美国国家公共电台 NPR Outgoing 'New Yorker' Cartoon Editor Says 'Being Funny Is Being Awake'

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The New Yorker magazine is famous for its cartoons. For 20 years, Bob Mankoff has been the gatekeeper. Next month, he gives up his title as The New Yorker's cartoon editor. Mankoff is a man obsessed¹ with humor. He has written many of the magazine's most well-known cartoons. He has studied what makes things funny. He's even taught college courses on the subject.

Over the years, he has edited cartoonists with different styles - the visual gag, the one-liner. When Mankoff came into our studios to reflect on his career, he told me he thinks of his own style as intellectual, drawing heavily on personal experience.

BOB MANKOFF: My targets are either myself or people like me. I don't punch down. I don't punch up. I elbow to the side.

SHAPIRO: Mankoff's most famous cartoon shows a man in a suit standing² at a desk, phone to his ear, skyscrapers³ in the window behind him. The caption⁴ reads Thursday's out, how about never? Is never good for you?

MANKOFF: That cartoon really comes from my own personal experience with sort of an appointment, someone trying to blow me off on an appointment constantly. And then I just sort of say this snotty line. Well, how about never? Is never good for you?

SHAPIRO: So do you actually walk around with a notebook when you have a snotty line like that, you can just jot⁵ it down and say, oh, that'll make a good cartoon?

MANKOFF: Well, now it's an iPhone with the notes.

SHAPIRO: At the risk of asking a magician to show how he does his tricks, would you pull out your iPhone and read some of the notes you've got on there for cartoons you've not yet made?

MANKOFF: (Laughter) Let me see. Let me see if - well, of course, I shut off my iPhone because they tell everybody to do that.

SHAPIRO: Of course because you're a good interviewee who does as he's told.

MANKOFF: OK. So here's one. It's a psychiatrist⁶. And on the couch is a door, OK, just a regular door (laughter). And the psychiatrist's saying is you're not crazy, you're just unhinged.

SHAPIRO: (Laughter) How long has that been sitting in the file?

MANKOFF: A long time because I really don't do much. The other one is look, honey, I don't have the time for an argument right now. Can we reschedule?

SHAPIRO: (Laughter).

MANKOFF: Sometimes - I just saw one of these wet floor cones⁸ you see in buildings and bathrooms.

SHAPIRO: Yeah, caution - slippery floor. Yeah.

MANKOFF: And I just say wet floor cone⁷ in Moses' desert - or, you know, in other words - or maybe it's guys crawling in a desert.

SHAPIRO: Just a germ of an idea that you can turn into a...

MANKOFF: Yeah. It's a germ of - you know. And they'll all think of a line, can I call you back? My desk is away from me. And then I'll just have to figure out how to make it work.

SHAPIRO: You know, I think I would worry that if I studied what makes things funny that I might lose the ability to be funny. But you've proven that not to be the case.

MANKOFF: Well, Ari, you definitely would.

SHAPIRO: I would. Well, thank you. Thank you, Bob.

MANKOFF: (Laughter) And that's why...

SHAPIRO: You just have this...

MANKOFF: ...I want you to keep studying accounting⁹ or whatever it is that your back up is.

SHAPIRO: Go back to covering wars and revolutions.

MANKOFF: The truth is it is - the study of it is actually inhibitory towards the production of it. But so what you have to do is sort of like move just from one completely different personality to another.

SHAPIRO: So there's one Bob Mankoff who studies humor and a different Bob Mankoff who creates humor.

MANKOFF: Yeah. There's one Bob. And then it would be - I would think it's the same thing as that people let's say who study English grammar or really know the grammar completely, you know, and they can tell you why...

SHAPIRO: They will never be James Joyce.

MANKOFF: They will never be James Joyce but maybe they switch. But the - part of my studies is dedicated¹⁰ to the idea that how do we engineer humor so that it's more useful in life?

SHAPIRO: I thought the whole point of humor was not to be useful.

