When The New Yorker was founded, in 1925, by the square-jawed newspaperman Harold Ross and his wife, the feminist and journalist Jane Grant, it was envisioned as a comic weekly. Since its inaugural installment, it has been packed with amusing drawings. (Issue No. 1 featured a commuter dutifully heeding a sign that read “PLEASE! HELP US KEEP THE ‘L’ AND SUBWAY CLEAN,” by polishing a window with his handkerchief.) Soon, Ross was noting that “everybody talks of The New Yorker’s art—that is, its illustrations—and it has been described as the best magazine in the world for someone who cannot read.” And yet here you are, reader, at the very end of this paragraph, proving him wrong!
It is true, though, that the most popular cocktail-party confession that I, the cartoon editor, solemnly receive and usually absolve is that someone “reads” The New Yorker only for the cartoons. Or that he or she always reads the cartoons first. (This is just before the penitent pivots to a harangue about the injustice of never having won the caption contest.) Apparently, The New Yorker also prints a bunch of bummer facts about corruption and oppression and imminent eco-apocalypse, but this week it just so happens that all the people in charge of that sort of thing have gone away for the holidays.
Yes, you read that correctly. (Look at you—still bothering with all these words!) Every last one of the serious adult types at this publication is off mulling some wine, trimming a tree, roasting a chestnut, taking in a matinée of “Little Women,” lighting a candle, putting out a candle-related fire, or catching up on back issues of verbose periodicals. And who happened to be napping under a desk when the office was being securely locked up for the winter break? You guessed it—the Cartoon Department.
Finding ourselves trapped in here, sans H.V.A.C. but avec the boss’s filing-cabinet Scotch (the good stuff), we banged on the doors and called for help, then collapsed onto the floor, weeping and rending our clothes. Later, we watched “Risky Business,” to get inspiration for cat’s-away high jinks, and skated around the Fact-Checking Department in our socks. Finally, we decided to give the cocktail-party people what they deserve: a cartoon-takeover issue.
To that end, we’ve thumbed through the archives, rummaged around in editors’ waste bins, and peered into the space behind my desk where important things tend to fall, and we’ve pasted together something resembling a magazine. It includes such treasures as a 1997 piece by John Updike on his youthful aspirations to be a gag cartoonist (judge for yourselves); cartoon-inflected fiction and poetry; cartoons about cartooning; musings on early animation; and comics by Liana Finck, Emily Flake, Ebony Flowers, and Emma Hunsinger. Ever wanted to know what Larry David’s or Mindy Kaling’s or Terry Gross’s or Ta-Nehisi Coates’s favorite cartoon is? We’ve got you covered. Been craving a Profile of that patron saint of neurotic geniuses, Roz Chast? Read on. There’s some old stuff and some new stuff, all aimed at keeping you smiling into the New Year, which we have on good authority will be much funnier than its predecessor.
Nine and a half decades ago, Ross had this to say about the publication he was planning: “It will hate bunk.” Of late, bunk has irrefutably been on the rise; the antidote, now as then, is humor. Besides, who couldn’t use a laugh break from this whiplash-inducing carnival ride of a news cycle?
So, as you settle in for fireside holiday rants from your bunky uncle, we hope you enjoy this issue. (Tip: in its printed form, it can be rolled up and used as a low-impact weapon.) The ratio of pictures to words should satisfy even the most literacy-averse. Oh, and please send a locksmith, or at least a pizza. ♦
"cartoon" - Google News
December 23, 2019 at 06:02PM
https://ift.tt/2sUJABj
The Cartoon Department Coup - The New Yorker
"cartoon" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2s88pJG
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment