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A list of the things that I did wrong in writing the first 200 pages of my Florence novel:
* Having the audacity to think that I could fit it in during this season of Extreme Busyness (though I had to fit it in, on behalf of a fellowship project I was teaching).
* Choosing to escape the frightening avalanche of emails by taking the book off the computer altogether and writing it in small spurts on the iPad. Good for scenes. Horrific for continuity.
* Giving myself a tremendously complex set of plot points and intersections to manage with a brain now too crowded to manage anything but the bare rudiments of daily life.
* Pushing ahead through the panic, as opposed to calling the panic off completely, and reconsidering. (But I had to push ahead; I was teaching this novel to a student.)
Finally, a few weeks ago, I did stop. Threw almost all of what I had away and started over. New technology. Simplified plot. More sleep. Less work at midnight hours. Less anxiety about the mountains of books and emails flooding in. Yesterday, Friday, was the first day since I began the book last October that I could work on it for an entire continuity-seeding stretch. Last night was the first night that I slept, unpanicked. There's a ton of work to do. But there's a working foundation.
Since I was giving myself some breathing room I decided to go one step farther down the easing road and read through some of the New Yorkers that have gathered here in this season of Extreme Busyness. First up: Giles Harvey's contemplations, "Cry Me a River: The Rise of the Failure Memoir."(March 25 issue) A look at the crop of memoirs that have emerged from failed novelists. Memoirs about failures—hmmm, I thought, I could have written one of those, if I didn't already understand that we all have our failures, our shames to work through.
Most interesting to me was this paragraph about the failure of the novel in our era—something we've all heard much about. Harvey is reflecting on David Shields (that inveterate provocateur) in this passage.
Shields tells a story about how he reached this conclusion ["that the novel is no longer up to the task of representing contemporary life"]. In the eighties and nineties, he spent "many, many years" trying to write a novel about this country's obsession with celebrity culture through the lens of a married couple's domestic life, a kind of American version of Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being." The project stalled when Shields came to find the conventional novelistic apparatus (plot, dialogue, character) cumbersome and irrelevant to his deepest concerns. He discovered that the essayistic digressions he had written and was planning to insert into his novel were themselves the book he wanted to write.... "Forms are there to serve the culture, and when they die, they die for a good reason—or so I have come to believe, the novel having long since gone dark for me."
I'm not going to stand in full Shields agreement here, or in agreement with every one else who says the novel is dead. Because I'm still reading and loving novels, and I'm still learning, from the best of them, what language can do, what stories can be, what humanity is capable of. The novel has not gone dark for me—not as a reader and not, if I can just stay focused, as a writer. Light is hard to come by, true. But I'm obsessed with the light.
4 Comments on "The Rise of the Failure Memoir," my failures, and other ruminations, last added: 4/1/2013
Good to hear of your productive writing day but even better to hear that you are sleeping. I recall a scientific study that found creative thinking near impossible on less than 6 hours of sleep. So sleeping time is writing time too. And the novel is NOT dead.
People have been talking about the death of the novel almost since the novel began. I wonder if under it all, there is still suspicion of a form that was, at first, considered entertainment for women and was more often than anything else written by women. Even now far more women buy and read novels than men do.
Nathan Heller is a patient, comprehensive reader, a man not prone to snap conclusions. Which is why I enjoyed his recent New Yorker story (January 14, 2013 issue) on twentysomethings. He remembers himself all those years ago. He reviews the literature of the young and the literature of those who purport to know about the young, and he wonders out loud in a voice both determined and delicate. This is how he ends his piece—a masterful, undamning, bittersweet conclusion. Here is how you is I, and how you is us:
The shock of the twenties is how narrow the window of experience really is, and how inevitable it seems both at the time and afterward. At some point, it is late, too late, and you are standing on the sidewalk outside somewhere very loud. A wind is blowing. It's the same cool, restless late-night breeze that blew on trampled nineteen-twenties lawns, and anywhere young people gather. Nearby, someone who doesn't smoke is smoking. An attractive stranger with a lightning laugh jaywalks between cars with a friend, making eye contact before scurrying inside. You're far from home. It's quiet. All at once, you have a thrilling sense of nowness, of the sheer potential of a verdant night with all these unmet people in it. For a long time after that, you think you'll never lose this life, those dreams. But that was, as they say, then.
