在《纽约客》登幅漫画有多难？

译者 ranki

How Hard Is It To Get a Cartoon Into The New Yorker?

Hard.

在《纽约客》登幅漫画有多难？

——答案是很难。

By James Sturm

Posted Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011, at 3:18 AM ET

詹姆斯·斯特姆 2011年8月24日（周三）3：18 am et发文

“轻一点。这是我的第一次”

It was a Tuesday in July and I was sitting in the "cartoonist lounge" on the 20th floor of the Condé Nast building in Times Square with an envelope containing 10 drawings: my first cartoon submissions to The New Yorker. Every Tuesday is judgment day, the day Robert Mankoff, the magazine's cartoon editor, meets with cartoonists face to face.

    现在是七月的某个周二，我坐在时代广场康德纳斯大厦二十层的“漫画家接待室”里，带着装有10幅作品的大信封——这是我第一次向《纽约客》递交我的作品。评审日是每周二，《纽约客》的漫画编辑罗伯特·曼考夫在这天会和画家们面对面地交流。

Another seven or eight cartoonists were squeezed into the small waiting room, which is dominated by a long coffee table stacked with hundreds of New Yorker magazines. A giant print of a Sam Gross cartoon hung on one wall; underneath was a couch. Sam Gross sat on the couch. The other cartoonists either tried to engage in awkward small talk or just kept silent. Sam, by far the oldest and most established cartoonist in the cramped space, held court. He said, "Dr. Seuss was not a good artist. He couldn't draw kids. They were just adults with big heads."

    七八个漫画家接踵而至。这个小小的接待室里，布置了一张咖啡长桌，上面堆满了上百本的《纽约客》。一张巨幅的山姆·格罗斯的卡通作品挂在长椅上方的墙上。而其本人就坐在长椅上。其他人不是沉默，就是在窃窃私语。作为在场年纪最大也最有建树的漫画家，山姆首先发言道：“苏斯博士并不是一位优秀的画家。他画不了儿童，只能画些骄傲自大的大人们。”

One by one, in the order they'd arrived, cartoonists disappeared into Mankoff's office and emerged a few minutes later. One cartoonist was asked by another "How'd you do?" The reply was a shrug. Everyone's expectations were low, and how could they not be? Rejection is the norm.

    漫画家们按先后顺序一个个地走进曼考夫的办公室，几分钟后再出来。一位画家被旁人问道： “你怎么样？”而他只是耸耸肩。大家都没有太高的期望，为什么呢？因为他们的作品总是被拒。

“我就知道会在这遇到你，高手。

“我现在已经不服药了，我想要撤销我的证词。”

Fifty years ago, you could make a modest living selling work to popular, general interest magazines like Cavalier, Fact, Look, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Saturday Review, but today it's almost impossible to eke out a living as a gag cartoonist. There are still places that buy gag cartoons (like pharmaceutical brochures and yoga magazines) but none with the tradition or cachet of The New Yorker.

    五十年前，你还能靠给《骑士》、《真相》、《看》、《周六晚报》和《周六评论》等大众杂志提供漫画作品勉强维持着小康生活，但现在，光靠搞笑漫画家这个头衔已经很难维持生计了。这些作品虽然也有一些销路（如药品广告和瑜伽杂志），但已经够不到《纽约客》的级别了。

I don't normally draw gag cartoons; I'm what's now called a "graphic novelist." I'm not really considering a career change, but I was dealing with the mid-career blahs and wanted to try something new. It takes me several years to write and draw a book. The book's subject determines and limits what I can and can't draw. I enjoy the process, but it's a slog. I wanted more spontaneity in my creative life. So in March I decided to fill a sketchbook, 90 pages, with New Yorker-style cartoons—one cartoon a day for three months. No excuses.

    我通常不画搞笑卡通。我是一个时下称为“图画小说家”的画家。我不打算转行，但目前我处在一个瓶颈期，需要一些新的思路。我花了好几年来写一本漫画书。这本书的主旨把我的绘画内容限定在一个框框里。我乐在其中，但这样的快乐也伴随着折磨。我希望我的创作世界里能有更多自我发挥的空间。因此三月份我开始准备自己的画本，90页里填满了纽约客式的卡通画——三个月以来每天一幅，从不间断。

If making graphic novels felt like a staid long-term relationship, then doing gag comics is like playing the field. One day I could draw a fortuneteller; the next, an astronaut. I went from sultans to superheroes, robots to rabbits. I felt liberated. I refused to get bogged down or fuss over the drawings. I spent no more than an hour with any one cartoon, and many took far less time than that. For the first two weeks I was feeling my oats. I already had a half-dozen keepers and was confident there were plenty more winners on the way. It was at this point that I started dreaming of actually selling a cartoon to The New Yorker.

