Author Archives: Martin

“Campaign Trail” Junkies Rejoice as Plaudits Descend

Martin Schneider writes:
Emily and I have written about our obsessive and undying devotion to The New Yorker‘s stellar political broadcast “The Campaign Trail,” which provided us with comfort, solace, and delight from Iowa all the way to Chicago’s Grant Park and beyond. (I even saw the main recurring members in concert! Sort of.)
According to FishbowlNY, the MPA Digital Awards has named as “Best Podcast Series” of 2008 The New Yorker‘s “The Campaign Trail”! We’d like to congratulate (this is off the top of my head) John Cassidy, Elizabeth Kolbert, David Remnick, Jane Mayer, Jeffrey Toobin, George Packer, Hendrik Hertzberg, Ryan Lizza, and above all, the podcast’s cheerful, focused, and curious moderator, Dorothy Wickenden, for this distinction. I regret if I left anyone out. The year of amusing and insightful talk was a joy to behold.

Essential Comedy Tome to Grill Chast, Sedaris, Clowes, Handey, Others

Martin Schneider writes:
Finally, a post that doesn’t mention Tw****r! I think I’ve discovered the 2009 release I’m looking forward to most. A gentleman named Mike Sacks has compiled a book of interviews with twenty-five of the funniest writers on earth, due for publication in July from F+W Press.
The book will feature interviews with familiar New Yorker contributors Roz Chast, Daniel Clowes, Jack Handey, and David Sedaris, as well as:
Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks)
Merrill Markoe (Late Night with David Letterman)
Dick Cavett (The Dick Cavett Show)
Larry Wilmore (The Daily Show)
Irving Brecher (Marx Brothers)
Bob Odenkirk (Mr. Show)
Robert Smigel (TV Funhouse)
Dan Mazer (Ali G, Borat)
Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day)
Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H)
Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development)
Dave Barry (syndicated column)
Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket)
Bruce Jay Friedman (The Heartbreak Kid)
Marshall Brickman (Annie Hall, Manhattan)
George Meyer (The Simpsons)
Al Jaffee (MAD Magazine)
Allison Silverman (The Colbert Report)
Buck Henry (Get Smart, The Graduate)
Stephen Merchant (Extras)
Todd Hanson (The Onion)
(Apparently New Yorker editor Susan Morrison is involved as well.)
I feel confident in guaranteeing that if you collected that group in a room, nobody’d ask, “So when do the funny people show up?”—except in jest.
Best of all, you can read the chapters for Handler, Chast, Friedman, and Clowes in full on the book’s website, which also has generous excerpts of every single other chapter.
As a comedy enthusiast with a serious weakness for artist interviews (Paris Review, Inside the Actor’s Studio, you name it), I’m genuinely excited, as you can well imagine.

Not Just Inane Chatter, Twitter also Brings Facts

Martin Schneider writes:
User @alexbarkett (for that is the convention) tweets: “For everyone who was wondering, the audio prelude to all New Yorker podcasts is a song by Isolée called Schrapnell.” I checked it out: it does sound right! (Compare.) A back and forth with Mr. Barkett confirmed that he knows the full song and that it only applies to the “Out Loud” podcasts.
Note that when I tried to confirm this fact on Google, I came up bupkes.

Wallace Week at The New Yorker: The Good and the Bad

_Martin Schneider writes:_
Love the prospect of an in-depth “article”:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_max?currentPage=all about the last days of David Foster Wallace, by D.T. Max. Not so comfortable with the unfinished “work”:http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace?currentPage=all.

Review Roundup: Cheever, Orwell Receive Boost, Yawn

Martin Schneider writes:

In the New York Times Magazine, Charles McGrath (father of Ben) makes the case that John Cheever is sorely due for a revival. Since he’s better than the recently canonized Richard Yates, this does seem both likely and proper. The success of Mad Men, set in Ossining, Cheever’s hometown, should help.
Meanwhile, the otherwise excellent New York Review of Books brings us Julian Barnes’s fatuous review of the new George Packer editions of George Orwell’s essays. I’m an Orwell nut of long standing, dedicated my (poor) senior thesis to his work, have committed the CEJL to memory (true Orwell fanatics instantly recognize that abbreviation), and grow impatient with Barnes’s denigrating tone and determination to ignore the volumes under review. Both Georges deserve better.