3 Comments on Nathan Heller on Twentysomethings, and the power of the second-person pronoun, last added: 1/29/2013
The sheer potential of a night with unmet people! SO encapsulates the pure potential of the as yet unjaded twenties! Something of it reminds me of Gatsby!
Late last Friday afternoon, a client and I were discussing Jonah Lehrer. My client had seen Lehrer talk, we'd both read Imagine. We liked the provocative style of Lehrer's work, his easy translations of harder-concept things. We liked that a guy like Lehrer got so much attention in a Fifty Shades world.
I raced home to read the story on the full screen. I churn now, within—confused, more than anything, as to why a young man as successful as Jonah Lehrer most certainly is would find it necessary, first, to fabricate Dylan for his book, and, second, to spin a complicated tangle of lies in the aftermath of being found out. Lie after lie. Preposterous lies. Not exaggerations, but lies.
Why do such a thing? Why cannibalize a rising-star career? Why jeopardize the faith of readers, an editor, friends? Writers make mistakes—we all do, I absolutely do—but deliberate deceit is hardly a mistake. Deliberate deceit is intentional, and designed. It can't feel good. Nothing will make it right.
There can only be, when lying as overtly as this, a terrible anxious rush in the middle of the night.
3 Comments on The Jonah Lehrer Lies: But why?, last added: 7/31/2012
You know, I felt the Dylan part of his book was fishy. To begin with I disagreed with his interpretation of a song's reception. Then I wondered where he got the quotes—Dylan gives few interviews—and wondered why he didn't credit them.
It's all so surprising. I'm just in shock that someone would get as far as he did with all of this undertow pulling on him. It's too bad because he seems like a very intelligent person who happened to get in over his head. I'm also surprised his publisher didn't ever catch onto it. Makes the world seem a bit sadder to know people feel the need to do things like this. :(
I had time, just now, that quiet time, of reading the magazines that came in last week. Oh, the stolen deliciousness of it all. In The New Yorker, I read of Oliver Sacks on his years dedicated, in large part, to experimenting with large doses of amphetamines, morning-glory seeds, LSD, morphine, and all other manner of neuro-shifters. I thought of all the Sacks I have read these many years, of the seeming innocence of his beguiling childhood memoir, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, of his great empathy for patients and ferns and other earthly beings. His New Yorker essay delves, skips, and buries time before it rushes, headlong, toward its hard stop. Sacks had discovered a book on migraines and it had become important to him. He had a revelation about migraines. He ...
... had a sense of resolution, too, that I was indeed equipped to write a Liveing-like book, that perhaps I could be the Liveing of our time.
The next day, before I returned Liveing's book to the library, I photocopied the whole thing, and then, bit by bit, I started to write my own book. The joy I got from doing this was real—infinitely more substantial than the vapid mania of amphetamines—and I never took amphetamines again.
Writing books, Sacks suggests, saved him. The next story I read, an excerpt from D.T. Max's much heralded biography of David Foster Wallace (in Newsweek), suggests how writing would and would not save this genius. The excerpt, which focuses on Wallace's early correspondence with Jonathan Franzen as well as his infatuation with Mary Karr, suggests that this book is well worth reading as a whole. I've always been a huge D.T. Max fan, and I'm certain I will learn from these pages.
In between the Sacks and the Wallace, I found two poems of interest. Joyce Carol Oates has a chilling, compelling poem in The New Yorker called "Edward Hopper's '11 A.M.,' 1926"worth reading from beginning to end. Oates was one of several authors who contributed to one of my favorite poetry collections (a gift from my sister) called The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper (collected and introduced by Gail Levin). Clearly this project, all these years later, continues to inspire.
