I Only Read It For The Cartoons by Richard Gehr

I love The New Yorker. Truth is, I am sort of obsessed with it. Many of my literary heroes wrote for it and I try to read just about everything that comes out about the mag and its' illustrious history while still trying to keep up with my subscription. (Last Summer, I got caught up for the first time in three years, a triumph known only to regular subscribers, but soon fell behind again. Currently, I'm reading the July 21st issue and Friday is Halloween.) Naturally, I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of this. 

Cartoons are part of what makes The New Yorker distinctive and enduring. Here Richard Gehr writes about and speaks with twelve prominent cartoonists whose work you'll recognize even if you don't know them by name. You get a wealth of background, back story, and behind-the-scenes stories. Some of these characters (and they are characters!) have been drawing for the magazine for decades, others far less, but they all have that certain something that makes their cartoons "New Yorker cartoons". Few other cartoons can be distinguished in such a way, especially these days, with newspapers having gone the way of the dodo and few other magazines bothering with the art form any more. Cartooning is practically an endangered species and that makes this examination of these artists all the richer.  

A real treat comes at the end when New Yorker cartoon editor and contributor Bob Mankoff discusses the process of choosing the cartoons for each issue. As one would expect from the mag, it is a painstaking process but it obviously pays off time and again, week after week. 

That said, this might be a book for dorky New Yorker obsessives like me and not for someone who wishes to read cartoons. For that, you'll need another book entirely. May I suggest The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker, a magnificent coffee table volume that will supply you with all you need and more.

Sadly, one of the greats featured in the book, Charles Barsotti, he of kings and puppies, passed away this June, just a few months before the book pubbed. 

"It's been a long time, I shouldn't have left you..."

Eric B & Rakim quotes aside, I've been reading a great deal since last I posted.  I just finished Michael Chabon's latest, Telegraph Avenue, as well as Per Peterson's It's Fine By Me, both of which I'll write about at length soon enough, however, I've been doing a lot of dipping between a number of books that are well worth their while.  

First off, The Fun of It: Stories from the Talk of the Town.  Edited by Lillian Ross, who joined the New Yorker in 1945, this chronological collection of "casuals" from the magazine is a delight, especially if you're like me (and I know I am) and enjoy the short, engaging pieces at the front of each issue that leave you wanting more.  Great writing from great writers--James Thurber, Harold Ross, A J Liebling, Joseph Mitchell through the Shawn era staff and onto the current class including David Remnick, Jeffrey Toobin and Rebecca Mead.   

Here's a quote I found especially interesting: "Freshman congressmen come here [to Congress] half persuaded that their constituents' impression of them is true, that they are going to save the country, only to find out that the mechanics don't exist for saving the country through Congress."  That was from Congresswoman Claire Boothe Luce.  In 1943.  Nothing changes.

I'm halfway through Frances and Bernard, an epistolary novel by Carlene Bauer.  Thus far I'm intrigued but I'm uncertain I like the characters all that much.  It will be a testament to Bauer's writing to turn my head.  Still, good stuff so far and I have time to form my opinion since the book won't be out until February.

Revisiting A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel and find it just as charming and laugh-out-loud funny as I remember.  This is one of those books I've been lending to friends since it was published in 2001 and not one of them has ever given it back without telling me how much they enjoyed it.  Please read or re-read this memoir about 'growing up small in Mooreland, Indiana' as the sub-title says.  I'm not sure where Kimmel is now but I do hope she's still at the writing game.

Surprisingly, Grove published another collection of Sherman Alexie short stories, this one entitled Blasphemy, which is a mix of old and new.  I thought I remember Alexie leaving Grove and going to another house at the time War Dance was published.  Perhaps I'm mistaken or maybe this is the last of some contractual obligation, a live album or collection of b-sides, if you will.  As an apostle of Alexie, I had to have it (Thanks Jen) and find the book quite satisfying and rife with stories you'd expect from him--some touching, some beautiful, some infuriating.  I was happy to re-read "What You Pawn, I Will Redeem" as well as "This is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona", the basis for the movie Smoke Signals.  As mentioned before here in my little corner of cyberspace, Alexie is not everyone's cup of YooHoo but I think he is a master. 

