Althouse: "'There’s nothing more futile than trying to explain a cartoon to someone who doesn’t get it,' Mr. Lorenz said."

December 12, 2022

"'There’s nothing more futile than trying to explain a cartoon to someone who doesn’t get it,' Mr. Lorenz said."

"He cited an illustration by Mr. Ziegler of a man standing at the counter of the Bureau of Missing Toast as he tearfully shows a clerk a photo of a well-done slice of bread. ‘It didn’t seem like the craziest thing we’d ever run, but I had people come up to me and say they did not get it — or like it,' Mr. Lorenz said. 'On the other hand, Jack got a half dozen pieces of toast in the mail.'"

From "Lee Lorenz, 90, Cartoonist and Gatekeeper at The New Yorker, Dies/Over 40 years at the magazine he drew hundreds of cartoons and covers and served as art and cartoon editor, recruiting new talent and deciding who got published" (NYT).

20 comments:

Joe Smith said...: Maybe socks would be better?

Who loses toast?; 12/12/22, 10:44 AM
PM said...: His cartoon selections were the only thing that got me to page through an Elizabeth Kolbert article.; 12/12/22, 10:50 AM
Anthony said...: I always found New Yorker cartoons to be, well, dumb.; 12/12/22, 10:54 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Hypothesis: Elon Musk is better at comedy than The New Yorker is at cartooning.

Discuss.; 12/12/22, 11:03 AM
Crimso said...: I'm reminded of the cartoon with the pig at the complaint department saying "My wife's a slut."; 12/12/22, 11:12 AM
Rory said...: "explain a cartoon to someone who doesn’t get it"

I like the kitty.; 12/12/22, 11:31 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: I laughed at the description of the toast cartoon.; 12/12/22, 11:31 AM
Mark said...: No mention of Elaine Benes?; 12/12/22, 11:35 AM
Saint Croix said...: A couple of Zieglar's toast cartoons here.

Also Sesame Street did an investigation into the missing toast.

The criminal, by the way, is Vincent Twice. Vincent Twice. Who sounds nothing like Vincent Price. But that made me google Vincent Price toast and I found his recipe for French Toast. So, mystery solved!; 12/12/22, 11:36 AM
tim in vermont said...: The cartoons kept me paging through the New Yorker long after the articles had driven me away. I don’t ‘get’ the toast cartoon, but I think it’s funny.; 12/12/22, 11:39 AM
mikee said...: The literally marginalized comics of Mad Magazine's great Sergio Aragones prepared me as a child for teen years filled with everything from Kliban's cats to Zippy the Pinhead to Life in Hell and college years enlivened by National Lampoon and Playboy dirty joke comics. Comics about the Addams Family were icing on the cake. As for the Far Side, give me Cow Tools, or prepare yourself to Beware of the Doug. My son is named Calvin after my father, but his first gift was a stuffed tiger.

The New Yorker's comics of sensible chuckles and virtue signals are a somewhat boring footnote to the world of US cartoon panels in periodicals. I understand they paid well, comparatively, which is nice.

What will the poor man in the toast comic do if his missing toast reappears slathered in butter, or worse, with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled all over?; 12/12/22, 12:24 PM
Fred Drinkwater said...: Reference: Thurber's "Glimpses of the Art Conference"

Also "The Theory and Practice of Criticizing the Criticism of the Editing of 'New Yorker' Articles"; 12/12/22, 12:31 PM
Terry di Tufo said...: Almost certainly the inspiration for the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine gets a New Yorker cartoon editor to acknowledge that he didn't get what a cartoon meant either.; 12/12/22, 12:42 PM
tim maguire said...: I don't get it either. I can appreciate the weirdness of a Bureau of Missing Toast, but if there's more to it than that, I don't see it.; 12/12/22, 1:49 PM
wendybar said...: Like the New York Times naming John FETTERMAN as one of their most stylish people?? THIS is a cartoon that you HAVE to laugh at.

Seriously, HOW do you take anything they post seriously, when they think Lurch in a Carhart is stylish??

https://twitchy.com/artistangie-313138/2022/12/12/john-fetterman-named-on-new-york-times-list-of-most-stylish-people-and-ummm-lol-wut/; 12/12/22, 2:34 PM
hombre said...: Leftist BS has crowded out humor by now at New Yorker.

But RIP Mr. Lorenz. Thank you for what was.; 12/12/22, 2:57 PM
typingtalker said...: If I don't "get" or like a New Yorker cartoon I assume it's over my head and turn the page.

Life is short.; 12/12/22, 4:18 PM
William said...: There was a time when cartoonists could sell their work to the Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, or other venues. I wonder where cartoonists now can go after their work is rejected by The New Yorker. Cartoonists are going the way of epic poets. They exist but there's no mass market.....Is there any cartoonist nowadays with the mass following of Al Capp or Steve Coniff or the later generation of Charles Schulz or Bill Watterson?; 12/12/22, 7:09 PM
Lurker21 said...: Reminds me of Don Pardo, who Lorne Michaels had announcing Saturday Night Live until he was 96 to make the audience believe the show still was what it once was. The last few years they even flew him in from Arizona every week to yell a few sentences into a microphone.

I do like the New Yorker cartoons. They had the magazine in doctors' and dentists' offices when I was a kid and the comics were just about the only thing in the magazine I could understand.

Also "The Theory and Practice of Criticizing the Criticism of the Editing of 'New Yorker' Articles"

Is that the right title? I found "The Theory and Practice of Editing New Yorker Articles." It's quite witty. Bill Murray reads that or part of that or something like that in The French Dispatch movie.; 12/12/22, 9:13 PM
Jim Gust said...: The cartoonist with a mass following today is Scott Adams. He's republished much of Dilbert in book form, I own several of them. Generally funny because it's true.

Haven't looked at The New Yorker in decades. Did I miss anything?; 12/13/22, 12:00 AM