Roz Chast's cartoons exude warmth and whimsy, but often share more in common with the dark humor of cartoonists like Charles Addams or Gahan Wilson than they do with "Peanuts." When she broke into a regular gig as a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine in the 1970s, she had already cultivated the eccentricities that became the hallmark of her work. As proof, an adult Chast drew a cartoon that shows a young girl with her head stuck in the "Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases." It's labeled "Me, Age 9."
Chast has illustrated more than 800 cartoons for The New Yorker, as well as a number of books. Most recently, she published Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, a sharply-observed memoir of her parents at the ends of their lives. In this episode of Here's The Thing, Roz Chast talks to Alec Baldwin about life with her parents, growing up in New York, and her neurotic pet birds.
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This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing, My chance to talk with artists, policymakers, and performers, to hear their stories. What inspires their creations, what decisions change their careers, what relationships influenced their work. If you've ever picked up an issue of The New Yorker, chances are you've seen the work of cartoonist Ro's Chaste. Her characters appear to be hastily drawn in colored pencils by a clever child while talking on the phone, But on closer examination, you recognize the complex emotions that her drawings contain. Though their faces are made up of only a few squiggles. You spot a look of resentment in the mother, resignation in the father, entitlement in the sun, and defiance in the daughter. Chaste gives life to the objects around the family as well. She trains her eye on what the rest of us don't see, archiving the detritus real or imagined, that we lead behind in our wake. You could call her an anthropologist of human emotions, but Ros's Chaste prefers to keep our title simple. I guess a cartoonist. Yeah, cartoonist, And how long have you been doing the pieces for the New Yorker since when I started in for the New Yorker. For the New Yorker, yeah, and did you know how does that work? Did you submit and submit for eons and eons and finally got accepted or no. I had a very strange experience when I got out of art school. I was starting to take a portfolio around and I was doing cartoons for various places. I actually thought I would wind up working for the Village Voice. That was sort of my goal, because that's where I pictured myself. You know, Jules Feiffer did cartoons for the Village Voice, and I thought, well, if I work really hard and if I'm really lucky, and if there's a receptive editor, that's where I'll be. My parents subscribed The New Yorker, and so at some point I thought, well, I might as well try them. But I really did not think that that was where my cartoons would be because, especially in my cartoons were not what they had in the magazine, and uh, but I thought, uh, how would you describe what was in the magazine? And they were mostly single panel cartoons with a gagline underneath a lot of them were funny. I liked a lot of the art in them. I loved, you know, Charles Adams and Ed Coren, Jack Ziegler, there were a lot of Gay Wilson when he appeared. There were a lot of cartoons that I liked. But I just did not see my stuff in there. I guess because of the single panel thing, and especially back then, my stuff was lots of panels, and they were really really tiny. The boxes were about postage stamp sized, and in fact, the editor of The New Yorker told me that I had to start making them bigger because um, they were just very hard to see. But I think, in this sort of logical but sort of slightly in main way, I thought, if I just draw really small, like, nobody will get really angry with me. So anyway, one time, and it was in April of seventy eight, I dropped off this portfolio of cartoons to The New Yorker. I had called them up and found out when they saw stuff over the transome. I didn't know anybody there. I didn't know computers the internet paper right, and I didn't know how many cartoons. Was the editor then William Shaun and uh Lee Lawrence was the cartoon the art editor. There was no cartoon editor. He was in charge of all the art, the covers, the inside. You know, there wasn't that much art. There was the cartoons, there was the covers. They were spot drawings, and that was pretty much it. When I came back next week to pick them up. I had about sixty cartoons in there. I really did not know what I was doing. There was a note from him to come back and see him. Turned out i'd sold a cartoon and he told me to come back every week. So that's kind of what I've been doing. Would you would say that you're in the if they do they do double issues, so they probably put out what about fifty issues or forty eight issues a year, something like that, And you'd say that you appear in the magazine how often per year? It goes on streaks? I mean it's uh, they'll take whatever you've got. No, no, I mean it's weird stuff you send them, no tons because I mean they reject at least of the stuff you submit. Yes, the way, there's I don't know, maybe forty cartoonists on staff, and we all submit a group of cartoons. Every week. I send in usually six to eight cartoons, and um, sometimes they take one, sometimes they don't take any. Every blue moon they take too. But the overwhelming majority of what I turned in is rejected. Where does that go? It goes on top of my file cabinet with its other reject brethren, the graveyard, Graveyard chest imagination. Yeah, but you know, then I publish somewhere else. I used to do sonics cartoons for a Scientific American UM and read book. Uh, you don't put them online on a website. That is ross chess rejected cartoons, man, I