To return for a moment to Roz Chast's new graphic memoir, why don't we START with the punch line?

Okay, this isn't exactly the "punch line" of a "joke," but it's sort-of. And we're going to work our way backwards, starting with the sort-of punch line and working back to what the hell the whole thing is about. Just trust me here, please. (With how many humorists can you perform this stunt?)

by Ken

If you happen to have looked at my Monday post ("in a 'graphic memoir,' Roz Chast looks back: 'Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT?'") lately, you may have noticed a couple of updates, most importantly this one:

I sort of assumed that what was posted on the New Yorker website was destined for publication in the print edition. Now that I have my March 10 issue, I can report that Roz's Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT? "Sketchbook" fills 12 pages of the issue.

[Here's the link to the Web version.]

The other update concerns a sequence from Roz Chast's remarkable "graphic memoir" that I described but didn't show. It's been on my mind, and tonight we're rectifying that.

The memoir, you'll recall, concerns Roz's parents, George and Elizabeth, who were born 11 days apart in 1912, both children of really-hard-luck Russian immigrants, and who grew up two blocks apart in East Harlem. ("Tenements!" cries her mother. "We had nothing!" cries her father.) The memoir goes back generations before the parents and carries them through the end -- both parents lived into their 90s.

How close were they? This close:




Here (crudely ripped out of its original format
by yours truly) is the sequence in question --

The book version of Can't We Talk About Something More PLEASANT? is scheduled for publication in May.

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