Reality And The Cartoonist's World

It's sometimes a fine line

This is a recreation of a drawing by James Thurber, by James Thurber. He was a writer and cartoonist for The New Yorker from the late 1920’s to the 1960’s. There is an interesting story that goes with this drawing that I want to share with you.

Andy (EB) White and James Thurber

Thurber began at The New Yorker as a writer and shared an office at the magazine with his friend, writer E.B. White. Thurber was always doodling, and often throwing out his doodles. One day, White took one of said drawings out of the trash, inked it in, and brought it to the magazine’s editor Harold Ross and art director Rea Irvin (unbeknownst to his pal Thurber). It was the original version of the drawing above. It was rejected. Rea Irvin said to White, “seals whiskers go like this,” and provided a little sketch. White wrote back on the rejected drawing,

“Thurber’s seal whiskers go like this.”

I wish I knew what Rea Irvin meant—his sketch is long gone— because if you google seals’ whiskers, they pretty much go like the way Thurber drew them. This is my drawing of a seal, based on my google search.

Anyway, my point in telling you all this is that I love that White stood up for his friend’s drawings. White recognized that what Thurber had in his drawings was gold, he understood that Thurber’s way of drawing was unique and full of character. White continued to submit Thurber’s cartoons and they were continually rejected.

So then White and Thurber went on to write a book together, called Is Sex Necessary? Thurber supplied the drawings. It was a best seller in 1929 during the Depression, which is saying a lot.

When Harold Ross heard that two of his star writers had gone on to do something wildly successful without him, he got angry. He cried,

“Where is that damn seal drawing??”

Thurber could not find it, so he drew another seal drawing, and instead of the seal sitting on a rock, his drawing evolved into the rock becoming a headboard. Ross published it in The New Yorker in 1932. This then became one of his most well-known cartoons.

The original drawing at the top of this newsletter was recreated years later by Thurber.

The editors at The New Yorker do fact check our work, but if I submitted a drawing with seal whiskers, I am not sure it would be corrected. I may do a test case this week, and will report back.

It’s often a fine line between reality and a cartoonist’s world.