Field Trip: New Yorker Magazine

Tuesday at the New Yorker is cartoon submission day.

Through a friend of a friend, I got invited

to sit in the little couch room 

and eavesdrop.

The cartoonists were unilaterally

friendly.

Perhaps this is the one day a week

they let themselves out from behind their desks,

perhaps it was just a fluke.

But it was interesting to get to chat

with some people who make their living at being artists.

I also got to meet with Bob Mankoff.

I was terrified.

When  I got in the room, I found

Bob is personable and knife-edge articulate.

He likes to work with cartoonists and

really improve their work if he feels

they're worth publishing.

He feels that illustration is totally different
(and that Hirschfeld was a caricaturist,
which is also different)

and while there are some people who

cartoon as well as a few other things,

mostly he likes to publish people who 

submit a huge volume of work.

This is understandable: he probably doesn't want

a waiting room full of one-hit wonders

crowding his waiting room every week.

Is it a touch despotic?

Maybe. But maybe he wants to reward

whatever his version of hard work

and commitment is.

And to be perfectly frank,

he's the cartoon editor of the New Yorker.

He can do whatever the fuck he wants.





I brought a few examples of my work
and he described it as
'sinuous stick figures.'

He also mentioned that
some internet stuff is funny,
and some of it is crap,
but the NYer can't be as weirdly specific
as Feminist Ryan Gosling.


What did I learn overall?
I'm not going to be a cartoonist, at least while Bob is in charge.
I have massive respect for the work,
but slaving away at drawing gag cartoons
isn't for me.