so they don't go on a website website, Okay, Now, Crumbler and UM, so much trouble, so much trouble, and they're just bad anyway, And anyway, sometimes I redraw them and and I reworked them. And you know, because if I'm really stubborn about a joke, if I think this could be a good joke, if I just need to make it better, you know. So where did you go to art school? I went to Rhode Island School of Design. You went to Rid, Right, What did you study there? You study art? And I started out. I started out in graphic design because I thought I would be practical, and I hated it. It was just, you know, a lot of it's like this was about learning to be neat and measure exactly, and uh, I really was not good at that. I had been cartooning since you were a child. Yeah, you started when you were young. I started when I was really little. And I think a lot of it had to do with that I was an only child and my parents were a lot older, and there was one way to kind of keep me entertain after Known'm kidding, ha ha. And the chasti and psychological condition was that in the early drawings as well. Oh, I think ross chest as a child, what's the point help me going to the library? I like the library. What's the point of going to the movies? We have snacks at home. No. I think when I was a kid, I drew everything. I mean I like to draw people. I liked, you know, funny remarks and conversations and yeah, you know, I just like to draw. And then when you left Wristee, what did you do before you started? I'm not coming who. You became with the New Yorker and so you graduated risdy Win in so it was only a year before you submitted to Sean. Yeah, yeah, so it was actually less the other work you do as an artist during that period of time. I mean, do you wind up? Is this the beginning of you making your living as a cartoonist right away? Um? I started out actually doing illustrations. They were terrible. I was doing cartoons on my own, but I never thought that I would be able to make a living at first as a cartoonist. You know, I was living in my parents apartment and that was enough, and I sort of made up a weird illustration style that was like a pastiche of all the popular styles of the day, and they were pretty terrible. I did not get much work, and at some point I just thought, you know what, I'm just going to try submitting the cartoons because this is really what I like to do, and at least if nobody takes them, then i'll know that, you know, I tried. So I don't know if I even thought it out that far, or whether it was really that the illustrations weren't getting any work at all. And when I started doing the cartoons, that's when I started getting work. I started selling to do the illustrations look like were they in? They're not in the style? When when you're when you're an artist and you do illustrations, it's it's it's like you draw birds like Audubon, you don't draw birds like Ross Chest draws cartoons and people. They're not squiggly lines of people with their hands up around their mouths. They were just like these fake kind of Milton Glazer mixed with a little weird abstract e kind of junk. Because at Rizzy, I was taught like, you don't want to be too tight when you draw, so there was like a kind of like fake loose kind of thing tossed off. Well they were not tossed off. They were fake loose, you know. They were like to look like they were just horrible, and I didn't like doing them. I mean, that was the worst part. It was just someone that taught you then, who helped you that you remember, who was a great mentor of yours. Um I was in high school. I went to the Art Students League on week on. It was one Saturday a month, and I had yeah, yeah, and that's I mean, I could not say that I know anatomy my any stretch of the imagination, but it's where I took a lot of figure drawing and I loved the Art Students League, and I had an amazing teacher there named Andrew Lucash. I like that a lot. When you start working with for the New Yorker. How long does it go on before you're making a living just doing that? Um, I don't think I've ever I've always done other things illustrations, um and tossed off kind of phone. Know. What happened was once my style got known through the New Yorker, then people would hire me because it was okay to draw my style. And uh, I remember doing some illustration. I think what was that magazine? It wasn't called I can't remember. Maybe it was it have been missed, I can't remember. Somebody's closet. It was just like I had all these clothes and these arrows with words like sick, yuck, throw out, you know, and it was like I couldn't incorporate the jokes and the writing into the illustrations. And so you know, in the years after that, after my cartoon started appearing in New Yorker, I was able to get illustration work, but they knew what I did. I mean, every once in a while, something weird would happen, like, UM, a magazine would say. I think it was seventeen magazine. I I illustrated a booklet for teenagers about I don't even manners or something, and they said, could you make your people look more contemporary? And I thought, they don't look contemporary? You know. I just thought, well, this is how I draw contemporary people, you know, I mean, what are they supposed to wear a different sort of hair band or something. I just I don't know. It's just like, no matter what I put on my characters, they look how they look. They said, okay, and then we went on from there. Sean was the editor when your first commit was got Leeb. Next after that it was Sean Gottlieb, Tina and David. How does that change the perception of your work? Editor to editor and then art director and cartoon editor and on and on. Have you had a different reception for your work over the last several years? Um? I was very panicky when Tina Brown took over, because I think several people were because I had the