MANKOFF: Yeah, but it is. In fact, the most important part of it is not entertainment. Jokes are the pornography of humor. The most important part is it enables us to get along with other people, to cope with difficulties, to defuse tensions and just simply to make life in general more enjoyable. And by having a sense of humor, it means we have a perspective on the quotidian¹¹ everyday absurdity¹² of it.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

MANKOFF: The everyday absurdity. Otherwise we're just - I mean, one of the things I often say is being funny is being awake. It's just being awake to partly not let yourself get upset.

SHAPIRO: I think I understand what goes into editing a typical New Yorker article. I have no idea what goes into editing a cartoon after you've said yes or no.

MANKOFF: Well, it might be something as simple as compressing the words. I will try to suggest other ideas that might be better. For instance, let's say it's a hippo and there's two of the little birds on it. And one of the birds is saying, we can only see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. And that's a Newton quote.

And then I'll say, well, you know, that's just a word gag on this. I think it'd be interesting if the - whatever they're standing on is very, very small in itself but they are even smaller.

SHAPIRO: Yeah.

MANKOFF: And I'll say, oh, that sort of relates to other cartoons we've done on which the snail¹³'s on a turtle's back and one snail is just saying, you know, watch out, here we go. OK.

SHAPIRO: (Laughter).

MANKOFF: So it's partly because I have a background of all these associations. I'm brainstorming¹⁴ a little bit with them. And then I will edit a word. I - sometimes I'll write another caption, always with the cartoonist's consent. And then we check the cartoons against all the New Yorker cartoons that have ever run in the magazine so that we don't have any duplicates.

SHAPIRO: Wait, really? You - do - you have a database that can do that with, like, a hand-drawn sketch¹⁵?

MANKOFF: Yeah. Well, we have it because right from the very beginning, The New Yorker kept a record of every single cartoon by, in effect, tagging it.

SHAPIRO: So how often do you say, oh, this is a great cartoon - shoot, we did it in 1952?

MANKOFF: Often.

SHAPIRO: Really?

MANKOFF: Often because every week that information comes in. And not only - it's become very, very hard now also even in terms of - because we also search on the Internet now. And, I mean, you can't drive yourself completely crazy about it. One of the things you realize is pretty much all ideas are variants¹⁶ of similar ideas. And then you have to decide is this different enough so that if two people look at both of them, they say - different. Or even if knowing of the previous one, would you laugh at this one?

So desert island cartoons are like that, all the cliche¹⁷. I recently sent out an email with us about, I don't know, a hundred and - I'm actually looking at a list now here of cliches. Just in the L - in the L word - life raft survivors¹⁸, lightbulb ideas, lion and mouse, "Little Engine That Could," "Little Red Riding Hood¹⁹."

SHAPIRO: These are all cliches?

MANKOFF: Yeah, lover hiding in a closet.

SHAPIRO: But there's not a prohibition²⁰ against them because I've certainly seen some of those in The New Yorker recently.

MANKOFF: There's not a prohibition. In fact, cliches or let's say tropes - that sounds better - are the engine in which you make new out of old. In fact, I mean, pretty much everything in the culture is something that's been remixed. You know, every Bob Dylan song is based on some melody he heard in other folk songs or whatever. So originality²¹ is not only overrated, it doesn't really exist.

SHAPIRO: Before I let you go...

MANKOFF: Yeah.

SHAPIRO: What advice do you have for a cartoonist starting today?

MANKOFF: Stop.

SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Bob Mankoff, thank you very much.

MANKOFF: No, no, no. No, excuse me, I meant don't.

SHAPIRO: Don't stop.

MANKOFF: Don't stop.

SHAPIRO: Bob Mankoff, the outgoing cartoon editor of The New Yorker magazine. It's been a pleasure. Congratulations.

