THE NEW YORKER ALBUM OF DRAWINGS
1925-1975
Unpaged. Viking. $15.
A New Yorker cartoon is a rectangle entirely surrounded by laughter. In the fiftieth anniversary collection, the occupants of those rectangles gather like relatives at a spirited family reunion.
Here are Peter Arno's ageless chorines and satyrs; Helen Hokinson's gaggle of club women; Saul Steinberg's pun-and-ink illuminations; the Thurber people who always reminded Dorothy Parker of unbaked cookies. Here, too, is the ir repressible new generation of arche types: George Booth's slatternly couples—obviously the illegitimate descendants of George Price's cluttered screwballs; Lee Lorenz' literate animals, minerals and vegetables; and Ed Koren's celebrated shaggy people stories.
As...
