Author Archives: Martin

Ben Yagoda Uses Steve Martin to Disprove Truism

Emily has posted a couple of times on Steve Martin’s new book, Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, and I thought I wouldn’t let that stop me from directing you to Ben Yagoda’s fine review of the book in Slate. Heck, let’s flood the zone!
It’s a truism that positive reviews are difficult to write, but you sure wouldn’t know it reading this one. Indeed, Yagoda’s artful review not only persuades that the book has the qualities he attributes to it—many reviews accomplish that—but also has made me, once unsure, entirely eager to read it, a far meaner feat.
Yagoda cites some interesting demographic data to prove that huge numbers of Americans haven’t any conception whatsoever of Martin as a standup comedian. I was born in 1970, so I was about ten years old when he was peaking. I vividly remember his fame as a standup without having had the slightest notion what it was all about. I remember “King Tut” and “two wild and crazy guys,” but for the most part he amused people far older than myself. “My” Steve Martin was just a touch later than that, the one who appeared in The Man with Two Brains and Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid.
The sharp folks at fwis also explain why the book’s cover is so effective. I’m not sure if they are aware that the designer of Martin’s 1978 LP A Wild and Crazy Guy might deserve the lion’s share of the credit. —Martin Schneider

Steinberg Appropriation Hunt! (Reader Participation Alert)

Our friend Jennie, owner of one terrific Saul Steinberg homage, writes,

Have you seen the Brooklyn version of the famous view? It’s more a view of than from, but it’s on display at Prints Charming in Park Slope, on 4th Street just east of 5th Avenue. It’s by Warren Linn, if I’m reading my notes correctly.

Since Park Slope is a little bit out of our way, we’ve decided to ask our enterprising readers to verify this bit of Steinberg-spotting.
So listen up: Anyone (not just the first person) who sends a gif or jpg file of this poster to martin at the above domain will receive a handsome selection of stickers featuring obscure players from the German Bundesliga.
If you do choose to visit Prints Charming, by all means be polite and maybe purchase a small item for their trouble. Not that we expect anything less from our readership. —Martin Schneider

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

“Best American” Short Stories Update

Exciting news! Our handy page of the best stories in The New Yorker (according to Houghton Mifflin, anyway) has been greatly expanded. Today I discovered this rather remarkable website, overseen by one William G. Contento, which lists the contents of a great many fiction anthologies, Houghton Mifflin included.
Most of the years between 1939 and 1976 are now represented. (Either the anthologies did not publish a “Notable” list or Mr. Contento chose not to include them. I suspect the latter—I wouldn’t want to type all that stuff in, either.) This explains why the new batch of lists looks rather skimpy alongside the more recent lists. If you go only by the stories that were actually included in the anthologies, there has been little change since 1939. Four was about the most you could expect in the 1940s, and it’s about the most you can expect now.
The new lists are very interesting, I think. Irwin Shaw comes up a lot. Some names are conspicuously missing, notably J.D. Salinger and Vladimir Nabokov, although it’s possible they were chosen in years that are still missing. John Cheever and John Updike are represented. Matthew Yglesias‘s grandfather makes the list.
The most intriguing name on the list, in my opinion, is Mary Lavin. I had not heard of her until today, but she must have been a very impressive woman indeed, overseeing a farm and raising three daughters on her own during the time her stories were written. A mere glance at the lists will disclose that she was very, very esteemed. Consider this: Over a period of eighteen years, she wrote just fifteen stories for The New Yorker—and yet only Updike, Alice Munro, and Louise Erdrich were able to have more of their New Yorker stories selected, in the years for which we have data.
In any case, decades have elapsed. It’s up to you to decide whether such resonant names as St. Clair McKelway, Hortense Calisher, Lyll Becerra de Jenkins, Carlos Bulosan, and Louis Bromfield have been forgotten justly or criminally. —Martin Schneider

Infamous (Almost) and the Ransom Note Approach

I saw Infamous, the “other” movie about Capote, tonight, and I must say I liked it. I happened to get a gander at the movie poster and got a snootful of faux Irvin font! So close, close, close. It’s clearly not quite Irvin—and equally clearly, intended to evoke same.
T’other day I linked to a 2003 post on Maud Newton’s sharp media blog; if you look at her masthead image, you’ll see some authentic Irvin font peeking back at you. —Martin Schneider