Finally, within the pages of this week's New Yorker is a poem by C.K. Williams, one of my favorite living poets. I had the great pleasure and privilege, years ago, of interviewing C.K. in his Princeton home for a magazine story. Later, I saw him read at the Writer's House at Penn. He remains vital, interesting, experimental, and honest, and his new poem, "Haste," is a terrifying portrait of time. From its later phrases:
No one says Not so fast now not Catherine when I hold her not our dog as I putter behind her yet everything past present future rushes so quickly through me I've frayed like a flag
Unbuckle your spurs life don't you know up ahead where the road ends there's an abyss? ...
My first corporate interview isn't until 1 this afternoon. I'm sitting down to read Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. I figure it's time.
(That above, by the way, is my cat Colors, who lived with me for many years. She's climbing into my bedroom window. I'm eleven or twelve years old. And I'm reading on my bed as she pokes her pink nose in.)
4 Comments on Oliver Sacks, David Foster Wallace, D.T. Max, Joyce Carol Oates, C.K. Williams: A morning spent reading, last added: 9/8/2012
Writing and reading totally saves me. Writing keeps the dark away. Reading is the infusion of light.
Much to ponder here.
Not sure you will be able to concentrate on your corporate interview after being immersed in In Cold Blood. You might want to put back some light by reading some poetry.
I have not read In Cold Blood either. I'll wait for your impressions. I'm ready the book club book and woefully behind in it...since the meeting is tomorrow and I'm only halfway done
After a long day and an even longer week, I collapsed on the couch with my New Yorkers. Does anyone else feel this way? My New Yorkers. I want to know what these writers know. I want to write a single sentence like they (or some of them) write. I want to give you what I read and think. For now, here is this. It's James Wood talking about Tom Wolfe's latest novel, Back to Blood. Wood is reflecting on details that resonate, those that feel organic, and those that sour the prose with obvious, unlived research. Listen in (for the whole, buy the October 15, 2012 issue):
The important details, the ones that make fiction's intimate palpability, cannot simply be scooped up off the sidewalk. Tolstoy, praised as a realist by Tom Wolfe, took the germ of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" from an actual story about a judge in a nearby town who had died of cancer; but one of the most beautiful moments in the novella surely came from Tolstoy's imagination—or, rather, from his patient loyalty to Ivan's invented reality. I mean the moment when Ivan Ilyich, lying on his couch, in great distress and loneliness, remembers "the raw and wrinkly French prunes of his childhood, their special taste, and how his mouth watered when he got down to the stone."
Very occasionally in this novel, Wolfe gives evidence that he knows the difference between those French prunes and "Hotchkiss, Yale ... six-three." At one point, Nestor, fleeing the opprobrium of his community, ends up at a favorite Cuban bakery, where he enjoys "a whiff of Ricky's pastelitos, 'little pies' of filo dough wrapped around ground beef, spiced ham, guava, or you name it.... He had loved pastelitos since he was a boy." It's a rare passage without exclamation marks, and superficially it resembles Ivan and the prunes. But the detail about the patelitos has the whiff not of pastry but of research.
1 Comments on James Wood on Tom Wolfe's use (or not use) of meaningful detail, last added: 10/14/2012
Weidenfeld & Nicolson has acquired a collection of stories by Nathan Englander, one of the New Yorker's "20 Writers for the 21st Century", whose previous works have been published by Faber.
Editorial director Arzu Tahsin bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Arabella Stein at the Abner Stein Literary Agent on behalf of Nicole Aragi in an auction. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank will be published in February 2012, with Knopf to publish in the US.