impression that she liked only topical stuff. And I think that that a lot of my cartoons during that time became more topical. But the thing with very topical cartoons is you know, you can't really include them in a collection. I mean, who really cares about Monica Lewinsky joke right now? So you know, I felt like if I could do them in a way that was still my stuff, it was all right. But um, that were your fears assuaged? Once she got there, that she get your it was all right, it was okay. But I think there is some differences. I think so, I think so, um, and who knows how much of it was in my own, you know projection. Another thing I thought about was just pure writing. Have you done a lot of writing and do you do writing aside from doing the cartooning, because so much of what you do involves writing. In this book that you have about now is so beautifully written in terms of the honesty and the well, thank you, thanks um. I think that one thing I have always loved about cartoons is that they have writing and they have pictures. And it's not just like an illustration. In the best cartoons, the best graphic novels graphic uh you know, storytelling, The words and the pictures play off each other. The illustration is not necessarily a literal illustration of the words that you see on the page. It could be moving the story forward or back, or could be like in total contradiction to what's written. Um, there's some sort of thing going on between the two of them. And what I love is that I don't have to choose. Like in this book, there are times where a picture served, you know, best, to tell what I wanted to tell, And there were parts where I really wanted it needed to be all text. You know, the pictures would not have helped, would have in fact attracted. And I do like to write. I have written, Um, I've written for The New Yorker, I've written a Talk of the Town piece, I wrote shouts and murmurs. I've written an obituary um for uh wonderful cartoonist Leo Collum. Um. I like to write. I like to write mostly though, UM, I like cartoons. You do, Yeah, Are you much of a television watcher? Someone who's who's very funny and and humorist certainly applies to you when your work, Like any good cartoonist. Um, what kind of television do you watch? Oh? God, I love so many of these, you know, repeating the series that have been on. Oh my god, I watched yeah Bench last night, I watched three episodes of broad Church, British show. Um about a little kid who's murdered and broad Church is the name of the town. Um, I've watched that. I watched broad City, Girls, Madman, What's the Wire of No? No, broad City though it was funny. Not a sitcom watcher. No, I'm not much of a sitcom watcher. Um, I watched sits. Know. When I was a kid, I watched a ton of sitcotts, Bewitched, Green Acres, I mean, I was obsessed with Bewitched. Where's the Agnes More ahead of today? Oh my god, I can still hear the credits in my head. I watched Beverly Hillbilly's Island, Gilligan's Island, totally yeah. I mean I still see a lot of people in terms of Guilden's Island. I still have dreams about Ginger. Oh my god, say, at least is not like Gilligan weird tied up to a tree in my dream Gilligan in this skipper, they're on the other side of the island doing the laundry quote unquote with I say, I say. And the last TV show until the Sopranos came along that I watched with any devotion was Mary Hartman. Mary Hartman, Yes, and I was addicted to the weirdness of that show. When I was like, I forget sixteen or see, I did sort of get into the Mary Tyler Moore show. And there were a couple of years when I first got out of college. Maybe it was the first year I got out of college where I was living in the apartment, living in my first apartment. Actually it was when I got out of college, when I still living at home for a while and then I moved into my own apartment that I didn't really have much of a social life, let's put it that way. And working. I was working, and I was working on my cartoons, and I was mostly mostly pretty depressed. Big shock, because well I was living at home and I just thought, this is still at home with my parents in Brooklyn, and I thought this is my life. I was twenty two, twenty two, and I didn't know how to fill my time. I think that was another thing that like, you know, it's it's so different now with the Internet, but before it was like there were these stretches. I mean, I was also in love with this guy and it wasn't reciprocal. Um, what do do he was a painter U school. He was yeah, yeah, um yeah. But anyway, uh so it was it was a very depressing time. And I used to watch the Mary Charler Wore Show and also The Odd Couple, and there were these things that sort of like like I knew if I got to those shows, I would like live through the day. It's hard to sort of explain, but remember that those shows made me feel more. Yeah, they would pay that they'd play that opening and gone with the wind. I told someone I spent you're a real New Yorker. I spent six months on the internet, surfing the carters and the baffles and the warrens of YouTube to find the voice of the man that was the voice of my childhood. Now, it's interesting that you remember the voices. I don't remember that that. I remember that Clapboard like really, well, which one do you remember? That? Was the four thirty movie? No? That was that? That was? I think that the Million Dollar movie was the Clapboard was later one? Um, the four thirty movie I think had a kind of grandfather clock kind of I don't want I don't want to be taking you on in the music was do I think I've got you here. I don't mean to be lecturing Roch, but I'm going to tell you the clapboard and the camera on the dolly was the four thirty movie. That was the slate the Maybe I'm remembering something really long ago. You have been breathing in a lot of chemicals there in your