Poking A Dead Frog Part 19

It's hard to draw-at least in detail-worlds that you don't know. I don't know what's in a penthouse refrigerator. Expensive champagne? Maybe some really old capers?

Has The New Yorker's submission process changed for you since you first began?

No, it hasn't changed much at all. I've submitted, let's see: thirty years times forty-six weeks on average a year . . . whatever that is, since I first started, and I still do it basically the same way. Each week I submit between five and ten cartoons. Usually, about six or seven.

And how many, on average, will be accepted each week?

It's really hard to say. I might average one per issue for maybe three or four weeks in a row, but then I might go for three or four weeks and not sell any. And then the next week, for no reason at all, it seems, they'll buy two. I'll feel great, but then I'm back to square one. It's a cycle, but it's frightening because I never know if the cycle will remain stuck on my not selling anything.

Someone once told me about a psychological experiment that was done with rats: If you keep rewarding the rats with a pellet each time they push a lever, they will eventually become bored and stop pushing the lever. And if they receive no pellets at all, they'll get discouraged and stop pushing the lever. But if you provide them with intermittent, random pellets, they just keep pushing that lever. Sometimes I feel like I am that rat.

It's a tough business. You only feel as good as your last sale. Even this many years later, I still get depressed if I haven't made a sale for a couple of weeks. I always feel like that's the end of it, you know-I really have run out of ideas!

You would think that by now I would understand that when I get depressed, it's part of the cycle. But it's still hard. The fact is, there are no guarantees. I don't know too many cartoonists who are superconfident people.

Do you hand-deliver these cartoons to The New Yorker office?

I used to go every week, but it just took too much time. In the eighties, I'd have a weekly lunch with the rest of The New Yorker cartoonists. But when we all moved out of the city, the group disbanded. I feel I can better use my time to stay at home and work. Or procrastinate.

Once a week, I fax a batch of rough sketches to The New Yorker offices. I try to draw pretty much what the finished cartoon will look like. You know, if people are standing in a room, I'll sketch the room, but I won't put in all of the fine detail until the cartoon is bought. The initial versions are always rough. If they buy it, I do a finish-a finished version of the sketch.

How long does a finish take?

For a very simple drawing, it might take an hour and a half. For a more complicated one, especially those in color, it might take several hours.

What exactly goes on in a New Yorker cartoon meeting? To me-and, I think, to many others-The New Yorker is like the Kremlin. It's a world of mystery, smoke, and mirrors.

The deadline is late on Tuesday. Every cartoonist either e-mails or brings to the offices a batch of rough sketches, usually about five to ten. I've never been to a New Yorker art meeting where the editors talked about cartoons, which takes place on Wednesday. It'd be like peeking in on your parents and accidentally seeing them doing things you know they do, but don't want to think about them doing.

I once read an article that described the process, but I've since repressed it. As much as I would like to imagine the editors saying, "This one is really good, but this one is even better!," I know the disgusting, painful reality.

Do a lot of these ideas for cartoons gestate for a long time before you sketch them?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Often, ideas will crop up when I'm in my studio just doodling and thinking. I remember when I was drawing "The Fantastic Voyage" [Scientific American, July 2002]. I had been thinking about the cliche of s.p.a.ceships and strange submarine-like vehicles that would travel through the body in sci-fi films from the fifties and sixties. I wondered, What if people were in a broken-down bus instead? Or in the family sedan? That's how that cartoon came about.

I once doodled a crazy man holding a sign that read: THE END IS NEAR! I just felt like drawing one of these guys. Who knows why. After looking at the guy for awhile, I realized that he needed a crazy wife. So I drew him a wife, and she was holding up a sign that said: YOU WISH. That one came out of the blue.

What ideas are you currently mulling over?

I'm working on an idea now. I wrote down, "Break Internet." I like the thought of breaking the Internet, as if it were a toy or an appliance. Now that I describe it, it sounds pretty lame. [The cartoon was not bought.]

How extensive is your backlog of unsold cartoons?

Thousands and thousands. It's an ocean of rejection. A lot of them are very dated, and a lot of them are just plain bad, but in that pile I will sometimes find something I want to rework. I have so many rejected drawings that it almost becomes raw material for me. When I'm stuck, I sometimes go into that file, and I'll see if there's an idea hiding that can be fixed.

How much time do you spend on the exact wording of your cartoons?

It really depends. Sometimes a cartoon will be very clear in my head from the minute I conceptualize it. Other times-especially with a multipanel "story" cartoon-it takes longer. I like the editing process. I think-I hope-that this is something I've gotten better at as I've gotten older. I probably could have done more self-editing when I was younger.

Specifically, what sort of self-editing?

