The Tilley Watch Online, January 5-9, 2026
An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features
Daily Cartoon: Ali Solomon, Lynn Hsu, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Liz Montague, Ivan Ehlers.
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A Puzzler Added to The Spill Library
The New Yorker At 100: Unpacking The Voices Behind A Hundred Years Of Influence by Robert Keys. This seems to be a print-on-demand book. 80 pages. Very large type. More of a booklet than a book. No bio of the author (who states he wrote the book after watching the recent Netflix documentary, The New Yorker At 100). Possibly an AI generated book?
The booklet begins with the disclaimer: “What you’re holding isn’t an official companion, and it isn’t approved or endorsed by Netflix, The New Yorker, or anyone involved in the film.”
I immediately went to the chapter on cartoons to get a feel for the content. This section perplexed me:
“In the film, this early vision [of what kind of magazine Harold Ross invented] comes alive through rare archival shots of the magazine’s earliest offices. Papers everywhere, editors arguing, illustrators sketching as fast as ideas come.”
Perplexed because there are no “shots of the magazine’s earliest offices” in the film, showing “papers everywhere, editors arguing, illustrators sketching as fast as they can.”
And then there’s this (also not in the film):
“You see rough drafts, rejected options, the caption debates that can last for hours. Editors lean back in their chairs, tilt their heads, squint, and say, It’s almost there.”
With that in mind, this title will be added to the Spill library as a curio.
Yeah, that’s AI.
I’m intrigued by how it was done (and a bit frightened that it was done).