cartooning studio, and your memory is failing you. The one you're referring to as a famous piece called syncopated clock, and that was the Late Show on CBS and the Late Late Show on CBS. So the clapboard was the ABC. But when did you realize that that was a clapartelling this the clapboard in the Okay, sol See, I didn't know. I thought it was like a black thank you. I didn't know what it was until I was much older. A clapboard. It looked like it looked like a weird flashboard to me. You were depressed back then. The painter wasn't around. You're looking with your parents and crazy Ville. How old were you when you moved out of the apartment, Uh, twenty three, So you're just there for a year, just there for you about yes, yes, And then you moved toward to Manhattan. Yes, moved to Manhattan, a wonderful apartment on seventy third Street, loved one between Amsterdam and Columbus area. It was wonderful. It was it was, you know, kind of raddy back then. Not terrible, but it was the wild wild West back Yeah, it was raddy. You know, they were like linoleum stores in secondhand clothing stores. Tinchers was still on Broadway, yes, And the prostitutes used to wear like faux fur coats and approach you on Broadway. Yes. And as you went up on Amsterdam Avenue, people in the summer with like barbecue out of their cars. And I remember that because the painter that I like lived on two Street in Amsterdam. And whence you crossed like seventy nine Street, you were just like, I don't even know where I am. How old were you when you met your husband? So this is again like a year or two later when you met him, were at the New Yorker. Well, you know you New Yorker people all just commingle, yes, pretty much so much. Yeah, and only another New Yorker staff member can understand just you know, these are the people we know and really cross paths. What did he do? Yeah, Bill. He's a writer, and what does he right? Predominantly short humor, talking the town and stuff like that. Well, now's some reason why the lights in here. Like, I'm surprised, and I'm coming into this interview with you having read your cartoons and loved your cartoons, and I am a great cavelling, cavetching, whining bundle of insecurity myself. I am. I'm a ball of insecurity. And for you, of all people, I've got all these presumptions about you to ask about the power fluctuations in an old apartment building. I'm just surprised, this is an old apartment building to take up this carpet his linoleum there, Okay, okay, I come completely Joseph's Temple of communication explanation. I just wanted to make sure about you don't have some neurological disorder. You don't have any neurological disorder as far as I know. You know, it's but just you know, there's just things going on, electrical things going on. Was trying to talk to Charles Schultz is trying to talk to you. He's born on my birthday. Actually, really, yes, what did you think of that cartoon? Peanuts? When I was younger, I liked it a lot. I still think it has some fantastic archetypes, but you know, it's not completely my cup of tea, but I like it. Charles Adams probably Jane Wilson, Charles Adams sort of more odd. Tim Burton definitely definitely. Chat said she loved Charles Adams work when she was young because, quote, it made fun of stuff you weren't supposed to make fun of. Unquote. It's clear she wasn't your average kid growing up in Brooklyn in the fifties and sixties. In her cartoon A Note on the Author, Chaste drew her nine year old self reading the Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases. I'm Alec Baldwin, and here's the thing. Take a listen to our archive more in depth conversations with artists, policymakers, and performers like Lena Dunham. Dunham and Chast both talk to me about their early years, but Dunham's plans for her future were way off. Always thought I would be like a weird gender and women studies teacher who occasionally showed movies at film festivals and hung out in my strange apartment that was stacked high with books. Take a listen at Here's the Thing dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. My guest today is Ra's Chast. Can We talk About Something more Pleasant? Her graphic memoir about taking care of her elderly parents in their final years, was nominated for a National Book Award last year. Along with her drawings that told the story of her parents, the book includes actual photographs of the objects they left behind. While cleaning out her parents fridge, Chast found an invention of her mother's from the sixties made from mismatched tupperware held together with masking tape, called the cheese Tailor. Chast says anything to do with death is funny, but the emotional honesty of her book produced more than just laughs. The New York Times called can We Talk as ambitious, raw and personal as anything she has produced. Yeah. This is definitely the most personal and how would you describe it? The book is called can't We I'm sorry, Can't We talk about Something more Pleasant? Which comes from my father. That's something that he would say anytime a topic that was a little dicey would come up. Because my mother loved talking about like weird illnesses than friends of hers had, Like you know, did you hear about Shirley She has like blood coming out of her right ear, blood and puss, and she was just sitting in the Chinese restrust. Actually it was like it started at blood, then pus, then it started shifting, then it was blood an enormous amen. And then my father would just say, can't we talk about so my mother? You and I are going to go back and forth about our mother's and my family. We we make fun of my mother because my mother will not have six degrees of separation. She'll have a hundred and six degrees of separation from someone and yet feel the pain of someone she could never possibly meet. Or No, she loved tragedy. She was