I Only Read It For the Cartoons

Gehr is sure to delight any New Yorker fan with this look at the pantheon of cartoonists who regularly grace the magazine's pages with their special brand of wisdom and humor. The 12 profiles collected here, introduced by Simpsons mastermind Matt Groening, capture the twisted minds and methods of the New Yorker's contemporary cartoonists. As Roz Chast explains, the cartoons function as a "gateway (drug) to both the magazine's long-form journalism and the world at large." Gehr indulges readers hungry for New Yorker folklore; cartoonists waiting on drop-off Tuesdays with a brown envelope in their hands, or resubmitting rejected cartoons over and over again. He ranges from the wavering lines of Chast to the gag humor of Jack Zeigler, but doesn't dig too deeply into his subjects' lives. At times, indeed, his study feels more like a series of casually strung-together interviews, with less than illuminating comments from cartoonists like "I enjoyed high school more than I did college." But the book, brimming with New Yorker history and the idiosyncrasies of its contributors, is successful at what it sets out to do%E2%80%94provide a first-of-its-kind paean to some of the magazine's most consistently popular contributors. Agent: Sarah Lazin, Sarah Lazin Books. (Oct.)