David Remnick speaks energetically and eloquently to a silent, invisible NBC News interviewer about the late Boris Yeltsin; Remnick pronounces “Chechnya” just like a Russian (as far as I can tell), and Eustace Tilley provides quality control from his shoulder like either a stern angel or an impudent devil. If you leave the MSN site running after the Yeltsin segment but switch windows on your browser, as I did, you may be startled by some disgruntled snuffling; that’s the next segment, in which “for the first time ever, the rare and elusive Borneo rhino is seen on video in the wild”; its nostrils are impressive.
Category Archives: Eds.
People of Cover
Martin Schneider writes:
I wanted to address reader Bruce’s comment to the last “Squib Report” post. Here’s what he wrote:
What is so interesting about the current cover is that this is the second time in the magazine’s history that they have shown people of colour in the drawing. Otherwise it is not a great cover.
When I first read this, I immediately thought of Tina Brown’s second-ever cover, which celebrated Malcolm X (and was timed to coincide with Spike Lee’s movie), and Art Spiegelman’s “controversial” 1993 Valentine’s Day cover.
A few minutes with The Complete New Yorker produced this list:
January 19, 1929
January 10, 1931
November 21, 1936
March 9, 1940
February 7, 1942
January 9, 1971
December 28, 1992
September 13, 1993
October 17, 1994
January 16, 1995
January 30, 1995 (sort of)
December 4, 1995
March 11, 1996
April 28, 1997
July 26, 1999
January 17, 2000
February 14, 2000
April 2, 2001
October 27, 2003
June 28, 2004
September 12, 2005
I am sure there are many other examples—and this list only counts Africans or African-Americans. If we broadened it to include Asians, Inuits, Native Americans, and so on, the list would be considerably longer.
I’m sure we can all take issue with The New Yorker‘s blind spots or paternalism over the years—it’s been a tumultuous eight decades!—and The New Yorker has certainly never been easily confused with Ebony. Still, Bruce—you’re going to have to make your case in some other way!
David Remnick, Mandy Moore, and Guy Maddin Share a Surprising Secret
To wit, they’re all in this post. Oh, susceptible feed-readers!
David Remnick makes plenty of good sense in the London Independent, though if you read the fine print it’s actually an excerpt from a Stop Smiling interview. But if you actually visit Stop Smiling, at least if you’re me, you’ll be unable to find the Remnick interview, and will have to content yourself by reading instead about one of your favorite filmmakers, Guy Maddin. And if, after you read the Remnick interview, you’d like to see a photo of him looking rather stern as he interviews Barack Obama, Mediabistro has provided one.
Also, although it’s tempting to view Britney et al. as paragons of grammatical virtue, the quite handy and culturally relevant site Celebrity English will set you straight. Among C.E.’s many practical features:
Grammar Examples
Hone your grammar skills! Janet Jackson and Owen Wilson will teach you about run-on sentences. Madonna and Nicole Kidman will teach you about dangling participles. Which stars would you like to teach you about subject/verb agreement? How about Johnny Depp? Britney Spears? Tom Cruise?
Vocabulary Examples
Have fun while you improve your word power! Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt will teach you about words that mean “charitable” and “inclination.” Paris Hilton will teach you what “contrition” and “explicate” mean. Orlando Bloom will show you the difference between “avocation” and “vocation.” Learn why Scarlett Johansson is adamant about a decision she made.
Plus, who’s making the most mistakes? Only Celebrity English knows! It’s almost The Chicago Manual of Life & Style, a publication that would suit me to a T.
David Remnick Demonstrates the Correct Usage of “Hopefully”
In his Comment this week about Al Gore, global warming, &c.:
Even the national pastime was in danger. “But,†Gore added hopefully, “I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush when he says, ‘We will find the steroid users if we have to tap every phone in America!’ â€
There you have it. That’s how to employ “hopefully”; it means “with hope.” My mother taught me to say “with any luck” when the world’s bad influences whisper phrases like “Hopefully, I will win the Nobel Prize in Literature.” I pass that along to you, hopefully. If anyone is getting ready to recite that the English language is always evolving, I will globally warm them.
Paging Nicholson Baker
If you live in Victoria, British Columbia, you can scoop up a whole bunch of vintage magazines for a song, including many ’30s and ’40s New Yorkers, because the public library there is dumping all its messy old paper onto the bargain table. “A separate table will be reserved for the oldest magazines, which will be sold by silent auction.” Indeed.
David Remnick will quite rightly be winning The Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award from the National Press Foundation.
Leaves You Wanting Less calls David Rakoff’s writeup of his Woody Allen binge “positively Kael-worthy.”
As for Zbigniew: I naturally assumed the parents in question were poets (who are often drunk), and the name was a tribute to the great Zbigniew Herbert, whose deathless “Mr. Cogito” poems were introduced to me by Phillis Levin, who has herself been in The New Yorker not a few times.
