Saturday 23 January 2021

Home Life

I was going through the filing cabinet today, looking for an important document that, of course, I couldn’t find.

Never mind, I found this old cartoon I tore out of the New Yorker years ago, back when there were no mobile telephones, let alone ones that had cameras so that you could take photographs of things you didn’t want to lose or forget about, (and then lose and forget about them amid all the other photographs of things you didn’t want to lose and forget about on your telephone). No, back in those days you had to tear things out of magazines and put them in the filing cabinet if you wanted to lose and forget about them - I mean neither lose or forget about them (or at least only lose or forget about them for a few decades, until one Saturday afternoon when you come across them while looking for something important):

Why did I tear it out, I wonder? Was it because it is funny? Or perhaps because it reminded me of my own dear husband and myself? The second possibility cannot be right as we do not have a cat.

At least we don’t any more. 

6 comments:

  1. You often describe my life, and this is one of the times. Now I have to go look for my Booth cartoon, torn from the New Yorker, which I sighted recently when looking in the desk for something important which of course I didn't find. I kept mine because it was my husband and I right down to the cat and dog depicted. I wish I could show it to you, but I haven't a hope of getting it on here! Thanks for the post.

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    1. I went to look for a huge book someone gave me of all the cartoons the New Yorker had ever had up to the point the book was printed - around 2010. I thought I'd be able to photograph pages with Booth on them and send them to you. Unfortunately, despite the book being so huge, I've lost it! I must have lent it to someone. Another New Yorker cartoonist I loved was Hamilton. My husband always remembers one he did of two innocent looking primary school kids walking home. One was saying to the other, "Bludgeon of Death was a good movie, but Screaming Eyeball was a great movie"

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  2. George Booth drew great cats (and dogs), but I have to say that I don't quite see the point of this one. I greatly admire his cartoon with a long caption ending "and now he's beginning to gat a little heat", and wish I had a copy of that one.

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    1. The point for me is the way it captures the world of a couple who've lived together so long they can no longer see their own absurdity. That's a very high falutin way of putting it. And doesn't really get to the heart of what makes it funny. But I guess comedy is never really any good if you start taking it to bits to see the mechanism. And it's also very much a thing of individual taste.

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  3. That book of New Yorker cartoons isn't lost. Despite its size, it walked out of the house with a visitor, as ours did.
    Susan

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    1. Is this a confession? Certainly we did have a visitor two or three months ago and she was called Susan, We gave her a hot dinner, because she claimed to be a friend of a very old friend of mine. We have never seen her since - or the book, now you mention it. But, Susan, you are forgiven - as you obviously noticed, we do have what some might consider to be far too many books.

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