Speaking of things cyber, The Movie Uncyclopedia was recently published as an e-book.  I had the great good fortune to be involved promoting both The Football Uncyclopedia and The Baseball Uncyclopedia.  This time around Michael Kun (who is just the nicest fella), Lou Harry (with whom I spent one of the funniest evenings of my life), Eric Feinstein (who I don't know at all), and Theresa Hoiles (who I hears smells nice) skewer the world of film and film fans. Together, they pool their years of movie-watching experience and let 'er rip reminding readers that what you remember and know about your favorite films is wrong, wrong, wrong.  Fat with footnotes and playful in-fighting among each other, they tackle some of the burning issues of filmdom with the grace of a sledgehammer.  Included at no additional charge--THE MOST EXCITING INTRODUCTION EVER!  Funny stuff, as ever, from this bunch. 

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Before Passover passes me by, here's the perfect title to accompany all that matzah you might be eating.  


People of the Book is a remarkable novel whose main character is a book, the celebrated Sarajevo Haggadah.  The haggadah is read during the Passover seder that commemorates the exodus of the enslaved Jews in Egypt.  Think Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments. You know, "Let My People Go!", parting of the Red Sea, killing of the firstborn, Yul Brynner as Pharoah, the whole bit.  Throw in some songs, some wine and a reminder what a tremendous disappointment I was to my parents and it's like you're at the table with us. 

A magnificently and uncharacteristically illustrated version, the Sarajevo Haggadah is believed to have been created in Spain in the 1400's.  At some point in the 16th century, it turned up in Italy and then at the very end of the 1800s, it was sold to the National Museum of Sarajevo.  During World War II and the long, ugly Bosnian wars, the Haggadah was hidden and kept safe, in one instance by the museum director, himself a Muslim.  You can read Brooks' fascinating New Yorker piece about the Haggadah and the museum director here: http://goo.gl/74ykP

In broad strokes, those are the facts.  What Brooks does then is piece together a dazzling work of fiction by imagining who wrote it, who commissioned it, who illustrated it, and who kept it safe in a longer narrative broken up by period pieces and some contemporary conspiracy.  

Having never read her before, I can say Brooks is a gifted writer, given to clean prose, believable dialogue and a tremendous nose for research.  There are some contrivances along the way but they don't take away from this ambitious and satisfying book.  

Happy Passover.

An old friend visits

The work of James Thurber has meant a great deal to me since I paid a quarter for a copy of The Thurber Carnival at a thrift store almost 25 years ago. Most people had to read "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" or "The Catbird Seat" as part of a college collection or as an assignment in high school. Maybe that's all the Thurber most people need but his work spoke to me immediately and with immediacy. It was smart and funny and literate and snobby and drunken and sad--all qualities to which I aspired. For many years, I would bore most anyone who would listen to me go on (and on and on) about James Thurber. His work turned me on to Perelman, Runyon, Benchley and the rest of the Harold Ross/New Yorker set and changed how I read.

The other night, for the first time in several years, I picked up The Thurber Carnival and am delighted to report it is STILL smart and funny and literate and snobby and drunken and sad. Certainly it is dated and some of the pieces have little in common with our present world nor how humor has evolved since but the writing holds up as truly classic American literature.


The selections, especially those from The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze, knocked me out all over again: Elliot Vereker from "Something To Say", Barney Haller's accented speech and Thurber's fear of 'grotches' from "The Black Magic of Barney Haller", Charlie Deshler 'coming out of the anesthetic' of his wife's charms from "The Curb In the Sky". Still funny, still clever, still beautifully written. I was also quite moved by the longing and loneliness in both The Evening's At Seven and One Is A Wanderer. Thurber is remembered as a writer of humor but he was a hell of a writer, period.

I could go on (and usually do) but instead suggest you, too, dig out your old copy of The Thurber Carnival and give it a read. Or should you come across a copy in a thrift store, spend the quarter. My guess is you will be rewarded and delighted.