Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I hadn't really thought about the fact that there are so few
publications that use single panel cartoons. Given the available
talent, as evidenced by the thousands of wonderful rejected
cartoons, this seems like a terrible shame. Do political cartoonists
ever submit non-political cartoons to TNY? Have other magazines made
any steps toward at least exploring using cartoons?
  

    
What are these "other magazines" of which you speak? Haven't our
digital overlords prohibited most of them?
  

    
There is that.
  

    
Which makes me wonder if there's a future for this form. On the one
hand, see above. On the other hand, it annoys me when the New Yorker
gets off a good one because I have Facebook friends who'll post it
immediately. (I have, over a long period of self-discipline, taught
myself to leaf through the new issue when it arrives and not read
any captions.)
  

    
>>Do political cartoonists
ever submit non-political cartoons to TNY? Have other magazines made
any steps toward at least exploring using cartoons?

I believe TNY runs cartoons partially to suck people into the hard
reportage. No political cartoonists in that department. Cartoons
seems to have drifted out of the media consciousness. But whenever
I'm reading some "longread" (ick), I wonder why it's not broken up
with cartoons. In TNY, it keeps the reader flipping the pages, if
nothing else. 

I agree that magazines are on the verge of extinction. But we'll
still be reading stuff online in one form or another, at least in
the short term. And there has to be something other than targeted
advertising to break up the text. 
  

    
Still waiting for your favorite 'toons, Ed. Look forward to enjoying
when I get back from La Mama in a few hours.
  

    


was thinking about cartoonists being driven to extinction --- so few
newspapers left, whether a mainstream or alt weekly; no place for a conrad
or tom tomorrow. if you cant practice and you cant aspire and you cant get
paid, then....

when there were cartoons/cartoonists stepping up with cartoons in solidarity
with the charlie hebdo massacre, was struck by how lame the US ones were and
how much better the european ones were --- simply because it appears in
europe there are still outlets for cartoonists, so they get to practice what
they do and arent entirely extinct as a species.

along the same lines, the new book out 'culture crash' (of course published
by a university press).

anyway back to TNY!
  

    
I can't think of individual cartoons as favorites, mainly because
I've been looking at them for so long. That one I mentioned early
on, about saying you're a Democrat, that was obviously from the
Eisenhower era. 

Now, cartoonists I like in the New Yorker include classics like
Chas. Addams, Thurber (I spent a bunch of my childhood consuming
everything I could by those two), Sempé, Steinberg. 

Current ones include Shanahan (long-time fan), Barsotti (RIP), Chast
(obvious, huh?), Shannon Wheeler, Diffey, Haefeli (who strikes me as
a modern version of what's his name...William Hamilton? The guy who
mostly draws upper-crust folks...once had 'toons in the SF
Chronicle, if I remember right), Steed... Not all of them hit all
the time, but these spring to mind. Sometimes a woman I think is
related to Joan Accocella does some witty stuff, and there are other
rare sightings that don't come to mind immediately. 

What I miss is the occasional multi-page spread they used to do back
when Crumb was contributing, even if some of them were by that
miserable guy who did that interminable, eye-straining book about
multiple generations of boys who hated -- and then became -- their
fathers. 
  

    
Incidentally, while our digital overlords have decreed that we must
all read on screens from now on, I've read studies confirming my own
observation that one retains less in that format. I take my iPad
with the New Yorkers I haven't read with me when I travel, and I
find that the long pieces are harder to read that way. The
permanence of paper, plus the disposability of a magazine, is
something you just don't get on line. 

There are people I know who say that this will eventually swing back
to a manageable situation. I hope so, but have little faith that it
will be so. 
  

    
Can't read the signature but I have had a copy of a Ny'er cartoon
for a long time, featuring the Grim Reaper in front of a CEO's desk,
which reads "Who the hell are you? And how did you get past Miss
Merryweather?"
  

    
>>What I miss is the occasional multi-page spread they used to do
back
when Crumb was contributing, even if some of them were by that
miserable guy who did that interminable, eye-straining book about
multiple generations of boys who hated -- and then became -- their
fathers. 

They reprinted several pages of Chast's book right before it came
out. But I agree that they should do it more often. Not sure who the
"miserable guy" is you're talking about, though. Sounds like it
could be Jules Feiffer but I'm sure it isn't.
  

    
No, I finally sold the huge book he put out via my Amazon store.
Title is Somebody Somebody, the Smartest Boy on Earth, only with the
name in there. He occasionally does covers. Agggh.
  

    
There is nothing better than sinking into a piping hot bubble bath with a
fresh copy of The New Yorker. This only works with paper, may it never die.
  

    
Ed is thinking of Chris Ware. I think they printed a long excerpt from
"Building Stories" as well as "Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on
Earth." I really like Ware's geometric, nonlinear style, even if his
stories are often quite bleak.

Art Spiegelman has also done a couple extended pieces -- I kept one,
in which he talks with Maurice Sendak.

