Guest post written by Kelsey Manning (@kelseyMmanning)
Before Thurber Prize winner John Kenney settled in to read a selection from his novel Truth in Advertising, he had a few words for his fellow finalist:
“Dear David Letterman, Please let me win this award. Just this one. We need the money.”
It was one of many hilarious moments during last night’s presentation of the 2013 Thurber Prize for American Humor. David Letterman attended alongside co-writer Bruce McCall on behalf of their book This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me). In the absence of third finalist Liza Donnelly (Women on Men), her husband Michael Maslin spoke about how much James Thurber means to them, especially as New Yorker cartoonists themselves. The pair’s first date was to see a James Thurber drawing at the Armory on the East Side.
In the true spirit of the night, Truth in Advertising author John Kenney joked, “My first flight wasn’t to the Thurber House or my first date, but I was conceived there.” It was easy to see why the Thurber Prize judges—Meg Wolitzer, John Searles, and Henry Alford—were so taken by the wit in Kenney’s debut. (more…)
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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.
Contributed by Owen Schumacher
It's hard for most of us not to recall the cars of postwar America with great fondness. But not for the author and illustrator, Bruce McCall, who saw through the clunky, neglected engineering and corresponding culture of gee-whiz enthusiasm—behind all those gleaming, two-tone, two-ton behemoths of the Eisenhauer era. Bruce was there at the time. He lived it. He illustrated the cars of Ford's Canadian division in Toronto. And he hated every moment of it.
The '56 Ford Meteor, the Canadian equivalent to the Fairlane, is absolutely beautiful, by the way. It's like a road sculpture. Bruce would likely burst your bubble and tell you something pessimistic about it, but just wow!
Enter Bruce's revenge: The Last Dream-O-Rama (2001), a tongue-in-cheek recollection of the gaudy, glittering monsters the Big Three forgot to build—like the '55 Bar-B-King Royal Patio Leisureliner, the car with a complete backyard barbecue, or the '59 Fin-Landia Choiceflow Fundeck, whose slotted rear deck leaves you, the proud owner, the freedom to insert a tail fin combination of your choice. Now that's freedom!
All these impossible cruisers, the author would argue, are the daffy, chromed-out expressions of an obnoxious Atomic Age: naïve, kitschy, wasteful, superficial, and even McCarthyan.
But I just think they're pretty—nuts—but pretty. And there's even a part of me—with a crew cut and skinny tie, I guess—that wouldn't mind seeing Bruce's creations built. As jokingly impractical as they are.
The time and culture behind these cars may be the object of Bruce's derision, but ironically, the beauty of his work still initiates our inner Goldwater—that dusty, latent part of us that can't help but shimmer for Rockwell, malt shops, or Wolfman Jack.
But enough thinking. Just laugh at Bruce's cars already!
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!
Fascinating. I knew of some of them, but. . .
Jane
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.
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.
Thanks for this – has brightened up my lunch time coffee no end!
You can add me to the list though my covers and spots came out when you were probably just a tot! Interesting post.
Love this; thanks so much for compiling.
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.
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!
And now there is Frank Viva, whose first book is ALONG A LONG ROAD (Little, Brown).
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!
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.