The Sportswriter: Remnick Spotted on Subway Train Metro-North
By this alert reader, who was nevertheless too absorbed in a Richard Ford novel to get the lay of the land, that is, what Remnick was reading as he traveled along, or whether he was alone rather than, say, in a group of women with men. Even still, such a sighting is the ultimate good luck for any New York writer sort of person, a sort of Independence Day of the spirit, beset as it so often is by a multitude of sins, that pack of snarling wildlife. I’ve heard of Remnick sightings in Central Park among the rocky springs, as well, which warms a piece of my heart.
Gravestones Are Forever, Plus Lillian Ross Pictures and More Allen Shawn
From Boston’s The Weekly Dig, a whole story about Drew Dernavich’s cartoons and tombstones. Didn’t know Dernavich engraved tombstones? Then you haven’t read this Boston Globe story about how the relatives of deceased Beantowners are up in arms over whimsical Boomer epitaphs like “The Happy Tomato” and “Who the hell is Sheila Shea,” and marble portraits that are less than Puritan. Dernavich is quoted there, but the new story’s a real profile:
“I’m not drawing in cartoony style. They’re like prints with captions,†Dernavich explains. “I’ve always been interested in printmaking and woodcuts. It makes sense to me. It feels natural. At first, I’d draw like this and think, ‘This isn’t a cartoon style.’ I tried to teach myself to draw cartoony; I guess I taught myself pretty badly. They all had this kind of schizophrenia—you’d have a realistic-looking pant leg with a cartoon head on top. It took a long time for me to figure out that your work doesn’t have to look like SpongeBob to be a cartoon…. I’ve always liked the stark black and white of the German expressionist printmakers, even though you’d never call that stuff humorous. Actually, it’s incredibly depressing—woodcuts of people hanging themselves. It’s very painful, but I love the stark look of it. I don’t know if that makes it any funnier. But I can draw a guy with a bulb nose and buck teeth, and that doesn’t make it funny, either. You don’t have to have a funny style if your material is good. You don’t need a laugh track—people can figure out what’s funny on their own.â€
Also, in re dead people, happy birthday, Robert Burns. Not at all in re dead people: The MoMA is having a film tribute to Lillian Ross from February 23-28, and the Times has a nice profile of Allen Shawn.
Harold From the Block, the Key to the City, and a “Celebrity Tonguemeister”
NYC Blocks, you’re the most welcome new fish in the aquarium (I don’t read a lot of blogs, aside from those I find absolutely necessary; if anything, these days, I read wondrous things like this) since the splendiferous Today in Letters. Read David Crohn’s most recent (that is, his second) post on NYC Blocks, “11th Street Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.” A snippet: “Musical iconoclast Charles Ives, playwright Oscar Wilde and famed New Yorker editor Harold Ross liked the block so much they once called it home, but my favorite residence is still occupied by some of its original inhabitants….”
History-digging? Renting? Buying? Strolling? Read on. Also, unrelated: Is Jay McInerney the Truman Capote of wine, meaning, to this writer, “a celebrity tonguemesiter with forelock tugged to any passing celebrity or supertaster”?
Allen Shawn’s Memoir, “Wish I Could Be There: Notes From a Phobic Life”
From the Daily News today (link mine):
WISH I COULD BE THERE by Allen Shawn (Viking, $24.95). Shawn, a composer, writer and son of the legendary former editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn, suffers from both claustrophobia and agoraphobia – which means his fears mount both indoors and out. In a book that is a memoir as well as a scientific exploration of phobias, he searches his childhood and the workings of the brain for an understanding. His background was privileged but troubled and it seemed he is further betrayed by his neurophysiology. A must-read for the panic-prone.
I’m really looking forward to reading this. You should click on the Amazon link to, at the very least, admire Viking’s evocative, closed-in, subtly sad book-jacket design. If anyone knows who designed it—Amazon’s not letting me see inside the book—let me know. (Update: The book-jacket designer is Herb Thornby. Thanks, helpful reader-tipster!) “Wish I Could Be There” sounds like a play on “Wish You Were Here,” but it would seem to echo another book title, “Here But Not Here,” as well.
John O’Hara to Harold Ross: “I Have Decided to Reject Your Rejection”
From his January 1939 letter to Ross, just added to the brand-new and already much appreciated Today in Letters, a blog begun recently by Brian Sholis. Sholis, who just contributed a piece to PRINT and whose keen New Yorker event reporting I’ve called attention to before, calls his new enterprise “a ‘this day in history’ for literary correspondence and diaries.” The entries so far include a letter from Baudelaire to his mother from 1856; a 1928 Isak Dinesen dispatch; a 1937 letter from Elizabeth Bishop to Marianne Moore; and a 1661 Pepys diary entry. What a great idea! It’s going to be fun to see what he chooses. I’ve kept The Faber Book of Diaries and The Faber Book of Letters on my bedside table for years, since they’re so damn entertaining.
Waiting for a post you’ve been looking forward to on Emdashes? All in good time; intern applications now being accepted. Benefits: invitation to fix my defunct Complete New Yorker, all the popcorn you can eat, iTunes aplenty, and friendly smiles.