Without even accounting for triple-word or double-letter scores, rozchast will earn you 22 points, and stevemartin 16. I officially declare them both sanctioned TWL words, and if anyone disputes this, they can answer to me.
Anyway, as I’m sure you know, Roz Chast and Steve Martin did an alphabet book together, and it’s damn funny. What you didn’t know was that there’s a video here at wsj.com in which Chast talks, winsomely and slightly mischievously as usual, about the book (as well as her supremely awesome collection The Party After You Left). I love the idea of these two cooking this up together. You can see Chast and Martin chatting chummily in a video from last year’s New Yorker Festival, and if you’re a genuine Chast completionist, you’ll check out a little chat I had with her not too long ago.
Monthly Archives: November 2007
Very Nice-Looking Canadian Magazine Has Very Familiar Inspiration
A Toronto-based magazine called Taddle Creek, which accepts submissions only from people who live in Toronto, just wended its way into my office, because that’s the kind of thing that we get around here. This is the 2007 “Christmas number,” and while there are some McSweeney’s-esque notes here and there, the magazine’s guiding visual inspiration appears to be The New Yorker (although TC seems to print considerably more full-page comics). And I approve, of course. More evidence of this to come when I’m up to scanning, and if you’re lucky enough to live in Toronto, well then, you can submit—but read the guidelines first, or woe betide you! The staff is especially adamant about the outdated yet insidious habit of putting two spaces after periods. Thank you, Taddlers. And happy anniversary—I learn from your website that you are ten. Emdashes, being only three, salutes you.
Steve Martin, New Yorker May Help Family
From the Time piece, by Richard Corliss, about Steve Martin’s new memoir, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (of which I really must get a copy):
In recalling the ’60s and ’70s, Martin writes revealingly of his sex life (busy) and his drug life (not so much). But the most poignant passages touch on his estrangement from his father and their reconciliation at the elder man’s deathbed. “When I published that part in the New Yorker,” Martin says, “I got a great letter from a woman. She said, ‘I read your article about your father, and I gave it to my husband, and he read it and didn’t say anything. And then he said to me, What’s our son’s phone number?'” For a moment over lunch, Martin clutches his chest–a dramatic display of emotion for this very inward man who may, at heart, be the kid who stayed all day at Disneyland rather than pedal home to spend time with his dad.
Martin reads from his book in an audio feature at newyorker.com, and he also talked with editor Susan Morrison at this year’s New Yorker Festival. He had a lariat, and he knew how to use it.
When You’re in the Market For Business Cartoons
You might want to take a look at cartoonist Mark Anderson’s comparison of various business cartoon collections, including The New Yorker‘s. As you might expect, even the non-New Yorker books contain quite a few New Yorker cartoonists. There just isn’t that much single-panel work out there anymore!
Also, while looking for something else, I came across this archive of pieces about James Thurber, and also quite a nice little collection of New Yorker-related photos and factlets, along with audio recordings of some of the writers mentioned.
There’s a Reason These Cartoons Weren’t in The New Yorker
Or is that multiple reasons? Sometimes it’s hilariously obvious; other times, it’s so ineffable and multilayered you could write a dissertation on it. Someone probably is, and I hope that chlorophyll-deprived Ph.D. student will send it to me as soon as he or she has handed it in and fainted away from lack of sleep and sustenance. Anyway, there were Gawker folks at last night’s extremely fun, if nonswimming, pool party for The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap (“More cartoons you’ve never seen, and never will see, in The New Yorker“), and they have nice digital cameras, so I don’t know how much point there is in boldface names. But it was warm (and not just in temperature terms, though it was that, too) and crowded and high-energy and, dare I say it, kind of hip. Nobody there looked a bit rejected.
I recommend both Rejection Collection books, which have—alongside those ineffably or effably rejected cartoons—photos of and highly whimsical, illustrated interviews with the cartoonists you know only from their cryptic signatures, and there’s also a chance to have your copy/ies signed this Wednesday, 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble on 6th Avenue. Whiz kid and pigeon enthusiast Matt Diffee will be there with cartoonist and moonlighting impresario David Sipress; they’re both funny and friendly guys. Swimsuits encouraged. Transgressions are the order of the day!