    如果说绘本小说听起来像是一项长期稳定的事业，画画搞笑卡通就只像是在儿戏。今天我画个算命师，明天我可以画宇航员。从苏丹人画到超级英雄，从机器人画到兔子。我可以自由发挥。我对这些作品不乏思路也从不厌倦。一幅画我只花不到一小时的时间，常常还比一小时短得多。刚开始的两周，我感到信心十足。已经有六幅佳作诞生，而且我相信后续还会有更多。因此我梦想着我可以投稿给《纽约客》了。

“《纽约客》收了他一幅漫画。”

“求婚的是你还是巴多罗马？”

Once upon a time, before The New Yorker featured photos and illustrations, the cartoon was the magazines' visual star. The cartoon took up, and deserved, more real estate on the page. The art was built to last. Drawings boasted delicately controlled gray washes, accomplished pen and brushwork, and finely observed details. You got the idea that the cartoonists paid attention as they moved through the city; their drawings existed in the observable world as much as in the realm of ideas. In addition to his diagrammatic drawings of time and space, Saul Steinberg could render Fifth Avenue or the interior of a theater with a flourish of details that testified to his presence. The charming yet limited range of a James Thurber drawing stood out as an exception.

    以前，在《纽约客》还没开始刊登照片和图片的时候，卡通画是杂志的亮点。卡通占据了大量的篇幅内容。它们越来越流行。各种自称做旧工艺优良、画面清晰的钢笔和绘笔画出现了。你可以想象到卡通画家们留意着这个城市的每个角落，他们的作品既从现实世界中汲取灵感又发挥着想象的灵光。索尔·斯坦伯格的作品中，无论是画第五大道，还是某个剧院的内饰，不但详述了时间和空间背景，还将细节表现得淋漓尽致，由此证明他确确实实是有到过这些地方。相对于詹姆斯·瑟伯一类的作品来说，它有着独特的魅力。

I'm not sure Thurber would stand out in today's New Yorker. Mankoff's cartooning credo, as outlined in his 2002 book, The Naked Cartoonist, is that it's the idea that transforms a quirky little drawing into a New Yorker cartoon. Or as Mankoff writes, "It's not the ink, it's the think." As a result, today's New Yorker cartoons reflect Mankoff's own work—a more narrow, idiosyncratic style that, like Thurber's, inspires readers like me to think, "I could do that."

    我不知道瑟伯的作品会不会出现在今天的《纽约客》中。在曼考夫2002年出版的《赤裸裸的漫画家》中，他阐述了自己的漫画信条——这些诙谐的漫画作品背后的灵魂，才是他们成为“《纽约客》卡通”的关键。或许就像他写道的，“不在于你的笔墨，在于你的思想。”由此，今天《纽约客》的卡通作品恰反映了曼考夫本人的风格——一种更局限的独特风格，就像瑟伯的作品，引发了无数像我一样的读者去思考。我觉得我有这种能力。

“爷爷，假如生日愿望真的可以实现的话，你为什么还这么老呢？”

“看来，妈妈不在嘛，是吗？”

By my fourth week of daily drawing, I hit a wall. It got harder and harder to generate gags, and I often found myself staring at a blank page at eleven o'clock at night, just wanting to get something down so I could go to bed. My measuring stick was the great New Yorker cartoonist William Steig. Besides knowing what made people tick, Steig possessed that holy combination of looseness and precision that gives great cartooning its casual authority. I knew I could never compare with Steig, but I didn't want to embarrass myself, either. I had my pride, and if I was going to produce another 60 gags I needed to approach things differently.