BY JEN VAUGHN – Vermont cartoonist James Sturm wrote an insightful piece on submitting cartoons to the New Yorker posted on the Slate. As a cartoonist or unfortunately termed ‘graphic novelist,’ Sturm is used to drawing stories in the long term, stretching a few hundred pages, panel upon panel upon panel upon YES, panel. How Sturm spent his summer vacation was a cartoon a day to build up a keeper-portfolio for The New Yorker. Sturm relearned to let go of the beats you find in a long-form comic to sketch loosely and effectively situations right after that something funny, something intangible occurred. He includes many of his cartoons in the article including this close-to-home joke and one of my favorites: when the caption is recycled for a different situation.
Now I won’t ruin the article for you but Sturm did the numbers and basically went to the office with his portfolio along with “50 regular New Yorker cartoonists who submit 10 cartoons each week. That’s 500 cartoons vying for about 12 to 20 slots.” What may have eventually felt absurd to Sturm is still an inspiring journey to most cartoonists. Getting a cartoon accepted to the New Yorker is a milestone for some people but at one point so was getting into Nickelodeon magazine or for that matter, getting a company to publish your own work. Kudos to Sturm for his open door, open heart and keep on swingin’ for those fences (baseball metaphor mine).
—
Jen Vaughn was recently spotted diving off the Floating Bridge by New Yorker cartoonist Ed Koren, who recognized her but commented that she had more clothes on the last time they met.
3 Comments on We Can’t All Be ‘Funny’, last added: 8/25/2011
Shannon Wheeler has been posting rejected NEW YORKER cartoon submissions at ACT-I-VATE under the title, NIHILARITY, for awhile now and published a book collection called I THOUGHT YOU’D BE FUNNIER [BOOM!Town] which was nominated for a Harvey and won an Eisner. Good stuff: http://www.act-i-vate.com/96.comic
Daniel Barlow said, on 8/25/2011 4:49:00 PM
Love the bio, Jen! Can you really swim off that bridge? I’m driven over it a few times. Love that part of the state!
Cole Moore Odell said, on 8/25/2011 7:13:00 PM
My dad’s parents used to have a place in Brookfield when I was very young and the floating bridge looms large in my imagination. Used to be big wooden barrels holding it up, if I recall correctly.
At the end of July I created a post on New Yorker cover artists who also did picture books for children. Well, I showed just a scant hint of some of the covers I have in my possession, and now seems like a good time to bring some others out for one and all to see. And who better to start off this regular series than fan favorite Ian Falconer: He of the undeniable Olivia.
Falconer’s a particular favorite of the New Yorker, his covers dating back at least until the late 90s. I could throw a whole bunch of them up here, but what I find interesting about New Yorker artists is how they can sometimes create small series of covers that go undetected unless you place them all together. Take Falconer’s Easily Shocked Old Lady (or ESOL). The Easily Shocked Old Lady is a Falconer staple. She walks through this world of ours with a true fear of changing mores and habits. Sometimes we identify with her. Other times we are encouraged to enjoy her squirming. And the poor woman appears unable to go anywhere without getting a case of the vapors be it . . .
At the museum
In a department store
Skiing
Or even just taking an elevator
The ESOL is a kind of anti-Olivia. Like Falconer’s most famous pig heroine, the ESOL prefers to wear red and white with some black (though she may try a bit of pink if she’s feeling adventurous). Her hair is carefully swept back in a “do”, pearl earrings in place. Sometimes I worry that her feet hurt wearing those black heels (though clearly she’s in good shape if she’s skiing).
There is one cover where a woman who looks a heckuva lot like the ESOL appears and it is Falconer’s cheeriest image. I’m fond of it because it allows us a glimpse into her personal life. Gone are the trappings of the New York lifestyle. She’s clearly on vacation, a fact I ascribe to her hair which has reestablished its natural curl (she probably hasn’t been to her stylist in a while). She’s still wearing her customary red, but now it’s with stretchy pants and shoes that won’t pinch her anymore. With her, just as nerdily American, is her husband, waistband maki
9 Comments on New Yorker/Picture Book Artists: Ian Falconer – Beyond Olivia, last added: 9/8/2011
I love Falconer’s New Yorker covers. As for the ESOL, it makes me smile that she always appears to be wearing a Chanel suit. I have wondered if Falconer has a grandmother who wore Chanel. I kind of expected to see something snazzy for the ESOL’s ski outfit (something more along the lines of Coco).
