Cartoon Cavalcade
Edited by
AMERICANS pride themselves on their rough-and-tumble humor. This is the country of the belly-laugh and the wisecrack, the soek-in-the-bean joke, the kick-in-the-pants side-splitter, and latterly the delightfully mad psychopathic-spoofing of Thurber and the macabre and sophisticated Charles Addams’ pleasantry. We also laugh loud, long, and healthily at ourselves, and we are suspected of having invented pie-throwing as a form of amusement.
In Cartoon Cavalcade, Thomas Craven, taking time out from publicizing the more serious arts, has compiled a much needed, inexpensive picture hi story of some sixty years of American laughter and, inherently, American social and moral comment. As toastmaster and host at this typically American feast, Mr. Craven is perfection. His three informal essays on American cartoon artists, trends, and personalities are meaty after-dinner speeches — not too long, anecdotal, well-informed, casual, personal, charming, nostalgic. And he is also unusually fortunate in his feasting, for his delicacies have been prepared by master graphic chefs ranging from A. B. Frost ‘83 to Carl Rose ‘43. There are entire comic strips in this ample book; big slices of Charles Dana Gibson, Tad, Thurber, R. Taylor, Peter Arno, Steig, Soglow, John Held, Jr.; and examples of the work of some 168 others. William Murrell’s A History of American Graphic Humor is a more monumental work, but Cartoon Cavalcade will be t reasured, especially by all those who love to laugh and to look back.
A cartoon is, corporeally, a transitory thing—’a climactic concentration of wit or satire with or without caption, a graphic bit of gay or biting ephemera to be chuckled at and recalled with pleasure. Some people clip cartoons and save them; others wish they had. Both groups will delight in Cartoon Cavalcade. It’s as much fun as a family album, and in a sense it’s just that — the American people’s family album. Simon and Schuster, $3.95.
LEO LERMAN