Posts Tagged ‘Tom Gauld’
“Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it’s much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!”*…
With this post (and all best wishes for the season), your correspondent begins his annual Holiday hiatus. Regular service should resume on or around the New Year… In the hope that it’s helpful to those still searching for last-minute gifts, this, from the marvelous Tom Gauld…
And as a bonus, this appreciation of Jean Shepherd, the man whose work inspired (and fueled) that yuletide staple, A Christmas Story— and so much more: “The Old Man at Christmas“…
… Most of Shepherd’s career, particularly his first three decades on the radio, relied on riffing and improvisation, which makes for a vast but fairly evanescent archive. People often rewatch classic movies, and sometimes rewatch beloved old TV shows, but they very rarely replay old radio shows. The real marker of twentieth-century success always lay in syndication, and it’s there, a little late in the game, and in a medium that had otherwise eluded him, that Shepherd secured his legacy. In the petty grievances and joys of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, in NPR-style storytelling, in everything that straddles the line between countercultural and popular representative of the monoculture, from Calvin and Hobbes to Steely Dan, echoes of his work can be found, so abundant and diffuse they can be easy to miss—but they’re everywhere you care to look…
Daniel M. Lavery in The New York Review of Books
* Neil Gaiman
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As we read, we might recall that it was on this date in 1882 that an associate of Thomas Edison, Edward Hibberd Johnson (President of the Edison Electric Light Company, a predecessor of Con Edison) lit and displayed the first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree at his home in New York City.
He had Christmas tree bulbs especially made for him–80 red, white, and blue electric light bulbs the size of walnuts, hand-wired around the tree. From that point on, electrically-illuminated Christmas trees, indoors and outdoors, grew in popularity in the United States and elsewhere. In 1895, President Grover Cleveland sponsored the first electrically lit Christmas tree in the White House. And in 1901, the Edison General Electric Company advertised the first commercially-produced Christmas tree lamps (manufactured in strings of nine sockets).
“I suppose illustration tends to live in the streets, rather than in the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the museum, and consequently it has come to be taken less seriously”*…
But surely, it shouldn’t necessarily be so. Consider Tom Gauld (@tomgauld). He’s probably best known for his work for The New Yorker (e.g.) and The New York Times (e.g.); but he’s also an accomplished cartoonist. Your correspondent’s favorites are his on-going contributions to The Guardian Review (above and below)
… and The New Scientist…
See more of his marvelous work at his site.
* master illustrator Quentin Blake.
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As we visualize it, we might send carefully limned birthday greetings to Richard McClure Scarry; he was born on this date in 1919. A children’s author and illustrator, he published over 300 books with total sales of over 100 million worldwide.
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them”*…
Since we last visited Tom Gauld, he’s turned his attention increasing to the blessed realm of every year’s perfect Holiday present: the world of books. From New Yorker covers to cartoons for The Guardian‘s Review section, he celebrates the world of letters (and the arts) with insightful whimsy…
Turn the pages at “You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack” and at Gauld’s site.
* Joesph Brodsky
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As we prepare to bury our noses, we might recall that it was on this date in 1679 that ruffians in the employ of the Earl of Rochester set upon and pummeled England’s poet Laureate, John Dryden, on the mistaken impression that he had written “An Essay on Satire.” The essay– which was circulating in manuscript form in London, and contained damning accounts of the King and many notables, including Rochester– was in fact written by John Sheffield (1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, a poet and Tory politician of the late Stuart period, who served as Lord Privy Seal and Lord President of the Council).
The wrongly-accused Dryden
Sheffield
Ennui! In color!…
(Some of) the comic stylings of Tom Gauld…
Ladies and gentlemen, You’re All Just Jealous of My Jetpack!
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As we parse our predicaments into panels, we might recall that this was the cover date, in 1882, of the first issue of Golden Argosy, which featured stories by Horatio Alger, Jr. and Edward S. Ellis. The first “pulp” magazine in the U.S., Golden Argosy (soon renamed simply Argosy) went on to publish such authors as Frank Converse, Malcolm Davis, Upton Sinclair, Zane Grey, and dime novelist William Wallace Cook.
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