Category Archives: Letters & Challenges

Reminder: Enter our Olivia Gentile Giveaway — Two Days Left!

Martin Schneider writes:
If you happened to miss Tuesday’s announcement of our giveaway of Olivia Gentile’s new book, you have two days to go! We’ve gotten an impressive response to our first post, which pleases us no end, but you shouldn’t let that dissuade you from entering—you gotta be in it to win it, some great bard once sang.
Send us an email, subject line “BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER,” and include your name and full mailing address. We won’t accept anything after 8:00 pm EST on Sunday, April 19, so don’t dilly-dally (we also advise you not to shilly-shally).
Good luck!

Book Giveaway: Olivia Gentile’s “Life List”

Martin Schneider writes:
Emdashes is pleased to be hosting giving away three copies of Life List, a biography of Phoebe Snetsinger by Olivia Gentile that was released just a few days ago. The term “life list” signifies a list of the birds a person has seen in the wild, as all birders are aware. (Here is my life list, for instance.) The book is about a very unusual twitcher (birders’ term for a birdwatcher who is perhaps unduly concerned with adding new birds to his or her life list), and it sounds marvelous. I can’t wait to read it.
Here are favorable notices the book has received from two well-known people:

Except for one thing, this book would rate as a great adventure novel and fictional psychological portrait, about a woman’s obsession with bird-watching, its effect on her relationships with her husband and her four children, and the horrifying mishaps that she survived on each continent—until the last mishap. But the book isn’t that great novel, because instead it’s a great true story: the biography of Phoebe Snetsinger, who set the world record for bird species seen, after growing up in an era when American women weren’t supposed to be competitive or have careers. Whether or not you pretend that it’s a novel, you’ll enjoy this powerful, moving story.

—Jared Diamond

Gentile’s tale of a desperate but determined housewife with a passion for birds and adventure is engrossing, sharp, and affecting—a touching portrait and great read.

—Susan Orlean

If you have not seen the author’s entertaining and striking website, you should.
Here are the rules: Drop us an email, subject line “BLACKBURNIAN WARBLER,” and please include your name and full mailing address. We’ll take all entries until 8:00 pm EST on Sunday, April 19, and then the Random Number Generator will intervene with its trademark dispassion. Good luck to all entrants!

Complaint: Damn You, New Yorker, for Being So Good!

Martin Schneider writes:
I don’t think it’s much of a secret that The New Yorker occupies some unusual cultural turf. The New Yorker is known for high quality and also, sometimes, disliked or resented for occupying its position so confidently or unapologetically. As a result you often run into people avowing their dislike for the magazine even as they acknowledge its high quality in the very same breath. One form this takes is disgust over the high piles of worthy issues that amass in the corners of subscribers’ apartments and cause pangs of guilt—an odd reproach at best, and yet understandable.
Yesterday I noticed that one of our nation’s finest political bloggers, native Manhattanite and current Washingtonian Matthew Yglesias, had twittered, “Going to give in and subscribe to The New Yorker.” That piqued my interest, so I wrote him and inquired what constituted “giving in.” Below is his reply—I think it captures a certain paradoxical love/hate attitude towards The New Yorker as well as anything I can think of.

I’m a hater by instinct, and everyone’s great love for the New Yorker (“everyone” here meaning, of course, the kind of people I know) has left me sullen and resentful for years because, honestly, it’s not as good as people say. But over these past few months of roommateless living when I haven’t been able to ever, ever poach a glance at someone else’s copy I’ve been finding something . . . missing from my life. Like really I like the magazine more than I care to admit. So I broke down and subscribed.

In this economic climate, it’s cheering to hear of anyone initiating magazine subscriptions. We hope you enjoy it, Matt! And don’t forget that subscription brings with it free access to every issue the magazine ever published, in the Digital Edition. (Sometimes the word doesn’t get out to subscribers.)

Daniyal Mueenuddin Book Giveaway: Closed for Entries

Martin Schneider writes:
If you can read this, then it’s 8:00 pm Friday evening on the East Coast, which means it’s time to turn on Ghost Whisperer too late to send us an entry to our fabulous Daniyal Mueenuddin giveaway.
In fact, we even have a winner already: Congratulations to Shannon Doherty!
Everyone else, don’t fret: we will be hosting more giveaways like this in no time at all.

