Our pal “Ben Bass”:http://benbassandbeyond.blogspot.com/ apparently has _other friends_ with captioning talents that outstrip ours (sniff). His chum Neal Svalstad is one of the “finalists”:http://benbassandbeyond.blogspot.com/2008/11/getting-out-vote.html in The New Yorker‘s cartoon caption contest this week. We’ve looked over the options (his is the one that mentions sushi), and Emdashes throws the full weight of its support behind the “Striking Viking” option. Go “vote”:http://contest.newyorker.com/CaptionContest.aspx?tab=vote&affiliate=ny-caption!
Incidentally, the headline of this post is an acronym that spells out _**SVALSTAD!**_
Author Archives: Martin
Isn’t There an Economic Crisis or Something to Write About?
For some reason, netroots policy wonks from the political “left”:http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/11/thought_of_the_day_11.php and “right”:http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/11/can_a_bad_actor_play_a_good_on.php today expressed unusual interest in “The Almost It Girl,” (Digital Reader link “here”:http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2003-10-20#folio=096) a 2003 Rebecca Mead profile of Jaime Pressly and its lengthy “abstract”:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/10/20/031020fa_fact_mead. (That’s ‘i’ before ‘m’ and no ‘e’ in the surname.)
Punctuation Update: New Yorker Is All, “Okay, We Get It”
Daniel Radosh is pretty clearly “right”:http://www.radosh.net/archive/002498.html about The New Yorker‘s style rule on such constructions as, “So I was like, ‘I’ll have you know my dissertation is being published by Cambridge University Press!'” I’m glad to see that the magazine has taken a “step”:http://www.radosh.net/archive/002540.html in the right “direction”:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/24/081124fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all. It’s painful to see a mere punctuational nicety elevated to a wilful refusal to understand the actual content of the utterance. Hurrah!
Spokespigeon: This Week, We’re Glad Not to Be Turkeys
Emdashes applauds the plentiful presence of pigeons on Harry Bliss’s cover this week!
Prior muckraking “Emdashes TNY/pigeon coverage”:http://emdashes.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=pigeons&blog_id=2.
Jane Mayer Wins 2008 John Chancellor Award
_The New Yorker_’s Jane Mayer was presented with the “John Chancellor Award”:http://www.cjr.org/audio/on_the_importance_of_cultivati.php for Excellence in Journalism last week. Mayer was honored for her reporting on the use of torture by the Bush administration. (Andrew C. Revkin of _The New York Times_ is the other recipient, for his coverage of climate change.)
Mayer and Revkin spoke at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, and we’ve got “audio”:http://qtstreaming.jrn.columbia.edu/CJR/2008/mayerrevkin1119.mov. After some minor A/V difficulties, it’s a very interesting discussion about reporting from two people who know a great deal about it.
Also, “Floyd Abrams”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Abrams gets mentioned. Floyd Abrams rocks.
Renata Adler: Finally, Some Insight into the “Dime” Mystery
In 2004, Robert Birnbaum “interviewed”:http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personalities/birnbaum_v_renata_adler.php Renata Adler at “The Morning News”:http://www.themorningnews.org/; unsurprisingly, the matchup of these two idiosyncratic people produced an interesting, wide-ranging, scattershot interview touching on many aspects of writing and reporting and publishing.
My colleague Benjamin Chambers has “twice”:http://emdashes.com/2008/07/speedboat-jen-fain-is-the-writ.php expressed “befuddlement”:http://emdashes.com/2007/03/other-things-im-excited-about.php at Adler’s inability to quote the last line of her own novel Speedboat accurately. The line Adler mangled, in her book _Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker,_ runs as follows: “It could be that the sort of sentence one wants right here is the kind that runs, and laughs, and slides, and stops right on a dime.”
With this in mind, here’s the sentence that jumped out at me: “I have this quirk, this neuroticism, [pause] this habit . . . of editing all the way down to the wire and past.”
So that’s it. She was just editing past the wire again!
See Mary Ellen Mark at McNally Jackson in Early December
Mary Ellen Mark’s new book of photographs, “Seen Behind the Scene: Forty Years of Photographs On Set,”:http://www.amazon.com/Seen-Behind-Scene-Photography/dp/0714848476/ sounds very interesting. It’s dedicated to film sets; I confess I have ample curiosity about this subject (like lots of other people). She’ll be appearing at McNally Jackson to present a slide show, sign copies of the book, and I’m sure speak or take questions. Her photos have been appearing in _The New Yorker_ for years now.
Here’s some verbiage from the press release to help assume some of the rhetorical weight of this post:
For the past 40 years, Mary Ellen Mark has been given unprecedented access to the film set of the world’s most acclaimed directors including James Ivory, Francis Ford Copolla, and Steven Soderbergh, to make beautiful, candid pictures of famous actors and actresses such as Marlon Brando, Laurence Fishburne, Nicole Kidman, Christina Ricci, and Benicio Del Toro.
This event takes place on Monday, December 1, 2008, at 7pm (“designated”:http://emdashes.com/2008/11/joshua-henkin-still-elegant-so.php author appearance hour in NYC etc. etc.) at McNally Jackson, on 52 Prince Street.