Eliminating things I don't need; paying attention to the rhythm of a joke. I don't want to make anyone read more than absolutely necessary.

I wonder how many readers even notice how finely structured the wording is in certain cartoons-such as with your work, or Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury, or Gary Larson's The Far Side. There's never an extra comma or beat.

Bad rhythm is something you see frequently with amateur cartoonists. With that said, there are times when I can feel the rhythm of a cartoon more clearly than at other times. I work on deadline, and I have to do this whether I'm in the mood to work or not. But why I'm in the mood sometimes and not at other times is still a mystery.

Do you have tricks you've taught yourself that have made the process less difficult?

Getting away from work and coming back to it fresh really helps. Also, Truman Capote once said that if you have to leave a ma.n.u.script or a chapter, don't finish up the last little bit, because then, when you come back, you'll have to restart from nothing. I've often used this approach. If I'm going downstairs for lunch, I leave something I'm excited to come back to-so I won't be starting from zero miles per hour. But it doesn't always work.

Do you consider yourself as much a writer as a cartoonist?

I don't consider myself as much of a writer as a "real" writer-those writers who write without drawings. And I don't consider myself as much of an artist as a "real" artist-somebody who paints without using any words. But cartooning is a hybrid, and cartoonists are hybrids. We feel incomplete doing just one or the other. When I have to write and I can't use pictures, it's very frustrating. You work in the medium best suited to what you have to say, and, for me, that's cartooning.

So where do you see the art of cartooning in the future? Do you think it'll remain a viable profession?

I don't know how viable it is now. It's a very tough profession. I really don't know whether cartooning for magazines will stick around. There's a lot written about teenagers and print media and how irrelevant the nonelectronic media might soon become. I really don't know what's going to happen. But I do know that if someone wants to become a cartoonist they're going to find an outlet.

I'd like to learn more about animation programs. If there was a computer program that wasn't too difficult to learn, I might just give it a shot. Hopefully you can always learn something new. Key word: hopefully.

Any advice for cartoonists starting out with their careers?

I'm really grateful for the life-drawing cla.s.ses I took at art school. Not that anyone looking at my characters would believe it, but I think life-drawing is really important. A cartoonist has to know how a body sits or stands on a page. It's like learning a language.

You can't teach a cartoonist how to have a style. They can improve their own style, but it's impossible to provide a style to someone who doesn't have one. And that has to be learned on your own.

Do you have any regrets? It seems that no matter how successful anyone is, they always have at least one major regret.

I feel that on my deathbed, which is something I hope to eventually have, I'll probably look back and wish that I didn't always look on the dark side of everything. But how can you not? You could die at any time, for any reason. You're walking under an air conditioner, and kaboom! My parents actually knew someone who was killed by a falling flower pot. But we have to kind of go along and put one foot in front of the other and pretend that we don't know that everything could take a serious turn for the worse in the next second.

It's all in the pretending.

Yes, it's all in the pretending. Any of us could walk outside right now and Mr. Anvil could suddenly meet Mr. Top of Head. But we pretend otherwise.

Actually, that'd make for a nice cartoon.

And if I'm safely off to the side while it happens to you, and if there's a deadline looming, I would absolutely love to draw it. [Laughs]

ULTRASPECIFIC COMEDIC KNOWLEDGE.

HENRY ALFORD.

Contributor, Spy, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The New Yorker; Author, Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners

How to Be Funny as a Journalist

You've been a writer now for over thirty years. Your specialty is humorous first-person journalistic accounts. But how would you define yourself? As a journalist? Or as a humorist?

I usually say both. The writing that I seem to be known for-the first-person, fish-out-of-water, investigative, humor-type pieces-are a hybrid. I usually say, "George Plimpton, but with more leotards."

Do such definitions matter in the industry? How important are labels for magazine and book editors looking to a.s.sign articles or seeking to purchase book ma.n.u.scripts?

Well, being a prose writer who doesn't write for TV or film, I wouldn't be able to eat if I weren't willing to do a certain amount of fact-gathering. If you're going to try to make a living off of being funny in books and magazines and newspapers, you probably need either to do some reporting or be a brand-name cartoonist.

The beauty part of embracing facts is that I can get an a.s.signment and I can get a book deal. Unless you're, say, Steve Martin, you can't get an a.s.signment to write a factless humor piece, and you can't get a book deal to write a novel. But I could go to a publisher and say, "I want to be a Mexican wrestler for a year," or, "I want to interview everyone in Ohio named Barry," and they might cough up some money for that.

How difficult would it be for you to get an a.s.signment to write a factless humor piece?

