The Tilley Watch Online, December 11-15, 2023
An end of the week listing of New Yorker artists whose work has appeared on newyorker.com features
The Daily Cartoon: Will Santino, Ellis Rosen, Kit Fraser, Paul Noth, Mick Stevens.
Daily Shouts: Olivia de Recat (with Timothy Cahill and Ryan Walls).
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Book Stories
I thought it would be fun, on this exceptionally nice day (nice, weather-wise) to visit one shelf of books in the Spill library. Usually, I show shelves of New Yorker cartoon books — either books of cartoons, or books about cartoonists. This shelf is not especially dedicated to New Yorker cartoons and/or cartoonists, and yet somehow they mange to show up anyway.
Of the Capote books shown (there are more to the left not shown), the one revisited most often is Music For Chameleons. It came out about the time I was finishing up my “cartoon residency” living in Manhattan, during the first years I was being published in The New Yorker. There’s a whole lot of wistfulness attached to that time.
I realized, seeing just the one Cheever collection on the shelf, that his work is woefully under-represented. Never did get around to buying the bestselling big red Cheever collection, but did read past these two books (and watched the movie based on a Cheever story).
Marc Connelly is on the shelf because of the Algonquin Round Table. If someone was a regular member, I looked into them and their work. Other Round Table books are, for some reason or another, on different shelves.
Peter DeVries was initially placed on the shelf because of his James Thurber connection more than his New Yorker connection, although one could say those two connections are heavily interlinked (Thurber introduced DeVries’ work to Harold Ross). DeVries’ Tunnel Of Love was purchased because of the subject matter: the main character is a cartoonist. One of DeVries’ jobs at The New Yorker was “cartoon doctor.” Hmmmm.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side Of Paradise was bought during my Peter Arno research (thanks, Arno, for widening my Fitzgerald reading!). Reading the book led to reading more Fitzgerald (I keep a copy of a Fitzgerald reader in my car for those times I’m double-parked in Manhattan, waiting for a legal space to open up).
Bill Franzen’s Hearing From Wayne came out within my first decade of being a New Yorker cartoonist, just a few years after I met Bill (he was the second New Yorker writer I met. Donald Barthelme, my downstairs neighbor on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, was the first). Bill continues to be one of the funniest and fun people on the planet.
Kennedy Fraser’s Ornament And Silence is also linked to my Peter Arno research (Ms. Fraser took over Lois Long’s — Arno’s first wife — New Yorker column “on And Off the Avenue”).
Veronica Geng’s collections (there are just these two) are must-haves. She passed away far too young.
The four Wolcott Gibbs books shown are on the shelf for various reasons. The collection, More In Sorrow is a must-have (and as a bonus it has a Charles Addams cover). Addams covers also adorn both editions of Gibbs’ Season In The Sun (yet another case of a New Yorker editor/writer producing a piece featuring thinly veiled New Yorker characters). Thomas Vinceguerra‘s big Gibbs book is also a must have. Tom went on to write Cast Of Characters: E.B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker — another sterling addition to the New Yorker book library. Tom’s death was another in the too-soon column. We became friends during the time he was researching Cast Of Characters and I was writing my Arno biography.
[the horizontal, or somewhat horizontal books: the three copies of Thurber’s Many Moons are there for wont of shelf space directly above, in the Thurber section. Lack of shelf space also accounts for Ann Beattie’s Walks With Men, and Maeve Brennan’s The Long-Winded Lady, as well as John McPhee’s Pine Barrens and Lillian Ross’s Adlai Stevenson. Note to self: build more book shelves]