Sharon Creeech said, on 9/8/2011 5:35:00 AM
I, too, love these covers. Hoping you will also do a Harry Bliss medley, too.
Elizabeth Bird said, on 9/8/2011 7:08:00 AM
Bliss shall come (that’s fun to say) but I’ve my eyes on a Spaniard for my next installment.
Lisa Jenn Bigelow said, on 9/8/2011 7:15:00 AM
This is such a fun retrospective — thank you! I love your simple but brilliant psychoanalysis of the ESOL. She definitely needs to go on vacation more often!
Catherine Nichols said, on 9/8/2011 8:53:00 AM
Here’s someone you might not think of–John O’Brien. He did a number of New Yorker covers in the 80s and 90s and has as inked a number children’s books over the years.
mia c said, on 9/8/2011 9:57:00 AM
I love this with the kind of love that stems from the knowledge that I may become an ESOL someday myself
Susan said, on 9/8/2011 12:34:00 PM
I LOVE Falconer’s New Yorker covers….I keep hoping they’ll finally have enough to do a book of ‘em…I’ll be first in line! MY favorite ESOL is the central-park-walking-dog one…she’s so shocked by so many things, but oblivious of the body outline at which her dog is sniffing!
Julian Hector said, on 9/8/2011 1:17:00 PM
I love Falconer’s covers!
Elizabeth Bird said, on 9/8/2011 5:56:00 PM
Oh, I don’t have the dog-walking ESOL! I think I remember seeing it too. Darn! A gap in my collection.
“You’re not going to succeed unless you give it everything that you got, because giving it everything you got is how you develop what you actually have.”
Francoise Mouly, famed art editor of the venerable New Yorker, has started a blog. She writes on FB:
I’m launching a Blown Covers website where I’ll be running weekly themed Blown Cover contests (submit your sketches! I’ll review them all and post the winner every Friday), talking about the week’s New Yorker cover and showcasing my favorite artists.
0 Comments on Blown Covers of the New Yorker as of 1/1/1900
On the “authority” scale, the idea of New York cover editor Françoise Mouly launching a blog about New Yorker covers and art would rank….very high. And so Blown Covers, which she describes as a personal blog. Although it’s unafiliated with the New York, she’s holding weekly themed New Yorker cover contests and is “always on the lookout for good ideas and great artists.” So yeah, this is an audition.
This week’s theme is the idiom “In like a lion, out like a lamb” and submissions are open until Thursday at noon, along with four examples of past covers inspired by the phrase including this beauty by Lars Hokanson/Frances Cichetti, and one by art spiegelman. The contest is definitely open to comics artists, so knock yourself out!
Other weekly features include artists spotlights, inspiration posts, and so on.
Need we say…bookmark?
0 Comments on Françoise Mouly launches Blown Covers blog as of 1/1/1900
Katharine S. White to Elizabeth Lawrence, March 17, 1960:
Next, I had to wind up a huge job I’ve been working on for six months—The New Yorker stories—1950-1960….The book will be out next fall but it still is not quite settled as to contents, order of stories etc. etc. It is a compromise selection, to suit the taste of five editors. I merely headed up the chore, but Bill Shawn of course has the final word. Most of what we have together is, I think, first rate writing but the trouble is that in the last decade our fiction writers use only “I” and their favorite themes are death, childhood, or the past. It was a jigsaw puzzle to fit it together. The South and Ireland are also in the ascendancy. I love the South but not Ireland (I confess) and I would gladly have cut out a couple of Irish stories but was voted down. My feelings do not apply to Frank O’Connor.
