Fave Photo Of The Day: Liza Donnelly & Edward Frascino
This photo taken yesterday in Santa Monica. Ms. Donnelly is visiting the left coast, Mr. Frascino lives there.
Edward Frascino began contributing to The New Yorker in September of 1965 (he was the subject of an Ink Spill interview in 2020, celebrating his 90th birthday).
Ms. Donnelly began contributing to the New Yorker in 1978 — her first drawing appeared in the magazine in 1982.
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Thurber Thursday: “Drawings In Periodicals”
One of my favorite things to do is go on fishing expeditions. Not for real fish, but for information. On an unpleasant day like today — hot and muggy — instead of rooting around the Spill‘s archives, I thought I’d go fishing in my copy of a favorite book, James Thurber: A Bibliography, by Edwin Bowden (Ohio State University Press, 1968). I can’t say enough good things about this book — it’s a must-have.
The book covers both Thurber’s writings and drawings. The Spill being cartoon-centric, I thought it would be fun to look through the “Drawings In Periodicals” section. I’ve had this book since I bought it at the Thurber House in Columbus, Ohio many many years ago, and despite having looked through it a zillion times since, I always miss something and know that the next time I start turning pages something “new” (to me) will turn up.
For today’s weedsy expedition I’m looking for work that appeared in publications other than The New Yorker. I’m focusing on the first five years of the 1930s (it’s too overwhelming to take on, in one sitting, all of the work in all of the years he was contributing — there are 626 in this section of the book). The hope is I’ll come upon a listing I haven’t noticed before. When that happens, if it happens, it’ll set me off on another hunt: to find the periodical.
After looking through, here’s what I found: according to Mr. Bowden, for the 1930 listings (it begins in 1931), up to and through 1935, Thurber contributed approximately 99% (hey, I’m not a math person — this is a non-mathematical %) of his drawings to The New Yorker. From 1931 through the end of 1935 (when I stopped looking), there are 9 appearances noted in Mr. Bowden’s bibliography that were published elsewhere (other than The New Yorker that is). Other than a combined handful appearing in American magazine (4 different appearances), Horizon (3 different appearances), Stage (1 appearance), and The Saturday Review, (1 appearance) all of the 251 drawings listed from 1931-1935 appeared in The New Yorker.
Now, off to find any one of these hitherto unseen (by me) drawings.* I’ll report back next week if I find any.
Fingers crossed!
*The 1935 Stage drawing(s) appeared in the posthumous collection, Thurber and Company.
More: had I gone into the years following 1935, I would’ve run into plenty more non-New Yorker appearances, including work published in The Bermudian, and PM. A number of these were included in this 1994 wonderful Thurber collection edited by Michael Rosen, People Have More Fun Than Anybody; A Centennial Celebration Of Drawings And Writings (Harcourt Brace)