The People Have Tweeted: New Yorker Gets a Solid Thumbs-Up!

Martin Schneider writes:
We’re all accustomed to the perspective that The New Yorker is too precious, too pretentious, too serious, too self-absorbed, too too. We run into it all the time, it’s a balloon that seemingly demands puncture. People fall over themselves, clutching a needle.
It’s therefore instructive to enter “new yorker” as a search term on Twitter and see what people actually think.
Lot of enthusiasm out there. A lot.
It’s got to be about 5 positive comments for every dis. Maybe more than that. A few comments, chosen more or less at random:
i_Walt: Reading “The New Yorker” and listening to Verdi’s “Don Carlo.” Go out tonight? You must be joking.
abartelby: I need the latest New Yorker to read Ariel Levy’s essay but I don’t want to go out in the freezing rain so can someone please bring it over?
Sarahw224: I miss my new yorker already. Perhaps drawing room tonight or………..el prado?
subliminabubble: @mayaseiden i can’t even remember life before the new yorker! i’ve been reading it all day. thank you so much again!
I actually forget sometimes how much people love this magazine. It takes something as arbitrary as this to remind me.
Oh and also: people are having some trouble spelling Rahm Emanuel’s name.

A Useful List: Who at The New Yorker Is Using Twitter?

Martin Schneider writes:
Well, it seems the world has finally caught up with us. We were Twittering as far back as the New Yorker Festival, which was nearly six months ago! Now it’s reached that juncture at which phenomena topple over into a phase of greater exposure (hmmm, could be a book in that), and now I’m running into it everywhere. We thought it was high time that Emdashes declared its intention to cover this properly.
So to start with: everyone reading this should know that The New Yorker is using Twitter with great vigor. The magazine’s Twitter is updated regularly and has useful information about new supplementary content on the website like podcasts or videos pretty much every day, usually several times a day.
Richard Brody, who mans “The Front Row” in the blogs section of the magazine’s website, is sending links to his posts on Twitter. The New Yorker Book Club uses its Twitter to link to recent posts and make announcements. The “News Desk” blog is using Twitter regularly. There are also feeds for the Book Bench and the New Yorker Festival.
I’ve done some modest research into New Yorker personnel who are tweeting away, and I’ve come up with the following list:
Sasha Frere-Jones 1
Michael Kupperman
Tad Friend
Bob Staake
Thessaly La Force
Susan Orlean
Liza Donnelly
Julia Suits
Ward Sutton
Sasha Frere-Jones 2 (probably defunct)
Dana Goodyear
Malcolm Gladwell
Erin Overbey (Emdashes regular)
Evan Osnos
Marisa Marchetto (protected updates)
Andy Borowitz
Daniel Zalewski
Lizzie Widdicombe
Lila Byock
Thessaly La Force wonders whether regular Twitterers ought to get extra credit. It’s a fair point. The list is now ordered by number of tweets sent, at least by a mid-March 2009 reckoning; I’ll try to order additions in that spirit.
There’s also the as-yet-empty Cartoon Lounge, apparently run by The New Yorker‘s PR wiz, Jamie Leifer.
A couple of comments: the indefatigable Sasha Frere-Jones tweets about as much as anyone I’ve encountered. Tad Friend tweets quite a bit as well. Dana Goodyear is just starting out, and after a few good weeks, Gladwell may have lost interest—we hope not!
There’s also the charming newyorkerest, run by an enterprising San Franciscan. The purpose of newyorkerest is to isolate the best article in each issue. We’d like to give them a warm welcome to the heady world of New Yorker commentary. What we like most about newyorkerest is that it is all about celebrating genuine achievement; we are too, hence we celebrate newyorkerest.
Oh, here are some Emdashes-related Twitters: Emdashes, Martin, Benjamin, Print magazine.
A final note: We believe that this information—who at The New Yorker indulges in the occasional tweet—is intended for public consumption; otherwise we would not post it. It’s not our intention to catch anyone out or make anyone uncomfortable. So if anyone would like to see his or her Twitter status removed from this list, we’ll only be too glad to do so. Of course, if you’re a New Yorker contributor whose Twitter feed we haven’t discovered (yet), by all means email us and we’ll add it to the list so everyone we know will know how best to follow your interesting activities.