    在坚持每天创作的第四周里，我碰壁了。开始变得越来越难制造幽默，我常常在深夜11点还盯着空白的画纸，只是等着完成睡前的任务。我的标尺是《纽约客》的优秀画家威廉·斯泰格。他了解读者们所关注的东西，他的作品完美地把握了松弛度，展现了这种绘画方式所特有的随意性。我知道我不能与威廉·斯泰格相提并论，但我不会让自己丢脸。我有信心，我将尝试新的视角来完成剩下的六十幅作品。

I started doodling randomly on scrap sheets of papers, trying to draw something surprising or something that made me laugh. The best of these doodles— Frankenstein's monster staring at his big hands, a rabbi taking bong hits in a dorm room—I would then redraw slightly tighter in the gag sketchbook and have faith a caption would come later. If after a week I couldn't come up with anything, I'd e-mail the drawing to my dad, who, by virtue of entering The New Yorker caption contest on a regular basis (and once being one of the three finalists), seemed the right man for the job.

    我开始在纸上乱画，想要画出一些与众不同的或者能令人开怀的东西来。而其中最好的——弗兰肯斯坦的怪物看着自己的大手，一只兔子“砰”地跳进一间宿舍。我会将这些草图再细致地画进我的画本里，并且我相信我能很快想到图片的配文。如果一周以后我再想不出来，我就会把这些画通过邮件发给我的父亲，他经常参加《纽约客》的配文比赛（还曾经入围前三），应该会有好点子。

I wondered whether this was cheating, somehow, but dismissed the notion. Though today's

    我想过这到底算不算作弊呢？不过，很快我就忽略了这个念头。现在《纽约客》的漫画家们会自己配文，但刚开始的四十年里，大部分的漫画家都只负责绘画的部分（斯坦伯格和斯泰格就是最显著的例子）。就连许多杂志中最著名的漫画也是如此。像查尔斯·亚丹斯的滑雪人（滑道在树的两边）、瑟伯的刽子手（“很鲜明”）、以及皮特·德鲁的大部分作品，都是由别人配字。

“稍大了一点，不过洗几次后会变小的。”

“我采用了不守陈规的授课方法，这堂课主要探究了犹太教的基本思想。”

“那么，今天我们又遇到了什么麻烦事呢？”

Still, what had been taking me an hour a day now seemed like it was taking over my life. I always had a pen ready and whether I was hanging out with my kids, going to the doctor (after a suspicious looking bull's-eye rash appeared on my chest), or bickering with my wife—I was filtering it for a potential cartoon. I had to extract from any given situation some larger cultural observation. Or some statement about the human condition. Or something that resembled cleverness. My life has always felt as if it was grist for my creative mill, but now the mill had a daily quota that I was straining to meet.

When my life didn't offer usable material I started reaching for the low hanging fruit: desert-island gags and gorillas.

    就这样，原来每天只要花一个小时的事情现在占据了我的整个人生。我的钢笔随时待命，无论我和孩子们玩耍、看医生（在我的胸部长了疑似很严重的皮疹后）、还是和老婆吵架——我等着创作新的漫画。在任何场合下，我都得关注着一些文化评论、人类生存环境研究以及别的一些具有前瞻性的事物。我给我的创作事业限定了每日任务，我每天的生活就是竭尽全力地完成这些任务。

    当我无法在生活中取材的时候，我开始由一些简单的事物着手：荒岛、大猩猩等。

“你逃不掉了”

“橡胶小鸭子生病说他不能来了”

According to Matthew Diffee's book of unpublished New Yorker cartoons, The Rejection Collection, there are about 50 regular New Yorker cartoonists who submit 10 cartoons each week. That's 500 cartoons vying for about 12 to 20 slots. That's not counting submissions from cartoonists whose work appears in the magazine irregularly or the thousand or so weekly unsolicited submissions (which stand almost no chance of getting in).

    马修·迪孚关于未能发表的《纽约客》卡通的书《被拒绝的作品集》中说，《纽约客》有约50位长期约稿者，每个星期都会投10幅作品。于是在500张卡通中，大概指挥选12到20张。这是不算上随机投稿及主动投稿作品（这些通常没有机会入选）的数量。

When I finished my sketchbook I estimated about 50 of my 90 comics wouldn't look out of place in the current issue of The New Yorker (a generous assessment). Fortitude is one of the qualities Mankoff is looking for in a cartoonist. With about 50 cartoons, I could submit a batch of 10 for five weeks. Since Mankoff often wants to see people submit for months (if not years) before buying a cartoon, this didn't afford me a huge window of opportunity, but years ago, against all odds, I sold a cover to the magazine on my first try and I was hoping lightning could strike twice.

