****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Long before I ever picked up a copy of "The New Yorker," I knew about the fact that it was a treasure trove of cartoons. My father had a hardcover collection of choice cartoons culled from the first four decades of the magazine's history and that was where I met the original Addams family drawn by "Chas. Addams," the twisted looks at the world of by William Steig, Peter Arno, Robert J. Day, Mischa Richter, and others whose names I would not learn until years later even though I could instantly recognize their artistic styles. Weaned on such wonders it is not surprisingly that when I pick up a copy of "The New Yorker" I instantly flip through the magazine to look at each and every cartoon before going to look at what is happening in New York City in terms of shows and other entertainment that we can only dream about up here in the Zenith City."The Complete Cartoons of 'The New Yorker'" is edited by the magazine's cartoon editor Robert Mankoff, so blame him for any and all errors regarding the selection of the 2,004 (ha ha) cartoons selected, and with a Foreword by editor-in-chief David Remnick. There are also essays on the life and times (and humor) of each decade from the 1920's of James Thurber to the 2000's of Matthew Differ, written by the sort of eminent scribes you except to find in "The New Yorker," to wit: Roger Angell, Nancy Franklin, Lillian Ross, John Updike, Ian Frazier, Calvin Trillin, Mark Singer, and Rebecca Mead. But save those for after you have looked over the cartoons for each chapter, because then what they are talkinga bout will make more sense; then you can go back and look at the cartoons again to appreciate additional nuances.There is a lot of overlap between decades with these cartoonists because most of them stick around for decades, and why not? Is there a better gig for witty cartoons that "The New Yorker"? I suppose if there is such a thing as cultured (nee elitist) cartoons, this would be the place to find them, but this has certainly been a rich vein of humor for these talented artists to mine all these years. As you flip through this book you will find new favorites for each nine decades represents: Carl Rose and Gluyas Williams in the 1920s; Goerge Price and Alair in the 1930s; Garrett Price, Helen E. Hokinson, and Chon Day in the 1940s; Sydney Hoff and Robert J. Day in the 1950s; Saul Steinberg and William O'Brian in the 1960s; Joseph Mirachi, Henry Martin, Donald Reilly, and George Booth in the 1970s; Tom Cheney, Arnie Lewis, Edward Franscino in the 1980s; Robert Manhoff, Peter Steiner and Roz Chaast in the 1990s; and David Sipress, Alex Gregory, and Mick Stevens in what has passed for the 2000's to date.The book includes two CDs have all 68,647 cartoons ever published in "The New Yorker" (okay, published in "The New Yorker" up to that moment in the history of the universe, because already this thing is outdated). The CDs are browsable by date, subject, and cartoonist and while the resolution is not the greatest in the world, I was not that unhappy with it (but I am too lazy to change my out of date perscription for my eye glasses, so take that with a grain of salt). Anyhow, if you are in the Halloween spirit you can check out those cartoons this week or just go straight to the Addams collection like most people will do. The hard part is not to just sit in front of your computer and spend a hour or two short of 12 days to look at all of these cartoons (averaging one every 15 seconds), but you have to learn to ration these little treasures out. Besides, I am still trying to find my favorite one: a group of professors stand in front of a blackboard totally filled with the most complex formula in the history of the world and one of them finds where they went wrong: making a simple error in multiplication. Back to the hunt!
