What to read in last week’s issue before you let the recycling algore-ithm turn it to colorful pulp? Every Monday, we at Emdashes—archive maven Martin Schneider, intrepid intern John Bucher, and I—review the issue’s high points.
GOAT has a fine Bruce Davidson sixties-era photograph of a sinuous black man leaning on a Chevrolet, his son clutching his leg—a captivating contrast of masculine and feminine.
My prurient thanks, also, to Adrian Tomine for his world-be-damned cover girl on a double-decker New York sightseeing bus, her nose in what can only be (given the paperback’s telltale stripes on a clean white field) the classic Little, Brown edition of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Sigh. —JB
This has come up in the comments, but I really liked D. T. Max’s piece on the Ransom Archive. If it whetted your appetite, check out Ted Bishop’s Riding with Rilke, a travel book by a motorcycling literary scholar in which it serves as the destination—just don’t go in expecting a lot of Rilke. I also enjoyed Miranda July’s cunning tale “Roy Spivey.” I notice that the New Yorker lists “armpits” as one of the few (seven) keywords associated with the piece—possibly a New Yorker first! —MCS
I think I knocked the wind out of myself with my panicky post about finishing the double summer fiction issue a week too soon. I’ve got a few more picks to round out my rant, but in the meantime, I’ll quote an ad from the issue in question, to set the mood for this week: “Nothing relaxes like cocktail piano…nothing!” —EG