(Yet another quote from Two Gardeners: A Friendship in Letters, edited by Emily Herring Wilson. I’m only halfway through, so I expect there will be more.)
Distinctive New Yorker cartoonist Leo Cullum passed away over the weekend. He had published four cartoon collections, including in 2009.
The cartoonist served as a TWA pilot for 30 years before retiring to work as an artist. He once explained the transition: “I would draw during my layovers and on my days off from flying, so it really wasn’t much of an adjustment, except that I wasn’t drawing in Paris or Rome anymore.”
The NY Times has a great collection of Cullum cartoons. In an interview, Cullum once explained why he loved working for the magazine: The New Yorker pays attention to the cartoons just as they do the articles. The cartoons are not an afterthought, but an equal part of the equation, and they expect the best. Many people will begin reading the magazine’s cartoons before they get in the habit of reading the magazine from cover to cover … Other magazines just use them as filler.”
We always count on the New Yorker to point us in the direction of the best-looking books and film, and this literary guide to holiday movies is no exception. We're glad they mentioned our slick new edition of TRUE GRIT (read that excerpt below!) but we're also excited for the new adaptation of THE TEMPEST starring Helen Mirren as Prospera.
“True Grit” (December 25th) is the latest from the Coen brothers, and is based on the novel by Charles Portis ,which has been given a spruced-up new package and an afterward by Donna Tartt (“The Secret History”). Featuring Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Jeff Bridges, “True Grit” is the tale of Mattie Ross, whose father has been murdered; she attempts to track down the killer with assistance from a U.S. Marshal.
Do you plan on seeing any of these films? (And more importantly, will you read the book first?) Happy movie-going!
0 Comments on TRUE GRIT ... and other great book-to-film adaptations this fall! as of 1/1/1900
I had a pounding headache and a bit of a neural spin, so I retreated to the couch with this week's New Yorker. The article "O Pioneer Woman: The Creation of a Domestic Idyll," Amanda Fortini's story about Ree Drummond, the blogger, found me. I read.
It's not as if I hadn't previously heard about this millionaire blogging phenom. I was just insufficiently informed about the size of Drummond's empire—the numbers of books and their rapid succession, the appearances, the 23.3 million page views per month and the 4.4 million unique visitors (according to the article), the million-dollars-plus revenue Drummond received in 2010 for her blog alone. She's a pretty lady with a big camera, a Marlboro Man husband, four kids, and a diesel-powered blog that offers photo tips, recipes, giveaways, and up-to-the-minute details of her life as it is on her Oklahoma farm (and, increasingly, in her celebrity haunts). It's all turned her into a mega-star—her stories about closet cleanings and book tours, dyed hair and laundry runs.
Who'd have thought it? She certainly originally didn't, so the story says. Indeed, Drummond started blogging because it seemed like a "fun, efficient method of keeping in touch with her mother" and her first posts were "... audio recordings of herself burping, and folksy, Reader's Digest-style anecdotes about country living, such as happening upon two dogs mating."
Is it my mood? Is it the weather? Is it any wonder that I wonder (don't we all wonder) how, of the reported 14% of online women who blog, a woman writing about burping and dog love rose so very quickly to the top? Can anyone ever, truly, predict stardom, Big Things, It?
We can't, I think. We can't prescribe it or force it; we cannot choose whose voice will smoke its way up and through, whose images and stories will dominate.
We can only watch and wonder.
6 Comments on In which I am not The Pioneer Woman, last added: 5/8/2011
Absolutely, Beth F. That is a huge undertaking, an absolutely full time job. I would never last a day of it.
It's the origins that intrigue me. What made the early musings so popular—before the giveaways, before the books, before she really mastered the camera.
I scanned this too quickly the first time, and read "vapid succession" instead of "rapid succession." Oddly enough, I first learned of this woman on Monday (gotta be the same gal), while waiting to get my car repaired — she had a piece in Guideposts. And, whatever I thought about the originality and depth of her writing, I kept reading ... until my car was fixed. At which point I completely forgot about her — until now. Insert your moral here ...
