At wit's end Cartoonists of the New Yorker

New Yorker cartoonists are celebrated as characters in their own right in this mixed-bag illustrated tribute. Maslin (Peter Arno), a New Yorker cartoonist himself, provides brief profiles of his colleagues (including legends George Booth and Roz Chast, as well as newbies like Ellie Black) alongside MacWeeney's photographic portraits and a few of each subject's cartoons. Maslin's elegant prose ably evokes the artists' styles ("David Sipress's drawings seem on their way to collapsing; the scritchy lines of varying widths appear in need of adhesive tape to hold the whole thing together"), though the cartoons themselves are hit-or-miss. While Emily Flake amuses with her depiction of a jaded New York dad counseling his child on the playground ("Son, if you can't say something nice, say something clever but devastating"), the majority fall flat with head-scratching conceits (Drew Dernavich's "Stonehenge Squarepants" features a megalith decked out in men's underwear) or groan-worthy puns (Maslin contributes a cartoon of an angry pie yelling, "C'mon! You want a piece of me?"). Only the most avid New Yorker fans will be in on the joke. (Nov.)

Introduction For a magazine that's been around for a century, one might suppose that it has had its act together for much of that time. But the truth is: The New Yorker has been restless since its debut in the mid-Roaring Twenties. That restlessness, defined by a desire and openness to change, has been, and continues to be, its core strength. The magazine that made a name for itself in the last millennium is in some ways not the magazine it is today. And we hope that The New Yorker of a hundred years from now will not be a duplicate of the current magazine. It has always been the magazine of surprise, beginning with issue #1's cover by Rea Irvin of an oddly compelling top-hatted Victorian-era gent (soon to be dubbed Eustace Tilley). The magazine's cartoonists have kept the element of surprise afloat to this very day. Who among us does not flip through the latest issue to see the cartoons, looking and hoping to be surprised. My guess is that not a year has gone by--not even a month in a year--without someone somewhere saying that the cartoons "aren't as funny as they used to be." If we're lucky, that will continue as long as there's a New Yorker . Change at the magazine means that the idea of what's funny changes. In 2025, cartoonists should not be trying to mimic cartoons that tickled funny bones in 1925--they should be capturing the humor of the present. Looking at a 1920s cartoon will inform you of that era's fashion and concerns and behaviors, and even politics. The same can be said for the cartoons of the 2020s. Around and around it goes, with plenty enough oddities to make things more than interesting. This is the meat and taters of The New Yorker . In a now grand tradition, the magazine's cartoonists identify themselves as " New Yorker cartoonists"--but in truth they work for themselves. They remain, for the most part, solo acts, seeing what most of us see, then running that through their brains' highly attuned and complex cartoonist gadgetry. They're hard workers, these cartoonists--they always have been. As you will see in Alen MacWeeney's photographs of the artists in this volume, they are a determined lot. --Michael Maslin Excerpted from At Wit's End: Cartoonists of the New Yorker by Alen MacWeeney All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.