Kind of depressing how he didn't end up seeing it through, but I get it.
The point itself of the story seemed very 'New Yorker' in and of itself - a kind of existential, staring out the window looking at the rain kind of feeling.
Cool to kind of get a window into the process, but I don't think anyone imagines that you could make a 'living' as a gag cartoonist. I'd automatically imagine you'd also be doing other work.
It used to be possible. I had college professors that did it for decades from the 60's until the mid-90's, when computers started killing off previously imaginable ways of life.
Am I the only one who finds New Yorker cartoons dreadfully unfunny? I used to have a subscription, and found myself wishing I could get a discount by subscribing to a cartoon-less version.
You're not alone. I personally think they're a multi-decade instance of the "soap, no radio!" experiment: if you fashion yourself a NY socialite, you'll nervously laugh.
Could be. I'm definitely an over-educated New Yorker of 15 years now, and I haven't laughed once at a cartoon of theirs, but maybe that's why I'm not a socialite?
I've found a few chuckle worthy, or kind of witty, but the vast majority seem like the inside joke of people who come off as wanting you to think of them as more in the know than you. And they could be. But give me a good Far Side comic strip in its place any day :)
Obligatory mention of New Yorker cartoon in Seinfeld's last season, dissected by Mankoff: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/bob-mankoff/i-liked-the-k.... Great quote he uses from E. B. White: “Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.” If you still want to go ahead and dissect there's a whole area of linguistics devoted to this topic and this journal: https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/humr