addicted to tragedy. Yeah, the drama thing, drama, melodrama. Tell me about the genesis of this book, if you will. Well, I think in my head I do sort of take notes on things. There were a lot of cartoons in this book. Well, I was telling you earlier about how every week I submit around six or eight cartoons. So and then you were asking me about the rejects on top with the file cabinet. Some of these cartoons, like the one with the oven mitt, there were things that I did when I would go visit my parents, and I would have like a sort of insane conversation with my mother about that was you know this oven mit, which was uh, I mean, who patches an oven mit? They cost like four And this was before this was way before she was you know, she was still grocery shopping, so I know she could have bought an oven mit and it was patched with a skirt that I had made in seventh grade home economics class, and I could not understand why she still had it, you know. But then you know, as it became clear she they never threw anything away ever, ever, ever, ever, They just kind of like shoved it farther back in the closet. Um. And uh so, yes, they were kind of hoarders and um, borderline hoarders, I think. I mean they were not rats like scurrying. I mean I have watched the Hoarders. They were, Yes, yes, they were were you know, farm lee Cord hoarders. So some of the cartoons, like the that the cheese dan Ish one, there's probably ten or twenty in the book that I did, not thinking in any way that they would become part of a book, but that I did, you know, within a couple of weeks of the incident happening, or the Theuigia board one, you know where when my father was dying and I my daughter was doing Wigia board with some friends in her room, and you know, I barely was touching. And I'm with my daughter and a couple of friends. They're like sixteen years old, and the thing spells out, you know, heaven beckons. I. Oh, I asked it, I should say, I asked, Luigia board, is Grandpa going to die soon? And my daughter was like, mom, that's so morbid. But it was the first question that popped into my head. So I asked it. And I was not touching the plant chat you know, I was just like my hands were like touching two adams worth because I was partly curious to see, like where are these kids going to move it? You know, and you know, so I wrote that up. So so that's the genesis. But the genesis from the book, I think it just sort of started to fall together, probably like when you photographed the objects in the house. There's that little piece in the book. We have photographs of the pencil drawer, and these are these wonderfully plane and simple things that there are snapshots at all of us say that's that, this is how we live. When you were doing that, were you saying to yourself, I'm gonna put this down into a book of some kind. Before that, I think that, well, I was. I knew I was getting rid of almost everything in the apartment, and I wanted memories of it. I think that I thought it's the same way that when something is interesting, I think somehow this might be useful, and maybe in some very vague I was thinking about a book, but I don't think I really thought about I wasn't really thinking of this because I didn't even have a title for it for the longest time, or how it would be structured, or whether it could be a book. I didn't even know whether it could really be a book, or how I would use the photograph. So a lot of it just kind of came together more later. So for you, you didn't decide until when. When did you sit there and go, I want to get this on paper. This my feelings about my parents, I think probably, and why somewhere between my father's death and my mother's death somewhere in there. And why, I think because I didn't want to forget, and I just I just knew that if I did not get it down, I would forget. I would uh, I'd forget how they sounded, I'd forget. It's an instinct all of us have to some degree, I mean normal people. Yeah, I think so. I want to chronicle that in some way. I definitely think so. I think it's why we tell stories. I think it's why we tell our friends, Oh my god, this is what or why you know we don't because maybe we don't want to remember. We videotape our children out within an inch of their lives right right. What people take self is because you don't want to forget, and you know on some level that it's all just going to become like, you know, just like what did I have for dinner? Guess I have no idea. I don't remember. You were closer to your dad than your mom, definitely, both of your parents being older parents was one of the things you credited with them leaving you alone to draw. Yeah, oh yeah, I think that they were a lot of alone time, and most of their friends did not have children. They were just you know a lot of school teacher friends who some of them were you know, bachelor's or bachelorettes. Uh, and just or couples that prefer to travel or go to lectures or you know, go to the opera, and they did not want to be burdened with children. And both of my parents, I think we're sort of in that category. And as I mentioned in this book, they did have a child, baby that my mother lost. Um No, she did not like lose it in the supermarket. She lost the baby at seven and a half months. Um. And I think they were very afraid to try again. And then I was born to them when they were in their forties, but they were old. They were like an old forties. They were you know, you could see from that photo that my mother wore blouses that buttoned up the back. I don't even know where you get these kind of blouses, you know. She she wore like blouses with like the plaquette in the front, blouses. You know. Um, I never saw her wear like a button down shirt or any kind from she was she was born. Uh. They were both grew up in Manhattan, East Harlem, both New Yorkers. Yes, they were both