Roz Chast sold her first cartoon to The New Yorker in 1978. Since then, Chast's offbeat musings on everything from the joys of home improvement to the mysteries of sex to the fine points of parent-teacher conferences have become a regular part of the magazine's humor lineup.
(A 1988 cartoon, for example, introduced readers to "Bad Housekeeping: The Magazine for Women Who Couldn't Care Less." Story titles included "200 Meals You Can Whip Up in Under 10 Seconds," " 'I Let My Houseplants Die,' One Woman's Story" and "Defrosting with Dynamite.")
So what was Chast's major during her undergraduate days at the Rhode Island School of Design in the mid-1970s? Drawing? Illustration?
Try painting.
"You have to realize that drawing just isn't very sexy, especially to a teenager," says Chast, who speaks at the RISD Auditorium on Wednesday. "Painting, on the other hand, has this whole romantic aura attached to it. I mean, at a certain age, who doesn't want to be Jackson Pollock?"
But what about Pollock's stormy personal life?
"That's part of the appeal," Chast says with a laugh. "It means you're willing to suffer for your art -- which of course is very easy to do when you're still in art school."
Actually, Chast has fond memories of her RISD years.
"I've always loved Providence," she confides on the phone from her home in Ridgefield, Conn. "Obviously, it's come a long way in recent years. But even before the whole Providence Renaissance thing it was a great place to go to school. It was romantic in this wonderfully seedy way."
Chast also recalls seeing an early version of the Talking Heads, then featuring fellow RISD students David Byrne on vocals and Chris Frantz on drums. (Bassist Tina Weymouth and guitarist Jerry Harrison joined after the band moved to New York in 1974.)
"This was back when they were known as the Artistics," she says. "Like any red-blooded American kid, I'd grown up listening to rock 'n roll, but this was something new. They had this sort of punky art-rock sound that was totally unique. It was a knockout."
Back to Brooklyn
After graduating from RISD in 1977, Chast moved back to Brooklyn, N. Y. From there, she hoped to build a career as a freelance illustrator, perferably working for some of the big publishing houses and advertising agencies in Manhattan.
There was just one problem: Her portfolio was a mess.
"It was pretty ghastly," she says. "It was this hodgepodge of cartoons, illustrations and God knows what. I mean, I was an art school graduate. What did I know about being a professional illustrator?"
Eventually, Chast worked up the courage to approach The New Yorker, then, as now, considered the Mount Olympus of American cartooning. In particular, the magazine is known for its so-called "gag cartoons" -- humorous single-frame drawings in which words and images comment wryly on current fads, fashions and events.
(A typical example is Robert Mankoff's 1999 illustration of a swank young couple having a heart-to-heart talk over dinner. He to her: "Look, I can't promise I'll change. But I can promise to pretend to change.")
Chast says she never expected to hear back after dropping off some sample cartoons at the magazine's Times Square headquarters. But a few days later, Chast was summoned to the office of the magazine's legendary cartoon editor, Lee Lorenz.
Chast says she thought Lorenz would "pat me on the head, give me a few tips and then send me on my way." Instead, he asked to see more of her work.
"It was a complete surprise," Chast recalls. "I had this image of The New Yorker as this place where everybody smoked pipes and engaged in brilliantly witty repartee over three-martini lunches. I couldn't imagine that they'd take an interest in some weird girl cartoonist from Brooklyn."
Personal humor
Chast's skepticism was understandable.
At the time, most New Yorker cartoons got their laughs from a few tried-and-true subjects such as sex, sports and business. They also followed a predictable format in which the jokes were set up visually, while the punchlines were delivered verbally, usually in short one- or two-line captions.
But Chast's cartoons weren't (and still aren't) like that. Her humor tends to be more personal and whimsical. And rather than a single guffaw, her cartoons are more likely produce a chorus of knowing giggles.
One recent example (it ran in The New Yorker's Sept. 29 issue) shows a display of get-well cards aimed at today's postal-phobic teens. Neatly arranged under a sign marked "Starter Sympathy Cards" are selections such as "For You in Your Time of Freakedoutedness," "Bad News, Homey" and "I Am in, Like, Shock."
Asked where she gets her ideas, Chast says that she often jots down observations and impressions on scraps of paper. If the scraps manage to stay out of the laundry -- "I've lost more great ideas that way," Chast huffs -- they'll eventually collect on Chast's drawing table, where they become fodder for her work.
(In addition to a steady gig at The New Yorker, Chast also contributes cartoons and illustations to Scientific American and other magazines. She's also illustrated four children's books.)
Heavy topics
Asked what she plans to talk about at RISD, where she'll deliver the school's annual Gail Silver Memorial Lecture, Chast can't resist a final bit of deadpan humor.
"What are my topics?" she asks. "Foreign policy, the chance for peace in the Middle East, my advice for the International Monetary Fund, that sort of thing. Frankly, I feel I owe it to the RISD community."
A moment later Chast confesses that she's planning to show slides and talk about her work.
"I don't know about you, but I've always found it a lot easier to speak in public with the lights off," she says.
Cartoonist Roz Chast will give the annual Gail Silver Memorial Lecture on Wednesday at 6:15 p.m. in the RISD Auditorium, between College and Waterman Streets on the Providence riverwalk. The event is free and open to the public, although seating is limited.