Tina Brown in India, Cont’d.
War and Peace and Everything Nice
For some reason, this little unsigned entry in the April 29, 1920 issue of Life magazine (which I just received after a successful eBay auction—I win all my auctions because no one else is ever bidding on what I want) reminded me of James Wood’s piece last week on the new translation of War and Peace.
The Constant and the Inconstant
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.
This is also a very good time to revisit David Remnick’s memorably fine essay on translation from 2005, in which Remnick conducts a thorough investigation into several of the translators Wood mentions, including Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Anyway, I have other Picks of this Issue, to be added to this post soon, for anyone who checks in several times a day. (Confidential to those people: I love you.)
Thanksgiving of the Unexpected
My old buddy Tom Gogola (whose awesomely loud and witty band, Blown Woofer, is playing twice this weekend in New York, at Union Hall on the 24th and Mercury Lounge on the 25th—now that’s gravy) asked me to contribute to his paper’s Thanksgiving thanks-bonanza, and I did. Have a nice holiday, safe travels to Martin who’s on his way back over the sea, and see you in a few days.
Later: Hey, the results of Leonard Lopate’s Thanksgiving cartoon contest are now up on the WNYC website, complete with video of Lopate and Bob Mankoff chatting and throwing around a cartoon idea that includes the phrase “totally plucked.” Reads one plaintive comment, “congratz to the winners..really. But does anyone else feel like charlie brown for losing?” Cheer up—you’ve still got a chance in the traditional arena. And this week’s edition has Cartoon Issue-themed red in it; if you win it, you’re certainly no turkey.
O Princeton, Do Say You Made a Recording of This Remnick Event
From the Daily Princetonian, a report on David Remnick’s recent talk:
Remnick, a Pulitzer Prize winner, also reflected on his time at the University and discussed topics ranging from the state of American and Russian affairs to managing The New Yorker. During the event, formatted as an hour-long discussion with English professor Michael Wood, Remnick answered questions about his experiences as a University student and his path to The New Yorker. Continued.
Among the good tidbits: Michael Bloomberg claims he’s submitted six captions to the caption contest. As Emdashes readers know from reading our Q. & A.s with the winners, the mayor needs to work a little harder!
Also, Remnick again invokes—with some wariness—a hypothetical, parallel existence as a fiction writer. The first instance I was thinking of was in an old interview with Orville Schell at Berkeley; the page is now broken, but you can read the illuminating transcript at the trusty Wayback Machine. In the Berkeley interview, there’s an exchange so great that, as I read it, I wrote it down as a motto:
Schell: Have you ever written any fiction?
Remnick: Not that I liked.
Schell: But you’ve written some?
Remnick: Yes, not that’s any good. Honestly. But you know life is short, but not five seconds. So we’ll see.
Sounds like there’s a novel possibility in there somewhere, or perhaps some modern-Chekhovian short stories. We’ll be receptive.
The Elegant Joshua Henkin
There’s a bit of mystery in Mark Sarvas’s literary blog, The Elegant Variation; its “about” information is mainly a long quotation from Fowler’s Modern English Usage, and I’m never certain whether it’s the product of one person or ten. Sometimes, novelists like David Leavitt contribute.
On November 12, TEV gave center stage to Joshua Henkin, a writer formerly unknown to me, who’s promoting his new novel Matrimony for Pantheon. Henkin responded with a whopping twenty-five posts, many of them quite long, on the related subjects of writing fiction, teaching students to write fiction, and promoting works of fiction. It’s not often that one encounters such thoughtful prose, much less so much of it posted in a single day.
Simply put, the posts are wonderful. If you are interested in the process of writing fiction, I urge you to check them out. Meanwhile, I look forward to reading Matrimony. Good luck to you, Joshua Henkin! —Martin Schneider