At $750 per publication, it sounds like many of these cartoonists
would need second jobs, especially if the acceptance ratio is so low.
  

    
But doesn't Conde Nast have a pretty good aftermarket thing set up,
with selling copies (and originals), and licensing cartoons for a
bunch of things, not to mention the (to me) obnoxious use of their
cartoonists in multi-page advertising spreads?

(And yes, Chris Ware. Bleak, hopeless, pointless, great technique). 
  

    
Cartoonists used to be able to almost eke out a living at The New
Yorker. Not any more, alas. But I think most of them also illustrate
and do other commercial work. Barsotti, for example, had a *very*
lucrative deal with a British stationery company.

Most artists seem to feel that Conde Nast screwed up the Cartoon
Bank, which they bought from Bob Mankoff before making him cartoon
editor. But, yes, print sales can add up for a popular cartoon. I
forget the exact figure, but "On the Internet no one knows you're a
dog" earned the artist more than $100K. 

Chris Ware certainly isn't for everyone. I think he's formally
magnificent but emotionally chilly. Plus he works so small my eyes
hurt.
  

    
>>There is nothing better than sinking into a piping hot bubble bath
with a fresh copy of The New Yorker. This only works with paper.

I usually end up reading TNY on my phone on the subway, which is
probably possible in a tub, although I've never tried. (I'd add
something about this being the second funnest thing you can do with
one hand, but I am not crass.)
  

    
Chast has become a small industry, doing books with Steve Martin and
Stephin Merritt, and of course the great "Can We Talk About Something
More Pleasant?" And good for her -- I had often thought she'd be great
at a long-format work. 
  

    
I realized the other night what must be my favorite NYer cartoon, since
I repeat it often (even if it's under my breath). It's by Bruce Kaplan
(BEK), showing a typical psychiatrist scene; patient on couch, doctor
in chair, and the doctor angrily says:

"Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Next!"
  

    
Oh yeah, Chast is a factory. Most cartoonists seem happy to just get
a collection out every few years – although I wonder if those sell
anymore. However, Chast's recent memoir and her previous book, "What
I Hate: From A to Z," are definitely innovative. Which is why she
was the first cartoonist to become a National Book Award finalist.

One of the interesting things about such collections, as well as the
magazine's annual best-of cartoon anthologies, is that you get to
see the work in its original size and format. Cartoons are often
resized to fit into the magazine's fairly rigid horizontal grid.
Things have loosened up a little in the past couple of years due to
artists' complaints. But in the past, cartoons could extend upward
and outward, and sometimes even jump the page. 

Chast and Steed are probably the magazine's two main innovators in
terms of drawing outside the box, so to speak. 
  

    
BEK rocks, at least as a cartoonist. Unfortunately, he was the only
cartoonist I approached for my book who totally blew me off. Didn't
return my emails, phone calls, nada. Yeah, I know he's Mr. HBO
Executive Producer dude for "Girls" and stuff. But still.
  

    
Stop the presses! Chast has a new book out. "Around the Clock" is "a
whimsical tour of a day in the life of 23 children, showing the
funny things they do at each hour of the day. (“From 7 to 8, Billy’s
muse/ tells him to paint the room chartreuse.”)"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/roz-chast-talks-about-her-ne
w-childrens-book-around-the-clock/2015/01/28/020e25ec-a237-11e4-b146-577832eaf
cb4_story.html
  

    
I ignore the cartoons, but read the poems - because...I'm a poet.
  

    
Way to contribute to the conversation, Bill. 

That Chast rhyme reminds me of Edward Gorey, actually, another odd
talent who would have fit in well with the New Yorker, but I don't
think ever contributed to it. 

Richard, do you think (as I sometimes do) that New Yorker cartoons
are becoming more topical (or that more of them are becoming
topical) with the result that they hold their humor for a shorter
period of time?
  

    
Bill, you should write a book called "I Only Read It for the
Stanzas: The New Yorker's Most Brilliantly Rhyme-Averse Poets."

New Yorker cartoons have always often been topical, in one way or
another. I just opened "The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker" to
the magazine's first year, 1925, and saw a cartoon where a kid asks,
"Pa, what's all this talk about evolution?" Dad replies, "Son, I'll
have to consult my attorney before I can answer that question. I
might be put in jail for it." It was the year of the Scopes trial,
of course. There are plenty of cartoons about the Great Depression,
WWII, and, in 1950, a guy asking his friend, "Say, Joe, what does a
North Korean *look* like?" So I don't think they're any more topical
now except maybe to the extent that we're all too familiar with
certain unavoidable memes and clichés. 

Maybe there are more media references now? I liked the J. C. Duffy
cartoon last week where a guy says to his wife, "LinkedIn has
finally paid off – it got me two new followers on Twitter." I
imagined the fact checker gleefully figuring out the correct
capitalization and (non-)spacing of LinkedIn.