Food issues.
In case you missed it yesterday, Garry Kasparov will be a candidate for the 2008 Russian presidential election. Don’t miss David Remnick’s audio interview with Kasparov! I enjoy reading Remnick on Russia—the subject seems so keenly dear to him, which is understandable, since he lived there as the Washington Post‘s correspondent. I wonder if he had the Russia bug before he moved; I seem to remember from Lenin’s Tomb that because his wife’s family was originally from there, it was already an interest, but this could be wrong. I got Russia fever the moment I got on the Aeroflot to Moscow two years ago. (There’s a new jet in town, by the way.) The country seems to become an altered state of mind for some people, a romantic virus, a pair of glasses you can never take off, and I can’t wait to go back there.
And if you see some posts in coming weeks that look kinda grizzled to you, they are! They’re drafts I never published over the past three years, but I wanted to share them with you regardless of “timeliness” (a dubious criterion in this enterprise, don’t you think?). Look for the grizzlies, and don’t play dead or scramble up a tree—embrace them.

The Great Hyphen Extinction

Hyphens are endangered. This is not necessarily bad. Perhaps even The New Yorker will soon shake off a few of its hyphenated habits—just the most antiquated ones. I like hyphens very much myself, and would never advocate their complete extinction! But you know, dear copy dept., that “life-style” and “sound-track” just don’t work anymore, especially in quotations from spangly modern sources. Do they still do “teen-ager”? Yes, it appears they do. Any other hyphenated dinosaurs you can think of? Again, this is not a general railing against “that copy dept. at The New Yorker, why is it stuck in the past?” I like many of its quirks, although, as you know, I take exception to British spellings. (And I’m half-Canadian!) I just think that you can’t talk about the “sound-track” to an Apatow or Cronenberg film, or the “life-style” of Jay-Z, or the “teen-agers” in Kids. Don’t you?

New Yorker Festival Tix Still Available: Dance Party, Iraq Town Hall, and More

From Festival Wire—these nights aren’t sold out, so you may be in luck!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5
FICTION NIGHT: READINGS
Karen Russell and Jonathan Lethem
7 P.M. Anthology Film Archives ($16)
THE NEW YORKER TOWN HALL MEETING: IRAQ REVISITED
With Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, Jon Lee Anderson, David Kilcullen, and Phebe Marr. George Packer, moderator.
7 P.M. Town Hall ($16)
A NEW YORKER DANCE PARTY
Hosted by Sasha Frere-Jones, with special guest d.j. Diplo.
10 P.M. Hiro Ballroom and Lounge ($20)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Matthew Bourne and Joan Acocella
1 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($25)
PANELS
Casualties of War
With Major L. Tammy Duckworth, Captain (Ret.) Dawn Halfaker, and Colonel John B. Holcomb. Atul Gawande, moderator.
1 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
NEW YORKER TALKS
Sasha Frere-Jones: What IsnÂ’t Hip-Hop?
2 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
EARLY SHIFT
Anna Deavere Smith talks with John Lahr:
A Conversation with Performance
7:30 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($35)
Rosanne Cash talks with Hendrik Hertzberg:
A Conversation with Music
7:30 P.M. Highline Ballroom ($35)
Saturday Night Movie: “Encounters at the End of the World”
Followed by a conversation between Werner Herzog and Daniel Zalewski.
7:30 P.M. Ailey Citigroup Theatre, Joan Weill Center for Dance ($25)
SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL
David Byrne Presents: How New Yorkers Ride Bikes
David Byrne will host an evening of music, discussion, film, readings, and surprises dedicated to the advancement of bicycling in New York City, including talks and performances by Yves Béhar, the Classic Riders Bicycle Club, Jan Gehl, Buck Henry, Calvin Trillin, Paul Steely White, Jonathan Wood, and the Young@Heart Chorus.
7:30 P.M. Town Hall ($16)
CASUALS
New Yorker Parlor Games with Henry Alford
8 P.M. The New Yorker Cabaret at Festival Headquarters ($25)
LATE SHIFT
Yo La Tengo talk with Ben Greenman:
A Conversation with Music
10 P.M. Brooklyn Lyceum ($35)
John C. Reilly talks with Dana Goodyear
10 P.M. Cedar Lake Dance Studios ($35)
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7
MASTER CLASSES
Poetry: Robert Hass and Katha Pollitt
10 A.M. Acura Stage at Helen Mills Theatre ($35)
FREE EVENT!
Parkour New York: David Belle talks with Alec Wilkinson
David Belle will discuss, and demonstrate, parkour, the sport he created. Parkour is a system of leaps, vaults, rolls, and landings designed to help a person surmount any obstacles in his path.
1 P.M. Event location to be announced. This event is free and open to the public.
WRITERS AND THEIR SUBJECTS
Rachel Brand, Neal Katyal, and Jeffrey Toobin on the Supreme Court
1 P.M. Florence Gould Hall, French Institute Alliance Française ($25)
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
Tickets are available online at ticketmaster.com, at all outlets in the New York metropolitan area, or by calling 1-877-391-0545. Tickets will also be sold during Festival weekend at Festival Headquarters, located at 125 West 18th Street, and at event doors. All Ticketmaster orders are subject to service charges.
Festival Headquarters will be open on Friday, October 5th, from 3 P.M. to 6 P.M., on Saturday, October 6th, from 9:30 A.M. to 6 P.M., and on Sunday, October 7th, from 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M.
For more information, go to festival.newyorker.com.

