By Mr. Fish
There’s a great passage written by pre-Beat poet Kenneth Rexroth that was published in an article in The Nation in 1957 lamenting the death of “politically radical humor” and the rise of “New Yorker humor,” which he described as humor that invariably hinges on “the whimsical disaster< s >” that beset those who attempt to “do something as elemental as driving a nail or mowing a lawn.” That was 50 years ago and, true to Rexroth’s foreboding, New Yorker humor has pretty much become the yardstick with which we mismeasure our cultural funny bone against what it could and should be today, given such a society as ours, where speech is purported to be free and where so many lampoonable imbeciles rule the land.
In fact, perhaps as a result of fewer and fewer people driving their own nails and mowing their own lawns as the society retrogresses further into the ridiculously class-conscious oligarchy of its own pre-Revolutionary beginnings, New Yorker humor has expanded way beyond merely describing whimsical disasters, of which there are fewer, to describing political disasters, of which there are an increasing number, leaving only those who were alive and working in the earlier part of the 20th century to know how to actually create politically radical humor, albeit with less ferocity and considerably more weariness these days than then.
I met one of these few remaining 20th century radicals in February 2007, a man whom Time magazine called “an acid-penned liberal” in 1960, and had a conversation with him that was not particularly radical or even humorous and was barely political, but why should it have been? Why should any artist be expected to mirror the heightened fury or the magnanimous joy of his art when he’s not actively engaged in creating it? I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s surprising description of Groucho Marx upon meeting him at a restaurant in the late 1970s, when he said that Marx was no funnier than anybody’s elderly uncle whom you might get stuck talking to at a family reunion. Translation: Groucho Marx is not so ethereal that he doesn’t fit into humanity with the rest of us; his magnificent talent doesn’t so much separate him from everybody else as it elevates the cachet of us all, the same way that listening to a recording of Chet Baker singing So che ti perdero and lighting a candle might elevate the cachet of a lousy plate of spaghetti. What was remarkable, I told myself after meeting Paul Conrad, this 20th century establishment radical, and recording two hours of a conversation filled largely with meandering twaddle and reminiscences so worn out that much of their exquisite detail had been obliterated by years of affectionate caressing, was his deep humanity, infectious calm and endearing exhaustion, which is precisely where the greatest art, radical or otherwise, is supposed to eventually lead all of us—isn’t it? Aside from his white-hot contempt for television, George Bush, the death of the environment, the gun lobby and the war in Iraq, the 20th century hell raiser was at peace, finally.
That said, asking Conrad, winner of three Pulitzer Prizes and staff cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times during its heyday and, by some people’s account, the greatest editorial cartoonist ever produced by the United States of America, to talk about his cartooning is like asking Thelonious Monk to talk about his musicianship: It’s stupid, particularly because a cartoonist, like a musician, has already found the most eloquent means of expressing himself and it’s definitely not through conversation with a stranger. And while I was aware that no amount of talk could reveal more about the man than simply looking at his enormous body of work, I was thankful to discover, after five minutes of bullshitting with him while I set up the microphone for our interview, that at least Conrad made more sense and was eminently more gracious than I’d heard Monk ever was.
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/for_paul_conrad_20100905/
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