Monks and Ghouls
Drawn and Quartered. By Charles Addams. (Hamish Hamilton, 25s.)
Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl. By Jules Feiffer. (Collins, 12s. 6d.)
Nothing Sacred. By Hugh Burnett. (Merlin Press, 6s.) Pick of Punch. Edited by Bernard Hollowood. (Arthur Barker, 21s.) CHARLES Aornms's ghoulish fantasies, which might be taken as a typical manifestation of post-Bomb sick humour, in fact have a much earlier genesis. Drawn and Quartered is a re- issue of a collection that has been out of print for twenty years, the earliest cartoons in it having first appeared as far back as 1935. Although they are not presented here in chronological
SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 23. 1962 order, it is possible to trace Addams's develop ment as a cartoonist by referring to the coPY" right dates at the front of the book. Only two of them—the 1935 drawings—are not recng' nisable at once as by Addams. They are in pure line, with no shading, none of that suggestive, threatening darkness that has become his hall' mark. Yet even in these the kind of humour is the same: one is of a Maternity Ward, with a row of mothers and new-born babies—but one of the mothers is a bald, bewhiskered man; the other shows a shepherd resting on a hillside, his flock browsing near by—but one of his sbeeP, has approached him and is saying `Meow. Always the but. . . Something in the accepted order of things has gone wrong, and this is the basis of practically every drawing in the book; By 1938 one can see the well-known family of ghouls beginning to take shape; by the flex' year the two central characters—the huge' shambling zombie, the slender witch with hart like seaweed—are firmly established, and the style has settled into that dark amorphousness I that we now know so well. It's irrelevant. , suppose, to talk of merit—either this sort 0 humour appeals to you, or it doesn't. I find .1 good when the cartoons are seen separately' at reasonable intervals, but repetitive
tion.
That goes for Feiffer, too, and with him be- comes a much more serious criticism. Boy, Eire' Boy, Girl should really be kept as a bed book, one strip, and one only, to be taken nightlYi Some nights the dose will seem a bit thin, bu on others the needle will go well home and e?: sure a nasty, restless night. But read straigm through, the way a reviewer does it, this collet tion suggests that Feiffer has run his own f°111;
in collet' ragged ought to start looking for another medium.
It is odd that both an American and an English cartoonist should have chosen—Pres101: ably without knowing each other's work to concentrate exclusively on monks as their car' ,e toon characters. irreverence in the air? Of t; two, the Englishman, Hugh Burnett, is both the more outrageous and the funnier, his draw_ ings, too, with their bold, aggressive immensely satisfying. Chon Day's Brother Sebastian, who looks like his chubby, haldin,,vg; bespectacled creator, is a gentle, imPass',, creature whose `situation' is always strictly or at least ecclesiastical—he even counts to ?cal' in Roman numerals when he hits his thumb VI,jeg line, arc_ a hammer. A likeable child, against Borne`„, Monk, whose garb emphasises rather than e°" ceals his adult frailty.
The humour in Gerard Hoffnung's cartoore
is in the drawings themselves—his gnooleInly, grotesques are seldom doing anything fun is they just look funny. The present collectinnin. simply a gallery of 'reading types'—m pulsive readers will find themselves pinned to °re or another of these pages. Once more vve,,aff, sadly reminded of what we lost through tin nung's early death. Pick of Punch, as usual, is full of splendid
all
cartoons and achingly dreary prose Pieces' der apparently written by the same man Under various famous pseudonyms. They begin' not have a great reputation in this country for be having revolutions . . ."It is comforting t° Eid aware, as I am, that in the feverish rush log types'—[Host COne clamour of life . . ."Nothing is more daunt t wto to a responsible citizen's self-respect . . Qtlicti name are we to give this suburbanitY, to is? Punch seems to reduce even the best of write
GLENEAGL -°
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