Personal History…Dust Jacket Of Interest…Addams’s Here At The New Yorker
Charles Addams’s dust jacket art for Brendan Gill’s 1975 Here At The New Yorker remains, to this day, my favorite of all the books out there about magazine. I was still in college the year the book was published; Gill’s book, along with Burton Bernstein’s Thurber: A Biography (published the same year) were the lit fuses that sent me, at rocket speed, to New Yorker world. Though still in school, I sent in batches of drawings, week after week, (pipe) dreaming of one day appearing in the magazine.
Addams’s cover art, a hit parade of New Yorker luminaries (including Addams’s self portrait shown here), was (and still is in a funny way) crazily inspiring. A 2019 Attempted Bloggery post you can see here gives us close-ups of the art and index to the characters.
Less than two years after the book came out, my work was welcomed into the magazine, and such were the times that I eventually managed to meet (William Shawn, Addams, Philip Hamburger, Roger Angell, Steinberg), correspond with (William Maxwell), or see up close in the flesh (George Price, Whitney Darrow, Jr., Brendan Gill) a goodly number of those on Addams’s cover.
–The dust jacket shown above is from my college copy of the book. Still in fairly good shape after fifty years.
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Addams’s A-Z Entry
Charles Addams (Born in Westfield, New Jersey, January 7, 1912. Died September 29, 1988, New York City. New Yorker work: 1932 – 1988 * the New Yorker has published his work posthumously. One of the giants of The New Yorker’s stable of artists. Key cartoon collections: While all of Addams’ collections are worthwhile, here are three that are particular favorites; Homebodies (Simon & Schuster, 1954), The Groaning Board (Simon & Schuster, 1964), Creature Comforts (Simon & Schuster, 1981). In 1991 Knopf published The World of Chas Addams, a retrospective collection. A biography, Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life, by Linda Davis, was published in 2006 by Random House. Visit the Addams Foundation website for far more information : charlesaddams.com/