born in this country, but all of their grandparents were from Russia. And both your parents were school teachers. Yes, for a long time. In fact, my mother was Woody Allen's teacher. Yeah, I know, I know, strange, Um, and he remembers her. Well, describe your okay. She was very tough. She was well, you asked me if they were school teachers. My mother became an assistant principal, a job for which she was perfectly suited. She was a disciplinarian. She was somebody. She was about five to then. She shrunk as she got older. Was a very tiny spark club more like a fire hydrant. She was short, and she was very very strong, and she was heavy, and she was zofted. She was very smart. I wouldn't say, I mean she went to Hunter College, my father went to City College. Um. She was very very bright. Uh. She was good in a crisis. She would be the kind she was, would be a great administrator. She was very tough. It's a very capable, very very capable, very tough. I think she resented that. Um. As a woman, she was not going to necessarily get the same sorts of promotions as like men who were much you know, less capable than her. Uh. I think that there's a kind of like then diagram where some of these skills overlap with the skills of being a mom and some of them really do not. And uh, she was very uncompromising, and I think to be a parent it involves a lot of compromise and can be too vigorously honest and apparently, no, you can't be too rigorously honest, and you can't be too strict. You can't be too rigid. You know, she she was rigid, She would rog She had her view of the world and the way things should be. This is the woman that had the cheese tainer. Yes, yes, my favorite. In fact, I think my mother chose that she would rather stick to her guns about something that she thought was right and have me hate her then look for some other way of doing this. Do you think your mother sensed the tension between the two of you. I think she did. Was almost like she knew. Did she know that even she knew this could have gone a lot better? No, I don't think she did. I think that was the thing that was sort of hard to take that I think we would she had empathy, but she or she had something I don't know what she had, but whatever it was, we the two of us were so completely different, like just cut from such too completely to use this horrible cliche pieces of cloth, not my fabric from seventh grade. Um that there was just no way she could even understand. How did that influence you raising your child? You have a boy and a girl. Yeah, it was totally different. I mean when she would say things, your kids set the house on fire. Oh well, just short of that. I mean, you know, um, you know you made cartoons about you as a mother. I have I had to you, Oh my god, I have a whole cartoon about being a wimp mom. Where when my son was about like three or four, you know those kind of crazy arguments where you're like you're reading a book about dinosaurs and you go, dinosaurs were very, very big, and the kid is in a certain pissy moved they go, no, they weren't. And so I think my response was, you're right, dinosaurs were as tiny as peas. I mean, you know, but anyway, I remember when she would say, when I would be like incredibly angry, she would say, when you have children of your own, you'll understand. And I knew I wouldn't you know. I understand, all right, I'll understand. I'm going to do something. You know, I don't want to not have a relationship. Is the family with his one child. In my family, there were six children, and money was just a constant, you know, it was just a metronomic reality. Where did you grow up? Massive Pequa Long Island part of residential Long Island? King corn stamps? Did you snake stamps? Back when they had the old and in the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company? Yes, well, we used to drink tang Tan had tang for breakfast. My father would make us tang is what the astronauts had been told. It was really sugar some tan. I want to believe tang is out there. You can probably get it on some like weird strawberry quick. We were drinking, you know, our parents just let us not eat whatever we wanted to. But pretty close. What did your parents think about it? And I'm assuming they certainly picked up at least allow that. Maybe your father did. Your father was a pretty bright guy. Yeah, they were both bright. We're both both bright. But your your father seemed have more of a sense of humor than your mother. I don't know not they They just had a different sense if you're very old fashioned. Did they know that they were these the font of a lot of the humor in your cartoons? M I think that my mother sort of new. I think that they did. Yes, yes, they did it. I always has denied it, and I would say, I'd say, Mom, this is not you, this is this is a sort of mom, it's a different different but this of course, you know, they did not see this book for obvious reasons, and it is not a book that I could have written while they were alive. Definitely not your Is your husband from the same kind of family? No, No, he's from opposite land personally big pies. Yes, oh definitely midwestern Minnesota. Yes, yes, and I wat yes, yes, I've watched home movies of his family and they're all like attractive and happy and they're like playing. Yes, yes, they're like healthy, there courses of the dinner, they're going to split some more wood. Yes, they're attractive. They get along with each other theirs. No, I mean I've seen like family photos and they're like setibiotics. What is that? Oh my god, I have family photos that are not in this book of like my relatives and they're like sitting around like the dieting table with bottles of manis chevits and those kind of seltzer bottles, and and like they're one of them is actually wearing a babushka and they look so glum. They look like they're just about