What Tuesdays Are, And What They Used To Be (For A New Yorker Cartoonist)
For New Yorker cartoonists, Tuesdays and Fridays glow brighter than the other five days of the week. For as long as there has been a New Yorker magazine, Tuesday has been the day cartoonists submit their work to the editor.* Friday is the day contributors hear whether they’ve sold one (or more or none) of their submissions sent in on Tuesday. Fridays aren’t as embedded historically as Tuesdays — the “hearing day” for lack of a better descriptive, has shifted over the years. For many years, pre-computer age, Thursday was “hearing day” (not hearing means you didn’t sell anything).
In pre-pandemic times, when the New Yorker’s offices were abuzz with activity (“abuzz” may be too loud a word for the magazine’s offices), many cartoonists would carry their wares into the cartoon editor’s office, and sit awhile, while she (she is Emma Allen) looked through the drawings. With the office shutdown due to the pandemic, that charming and (for some) essential interaction was, of course, suspended. Pre-pandemic, if one couldn’t make it into the office, or didn’t want to, there was always the in-person drop off (without sitting with Ms. Allen), or the mail, or email.
In these pandemic days, Tuesday is the day you scan and send in your batch (by noon) to Ms. Allen via email from wherever you happen to be on a Tuesday. No trekking to the magazine’s offices at One World Trade Center, no interaction with fellow cartoonists hanging around the Cartoon Department, no post submission lunch, bantering with colleagues. No Sam Gross figuring out the collective bill**, or rejected drawings passed around (by some) for appraisal(s).
For those cartoonists who like to get out and about, I do hope the ritual of showing up at The New Yorker on a Tuesday with your batch of freshly minted drawings resumes much much sooner than later.
*Tuesdays were also once the day of The Art Meeting, but that day has shifted over time. Check out “Every Tuesday Afternoon” in Thurber’s The Years With Ross for a fun account ofThe New Yorker’s earliest days of choosing art.
**Mr. Gross, one of The New Yorker‘s great cartoonists, was once an accountant (for about half-a-year).
Hear hear.
My weeks are blending into each other without that once-weekly reason to shower. (Er… I mean, ride a bike to lower Manhattan.)
Hope it returns. I miss it painfully.
I can certainly empathize with the New Yorker cartoonists. I worked as an office manager at a graphic design and marketing firm for 9 years and loved going into work everyday of it. I got to interact with some very creative and very fun people on a daily basis. I really miss that interaction.
I imagine that cartooning is a mostly solitary profession and that the once a week gathering to talk, celebrate and commiserate was (and is) highly anticipated. I hope that the Tuesday tradition is able to continue for you.
I would gladly pay you Friday for a cartoon on Tuesday.