Hey, What’s Wrong With Alaskan Poets? The 49th State Sticks Up For Itself

From the Chronicle of Higher Education blog, two northern retorts to David Remnick’s recent comment on having picked Paul Muldoon to replace Alice Quinn at the poetry editor post: “It’s not just a matter of picking the best poet you can think of. It’s also somebody who would know how to be in touch with an enormous range of poets, and that narrows it down a little bit more. And also somebody who’s not in Alaska.”
I was looking forward to the first poetic Alaskan defenses against this slur (which is of course no more than humorous hyperbole, but I suppose if I lived in a state of humorous hyperbole, I too would be easily offended), since they were inevitable.
Here are two. Will there be an Alaskan poets’ protest, in the manner of Sparrow, outside the offices till Muldoon relents and publishes “A Moose and a Musket, My Love” (ridiculous joke, I know) in TOTT?

1. Why not in Alaska? I was in Barrow in June (with Auden in my suitcase, as it happens) and my e-mail and web access worked fine at the Top of The World Hotel. The notion that a person writing, or editing, general-interest material needs to be in a particular location sounds a bit Eisenhower.
— Alan Contreras Sep 21, 04:03 PM
2. As an Alaskan, a New Yorker subscriber, and a teacher of poetry, I can testify that all of these are compatible. We regularly communicate with and visit the rest of the planet.
— Judith Moore Sep 21, 09:40 PM

And regardless of what you think about Quinn’s departure from the poetry editorship and Muldoon’s taking up the challenge—there’s been a riot of opinions about it all—I liked this remark from the blogger Baroque in Hackney:

The controversial, sainted novelist John Gardner once wrote (in his book “On Moral Fiction,” I think) words to the effect that if The New Yorker published real, vital fiction even once it would shatter all the fine glass in the ads.* Now, Paul Muldoon has, I know, been published in the magazine and as such must bear an implicit share of responsibility for not shattering the glass (though for all I know he may have shattered it, because I don’t always read the magazine, as it is £3.90 every two weeks in this country, but I do read it sometimes and always check the poetry). But the man has written many, many poems that would be more than capable of shattering it. He has a wonderful quality of play. He will bring a wide-ranging wit, and circle (and district) of poetry contacts, to his editorial practice.
I am entertaining a strong hope that he will smash the Steuben paperweights.** Come on Paul!
*This is unfair, of course; the New Yorker publishes lots of good fiction. I’ve always thought that the magazine’s format is not kind to art – the font is wrong and the paper’s too glossy.
**Also unfair. Steuben is a fine old firm that makes beautiful luxury goods. We have a Steuben apple at my mother’s house which was a christening present to my brother, which is exactly the kind of thing.

Elsewhere, here’s Vulture on James Wood’s unlikely (or possibly likely) first choice for book-review scrutiny, and a very amusing excerpt, in the Guardian, from Latin Love Lessons: Put a Little Ovid in Your Life, by Charlotte Higgins. Trust me, it’s very funny.

Notes on Nudism, in Verse, and We Answer a Baseball Question

In my inbox today, this note from my old friend Sandy McCroskey, who can’t resist shedding his garments when the sun is out (and who can blame him?). I’d pointed out the skin-baring angle in that daughter-marrying hoax, to wit, that hoaxster “[John] Ordover is a science-fiction editor with a prankish history and an interest in urban nudism.”

Yeah, but as noted here, the average age of nudists is, alas, increasing.

Also, I don’t see how some of the people out on the nude beach can let themselves go so badly. (I’m not talking about a little plumpness or inevitable signs of age.)

We just had a book grab, and I was delighted to find uncorrected proofs of the new collection by your former teacher the late lamented Kenneth Koch, On the Edge: Collected Long Poems—because I knew that inside I would find “Ko, or A Season on Earth,” which contains a passage that I’ve always remembered very vividly but have never been able to find online. It begins:

Meanwhile in Kansas there was taking place
A great upheaval. High school girls refused
To wear their clothes to school, and every place
In Kansas male observers were amused
To see the naked girls, who, lacking grace,
Were young, with bodies time had not abused,
And therefore made the wheatfields fresher areas
And streets and barns as well. No matter where he is

A man is cheered to see a naked girl—
Milking a cow, or standing in a streetcar,
Opening a filing cabinet, brushing a curl
Back from her eyes while driving in a neat car
Through Wichita in the summer—like the pearl
Inside the oyster, she makes it a complete car.

We get a diversity of letters at letters@emdashes.com, and here’s another recent one:

For years I’ve seen Ebbetts/Ebbets Field referred to, but there seems to be no agreement on how to spell it. With one “t” or two?