I started reading Drummond's blog about 3.5 years ago, just before the take-off. For me, her appeal was not the content, but her 'voice', the way she observed the world and how she brought that to the page (or webpage). I truly thought she could be my best friend. Apparently, so did 4.4 million other women. I now have VERY complex feelings about her rise to stardom...as in, I have had in-depth discussions with my real-life friends about my intense jealousy of her million dollar book deals ("one day I woke up and wrote a book!" "I had an idea for a picture and, golly!, there it was on the shelf one day!") And how I don't feel the intimacy I used to feel while reading her blog. (I'm dead serious and I realize how ridiculous this is.) Now, I will probably endure hours on a therapist's couch talking about the ways in which the Pioneer Woman has toyed with my emotions. lol.
Coming out of lurkdom here to voice my opinion. I followed TPW a year or two ago (right about the time her cookbook was published). I was wowed by her photos and writing and looked forward to popping over to her blog to read the latest about her kids, MB and Charlie (who now has his own book!). I admit, she won me over with her humor and down-to-earth personality. But a few months ago, I started to feel like it was all too much. Too many sub-blogs. Too much celebrity. Too much detachment from her readers. Honestly, I don't know how one woman can publish such a complex blog, while raising (homeschooling, no less!) her kids and taking care of the household stuff. Maybe I'm a cynic, but I'd bet she has some "help" with her blogging. Final thoughts: I'd much rather visit your beautiful blog. Your photos are lovely and your writing is thought-provoking and lovely.
My husband Matt pairs well with me for a number of reasons. Amongst them is our mutual inclination to collect things we love. As such, Matt has systematically been holding onto all his issues of The New Yorker ever since he got his subscription in college. Over the years these issues have piled up piled up piled up. I was a Serials Manager before I got my library degree and one of the perks of the job was getting lots of lovely magazine holders. For years these holders graced the tops of our bookshelves and even came along with us when we moved into our current apartment a year ago. Yet with the arrival of our puir wee bairn, we decided to do the unthinkable.
Yes. We ripped off all their covers.
Well, most anyway. We have the complete run of New Yorker text on CD-ROM anyway, and anything published after the CD-ROM’s release would be online anyway. Thus does the internet discourage hoarding.
In the meantime, we now are the proud owners of only three boxes worth of New Yorker covers. They’re very fun to look at. I once had the desire to wallpaper my bathroom in such covers, but that dream will have to wait (as much as I love New York apartments and all . . .). For now, it’s just fun to flip through the covers themselves and, in flipping, I discovered something. Sure, I knew that the overlap between illustrators of children’s books and illustrators of New Yorkers was frequent. I just didn’t know how frequent it was. Here then is a quickie encapsulation of some of the folks I discovered in the course of my cover removal.
Istan Banyai
Zoom and Re-Zoom continue to circulate heavily in my library, all thanks to Banyai. I had a patron the other day ask if we had anything else that was similar but aside from Barbara Lehman all I could think of was Wiesner’s Flotsam. Banyai is well known in a different way for New Yorker covers, including this controversial one. As I recall, a bit of a kerfuffle happened when it was published back in the day.
Harry Bliss
Author and illustrator of many many picture books, it’s little wonder that the Art Editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Francoise Mouly, managed to get the man to do a TOON Book (Luke on the Loose) as well. And when it comes to his covers, this is the one I always think of first.
12 Comments on Children’s Illustrators and The New Yorker, last added: 7/28/2011
Thank you so much for this retrospective! So lovely to see a Gary Larson cover in there, I had no idea! I’m going to have to check out more of Marcellus Hall, I love that cover.
I also love the covers by Richard McGuire, creator of books like The Orange Book and Night Becomes Day. Check out this old blog entry I wrote, http://handthumbcomics.com/?p=66 , for some of his covers!
janeyolen said, on 7/27/2011 10:39:00 PM
Fascinating. I knew of some of them, but. . .
