The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker
3.5/5
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About this ebook
These rejects were piling up in the dusty corners of studios all over the country. Sam Gross, who has been contributing since 1962, has more than 12,000 rejected cartoons. (Seriously. He's been numbering every single cartoon he's ever submitted to The New Yorker since the very beginning.) Enter editor Matthew Diffee. He tapped his fellow cartoonists, asking them to rescue these hilarious lost gems. From the artists' stacks of all-time favorite rejects, Diffee handpicked the standouts -- the cream of the crap -- and created The Rejection Collection, a place where good ideas go when they die. Too risqué, silly, or weird for The New Yorker, the cartoons in this book offer something no other collection has: They have never been seen in print until now.
With a foreword by New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff that explains the sound judgment, respectability, and scruples not found anywhere in these pages, and handwritten questionnaires that introduce the quirky character of each artist, The Rejection Collection will appeal to fans of The New Yorker...and to anyone with a slightly sick sense of humor.
Robert Mankoff
The New Yorker is an award-winning weekly magazine featuring reporting, criticism, commentary, fiction, poetry, and renowned single-panel cartoons. It has won more National Magazine Awards, the magazine world's equivalent of the Oscars, than any other magazine. Its contributors have won numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize. Robert Mankoff is the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, and a cartoonist in his own right. He is the editor of many collections of New Yorker cartoons, including The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker. Online: www.newyorker.com
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Reviews for The Rejection Collection
22 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Too clever by half.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A collection of cartoons that were pulled out of the reject pile of the New Yorker. Some of these it's easy to see why they never saw publications; others, well not so much. Often clever, almost always snarky, occasionally incomprehensible, just like the cartoons that DO see publication. Included questionnaires filled out by the cartoonists, where they demonstrated a lack of reverence even for their own work (a good trait that anyone should be able to emulate) and no deference to the whims of society. Fun, easy to read, a couple of nights right before bed, and you're done.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great cartoons that really had me laughing. I simply don't know what the New Yorker was thinking. The only problem was that it was too short so I read it too quickly.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A collection of cartoons that were pulled out of the reject pile of the New Yorker. Some of these it's easy to see why they never saw publications; others, well not so much. Often clever, almost always snarky, occasionally incomprehensible, just like the cartoons that DO see publication. Included questionnaires filled out by the cartoonists, where they demonstrated a lack of reverence even for their own work (a good trait that anyone should be able to emulate) and no deference to the whims of society. Fun, easy to read, a couple of nights right before bed, and you're done.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5What I liked best about this book was the questionnaire that each cartoonist filled out. There were a few funny ones but really, most of the cartoons just weren't that good. I won't be keeping this or its sequel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My sense of humor is actually not particularly twisted, so these had about as much of a hit/miss rate as the accepted versions. But that's still a pretty high hit rate. As a subscriber, I actually enjoyed the cartoonist profiles just as much as the cartoons. Funniest : "34-C?"
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Definitely funny! And while admittedly edgier than The New Yorker (language, bodily functions, gore), not offensive. Even better were the accompanying photos of featured cartoonists and their clever responses to a (probably intentionally lame) questionnaire.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The "interviews" with the cartonnists were funnier than most of their cartoons--which weren't bad, just a little twisted.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Some really funny and edgy cartoons. Not super-alternative but a little dirtier than you'd generally see in the magazine. Fun stuff if you like The New Yorker.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A unique and entertaining idea for a book. At first I thought the rejected cartoons would be bizarre or curiously un-funny; the true angle isn't clear until you read the editor's comments. A contributor himself, he gave a variety of other NYorker cartoonists a quirky questionnaire and asked them to select their favorite rejected cartoons. They are, simply, hilarious. You quickly get the sense that the New Yorker rejects the scatalogical, gay humor, and naturally anything too gory or too controversial. But hey, those are some really funny subjects, much of the time.The questionnaire got a little old (the first few were quite entertaining.) It gave the book a bit of a slipshod, last-minute feel, as though it was an eleventh-hour junior high school project. Perhaps that's why my 14-year-old is enjoying it so much.
Book preview
The Rejection Collection - Robert Mankoff
THE REJECTION COLLECTION
THE REJECTION COLLECTION
Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker
EDITED BY MATTHEW DIFFEE
FOREWORD BY ROBERT MANKOFF
SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
New York London Toronto Sydney
This book comes straight from the cartoonists themselves and is not authorized or sponsored by The New Yorker. So what we’re saying is, none of what you’re about to see is their fault.
SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2006 by Matthew Diffee
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON SPOTLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT and related logo are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Michael Nagin
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The rejection collection : cartoons you never saw, and never will see, in The New Yorker / edited by Matthew Diffee ; foreword by Robert Mankoff.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-3339-7
ISBN-10: 1-4169-3339-5
eISBN-13: 978-1-416-93871-2
[1. American wit and humor, Pictorial. 2. New Yorker (New York, N.Y. : 1925)]
I. Diffee, Matthew. II. New Yorker (New York, N.Y. : 1925)
NC1428.N47 2006a
741.5′6973—dc22
2006019877
Pages 263 and 264 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Robert Mankoff
Introduction by Matthew Diffee
Leo Cullum
Pat Byrnes
Sam Gross
Mike Twohy
C. Covert Darbyshire
Drew Dernavich
Christopher Weyant
Kim Warp
William Haefeli
John O’Brien
Marisa Acocella Marchetto
Danny Shanahan
Tom Cheney
Mick Stevens
Mort Gerberg
Michael Crawford
P.C. Vey
Barbara Smaller
Arnie Levin
Gahan Wilson
Glen Le Lievre
Alex Gregory
J.C. Duffy
Carolita Johnson
Ariel Molvig
Michael Shaw
Eric Lewis
P.S. Mueller
David Sipress
Jack Ziegler
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Contributors
FOREWORD
BY ROBERT MANKOFF
If memory—or, more accurately, Google—serves me correctly, it was Keats who proclaimed: Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Well, let me tell ye, Keats was dead wrong. Certainly, he’s dead; we can agree on that. But my main point is that if you want to know what makes something funny, it’s not beauty. Look, the Mona Lisa is beautiful, but until Marcel Duchamp put a mustache and goatee on her, she was no fun at all. Funny isn’t about beauty—it’s about freedom. Sometimes that freedom leads to disrespect, ridicule, and outright offensiveness. To see the truth of that, you don’t have to look any further than this collection of cartoons that happily exploit all that is vile for the sake of a smile.
Furthermore, if you’re like me, many of the offensive, obscene, disgusting cartoons here will actually make you laugh out loud—and, in some cases, cause incontinence, nausea, and fainting. So before looking at these cartoons, ask your doctor if incontinence, nausea, and fainting are right for you.
This collection is yet more proof that bad