Can you help?

We aim to please. I asked meat aficionado and sports-uniform maven Paul Lukas to guest-edit this reply. Here’s what he says:

Ebbets Field was named after Brooklyn Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets—two bees, one tee.

And there you have it. No question too big or small, folks!

Katha Pollitt and Jeffrey Toobin Read Tonight in NYC

…at the same bookstore, but not the same location. Choose your Barnes & Noble!
Pollitt: Barnes & Noble Astor Place, 7 p.m.; her new book is Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Random House).
Toobin: Barnes & Noble Union Square, 7 p.m.; his new book is The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (Doubleday). Slate recently did an analysis of some media perspectives on the book so far.
As for me, I’ll be at Katha’s reading; she’s a hilarious reader, and I should know—I’ve been to a dozen of ’em. Come join me! If you didn’t read her Q. and A. with Deboorah Solomon in the Times yesterday, check it out. The rest of her fall book tour schedule is here; she’s traveling throughout the country, so see if she’s got a reading or radio-show appearance near you. James Wolcott had some nice praise for Katha’s new book, Learning to Drive, on his blog yesterday: “To doubters and detractors, I would recommend the bittersweet chapter on the Marxist study group Pollitt attended in the 1990s, whose subtle intrigues and quixotic yearnings would make a wonderful play for a Richard Greenberg or A. R. Gurney.”
As always, the best way to keep up with events we think you’ll want to go to is to subscribe to the Emdashes Google Calendar. It’s free (natch) and we’re adding rashers of new events—New Yorker-related and otherwise excellent happenings—every day. We’ve also made a New Yorker Festival-specific calendar, for those of you following it, in person or in spirit. Got a listing for our calendar? Send it to listings@emdashes.com.

Why You Should Care That Paul Muldoon Is The New Yorker’s New Poetry Editor

Just kidding. I’ll send one of Muldoon’s books to any reader who writes in to challenge the fundamental truth of the necessity of poetry (and reading poetry, for you philistines) in civilization, especially a civilization whose mantle, as last night’s dinner companion suggested, is thinner and closer to barbarism than we might have supposed.
Anyway, here are some responses to the recent news.
Dean Olsher (“The Next Big Thing”): “Can it be a coincidence that her departure comes on the heels of the magazine’s decision to publish this poem by Joni Mitchell?”
Joseph Campana for the Kenyon Review: “Quinn presided over the magazine’s controversially uncontroversial slate of poems often referred to as ‘New Yorker poems,’ which espoused less an aesthetic school than a cult of personality.”
Eyewear: “He’s the Auden of his generation (with perhaps some different habits) in terms of precocious ability, verbal style, intellectual vigour, and expatriated address. Hopefully he will get the magazine to publish more poems and more poetry reviews.”
Paul Muldoon, quoted in the Guardian: “I sincerely hope that every poem I publish there will have it in it to make a profound change in the reader,” he said. “That’s certainly my aim.”
New York magazine’s Vulture: “In other news, Paul Muldoon doesn’t want to publish your sestina, either.”
I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
(Also, unrelated: Here’s a brief Q. & A. with Seymour Hersh in the Jewish Journal.)

Lucky Reader Finds an Alexander Woollcott Letter, Tangentially Related to Snails

Some months ago, an Emdashes reader in Grand Rapids, Mich., named Michael Zalewski (who isn’t related to editor Daniel, as far as he knows) wrote me this fascinating letter. I know at least one person who will find this very relevant indeed!
While on Cape Cod recently, I bought 1934 edition (second printing) of Alexander Woollcott’s While Rome Burns. Upon opening the book there were several New Yorker cartoons of Woollcott pasted to the inside of the book.
In addition, I found an envelope postmarked 4:30 p.m. 1933 Grand Cent. Annex N.Y. 14, addressed to John Stewart Mosher, Esq. of Philadelphia, Pa.
Inside the envelope was a letter on Alexander Woollcott stationery (more like memo pad—with address Four Hundred and Fifty East Fifty Second Street).
The letter is dated Oct. 3, 1933.
In type is following:
My dear Mr. Mosher:
I remember our meeting in the Cour Joffre.
I have just looked up “aestivating”. Thanks so much.

And it is signed in ink: A. Woollcott.

I am intrigued. Does this have any significance?
Sincere thanks.
Note: While the OED has no entry for “aestivating,” there is this definition for “æstivate, v.“: 1626 COCKERAM, Aestiuate, to summer in a place. 1742 BAILEY, Æstivate, to sojourn or lodge in a Place in Summertime. 1854 WOODWARD Mollusca (1856) 49 The mollusca..æ stivate, or fall into a summer sleep, when the heat is great. 1882 Pall Mall G. 1 Feb. 5 The snails of the equatorial region, though they do not hibernate, yet æstivate (if we may coin a word).” Update: I shared Zalewski’s letter with OED editor Jesse Sheidlower, who replied: “Oh, thanks for calling my attention to this. We do have evidence for (a)estivating now, and will likely add this when we revise the entry. What a great find, the letter!” I agree.