I still do occasionally write pieces without facts-and like most writers, I labor under the delusion that I'll write a novel one day, just as soon as it drops from the sky onto my head, already written. And, sure, very occasionally someone will a.s.sign me a bit o' whimsy. But bookwise, that's a tiny, tiny market, unless you're working on books meant to end up next to the cash register or the toilet.

It's possible that someone would be willing to publish all my New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs and the wackier of my op-eds from The New York Times, but I'd go into it knowing that it probably wouldn't sell a ton.

There's a fine line between being funny as a journalist and being overbearing-or even mean-spirited. What is that line and how is it best avoided?

I always say, The easiest three ways to make a name for yourself as a journalist are to be a really b.i.t.c.hy reviewer, to write a s.e.x column, or to do Q&As that are heavy on the Qs. So, I've tried to avoid those things, which I usually find overbearing.

With respect to my own work-especially the material where people don't know I'm writing about them-I try never to name or make identifiable anyone that I'm not in a professional relationship with. Like, once I took the National Dog Groomers a.s.sociation's certification test. I have limited skills in this area, despite my h.o.m.os.e.xuality. In the throes of the exam, I ended up smearing lipstick on my c.o.c.ker spaniel's snout and telling the test administrator, "I like a dog with a face." When I wrote the experience up in an article, I made the test administrator identifiable-she and I were in a professional relationship-but not the other test-takers in the room. That distinction seems only fair to me. Likewise, if you're selling me something, or if I've paid you to provide a service, you're fair game. If you're standing in the background, I'm gonna pixilate you.

Also, I self-deprecate a lot. The upside of self-absorption is that you don't pay other people enough heed to hurt their feelings.

Do you ever think you've crossed that line into meanness?

Sure, particularly when I was younger. I did a story in Spy magazine once-this is going back twenty-five years-for which I stayed at a bunch of bed-and-breakfasts in Manhattan, tangling with various hosts' unwillingness to tell me whether or not as a paying guest I was allowed to sit in their living room. One host, a distracted woman in her fifties, told me that she was going to be doing some exercises in her living room-"an activity," I wrote, "which I could only imagine involves a lot of crouching and lotion." I reread this line the other day and had two thoughts about it. One, it's sort of mean and ad hominem. Two, I am this woman now.

I like to think that my inner compa.s.s keeps me from being condescending, but I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to tell you otherwise. Worse comes to worst, a good editor can alert you to condescension. Ignorant: sure, probably have been there, too. No, the more tricky one for me-particularly if people don't know I'm writing about them, or if people who are being interviewed are a little more candid than they should be-is knowing whether or not I can use a juicy, possibly d.a.m.ning comment or revelation. I go through a whole Kbler-Ross, male-menopausal, weather storm-map-ish rinse cycle with those. I'll ask myself, Is it something they would have told me if they knew I was writing a story? Is it worth it to me to ask them if I can use it, only to possibly have them say no? Is the speaker or doer identifiable in the story? I'm inherently a pretty polite, don't-make-a-lot-of-waves, cheery-to-the-point-of-bland, PepperidgeFarmsy WASP, and this orientation doesn't always scream "good reporter."

As a journalist, you enter and write about other worlds: whether it's the hipster community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, an a capella group at Yale, or a cruise sponsored by the liberal magazine The Nation. Since you're an outsider in these situations, I'd imagine you'd want to take extra care not to appear condescending or ignorant.

I'm pretty conscious of the fact that I play on an uneven playing field. Uneven because 1) I'm the writer, so I'm always going to have the last word, and 2) sometimes I know in advance what I'm going to say before I enter the situation. For instance, I knew when I was writing my Brooklyn hipster story for The New York Times ["How I Became a Hipster," May 1, 2013] that I would enter a clothing store and ask, "Are your socks local?" When I sang with the Yale Whiffenpoofs [The New York Times, "Singing for Their Supper," January 11, 2013], I knew I would tell someone at Yale that Osama bin Laden had been in an a capella group as a teen and that I wished that his group had been called Vocal Jihad. So, I'm semi-armed. Thus, it's particularly important for me to be generous and kind in my coverage, and also to make myself look as much like an a.s.s as possible.

What percentage of jokes, on average, are written beforehand?

Not much. Maybe 10 percent. It's really more of a way to calm my nerves and jittery antic.i.p.ation before I start reporting. And somehow it helps me focus-maybe it's like an actor reading the whole script before he shoots. Like if you were cast on Law & Order, and your only line was "I didn't do nothin', Lenny," but they gave you the whole script, not just your scene to read, you could then really whale on that one line. You could bring seven thousand pounds of subtext to "I didn't do nothin', Lenny."

You mentioned Spy magazine earlier, which was infamous for combining journalism with humor. Can you see the direct influence of Spy on today's journalists?

