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How did you end up in Ridgefield ? We moved here in 1990 , just before my second kid was born . I also have a place in the city , so I ' m sort of toggling back and forth . I love a lot of things about Ridgefield , although I ’ m really a city kid . I grew up in Brooklyn . I didn ' t learn how to drive until we moved up here . And this is the first time I ' ve ever lived in a house . I never really got super-comfortable with driving , and I think that explains a lot of why I ' m really most comfortable in the city .
I went to the exhibition of your works at the Norman Rockwell Museum in 2015 , Roz Chast : Cartoon Memoirs . We are looking forward to another exhibition opening there this summer , What , Me Worry ? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine . That ’ s so fantastic . I just adored MAD Magazine . It was a major influence on me when I was young . It ' s the first place that I think a lot of kids , especially people our age , saw stuff that really made fun of pop culture .
So it had an impression on you growing up ? Big time . It made me laugh and laugh . It was just the greatest .
How did you got your foot in the door at The New Yorker ? It was very surprising to me , let ’ s put it that way . My parents subscribed and I , of course , knew The New Yorker . I ' d grown up with it . I loved some of the cartoonists there : Charles Addams and Ed Koren , George Booth . But I didn ' t see myself as being a New Yorker cartoonist because the cartoons were mostly one panel and had a gag line . When I got out of art school , I wanted to be a cartoonist . I was starting to take my stuff around . I was selling to The National Lampoon and to The Village Voice . The Village Voice was my secret dream
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because I saw myself fitting in there . They published Jules Feiffer , they published Stan Mack , Mark Alan Stamaty — they were more idiosyncratic , more narrative . And The National Lampoon had that whole section in the back , “ The Funny Pages ,” I think it was called . And they were not one-panel cartoons . So I did not see my work in The New Yorker , but I thought , well , I ' ll try them . Why not ? I really didn ' t know what I was doing . I was 23 , and I called them up . I found out when their dropoff day was , Wednesday , which is when people submit over the transom . They don ' t go in person ; they just bring their portfolio , they drop it off , they pick it up the next week .
So that ’ s what you did ? I put together 60 cartoons , because I really didn ' t know how to go about this . I went back the next week to pick them up and looked for the rejection note . There was not a rejection ; there was a note from Lee Lorenz , who was the art editor , for me to come back and see him . I was surprised , and I still remember walking down the hallway to his office and thinking , Well , this is certainly an unexpected turn of events . What will happen ? And he said they were going to buy a cartoon . There ' s not a word to describe how completely shocked I was . It went past glad or sad . It was like , “ What ?”
Dumbfounded maybe ? Like , “ Are you sure ?” He said to start coming back on a regular basis every week . So that ' s what I did , and it ’ s now 46 years later . Nuts , right ?
When he said to come back every week , what did that mean ? That means that I do a group of cartoons every week , which is what I still do , because they have a weekly art meeting . At the
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time , all the cartoonists — unless you didn ' t live in the New York area , then I guess they would mail them in — you ’ d go in person , and you ' d meet with Lee . He would look through your batch of cartoons and select a few . Maybe you bring in eight or ten , and he selects a few to take to the art meeting , where he met with William Shawn . Then they would buy the cartoons for that week from all the cartoonists who were submitting . That ' s essentially how it still works , except we don ' t go in person .
Do your cartoons have words to them ? Oh , yes . Back in the old days , there was the artist and there was a gag writer . I remember that was shocking to me , that Peter Arno never wrote a gag . Charles Addams , who is still my number one cartoon hero , bought most of his gags . By the ’ 60s , this was starting to fade away . And by the late- ’ 70s , when I joined , most people were writing their own stuff , as I did .
So , in the past , they would write a gag , and the artists would buy it ? Yes , there were gag men — and they were mostly men , I ' m pretty sure . In fact , the cartoonists were mostly men when I started . Sometimes I would get packets of gags from these guys who I ' m sure had never seen my stuff , because they were traditional — like “ Two guys in a bar , one guy says to the other ” sort of stuff . They were generally addressed to Mr . Roz Chast . I ' m thinking , since when is Roz a guy ' s name ? They would send me a packet of gags on index cards with a self-addressed stamped envelope . I would mail them back with a little note saying , “ Thank you , I write my own stuff .”
You said you started with The New Yorker in 1978 . At the time , it was mostly men ? There was
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one other female cartoonist when I started . She lived in Israel . Nurit Karlin . But before that , there had been female cartoonists . Somehow that started to fade away . There was , of course , the great Helen Hokinson and Barbara Shermund and Mary Petty , whom I loved . There were female artists of the past at The New Yorker , but when I started there was definitely a shortage .
You ’ ve done more than 1,000 cartoons for The New Yorker . What is it about your work that captivated them from the beginning ? I really have no idea . I know it looked probably very different from anything they were publishing . It was not on purpose . Because , as I said , being a cartoonist for The New Yorker was not something I even thought was possible .
You started drawing cartoons when you were 13 . Do you remember that time and what spurred you to start ? I liked things that made me laugh . Also , it ' s weird to describe yourself as a weird kid , but I was kind of a weird kid . I just did not feel like I fit in any place . For me , drawing cartoons was a way of coping with that feeling . I was kind of very angry , very unhappy . I couldn ' t make friends . I didn ' t understand other people . I didn ' t like school . I didn ' t like my home life . It was just a sad little miserable existence . For me , drawing cartoons was the best part of it . I ' m sure my parents meant well , but cartoons were where I felt I could be myself .
Which artists influenced you ? From the time I was eight or nine , Charles Addams . I loved that sort of ghoulish , transgressive , but very sort of cheery in this funny way kind of humor . Edward Gorey and so many at MAD Magazine . Don Martin .
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May / June 2024 BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE // 93 |