Updike with People

Emily Gordon: Was John Updike full of elegant ideas and excellent elocution? Did a nicely suited David Remnick ask respectful questions and gently tease the Rabbit raconteur about his stellar work ethic and multiple writing desks facing the sea? Did Updike confess his early ambitions to be a cartoonist and entreat us to read the classics? Were all the audience members called on to ask questions men? (I actually didn’t see any women getting up to the mike; at Lorrie Moore, on the other hand, male questioners were ignored.) Was Updike fond yet a little censorious about William Shawn’s fidgets about references to sexual organs? What do you think? On what would have been F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 109th birthday, Updike could only shake his head in sorrow and say, in effect, Jugs, Not Drugs. No, no, naturally he was much more articulate and sincere than that, and did not make infantile puns. More in a bit.

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |

30% Juice

Emily Gordon: in the iBook and there’s still Steve Martin and the cartoonists to go. I want you to know that in the interest of maximum New Yorkerness and blogger/performer ratio, I’m passing up Nancy Franklin interviewing Ricky Gervais—that’s two of the cleverest, bitingest people I know of—to see a whole host of Nyer cartoonists, including Chief Pen Cap Bob Mankoff. I write about the cartoons a lot, and I feel warmly toward the cartoonists, on the whole. I even think William Hamilton is funny more often than I used to, although his female bodies are oddly anatomical-drawing-y, almost anime in their, ah, antigravitational quality. Anyway, here’s Franklin on Gervais in the magazine as a condolence. I’m having a drink with someone later who’ll have been at that, so I’ll ask him how hilariously great it was. Although—in the Office DVD commentaries, Gervais is a little more preening than might be ideal. I guess I can’t really blame him.

I’m at 27% power now; really, that seems awfully fast.

24 September 2005 | uncategorized |