For New
Yorker Cartoonist William Haefeli life really is a
laughing matter.
Nothing vexes out
cartoonist William Haefeli quite so much as the demise
of the cocktail party. He doesn’t miss the polite
conversation or the mood lighting or even the dirty
martinis—he laments the loss of the perfect
milieu for a New Yorker cartoon.
“Two
people could meet who had never met before; a housewife
could meet a general,” sighs Haefeli.
“There were all sorts of exchanges and social
pleasantries.”
At 54 years old,
Haefeli doesn’t look a day over 38, but he does oddly
resemble the characters in his New Yorker cartoons. Not
feature for feature, mind you—they have squinty
eyes, big ears, big noses, and no chin—but in
overall angularity and expression. Watching him enter a Los
Angeles coffee shop one blistering summer day was like
spotting one of his drawings come to life.
There’s a
certain amount of truth in every stereotype, and the New
Yorker cartoon is no exception. It’s
sophisticated, wry, and at times incomprehensible. In
a 1998 episode of Seinfeld written by New Yorker
cartoonist Bruce Eric Kaplan, Elaine’s frustration
over an inscrutable cartoon of a cat and a dog
chatting in an office compels her to go to the
magazine to ask its cartoon editor why he ran it. His
response? “I liked the kitty.” Yet under
that canopy of enigmatic privilege and sophistication,
the cartoons are quite diverse, even progressive.
“The New Yorker cartoon doesn’t have to
be funny. It doesn’t need to make you
laugh,” says Haefeli, who regularly draws both
interracial and gay couples into his cartoons.
“It has to make you think.”
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