The Wednesday Watch: Happy 96th, Dana Fradon!; Profile of Interest: George Booth; A Syd Hoff Selection; Hugette Martell in NY Review of Books; Chatfield Chats About Trump

Happy 96th Dana Fradon!  Very best birthday wishes to Mr. Fradon, our senior New Yorker cartoonist.  Above, a powerhouse quartet: three New Yorker cartoonists and their editor. Left to right: Charles Saxon, James Geraghty (the New Yorker‘s Art Editor from 1939 – 1973), Dana Fradon, and Whitney Darrow, Jr.  Westport, September, 1982. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Geraghty Herndon). Mr. Fradon’s

Read more

Personal History: First Book

Pardon this little trip down memory lane.   In 1975 I printed this first book of mine on a creaky noisy offset press in the basement of the Print Shop at The University of Connecticut in Storrs (the Print Shop, a little paradise on campus, is no more, torn down and replaced — a la Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”

Read more

No Joke: Rea Irvin’s April 1947 Cover

The cover above has always been a favorite. The first time I came across it I thought I’d stumbled upon a printing error. But no, it’s yet another gift from Rea Irvin, cover artist, designer (as in his designs for the magazine’s masthead, as well as his adapted development of the typeface), cartoonist, “art supervisor” (his unofficial or official designation

Read more