I had to keep myself occupied yesterday afternoon while a repairman was in our basement figuring out why the furnace was sputtering and causing the house to smell like an oil refinery. With the sound of clanging tools just below the floor of the space where I work, I figured it was a good time to grab a bound volume of The New Yorker (the one you see in the photo) and see what I could see. There really is nothing like having bound magazines to look through, especially the issues I’m less familiar with.
I cracked open the volume and began thumbing through. A drawing of Dick Cavett got my immediate attention. It accompanies a Profiles piece by L.E. Sissman in the issue of May 6, 1972 (the issue sports a great cat cover by the equally great Ronald Searle). Always a fan of Dick Cavett, and not having come by the piece before, I dove right into it, happy to have found it. What was immediately apparent was that this was not a typical Profiles piece.
The Charles Saxon caricature of Cavett that brought me into the piece was clue #1. I didn’t remember ever seeing him (Saxon, that is) in that spot before, working as a caricaturist. Clue #2: a Saxon drawing on the second page that was not independent of the piece, but part of it — in other words: an illustration. I didn’t remember ever seeing a Profiles piece accompanied by titled (i.e., not captioned) drawings; if you’ve seen other examples, please let me know. Turning the pages I found ten more Saxon drawings, of various sizes on the page. One nearly full page.
Here’s a sampling of several pages so you get an idea:
I didn’t quite finish the Profile by the time the furnace was back to normal, but really enjoyed what I managed to read. The Saxon pieces were, of course, the unexpected cherries on top. So here’s to the gunked-up something or other in our furnace that caused me to land upon a terrif Profiles piece and a dozen new-to-me drawings by one of The New Yorker‘s cartoon gods.
Here’s Charles Saxon’s entry on the Spill‘s A-Z:
Charles Saxon (self portrait from Best Cartoons of the Year 1947) Born in Brooklyn, Nov 13, 1920, died in Stamford, Conn., Dec 6, 1988. New Yorker work: 1943 – 1991 (2 drawings published posthumously). Key collection: One Man’s Fancy ( Dodd, Mead, 1977). One of the giants of the New Yorker’s stable of artists. He could do it all: covers, spreads, single panels.