Jane
Linda Urban said, on 7/28/2011 3:30:00 AM
I love this article Betsy.
For about a year or so, when my son was small, he thought the magazine was about an individual guy who was The New Yorker. My boy scanned every cover looking for glimpses of the guy in a “Where’s Waldo?” sort of way and a few of those covers became favorites of his. He still has a small stack of them in his room.
leda schubert said, on 7/28/2011 5:10:00 AM
Great list. Also Charles Martin, Ludwig Bemelmans, Joseph Low, James Thurber (did he illustrate a children’s book? I don’t think so. But he wrote several of my favorites), Roger Duvoisin, James Stevenson, John O’Brien, Roxie Munro, Gretchen Dow Simpson (she did an alphabet book years ago) and probably more.
Fact: our basement is completely filled with New Yorkers.
Fact: Almost all of these illustrious illustrators who also do children’s books are men. Hmm. Yet a bunch of women did covers as well.
Zoe said, on 7/28/2011 5:30:00 AM
Thanks for this – has brightened up my lunch time coffee no end!
Marisabina russo said, on 7/28/2011 6:41:00 AM
You can add me to the list though my covers and spots came out when you were probably just a tot! Interesting post.
Sharon Creeech said, on 7/28/2011 7:30:00 AM
Love this; thanks so much for compiling.
Paul Zelinsky said, on 7/28/2011 7:51:00 AM
This is great to look through; thanks! What you can’t tell from looking is that some of these illustrators were New Yorker illustrators who were approached by New-Yorker-reading editors or art directors, and others were book illustrators before they became New Yorker cover artists. I am guessing that the Sendak one is the only case of The New Yorker approaching a book illustrator.
If I may pile on with suggestions for more, you could also include Ross MacDonald and Douglas Florian. I was going to say Marisabina Russo but she said it herself, and she said it, according to the indication on the post, almost three hours after I am writing this now. How did she do that?
About that wonderful NewYorkistan picture– I don’t know how it was credited in the magazine, but it was created jointly by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz.
jules said, on 7/28/2011 8:31:00 AM
I wrote this for Kirkus recently—http://www.kirkusreviews.com/blog/childrens/seven-impossible-things-new-yorker-effect/—-and started a list of those editorial illustrators who migrated to children’s book illustration. This post is PERFECT and adds to my list (which exists for no other reason than to just….exist). Bravo to this post!
Victoria Stapleton said, on 7/28/2011 8:47:00 AM
And now there is Frank Viva, whose first book is ALONG A LONG ROAD (Little, Brown).
Genevieve said, on 7/28/2011 9:06:00 AM
As a long-time New Yorker reader, I adore this post. Many of these covers look so familiar to me, I remember seeing them originally, but most of them I had not known were done by children’s book illustrators. Now I need to go find their books!
Elizabeth Bird said, on 7/28/2011 9:13:00 AM
I found a Viva cover that looks identical to Along a Long Road but didn’t get a chance to include it.
Jules I wondered if you’d done a New Yorker piece but neglected to check Kirkus. Consider yourself linked.
Wish I could get my hands on the covers of other artists mentioned. Didn’t know about Roxie.
Good to hear of your productive writing day but even better to hear that you are sleeping. I recall a scientific study that found creative thinking near impossible on less than 6 hours of sleep. So sleeping time is writing time too. And the novel is NOT dead.
I love essays. I love memoirs. I love novels. Each of them does something that the other two don't. None of them replaces the others, in my opinion.
People have been talking about the death of the novel almost since the novel began. I wonder if under it all, there is still suspicion of a form that was, at first, considered entertainment for women and was more often than anything else written by women. Even now far more women buy and read novels than men do.
Oh, but aside from that mainly what I want to say is hurray that you've got through that difficult patch with your new book!