Bob Mankoff is the current Cartoon Editor of The New Yorker. He’s also a gifted cartoonist as his classic “How About Never” plainly shows. What I liked about Mankoff’s book were the discussions of what makes a cartoon funny. Mankoff knows every cartoon (literally!) The New Yorker has ever published. He talks about how humor has changed over the decades and provides insightful examples. If you’re interested in how humor works, how American humor has evolved, and predictions about the future of cartoons, How About Never explores all of these topics with grace and wit. It doesn’t get better than this. GRADE: A
An auspicious return, George! And whatthehell happened anyhow?
Dan, according to Patrick, the server where GEORGEKELLEY.ORG resided melted down…literally. Everything on the server was lost. Patrick had to restore my blog from a backup, but some data was lost (I’ll try to fix some of that this week) on a new server. I’m glad have the blog back up and running.
Where the heck did this server reside? A secondary PC of yours, or your ISP? If the ISP, time to jump ship, NO ISP should have servers that don’t have external back-ups. There’s obviously something about this I don’t understand…
But wait, you have WordPress. That shouldn’t have happened!
George, this is right up my reading alley. Over the years I have enjoyed The New Yorker cartoons. I’ll check this out.
Prashant, you’ll appreciate the wit and humor in HOW ABOUT NEVER. But you’ll also love the historical perspective Mankoff provides. This is a great book!
Wow. I missed you, George. Was about to ask you to post on my blog if it wasn’t up today. Welcome back.
Patti, I missed blogging for a week and was going into withdrawal. Thank you for your kind offer. If the server melts down again, I’ll take you up on that!
Good one. My younger sister uses that “never” line regularly.
Jeff, that “never” line has become a classic. You would love HOW ABOUT NEVER.
If I’d had any clue it would be so long, I also would have said you could blog at Bullhorn.
This book looks great.
Rick, HOW ABOUT NEVER is a terrific book. You would enjoy it. I appreciate your offer. I had no idea it would take Patrick a week to restore the blog. But it was really toast. I’m restoring what I can of the damaged graphics.
I bought the huge book of New Yorker cartoons years ago. Lots of good stuff therein.
Bob, I’ve purchased several collections of cartoons from THE NEW YORKER. There was also a set of CD-ROMs that held all THE NEW YORKER cartoons every published!