MANKOFF: Thank you, Ari.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW BIRD SONG, "TRUTH LIES LOW")

1 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

2 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

3 skyscrapers   

n.摩天大楼

参考例句：

• A lot of skyscrapers in Manhattan are rising up to the skies. 曼哈顿有许多摩天大楼耸入云霄。
• On all sides, skyscrapers rose like jagged teeth. 四周耸起的摩天大楼参差不齐。

4 caption   

n.说明，字幕，标题；v.加上标题，加上说明

参考例句：

• I didn't understand the drawing until I read the caption.直到我看到这幅画的说明才弄懂其意思。
• There is a caption under the picture.图片下边附有说明。

5 jot   

n.少量；vi.草草记下；vt.匆匆写下

参考例句：

• I'll jot down their address before I forget it.我得赶快把他们的地址写下来，免得忘了。
• There is not a jot of evidence to say it does them any good.没有丝毫的证据显示这对他们有任何好处。

6 psychiatrist   

n.精神病专家；精神病医师

参考例句：

• He went to a psychiatrist about his compulsive gambling.他去看精神科医生治疗不能自拔的赌瘾。
• The psychiatrist corrected him gently.精神病医师彬彬有礼地纠正他。

7 cone   

n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果

参考例句：

• Saw-dust piled up in a great cone.锯屑堆积如山。
• The police have sectioned off part of the road with traffic cone.警察用锥形路标把部分路面分隔开来。

8 cones   

n.（人眼）圆锥细胞；圆锥体( cone的名词复数 )；球果；圆锥形东西；（盛冰淇淋的）锥形蛋卷筒

参考例句：

• In the pines squirrels commonly chew off and drop entire cones. 松树上的松鼠通常咬掉和弄落整个球果。 来自辞典例句
• Many children would rather eat ice cream from cones than from dishes. 许多小孩喜欢吃蛋卷冰淇淋胜过盘装冰淇淋。 来自辞典例句

9 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

10 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

11 quotidian   

adj.每日的，平凡的

参考例句：

• Television has become part of our quotidian existence.电视已成为我们日常生活的一部分。
• Most solutions to the problem of global warming are tediousl,almost oppressively,quotidian.大多数应对全球变暖的措施都是冗长乏味，几近压制，以及司空见惯的。

12 absurdity   

n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论

参考例句：

• The proposal borders upon the absurdity.这提议近乎荒谬。
• The absurdity of the situation made everyone laugh.情况的荒谬可笑使每个人都笑了。

13 snail   

n.蜗牛

参考例句：

• Snail is a small plant-eating creature with a soft body.蜗牛是一种软体草食动物。
• Time moved at a snail's pace before the holidays.放假前的时间过得很慢。

14 brainstorming   

献计献策,合力攻关

参考例句：

• With Brainstorming, treat the view on how to solve the problem rightly. 利用脑激励法(Brainstorming)，正确对待学生实验中的问题解决观。
• We are going to do some brainstorming soon. 我们很快就要做些脑力激荡。

15 sketch   

n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述

参考例句：

• My sister often goes into the country to sketch. 我姐姐常到乡间去写生。
• I will send you a slight sketch of the house.我将给你寄去房屋的草图。

16 variants   

n.变体( variant的名词复数 )；变种；变型；（词等的）变体

参考例句：

• Those variants will be preserved in the'struggle for existence". 这些变异将在“生存竞争”中被保留下来。 来自辞典例句
• Like organisms, viruses have variants, generally called strains. 与其他生物一样，病毒也有变种，一般称之为株系。 来自辞典例句

17 cliche   

n./a.陈词滥调(的)；老生常谈(的)；陈腐的

参考例句：

• You should always try to avoid the use of cliche. 你应该尽量避免使用陈词滥调。
• The old cliche is certainly true:the bigger car do mean bigger profits.有句老话倒的确说得不假:车大利大。

18 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

19 hood   

n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖

参考例句：

• She is wearing a red cloak with a hood.她穿着一件红色带兜帽的披风。
• The car hood was dented in.汽车的发动机罩已凹了进去。

20 prohibition   

n.禁止；禁令，禁律

参考例句：

• The prohibition against drunken driving will save many lives.禁止酒后开车将会减少许多死亡事故。
• They voted in favour of the prohibition of smoking in public areas.他们投票赞成禁止在公共场所吸烟。

21 originality   

n.创造力，独创性；新颖

参考例句：

• The name of the game in pop music is originality.流行音乐的本质是独创性。
• He displayed an originality amounting almost to genius.他显示出近乎天才的创造性。