"Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New YorkerPeople tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny." "-- Provided by publisher.
"The New Yorker has published over 75,000 cartoons since its founding, and 95% of them were done by only a few hundred cartoonists. For decades now, Mankoff has been at the center of this talented group of artists. He starts his story at age eight, when he started doing funny drawings, and follows his unlikely stints as a high school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student--all the while turning out cartoon after cartoon. We see his unwavering determination to have The New Yorker publish his work ("After two years of submitting all I had to show for it were enough New Yorker rejection slips to wallpaper my bathroom . . .I kept at it. I had other rooms that needed wallpaper"), the lucky breaks he finally gets at the magazine, and his most popular cartoons (the one that lends this book its title earned him a spot in The Yale Book of Quotations). A story about making a career out of your passion, How About Never is also about why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't, and why it's so damn impossible to win the New Yorker caption contest"-- Provided by publisher.
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