Call for Information: Russell Maloney

Martin Schneider writes:
In Comments, Ken Nettleton seeks information on a prominent New Yorker contributor from the past:

Have a very elderly friend whose husband was a Harvard friend of a Russ Maloney (sp?) or Mahoney who worked at the New Yorker and was a contemporary of EB White. His wife’s name was Miriam who was an actress. Belief Mr. Maloney/Mahoney died from an anurysm after he lost his wealth in a failed musical. Would like to find some record (if any) of Mr. M’s writing and what ever happened to his daughter after his wife remarried.

Russell Maloney (not Mahoney) is credited with 387 items in The Complete New Yorker between 1931 and 1948. The vast majority of them are Comments or Talk of the Town items, both of which were unsigned for many years, I believe. So the occasional Profile or short story notwithstanding, it’s likely that readers were not aware of his large impact on The New Yorker in its formative first decades.
According to Wikipedia, Maloney wrote the book and lyrics for a 1948 Broadway musical of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which must be the “failed musical” Nettleton mentions. According to Time Magazine, he died in 1948 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Miriam Maloney is credited with four Talk of the Town items herself. Can anyone help Mr. Nettleton discover what became of their daughter?

Book Giveaway: Daniyal Mueenuddin’s “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders”

Martin Schneider writes:
Emdashes is pleased to be hosting a book giveaway this week, for In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s first collection of short stories, which is being released today. Mueenuddin has had three stories in The New Yorker over the last two years, and there’s every reason to think that he will be a writer to watch for some time to come. As an example, here’s Publishers Weekly‘s review of the book:

In eight beautifully crafted, interconnected stories, Mueenuddin explores the cutthroat feudal society in which a rich Lahore landowner is entrenched. A complicated network of patronage undergirds the micro-society of servants, families and opportunists surrounding wealthy patron K.K. Harouni. In “Nawabdin Electrician,” Harouni’s indispensable electrician, Nawab, excels at his work and at home, raising 12 daughters and one son by virtue of his cunning and ingenuity-qualities that allow him to triumph over entrenched poverty and outlive a robber bent on stealing his livelihood. Women are especially vulnerable without the protection of family and marriage ties, as the protagonist of “Saleema” learns: a maid in the Harouni mansion who cultivates a love affair with an older servant, Saleema is left with a baby and without recourse when he must honor his first family and renounce her. Similarly, the women who become lovers of powerful men, as in the title story and in “Provide, Provide,” fall into disgrace and poverty with the death of their patrons. An elegant stylist with a light touch, Mueenuddin invites the reader to a richly human, wondrous experience.

Here are the rules: Drop us an email, subject line “NAWABDIN ELECTRICIAN” and please include your name and full mailing address. We’ll take all entries until 8:00 pm EST on Friday, February 13, and then the Random Number Generator will make its merciless decision. And good luck to all entrants!

Emdashes Holiday Contest: Give a Gift, Maybe Get a Book!

In this recessionary holiday season, a good many people are regrettably obliged to give fewer (or less overtly dazzling) gifts. We at Emdashes would like to help you express your inherent generosity (it is a fact that all Emdashes readers are generous and good-looking), if in virtual mode. And you might even get something in return: The person who submits the cleverest entry will receive a copy of Joshua Henkin’s novel Matrimony.
I have not yet read it, but it’s on my wish list (of the mind, not on Amazon). Attentive Emdashes readers (all Emdashes readers also possessing superior powers of recollection) will recall that I have been mightily impressed by Henkin’s blogging style at The Elegant Variation, and I feel confident that he writes good novels as well.
All you have to do is dream up a holiday present for a well-known New Yorker-related personality from the past or present. You can give Harold Ross a comb, Shirley Jackson a rock-proof vest, or George Saunders his own branch of Madame Tussaud’s populated only by statues of waxy Russian novelists (who animatronically recite their works at length). The possibilities are limitless! Each entry should consist of a person, a gift, and a brief (emphasis on the word brief) explanation; if you think the gift alone is amusing enough, you are permitted to dispense with the explanation. Feel free to submit gifts to multiple people; the more the merrier!
Longtime readers—i.e., all Emdashes readers—will recall a Valentine’s post from 2007 along the same lines; feel free to use as inspiration.
The deadline is January 9 (that’s a Friday). Send your submissions to martin@emdashes.com.
Good luck to all entrants!