to get slaughtered. It is. And then they're just not smiling. They look just his family, my family, my family, these old black and white photos and they're just grim. And you say to his family, say, is there any depression in your family? After a pause, they say, well, there was a sink hole out by the well ones back in the then there's just nothing. No, well they you know, they're they're Scandinavian, so there is that dark side, but that's natural essentially. But yes, but you don't talk about it. You just don't talk about You don't talk about it, and you make the best and you know, you have a drink or you you know, go out, Oh, we discovered a really nice restaurant out on route and they have But that aren't they onto something? Don't we find that as we get older? Isn't that just the answer? Someone said to me, what do you require? Had some life? Now I'm gonna be fifty seven years old. I said, I want a good reading lamp. I need a good radio wherever I go. I'm a radio addict. I said I need a good cup of coffee. I mean I don't. I don't need five star hotels. I don't need private jets. I mean all these things that might have been a part of in my in my deck, I don't need any of that anymore. You know, I need a good uh, a good fireplace. Very simple needs spring, Scandinavian needs, yes side. Well maybe that's like when you get older, it's like, do we all become more Scandina, Yes, we all, We're all like going towards the Scandinavian side. Tell me about your dad in his relationship with your mom. She wore the pants. She pretty much bore the pants. Yeah, he was. I think she helped him a lot. He clung to her. She knew what to do, she drove. She was internal relationship, which many men back then did. Yes, he went from his mother who was you know, she was actually I think kind of nuts. I mean literally, she slept across the foot of his bed until he was twenty one. She was bat She was kind of like a borderline bagged and he needed to marry some another woman to take care of. Yes, exactly had a little bit of an edge to her. Yes, Yes, very hard to please someone, hard to please someone who I think he probably read, you know, being screened at as love, you know, and also that she would mention because I care. Because I care, I will tell you the right thing to do, and I will yell at you if you don't do it right. And you know, this is how I show my love and I will always take care of you. And she always did, she always, But it was and it was very much, you know, between the two of them. You know. The death of my dad was just the seismic event. He was five years old, and it was probably it was so painful because I couldn't do anything for him. Once I made it, you know, I made it, and I made more money than I could ever spend. And I think to myself, what I wouldn't do to buy my dad a car, house, a camel hair coat? Did he want that sort of stuff? I mean I bought I never had a chance to find. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's I mean. I bought stuff. I mean I didn't make that kind of money, but still I wanted my parents had. Their clothing had was ratty, you know, and I would buy sometimes stuff, you know, LLB and I would send them stuff. But when I cleaned out the apartment, I found bags of unopened stuff. I think occasionally my father would wear a sweater that I had gotten. But like the kind of pants that he wore. He wore, I think of them as man pants. They were like those kind of gray slacks with a crease down the front. I never saw him in jeans or khakis, or chinos or quarter pants. By the way, man pants, I wear gray will blend pants. That's what he wore New York man wear. Because you can come home and just throw on a button down shirt and a blazer and you're off to a cocktail party. Well, my father was not going to any cocktail pread wasn't, strangely enough, No, And he died first. He died first. And he died in the place. Yes, And he had been in the place for how long? Uh not that long, less than about half a year. He died in the room with her. Uh. Well, I say this in the book. It was this is not a typical. He was in hospice and my mother left the room briefly she left to use the bathroom for like two minutes maybe less, and that's when he passed. Isn't interesting because I'm a firm believer that not with all people, but some people they have that kind of mastery and they're like, I don't want to die in front of you. I think that is exactly what happened, and that's what the hospice lady said. She found out about that. Oh, she was sort of shock. I mean she was just, uh, I can't you know, it's hard to even imagine they've been married for married in thirty eight it was two thousand seven, I don't know years, sixty nine years. Yeah, I mean it was just an insane amount of time that they've been together. And they were together before that, and they were each other's only they were like, yeah, they were like one person. Did she last after that almost two years? Did she change in her demeanor towards you once? Once she were her only blood? Kin? I know it was I think maybe she was trying to protect me sometimes, that maybe she thought real, her real emotions would be too much for me to handle, and that it was just easier to kind of well, you have the father who had crazy mommy. Yeah, and if I can be so glib about this, and I mean very often the woman like your mom, who's as strident as leathery as they are, there's some hurt that they're protecting what happened with her to the extent you can say she has an unhappy childhood. I don't know. I mean she never told me that she did if she didn't ever explored that, and she did not want to talk too much about that. I mean she would tell me these fixed anecdotes about the past and parents. To her father was he did a lot of things, but one thing that he mostly did was he's a pressor in the garment district. But before that he had