Roz Chast
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
The dreams and the fears into which Martha Stewart taps are not of feminine domesticity, but of female power. Of the woman who sits down at the table with the men and, still in her apron, walks away with the chips.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
You could bottle that chili sauce, neighbors say to home cooks all over America. You could make a fortune on those date bars. You could bottle it. You could sell it. You can survive when all else fails. I myself believed for most of my adult life that I could support myself and my family, in the catastrophic absence of all other income sources, by catering.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
To her critics, she seems to represent a fraud to be exposed, a wrong to be righted. She's a shark, one declares in Salon. However much she's got, Martha wants more. And she wants it her way and in her world, not in the balls-out boys' club realms of real estate or technology, but in the delicate land of doily hearts and wedding cakes.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
This is not a story about a woman who made the best of traditional skills. This is a story about a woman who did her own IPO. This is the woman's pluck story. The dust bowl story. The burying your child on the trail story. The I will never go hungry again story. The Mildred Pierce story. The story about how the sheer nerve of even professionally unskilled women can prevail. Show the men.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
the story that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
She seems perfect, but she's not. She's obsessed. She's frantic. She's a control freak beyond my wildest dreams. And that shows me two things. A, no one is perfect. And B, there's a price for everything.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
A woman is having a yard sale. This front lawn and the side lawn are just covered with crap. Busted washing machine, chair that's like all in tatters, maybe some exercise machinery and a million bottles. And, you know, just like what you see when somebody has like a particularly large and junky yard sale. And this couple is kind of looking and the caption is, there's more inside.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
Oh, God, it's just so great. It's so great. Oh, there's tires. George Booth is a, was a beloved cartoonist for the New Yorker for many decades. I think George Booth brought a different world to New York. into the New Yorker cartoons. It was definitely not New York.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
It was definitely not so-called sophisticated people going to the theater or, you know, wearing fashionable clothing or anything like that. They were from... a small town someplace in the United States, just going about their very, very strange business of grocery shopping or taking baths or some sort of situation where a miniature horse is running around the living room for some reason.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
One of the things that I love about George Booth's cartoons are the drawings themselves and the attention to all of the details that set the stage for the joke. One of my favorite examples of this is this cartoon of his, of this father in a car with his two doofus-y sons crammed all into the front seat. They're in a parking lot of a grocery store.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
And meanwhile, the mother, her grocery bag has dropped on the ground. Everything is rolling away. The bag tore. The grocery cart is smashed into a parking meter. And... Two rabid looking dogs are barking at her. You know, there's clearly this like grocery store, post grocery store crisis going on. And the father is saying to the sons, one of you boys go help mom with the groceries.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
It's just the greatest drawing ever. George and I met in the offices at the New Yorker in the, oh, I'm guessing it was sometime in the mid 80s. Back in the day, people brought their work in in person. And so that's when I met George Booth. He was tall and kind of goofy looking. He sort of reminded me of his cartoons. I was in awe of him because I loved his cartoons for so many years.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
And I have to say that when I first started, some of the old guys... didn't want to talk to me. I think maybe because I was very young, maybe because I was female, maybe I think also they didn't like my work. It was just too different from what they were doing. But George was always nice. And he was a great laugher. He laughed at his own stuff. He laughed at other people's stuff.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
And he was so true to himself. you know, from the beginning to the end, that to me, that was, you know, encouraging. It was like, you know, you follow your guide, you know? The piece of his that just knocked me out was Ip Gisagal. It's a two-page, episodic sort of story. It's not just one panel with a funny line. It's an actual story about Ip.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
And it's all in this kind of caveman dialect that he made up. The first panel is this caveman with his friends. And Ip is saying, I want a girl. He wants a girl. First he pets this creature with spikes on his back. And he says, And then the next panelist, he's looking at some giant, like, it's a mini dinosaur or a giant lizard. I don't know. And then he sees a girl. And he goes, schnorp?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
And she's like looking at him like, what is happening? And the girl just starts throwing rocks at Ip. It's a croctron girl. And it's clear from reading it, it's a rock-throwing girl. And her arm is just like windmilling around, just throwing these rocks at this guy. And then he like slings her over his shoulder and goes... He's saying, I like that rock-throwing girl.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Celebrating 100 Years: Jia Tolentino and Roz Chast Pick Favorites from the Archive
And then the last panel is Ip with the cavewoman person, and he's patting her, and he's going, and they're surrounded by little cave babies. ¶¶ I just loved his work so much. I loved it for its unique point of view, always funny, never cruel, kind of off the wall. Very inspiring. He was great.