It’s a long way off to pub date (March 2014) for New Yorker Cartoon Editor, Bob Mankoff’s memoir, How About Never — Is Never Good For You?: My Life in Cartoons — but the cover is now with us to examine and enjoy. Those with long memories may remember the image from the very first New Yorker Cartoon Issue (December 15, 1997). That earlier incarnation appeared as a cartoon with the caption “Hey where ya been? The gang’s all here!” and with a different head shot of Mr. Mankoff, a self portrait (see image below).
The memoir’s title comes from Mr. Mankoff’s popular cartoon “No, Thursday’s out. How about never — is never good for you?” (published in The New Yorker, May 3, 1993). Mr. Mankoff has been the New Yorker’s Cartoon editor since 1997, when he succeeded Lee Lorenz who had held the position since 1973 (Mr. Lorenz was Art Editor from 1973 to 1993, when his title became Cartoon Editor).
Here’s the publisher’s note from Henry Holt & Co.:
Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New Yorker
People tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don’t. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine’s caption contest. Throughout, we see his commitment to the motto “Anything worth saying is worth saying funny.”
Here’s the Cartoon Issue version from 1997:
Can’t wait for this publication. Will be a great addition to my collection of anthology cartoon books from the greats as well as more recent publications like Cartoon Rejection and Funny Ladies.