had an ice cream cone factory for a little while, um, which she swept out. She wanted to be a ballerina at one point, but she was not graceful, uh or tall enough for anything, but she was saving up for ballet shoes. She told me that one. Um. I think he did some other things. He operated a movie theater for a while, like as a projectionist and um, but most yeah, I think he was he was he took tickets on a trolley car. But the main thing he did was he was a pressor in the garment district and he had five children. His wife, my grandmother, raised the children and they had no money. Do you think that, um, do you think that your perspective which has this wonderful, wonderful, wonderful neurosis in it. And I said, like, Woody Allen, where you're expressing things? We all you're you're just doing it in a in a funnier, you know, you and he in a funnier kind of more interesting way. Do you think you owe that to your mom? Probably to both of them in some way. I think, you know, my parents were extraordinary people in sweet and sour in combination. In your work, do you get the sweet from your dad and the sour from your mom? I think both and both, I think and from both of them. Yeah, yeah, definitely. What's your next book going to be? About? Things? Stories and people, pictures and trying to cope? I'll talk about it and then I'll like completely drinks it so understand. Probably possibly about the New York and that's all I'm going to say. What about writing about yourself and your marriage and your you and your husband or worry we don't we got to stop and shot. We went to Stop and Shop last night to read, and we went to Stop and shopping. You miss living in New York at all. I missed New York all due time. I miss it. So wherever you I'm not going to say it on the air, but you live outside the city for many, many years, many years, describe what it's like. They're it's very pretty, it's very clean. Air is christ The air is crisp, and women a freshly worked out and they have got a Yeah, to some extent, it's people seem if they have you know, you don't see too many people like yaking to themselves on the street unless they're talking through their phone. It's it's great, But I really do miss the city. I don't really like to drive, I don't really like how kids are grown. Yes, so why don't you and your husband moved back to the city because he likes living out there? He does, he does. He in the same boat I want to move out of the city. And my wife was like, you know, she's singing West Side Story every night. She just can't imagine leaving New York. Yeah, well, without kids, I mean we would not have left the city. But with kids it was just impossible, and we can't talk Bill into moving back. No, no, no, he really likes it out there. He likes having a bird feeder, likes that we have. I like having a bird feeder. That's the one positive thing. We do. Have a bird feeder. You have and you have two birds, and I have two birds. I have a kayak and I have an African gray who talks, and I love birds. I'm a bird nut. Do you mind my asking what the bird says? Oh my god, Well she says a lot of things. Um, she says good morning, she says good night, she says, want want waffle? Can you still teach the bird to do things? Yes, yes, she's very neurotic. She plucks. She she's she's an African gray. She's very very sweet. They're notoriously neurotic. She plucks her feathers, and she does say she does say don't pluck, and then she keeps plucking. But the thing I was going to tell you is that when people come into the house, she might be on her feeding stand, she'll get afraid, she'll fly to the floor. And I always say it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. So she taught herself that. Now, if she's on her feeding stand and like some like a plumber comes by, he's got like tools off his belt and buckets and you know, strange shape, grange shapes like I always think of them as man. My dog does this when they see homeless people with like a shopping card with plastic bottles, strange shape and like too many things on the belt and the buckets. And she'll fly and clanging sounds. She'll fly to the floor. She'll sort of pace around, and she'll go, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, And and it is incredible, she soothes herself. It's so great. So I needed to tell her, I want to I'm going to get a bird. Now. There are a lot of work, I'm telling you, but there's there's so great. There's so great. I'll go to any lengths to be loved. Oh, I know, I know. And I want to have I want to have a I want to have a bird. And I want the bird to say to me, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. She says, it's herself. Any more than that, and that to my list of a good reading lamp, A fireplace, a cup of coffee, and a gray African one African gray and African gray, and should name what's your bird's name? Eli? My son named her. She We thought she was a boy. And you can't it's I forget what the word is, but like there's you can't tell from the outside. They have to have a blood test, so the vet did a blood test. They have they have no externals as it were nothing. Yeah, blood blood test just get lost in the mail. Yeah, So it was Elia. And the other one is a kayik and she's not very name Jackie Jack. And she's not very smart. She's not very smart, but she's so adorable and she's really pretty. So you know who needs when you're like that pretty, you don't have to be that. I'm going to get a bird. Let me think about it. But if I had a bird, I would name it ros. I would name it Rose. You can see ross chests cartoons in the pages of The New Yorker magazine and on her website ras chest dot com. To see a picture of Oz and her bird, Jackie, go to Here's the Thing dot org, where you can also see Roz's cartoon of this very interview. Oh This is Alec Baldwin you're listening to. Here's the thing.