Liars and Saints

  Again and again, David Sipress says the thing we all think; specifically, it's the thing we think but can't articulate. The cartoon below is something Sipress could have drawn for today, and it doesn't use any unnecessary lines, it doesn't use any unnecessary words. It looks simple.

 David Sipress often uses his own life in his art. ( When it's bad for one's life, it's good for one's art. ) In early adulthood, Sipress was studying at Harvard to obtain a doctoral degree in Russian history. He knew this was a wrong move; he knew his destiny was to draw cartoons. When he finally found the courage to quit school, he called his father, who actually placed a curse over the phone. The trauma of the call was so great, Sipress sort of attempted suicide. Then he avoided not just his father, but also his father's city (New York), for many years. I think most people would respond to this moment by burying the memory, or by speaking only in a self-pitying way. But Sipress's gift is for counterintuitive moves. In one cartoon, he seems to empathize with his father: OF COURSE his father had a valid point. The cartoon in question shows a man on a date. Bluntly, the man says, "I thought I was a writer, but it turned out to be a chemical imbalance."...

 As I've hinted, one preoccupation of the cartoonist David Sipress is: money. There is always tension right under the surface, and Sipress loves this. He makes room for the tension. A man presents an allowance to his son, but the stern Norman Rockwell talk goes missing. Instead, the dad says: "This is cash. Get ready to worry about this for the rest of your life." We all think we can put off financial catastrophe by wary behavior, but Sipress knows better: "The thing to do is just...invent a time machine, go back sixteen months, and convert all your investments to cash!" And we worry about money *at the cost of* enjoying the thing that is actually valuable in our life, the person next to us on the sofa. As one spouse says to another: "I'll give you a million dollars if you can tell me whether I've just been talking about my mother, my ballot, or my job...." Sipress says he likes to use a certain kind of pen because it produces wild, unanticipat...

  David Sipress says that a cartoon should make explicit the thing that is implicit in our heads -- the thing we all think, the thing we can't articulate. Here is one example. A woman turns to her spouse. She says: "Where do you want to worry that we're spending too much money this summer?" Not a word wasted, and we know exactly what this person is alluding to. I'm in awe. Sipress has a new memoir--"What's So Funny?"--  and I loved it from start to finish. I'll be thinking about Sipress and his work for a long while.

  David Sipress, a New Yorker cartoonist, has a new memoir out. (It's called "What's So Funny?") In art, less is more, and Sipress has a special gift for minimalism. A recurring theme for him is two married people on a couch. One says something terse and apparently bland -- and it's also fully deranged. "Can't we discuss this non-verbally?" "I'm bored. Let's have children." Sipress also has access to a fantasy world. In this world, Satan might gab about "hell's hottest July on record!" Or a cat might drag a mic out of the closet. "I know I'm meant to provide *physical* comedy, but tonight I thought we could try something different....." I'm looking forward to the memoir.