Gladwell Weathers Gauntlet of Hype; “Difficult Third” Released Today
Ricky Gervais famously ended his two successful TV series, _The Office_ and _Extras,_ after the second season, “saying”:http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/ricky-gervais_0207.htm of the third instance of anything successful, “It’s going to get criticised whatever isn’t it?”
Ah, very true. Starting today, Malcolm Gladwell’s third book, _Outliers,_ is “available”:http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922/ to the public. The early outlook is that he will survive his “difficult third” intact.
It is rare for a nonfiction book to enjoy this level of advance interest. Indeed, rival publishers are watching it carefully for signs of the health of the industry. In Jason Zengerle’s “profile”:http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/52014/ from “last week,”:http://emdashes.com/2008/11/malcolm-gladwell.php a competing publisher was quoted as saying, “I don’t care that it’s Little, Brown’s book. We all desperately need some good news.”
Most of the reviews are positive, but nearly every reviewer makes a point of noting that Gladwell’s thesis flirts with the obvious. Overall, interest and enthusiasm are high.
You can buy the book today, or, if your portfolio has taken a hit recently (I’m told such things happen), you can point your mouse at the following online resources.
_Time Magazine_ “profiles”:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1858880,00.html the author (profile pic is “rugged”).
_Newsweek_ won’t let _Time_ monopolize that sweet sweet “hype”:http://www.newsweek.com/id/169196.
_The Guardian_ (UK) “looks at”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/16/malcolm-gladwell-interview-outliers “the man who can’t stop thinking.” (I remember an old Kurt Russell “movie”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065566/ like that.)
_Slate_’s Book Club “takes up”:http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=read&id=2204398 the book. (John Horgan likes this one more than _The Tipping Point,_ of which he was notedly critical.)
_Entertainment Weekly_ “gives”:http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20239689,00.html it an A. (The Tipping Point got a “B+”:http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,275755,00.html.)
_Reader’s Digest_ offers two “brief”:http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/malcolm-gladwell-on-outliers-the-story-of-success/article104648.html but “illuminating”:http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/malcolm-gladwell-on-outliers-the-story-of-successexclusive-extras/article105061.html interviews. Gladwell says that he would not want his child to try to become the next Michael Phelps; I wish more people would say this sort of thing. Profile pic = “pensive,” in front of a bizarre hand-drawn gallery of facial hair.
_The Wall Street Journal_ has “three”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671211614230261.html “items”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122671469296530435.html, including an “excerpt”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122669767358429369.html with a baffling typo in the headline.
Other profiles:
“_USA Today_”:http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-11-17-gladwell-success_N.htm
“_Independent_”:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/malcolm-gladwell-wise-guy-1019537.html (UK)
Other reviews:
“_New York Times_”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/books/18kaku.html (Michiko Kakutani; reg. req’d)
“_Boston Globe_”:http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/11/16/the_topping_point/
“CNET News”:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10098237-16.html
“_San Francisco Chronicle_”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/14/RVPT13T9T7.DTL
“_Los Angeles Times_”:http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-book17-2008nov17,0,2764025.story
“_Salon_”:http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/11/17/gladwell/
“_Financial Times_”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c0342b6-b40e-11dd-8e35-0000779fd18c.html (UK)
“_NY Daily News_”:http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/arts/2008/11/16/2008-11-16_once_again_malcolm_gladwell_explains_it_.html
There have been lots and lots of “tweets”:http://twitturly.com/urlinfo/url/aa4cf0f35ea6f120b531e592678ca9ca/ recently.
And finally, now seems a good moment to revive two enjoyable New Yorker Conference videos: “2007”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/gladwell “2008”:http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/gladwell.
Joshua Henkin: Still Elegant, Soon to Appear in Three Dimensions in SoHo
I’ve expressed my enthusiasm for Joshua Henkin “before”:http://emdashes.com/2007/11/the-elegant-joshua-henkin.php. It’s a year later and I’m no closer to reading one his novels, but—he’s still on my list! He’ll be speaking at “McNally Jackson Books”:http://mcnallyjackson.com/, located at 52 Prince Street, on Tuesday, November 18, at 7pm (7pm being the designated author appearance hour in NYC). If he’s half as engaging and insightful as he is on “_The Elegant Variation_”:http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/, it’ll be memorable. (Here’s a “stretch of recent posts”:http://marksarvas.blogs.com/elegvar/2008/09/page/4/ I hadn’t even seen yet.) So run, walk, perambulate, etc.
At What Age Can He Vest, Measured in Dog Years?
I got a kick out of “this picture”:http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/01/meet-our-adsense-engineers-juliana.html of Newton, the friendly golden retriever who spends his days at the Google offices, the place where they make all the magical AdSense algorithms. He belongs to Juliana, who sounds very nice.
Of course the snapshot put me in the mind of Peter Steiner’s “immortal 1993 cartoon”:http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=3ML4QF8NM64S8L7QGQVEXN0D2PX87555&sitetype=1&did=4&sid=22230&pid=&keyword=peter+steiner+dog§ion=all&title=undefined&whichpage=1&sortBy=popular about the valuable anonymity dogs can find on the Internet.