Buy Books for Holiday Gifts

The Center for the Humanities and University Libraries of Washington University in St Louis celebrated ten years of faculty authorship recently. There were speakers and displays of over 200 books for sale. (The sale continues at the Washington University Bookstore through the end of the month).

Why should you care? Because as Dr Gerald Early said, this celebration is about the "grand democratic power of the book". More importantly, even with the continued onslaught of on-sale electronic devices this holiday season, books make lasting and indelible gifts.

The first two speakers on 12/06/11 were Washington University faculty. Dr Akiko Tsuchiya spoke about her book, "Marginal Subjects: Gender and Defiance in Fin-De-Siecle Spain". Dr Craig Monson then summarized his research at the Vatican Library on "Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art and Arson in the Convents of Italy".

The third speaker was Roz Chast, cartoonist for the New Yorker. This petite blonde in over-sized black "owl" glasses entertained for 45 minutes with slides and anecdotes about her 34 years of cartooning. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ms Chast outlined her creative process, its results, and the nerve racking submission and selection for cartoons appearing weekly in The New Yorker Magazine.

Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her parents (both teachers), Ms Chast said her favorite book was The Merck Manual, even though "leprosy was not common in Brooklyn". Other resources for her inspiration were the cartoons of Charles Addams and eventually his "Dear Dead Days, A Family Album".

Ms Chast admitted a fear of drawing horses and a love of drawing lamps, especially those with tables or wastebaskets attached to them. Her son (now grown) once asked her that if a boy was born with three legs, could the obstetrician over-rule the parents and make the boy normal, that is, two legs? She recently made a pumpkin/tofu pie for her vegan daughter's Thanksgiving. Her spouse is a writer and she has two parrots.

Ms Chast showed a picture of her desk, cluttered neatly with pens, paper, and Elmers Glue. She is one of 40 New Yorker cartoonists who submit 5-10 cartoons each on a weekly basis. She showed a picture of her ancient fax machine she uses to get her cartoons submitted before the Wednesday "Art Meeting".

Here the editors shift through 800 cartoons submitted by their cartoonists and "over the transom" public wanna-be cartoonists. The editors whittle the submissions down to 16-20 semi-finalists and then the 8-10 are selected for publication.

A day or two later, Ms Chast makes the "call of pain" to a junior editor to see if any of her "idea drawings" made the cut. The ones that do not are placed in the large "reject cabinet" in her basement.

Ms Chast's most recent book (2010) is "What I Hate from A to Z" and includes chapters on Alien Abductions, Carnivals, Rabies, and Premature Burials.

The Q & A session was next, followed by Ms Chast signing her books. She autographed this blogger's copy of "Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, and Health Inspected by Roz Chast, 1978-2006".

This blogger was up til past midnight reading her cartoons, laughing hysterically, and putting himself in a holly/jolly framework for the upcoming hectic holidays.

Blogger's note: The figure in the carpet says, "One civilized reader is worth a thousand boneheads". This gargoyle serves as the masthead for monthly publication @ http://cenhum.artsci.wustl.edu/publications/figure_in_the_carpet.