Fondly Remembered Army Man Is Newly Coveted

It is unfortunate that circumstances have forced the Writers Guild of America to go on strike, but one beneficial by-product has been the unforeseeable outpouring of approbation for David Owen’s March 13, 2000, profile of George Meyer. (Witness the requisite evidence that said outpouring has occurred.) And not only that, but this outpouring has spawned a kind of sub-outpouring directed at New Yorker mainstay Ian Frazier, whose September 2004 interview in The Believer is cited in most of the same places. I’m not sure, but I think the comedy blog Dead Frog started it all.
So what’s it all about? Army Man, man.
Long story short, the WGA went on strike in 1988, and George Meyer happened to have a little zine going, called Army Man, and it was really funny. He ended up being a very important writer at The Simpsons. Check out the links above for the mining of strike-relevant meaning, it’s all stimulating stuff.
The two things that stuck in my mind from when I first read that Meyer profile in 2000 were the story about the arm and the sandwich and Meyer’s spiel about Country Crock. I think two salient, entirely intact bits after seven years is pretty darn good, David Owen.
To a semipro scrutinizer of The New Yorker like me, it’s not every day that I stumble upon such a phenomenon: people, unprovably regular people out there, cherishing a New Yorker profile with such ardency. Check out the start of Ed Page’s post over at Maud Newton lo these four years ago:

I’ve read this New Yorker Profile of George Meyer about a gazillion times. I love it so much I cuddle with it at night. When I’m feeling blue, I sing to it. Sometimes, when no one is looking, I lick it.

Now that’s some approbation! As well as a nice rebuke to the whole stupid “New Yorker appeals only to snobbish monocle wearers” contingent. —Martin Schneider

Help Me Out, Alex Ross (Or Anybody Else)

My mom is from Austria. I lived in Vienna for three years after college. I’m more than tolerably familiar with the Wiener Werkstätte, used to go to the MAK all the time, been to Otto Wagner’s famous Kirche am Steinhof several times (I call it the “Narrenkirche”—Narr means “fool,” the church is located in a mental health facility).
All of which helps explain why the cover of Alex Ross’s new book The Rest is Noise was so deeply familiar to me. I grew up with images just like this around the house. I “knew” exactly what work that referenced. I also “knew” that I’d be able to Google the referent in a couple of minutes, at most.


Well, I was wrong about that. I never was able to track down the original, and it wasn’t for lack of effort.
So I am reduced to this: Alex (or anybody else): where have I seen the cover of your book before? First person to supply the answer will receive a handsome selection of stickers featuring utterly obscure Austrian soccer players (I am so not kidding about this). —Martin Schneider

Norman Mailer, 1923-2007

On the New Yorker website, Louis Menand reflects on the late Norman Mailer’s life and career. Mailer himself rarely contributed to The New Yorker, though. Until Tina Brown’s tenure, Mailer had published only two short poems in the magazine, both in 1961. There are just five bylines in all. As one of America’s most important postwar writers and a frequent object of public attention, he was far more often written about; a search on his name in The Complete New Yorker yields more than 100 hits.
Indeed, it would appear that Mailer had little interest in writing for the magazine. Perhaps he considered that a New Yorker byline would be incidental to his various projects—to remake American literature, to upend the battle of the sexes, to provide a channel whereby citizens could regain authenticity. Nevertheless, he’s enough of an icon to have served as the subject of a New Yorker cartoon—eight times. This 1997 Lee Lorenz drawing is apropos.
Mailer’s reputation doesn’t rest primarily on his novels (although I still plan to read The Naked and the Dead). Provocateur, mayoral candidate, co-founder of The Village Voice, journalist of genius, he did not squander his tenure on this planet. —Martin Schneider

10.8.07 Issue: Suddenly There Came a Tapping

In which the staff of Emdashes reviews the high points and discusses the particulars of the previous week’s issue (or, occasionally, another edition).
Tessa Hadley’s story “Married Love” started out comic and, by the end, worked in helpless regret. This is one of those stories where it’s difficult to tell where the comic leaves off. The story reminded me of the flaky October-June marriage in Zoë Heller’s Notes on a Scandal; these families could be neighbors. The standout article for me was Rebecca Mead’s Reporter at Large, “Our Man in Pyongyang,” about Bobby Egan, a New Jersey restaurateur who is our primary back channel to North Korea.
And if you were considering following Nancy Franklin’s advice and watch Friday Night Lights, by all means do. Standup comedian Patton Oswalt called it “the closest thing…to a Dogme 95 film on television,” the endorsement that induced me to investigate.
The Writers Guild strike has upended both the foreseeable future for so many good shows (and their writers) and the ethics of purchasing a DVD (for which writers earn meager residuals—as of now), but note that Friday Night Lights‘ creators are so confident in its quality that they offer a money-back guarantee. —Martin Schneider