'Never' has been good to cartoon editor Bob Mankoff
NEW YORK — When Bob Mankoff, the 69-year-old cartoon editor of The New Yorker, decided to write an illustrated memoir — "while I still have memory to memoir with" — he says there was no debate about the book's title.
How About Never – Is Never Good for You? My Life in Cartoons (Holt) borrows the punch line of Mankoff's most famous and popular cartoon.
It shows a businessman standing at his desk, saying on the phone, "No, Thursday's out. How about never – is never good for you?"
And in his own small and cluttered office at The New Yorker, Mankoff recalls the day in 1993 when "the cartoon muse" blessed him with that line.
Mankoff was trying to schedule a meeting for some forgotten reason with another cartoonist "who was giving me a hard time."
"And finally, I said, 'Hey Dick, is never good for you?' A snotty line I thought nothing of."
That night he was finishing his weekly batch of 10 cartoons to submit to Lee Lorenz, who was then the magazine's cartoon editor.
Mankoff, who succeeded Lorenz in 1997, says he used the line with no great expectations.
Lorenz liked the cartoon. So did Tina Brown, then the magazine's editor, who wanted it in the next issue.
Mankoff was surprised. "It wasn't topical, but Tina has a instinct for what was going to be hot."
The cartoon's punch line went on to become a catchphrase. It's Mankoff's lone entry in The Yale Book of Quotations. He boasts, "I'm right there with Mao Zedong and other great humorists."
On The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, congresswoman Nancy Pelosi adapted it: "When the Republicans came in, they said to the president, 'How about never? Does never work for you?' "
As for its popularity, Mankoff says, "Now, more than then, we live in a culture of friends and pseudo-friends on Facebook and stuff" whom "we want to avoid. And we try to think of a polite way to do that."
His cartoon "mashes up rudeness and politeness. The syntax is polite, the message is rude," which he calls "the classic recipe for humor: putting two things in conflict."
It's also an example of what he calls "identification humor."
"It's something we all wish we could say to people, but don't. Of course, now I hear that line all the time."