The New Yorker Cartoon Album

When a New Yorker cartoon clicks, it makes a telling social comment, offers an amusing insight, deflates an ego, or is just plain funny. Yet, with many of the cartoons collected here, the smug complacency lying beneath the air of irreverence gives the laughter a hollow ring. This omnibus includes the familiar names (Koren, Price, Arno, Day, Saxon, etc.) and reflects the all too familiar targetsworkaholics, keeping up with the Joneses, newscasters, the tug-of-war between spouses, shrewish wives, feminism, mild-mannered executives with Walter Mittyish fantasies, middle-class pretensions, cocktail parties and so forth. The cartoons' gentle or genteel humor is more likely to evoke a smile than a belly-laugh. Among the bright spots are Charles Addams's ghoulish fantasies which turn the macabre into an everyday occurrence, William Steig's delightfully wry musings and Saul Steinberg's metaphysical doodles. November