Life Is a Cartoon

December 2011 | Vol. X No. 4 One Civilized Reader Is Worth a Thousand Boneheads Life is a Cartoon Every year, when the leaves through Theories of Everything Nancy Berg Professor of Asian and Near Eastern form red and yellow designs (2006): a guilty looking woman is Languages and Literatures scattered across the lawn, our standing in front of a store where a Ken Botnick Professor of Art Center is busy with the mul- sign over the window reads “Mom Director of Kranzberg Book Studio ticolored covers of new fac- and Pop Grocerette.” Pasted on the Gene Dobbs Bradford Executive Director ulty books scattered across our windows are other signs that look Jazz St. Louis workspace. This is the busiest like advertisements, but rather than Elizabeth Childs Associate Professor and Chair of and happiest month for us. It is announcing sales they read “We Department of Art History and a pleasure to collect so many never see you any more!”; “What’s Archaeology Mary-Jean Cowell new books by Washington the matter, we don’t carry enough Associate Professor of Performing Arts University authors, fill out cards of your ‘gourmet items’?”; “Guess Phyllis Grossman with descriptions and authors’ you’re all grown up and have your Retired Financial Executive, LA66 Michael A. Kahn photos, and present them for the own life now”; and a poster of a Attorney, Author and annual Faculty Book Celebra- lonely-looking parental couple Adjunct Professor of Law tion. This year marks the tenth waving at passersby with the cap- Zurab Karumidze Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia year that we will host “Cel- tion “Don’t worry about us!” This Peter Kastor ebrating Our Books, Recogniz- cartoon makes you laugh, but it Associate Professor of History and American Culture Studies Program ing Our Authors.” (Please see also makes you think. Chris King page 10 for details.) So far, we Editorial Director I confess that I was not previous- The St. Louis American Newspaper have received permission to ly familiar with Chast’s cartoons. Olivia Lahs-Gonzales display 104 books representing Director I thought cartoons were designed Sheldon Art Galleries 76 authors, all published in the simply to be funny, to make you Steven Meyer last three years. If you see one laugh. So, at first I didn’t laugh Associate Professor of English or two you like, the Campus Joe Pollack at all. It took me awhile to “get Writer Bookstore will have more than but rather they balance depiction of it,” but when I did, not only did I Anne Posega 200 books available for purchase at the Head of Special Collections, Olin everyday human emotions with words laugh, but also I laughed at the context Library celebration. that sell the humor. In her cartoons, she of the joke. The power in Chast’s car- Qiu Xiaolong One of the keynote speakers for this toons is that she combines visual com- Novelist and Poet addresses ordinary human issues: guilt, Joseph Schraibman year is the cartoonist Roz Chast. It may anxiety, families, friends, money, real munication with a minimal text evok- Professor of Spanish seem strange to invite a cartoonist to a ing the social contexts of our everyday Henry Schvey estate, and aging. Although there are Professor of Drama book celebration, but Chast’s cartoons numerous multi-panel stories, even her world. Take, for instance, an older Chast Wang Ning are presented in the style of a graphic single-panel drawings express consider- cartoon from The New Yorker wherein a Professor of English, Tsinghua University novel made up of short stories. They crowd of travelers is standing around an James Wertsch able meaning. Take, for example, the Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts and do not rely on just a funny drawing, cartoon about three quarters of the way airport baggage carousel labeled “Emo- Sciences Associate Vice Chancellor for International Affairs Ex Officio Edward S. Macias Provost & Exec VC for Academic Affairs visit our blog site at http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/pubs/blog.htm Gary S. Wihl Dean of Arts & Sciences editor's notes continued looked at them the more I realized that cartoons are narratives, fairly easy to put into words. Of course, without the ingenious drawings the words are two-dimensional, but the meanings come through. The cartoon a few (un- numbered) pages past the “Mom and Pop Grocerette,” for example, contains the drawing of a dreary strip mall in the middle of nowhere. Like many such retail spaces, it has a large, pretentious sign above it. In this case the sign reads “Seven Deadly Sins Shopping Plaza.” Beneath the sign are seven tiny booth-like shops: the “Beauty Barn,” offering pride; the “Judo and Kick Boxing School,” offering wrath; the “Oooh, I love Your Dress,” offering envy; the “Adult Video” store, offering lust; the “All You Can Eat Belgian Waffles,” offering gluttony; the “Off Track Betting” shop, offering greed; and the “Lazy Day Bar,” offering sloth. The scary thing about the “Seven Deadly Sins Shopping Plaza” cartoon is that I am fairly certain I saw just such a strip mall on a recent trip to the West Coast. And that is the point: comedy should not always be comfort- able. It should expose the emotions and experiences we would rather hide or deny. Chast takes the tiny, seemingly insignificant details that are usually ignored and brings them to life in all their hilarity and pain. Her cartoons succeed because they make evident the unspoken truths about our lives. We at the Center for the Humanities and the Washington University Li- tional Baggage Claim.” We see the luggage arriving and one older business- braries invite you to come, listen to, and laugh with Roz Chast on Tuesday, man reaching for a plain-looking bag as he says, “There’s my resentment of December 6, at 5 p.m. A book signing and reception in physical beauty!” the Formal Lounge of the Women’s Building will follow, I may not have been familiar with Roz Chast’s work, but millions of other where you may also browse through a fascinating col- readers have known and appreciated it for decades. More than 1,000 of her lection of faculty books published during the past three cartoons have been published in The New Yorker since 1978, and many oth- years. ers have appeared in a great many other magazines. She has also published a dozen books including Parallel Universes (1984), Unscientific Americans Jian Leng (1986), Mondo Boxo (1987), The Four Elements (1988), Proof of Life on Associate Director Earth (1991), Childproof: Cartoons about Parents and Children (1997), The The Center for the Humanities Party, After You Left (2004), Theories of Everything (2006), and What I Hate: From A To Z (2011). One characteristic of her books is that the "author photo" is always a cartoon she draws of, presumably, herself. The title page is also hand-lettered by Chast. Chast grew up in Brooklyn and started cartooning while still in high school. She received a BFA in graphic design and painting in 1977 from the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating, she returned to cartooning, and less than two years later her name was added to those of some forty artists under contract to the New Yorker, where she has sent approximately 10 cartoons a week since 1978. Chast sees the universe through the eyes of a wife and moth- er, dreaming her dreams and trying to cope with reality. However, “In my mind's eye I will always be a short, frizzy-haired twelve year old," she told Sunday Morning anchor Charles Osgood. I have been reviewing a copy of Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected and Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006 in advance of Chast’s visit. This 1.5 inch thick book contains over 513 cartoons, 28 years of her works from the New Yorker and other periodicals. Although at first I thought it would be difficult if not impossible to write about cartoon drawing, the more I The Common Reader by Gerald Early Review of Henry Kissinger, his National Security Advisor ist, but highly hegemonic foreign policy not only and later Secretary of State wrote, “He didn’t were being called into question but were on the enjoy people. What I never understood is why he verge of being completely discredited on a num- went into politics.” It is less remarkable that he ber of ideological fronts. Nixon emerged during should have become the first president to resign a time when the national security state was in considering the combination of his own per- absolute crisis. sonal traits and the particular times in which he Nixon straddled several positions, as most lived. If Nixon was, as Mark Feldstein writes in politicians of his importance and complexity Poisoning the Press , “ill suited to the rough-and- do. He was a rabidly anti-communist conserva- tumble of public life,” he enjoyed great success tive, which is how he made his reputation as a and in nearly every instance of failure or public congressman with the Alger Hiss case and as humiliation, even after his ignominious depar- the worst sort of red-smear monger in his suc- ture from the presidency, managed to resurrect th cessful senate campaign against Helen Gahagan himself in some measure. No politician in 20 Douglas, but as Eisenhower’s vice president he century American history seemed as skilled at never repudiated the welfare state. Eisenhower, reinventing himself. There were several “new in fact, solemnly supported it as a political fact Nixons,” as it were, a reincarnation every half- beyond ideological dispute.

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