Mr Fish fans: an interesting story by him on Toons and Paul Conrad

[n2doc]

The back story:

"A few months back I published a story about my meeting Paul Conrad, famed editorial cartoonist for the LA Times, 1964 to 1994, and sort of interviewing him. The piece that ran in the LA Weekly was the second one that I'd written. Here is the first, considered too critical of the profession and the man to run anywhere."


The Con
Before I say anything about Paul Conrad – cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times from 1964 until 1993, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, name on Richard Nixon’s infamous enemies list, and, by some people’s account, the greatest editorial cartoonist ever produced by the United States of America – let me say that editorial cartooning has never had a Mozart, much less a Bob Dylan, although there are a shitload of Donovans in the profession. And that’s how it’s always been. Always. While the best cartoonists might be able to, on occasion, press themselves up against the high ceiling of creative expression, none have been able to go beyond that ceiling into the diseased and limitless sky where real artistic relevance resides, largely indefinable, open to an infinite number of interpretations and, therefore, an infinite number of uses by an infinite number of people. An editorial cartoonist is only successful if he can get the number of viable interpretations of his work down below two, and he is only expected to express opinions about other people’s problems, never his own, which is more in line with the responsibilities of a mother-in-law than with an artist hoping to starve to death on his own integrity.

Editorial cartoonists, thusly, do not practice art as much as they practice journalism, and as journalists they are, at least the most successful ones are, nothing more than polite hecklers of despicable men whose faults are glaring enough to serve journalism’s shorthand; that is, whose faults are so obvious that they provide a point of fact that allows the raison d'etre of the cartoon to make sense to as many people as possible. (Example: What makes George W. Bush the most lampooned U.S. President worldwide in history, surpassing all 20th Century Presidents combined, is the fact that you don’t need a house of mirrors to confirm that he is a complete asshole from every angle.) In that way, an editorial cartoonist sheds no new light on a subject, but rather relies on the manipulation of pre-existing prejudices to gently cajole his fans into continuing to agree with themselves. He is a jingle writer for the op-ed page with his commentary usually fitting as comfortably into the whimsy of his readers as the Oscar Myer Weiner song. Paid by advertisers who provide his publication’s income, it is his job to package and sell cultural criticism in a way that is fun! and completely innutritious, helping the country to remain so deliciously democracy-flavored while the First Amendment remains untouched like a musket over the hearth of our national identity, too precious to ever fire, all the marksmen of such a weapon long dead, their limbs and vocal cords murdered into coins and statues and lore.

And Paul Conrad is no exception, and, truth be told, neither am I. Still, the difference between him and me is that he respected the field of editorial cartooning enough to want to be a part of it, citing Herblock and Bill Mauldin as his biggest influences, while none of my primary influences for what I do were ever cartoonists; they were Lenny Bruce, Jack Benny, Noam Chomsky, John Lennon, Benjamin Braddock and all the dogs my family had while I was growing up. In fact, cartooning for me is the equivalent of waitressing until my true gifts are able to earn me some serious dough. My gifts? Well, right now, I have two that are running pretty much neck and neck: writing unpublishable fiction and rewriting unpublishable fiction. I, like every other writer and musician and painter who I’ve ever hung out with, am a hamster in a wheel motivated by the smell of his own ass. Like excessive masturbation, some part of me believes that the repetitive nature of writing and rewriting will eventually magnetize my intellect and make it so that other intellects will be inexorably drawn to what I do. I’m hoping that one day my brain will be charged sufficiently to fuck up clocks when I walk down the street and to pull the pacemakers out of the chests of ailing poets and to yank the chains from the necks of dogs straining to run and hump and poop like hell.

more:
http://www.wordsbymrfish.blogspot.com/


(I think he's dead wrong about Trudeau, but it is an interesting piece of writing nonetheless.)

[hootinholler]

1. I agree somewhat about Trudeau

It's that what he's been writing about has surfaced again.

-Hoot