I guess I see the influence most directly when I see charticles-something like New York magazine's terrific "Approval Matrix" seems like Spy's offspring. I remember reading an interview with Kurt Andersen and Graydon Carter, Spy's founders, who said that they got the idea for funny charts from Time magazine, which, after notable plane crashes, would always print ill.u.s.trations of where everyone was sitting on the plane.

Wit is always pretty timeless, so it's harder to see the specific trickle-down of Spy's particular acerbity. Acerbicity? Acerb.i.t.c.hy? The one aspect of the Spy legacy that, in the wrong hands, can sometimes be unfortunate is the insiderness of everything: Yes, I thought it was brilliant that Spy devoted a whole column to the Creative Artists Agency, and explained how some Hollywood movies are nothing but "packages," but isn't this the same head that wants to know weekend box-office? Not to go all Kahlil Gibran on you, but who gives a s.h.i.t about ratings and BO, as I like to call it? 30 Rock was one of the most brilliant comedies of our time, but it had c.r.a.ppy, c.r.a.ppy ratings. Do you care? I mean, you care if you're Tina Fey or you do props for 30 Rock, but otherwise, maybe you should consider taking up golf or Chinese brush painting.

What career advice would you give to those who want to combine journalism with humor?

Don't cook up some hilarious essay and then go to the newsstand thinking, Who can I submit this article to? Do it the other way around: Obsessively read and reread a particular section of a magazine-maybe Shouts & Murmurs in The New Yorker or maybe the back page of The New York Times Magazine, or maybe your local paper's op-ed, or maybe those essays in Details where a writer discusses some difficult-to-reach part of his body-and then write something that's tailored very specifically to that section of that publication. This will save you eight hundred thousand man- or woman-hours.

Additionally: Don't do round-ups of unusual but actual state laws ("In Rhode Island, it's illegal to serve crackers to Border collies . . ."), or parodies of year-end holiday newsletters. The world is good on those.

PURE, HARD-CORE ADVICE.

PATTON OSWALT.

Comedian, Feelin' Kind of Patton; Voice-Actor; Actor, Big Fan, Young Adult; Writer, Zombie s.p.a.ceship Wasteland, Silver Screen Fiend When you're writing something, and it makes you laugh, don't judge that. Even if it doesn't seem to fit. If it made you laugh out loud, it probably belongs on the page. Let someone else see if they can make it work. In the industry, you're always told about this imaginary ethereal audience, like, "People wanna see this, people wanna see that." Actually, let me boil down what I just said even better: Have trust in amusing yourself.

The next step is always the same thing, and it's actually very simple: Just keep going onstage. This is really helpful even if you just want to write, but especially if you want to perform. You're not going to figure out what your next step is unless you do get up onstage. Just keep doing it, and the way will show itself. I know that's frustrating to hear, because it sounds like I'm brushing people off, but it does come down to knowing it when you know it. And the ones that ask, "But what else?" never make it. It's the ones who just keep going who eventually make it.

The right manager and agent will find you when you're ready.

I know that it doesn't sound like I'm being very helpful, but trust me, I'm being extremely helpful right now.

DANIEL CLOWES.

The sometimes fictional, sometimes autobiographical comic universes of Daniel Clowes's books-he detests the term graphic novel-aren't the idealistic utopias conjured up by so many of his comic peers and predecessors. There are no heroes, super or otherwise; no precocious children. His comics, much like Robert Crumb's work, are about not-so-lovable losers who aren't so easy on the eyes. These characters generally live in urban wastelands or mind-numbingly boring suburbs, where nihilism pa.s.ses for hopefulness, football is understood as "sublimated h.o.m.os.e.xual rape and Oedipal hostility," and sometimes dogs are born without orifices. He writes about characters with names like Needled.i.c.k the Bug-f.u.c.ker, Hippypants, Peace Bear, Zubrick, Pogeybait, and d.i.c.kie: the Disgusting Old Acne Fetishist.

Born in Chicago in 1961, Clowes was by his own estimation a "shy, loner, bookworm kind of kid." He first realized he could draw after attempting (unsuccessfully) to reproduce his favorite Batman covers. "I was convinced [the covers] were either done by a machine or they had a special tool that made the lines perfect," he told the Guardian. "If I could get that tool, I too could create Batman comics."

Clowes majored in ill.u.s.tration at the Pratt Inst.i.tute in Brooklyn, and graduated in 1984 with few career prospects. But he soon discovered the Hernandez brothers' brilliant and influential Love and Rockets comic-book series at a local comics store and decided to submit some of his own drawings to their Seattle-based publisher, Fantagraphics. The editors there recognized his talent and quickly signed Clowes to their stable of artists and writers.