Tuesday Spill: Personal History…5 EZ Steps To The New Yorker

Personal History…5 EZ Steps To The New Yorker

When I moved to Manhattan in 1977, the idea was that being close to The New Yorker’s offices  might somehow help me (my work) get into The New Yorker. After getting over the jitters about actually going into the offices, I took that first big step and learned that going in didn’t mean having to do anything but drop off my envelope of drawings. I barely had to speak to anyone. 

And so from late 1977 through the early months of 1980 (when I moved out of the big city), I religiously brought my batch of cartoons up to The New Yorker every week of the year (except those few weeks the art department closed during the summer, and the week off at holiday time at year’s end). The path I took, in mid-morning, post-rush hour, quickly got me to where I wanted to go. 

I liked the weekly uptown excursion. It served as a cap to the work week; my weekend compressed into some walking, a train ride, and then a trip up and down in an elevator.

Once my batch of drawings was turned in I didn’t linger in midtown Manhattan — no lunches with cartoonists (I didn’t know any yet!). One time I did bring my rejected New Yorker work over to The Ladies Home Journal to sit down with their cartoon editor. That was a bust. After looking through the stack of my cartoons she said, “I don’t see anything here I haven’t seen before.” Ouch. 

The map shows the steps.

1. Leave 113 West 11th, with my 10″ x 13″ envelope filled with drawings. 
2. Walk up to 14th Street & 6th Ave., head down into the subway station and grab any northbound subway train.   
3. Exit at the 42nd subway stop, hard by Bryant Park.
4. Jaywalk across 42nd and enter the Grace Building lobby (arcade?) that runs through the block. (the other entrance/exit at West 43rd Street). There was, back then, a small newsstand in the lobby where I’d stop and take a quick look through the latest issue of The New Yorker. 

5.Enter 25 West 43rd Street, where The New Yorker was housed. I loved going through the revolving doors. The great Charles Saxon cover shown here always reminds me of those doors (even though they’re not the same doors. The New Yorker revolving doors are brass, I think). A few moments after entering the lobby (it’s really an arcade), an elevator ride would take me up to the 20th floor, where I’d step off, and leave the envelope of cartoons with a receptionist who sat behind a glass partition. She’d then hand over last week’s envelope of rejected work. No words were spoken other than my “Thank you.”* Then it was back in the elevator, to begin retracing the steps back to 11th Street. 

_______________________________________________________________________

*There were two instances, in those years of my commute, when more than “Thank you” was spoken. I spoke to Roger Angell on the elevator about a recent Talk piece he’d written, and I was once summoned back to the Art Department office where I was instructed by the magazine’s Art Editor, Lee Lorenz, to never again submit giant cover art (I’d turned in a piece measuring about 4′ (yes, feet) x 8′). I met one cartoonist that day while waiting to see Mr. Lorenz: the exceptionally wonderful Henry Martin. 

_________________________________________________________________________

Henry Martin’s A-Z entry:

Henry Martin ( Pictured above. Photograph taken 1984) Born 1925, Louisville, Kentucky. Died, June 30, 2020, Newtown, Pennsylvania. New Yorker work: 1964 – 1999 . Collections: Good News / Bad News ( Scribners, 1977), Yak! Yak! Yak! Blah! Blah! Blah! (Scribners, 1977). Martin has illustrated a number of books, as well as writing and illustrating children’s books. Ink Spill’s Henry Martin Appreciation