    当我画完一整本的时候，我估计90张里大概有50张作品不算违背《纽约客》的精神（这是乐观估计）。毅力是曼考夫的眼里一个漫画家的重要品质之一。有了这50张卡通画，我可以保持连续5周都投10张。曼考夫在考虑一幅作品之前，会看看它的作者是否坚持数月都来投稿（如果坚持不了整年的话）。从这点来说我的希望不大，但几年前，我也有过第一次投稿就被选作杂志封面的运气，我希望这样的运气也可以延续到这次来。

From reading cartoonist's blogs and books about The New Yorker's history I knew that the cartoon editor looked at work on Tuesdays. My friend Harry Bliss (New Yorker cartoonist and fellow Vermonter) was kind enough to put me in touch with Mankoff's assistant, who told me to show up on July 12 so Mankoff could look at my work.

    从其它漫画家描述《纽约客》历史的博客和书中我了解到，编辑们在每个周二接受投稿。我朋友哈里·碧利斯（《纽约客》的漫画家，也是我的佛蒙特老乡）很照顾地把我引荐给曼考夫的助理，于是我被告知七月十二号我能与曼考夫见面聊聊我的作品。

On the Tuesday I showed up there were three cartoonists besides me who were hoping to make a first sale. Two had been showing up for more than six months, the other one for several years. Clearly, no one is in this for the money. If you make a sale, depending on your tenure with the magazine, you can make anywhere from around $675 to $1,400 a gag. Seems like a lot for a little drawing, but the dues you pay are steep.

    周二当我去的时候，我身边的三位漫画家，都期盼这能第一次顺利交稿。其中两位已经坚持投稿6个月以上，另一位已经坚持了好几年。显然，大家都不是为钱而来。如果你成功卖出作品，根据你和杂志签约的期限，你的每张作品可以得到675至1400美金不等的酬劳。对于一幅小小的画作来说像是很多，但你要付出的代价是很高的。

The ones who have sold hundreds of cartoons over decades can bring in an additional $300-$1,000/month from reprints via the Cartoon Bank. But even with this additional income, you probably need to have a lot more gigs or a day job.

    几十年内卖出上百幅作品的画家每月还能获得300至1000美金的再版稿酬。即使有了这些额外的收入，你每天可能还是要画很多的漫画（来维持生活）。

“耐心点，宝贝，GPS正在重新定位。”

“蛇今天生病了”

Mankoff greeted me cordially, and I handed him my 10 cartoons. He read each of them in front of me. He told me I can draw and he'd like to see more people in the magazine who can draw. Promising.

    曼考夫热情地接待了我，而我也把10幅卡通画交给了他。他当着我的面看完了这些画。他觉得我有画画的能力，而且愿意看到更多有能力的画家贡献自己的作品。机会很大。

He thought that a superhero gag would be funnier if I used specific superheroes (huh) and that the mention of Ira Glass in a caption would be too obscure (really?).Mankoff thought that the complaint in my GPS gag was already dated (not for my GPS!) and that my gorilla cartoon with the snake charmer might be deemed offensive or just passé (point taken). He suggested I stay away from desert-island gags and the incongruity gag (in which there's a disconnect between the caption and the picture). These are overdone, and if he were going to use this type of material, he would turn to the all-stars he already has on his bench (baseball metaphor his).

     他觉得超人漫画里如果能画出具体的超人会更滑稽（啊），还有在配文中出现艾拉·格拉斯会让人费解（真的吗？）。曼考夫还认为GPS漫画里的抱怨已经过时了（跟我的GPS没关系！），而猩猩漫画里的耍蛇者显得别扭还是过时说不好（我知道了）。他建议我放弃荒岛系列和一些词不达意的漫画（配文和图片看起来毫无联系）。这一类的作品太多了，如果他想用这些作品的话他已经有一支全明星队了，用不着再找别人（他的棒球隐喻）。

“网上太多好片了，我都用不上我的镭射眼了。”

“如果是艾尔·格拉斯说的你就会觉得有趣了。”

Mankoff put two of my cartoons aside to consider for the next issue's final cut. I knew they wouldn't sell; I saw this as a small gesture of encouragement. The rest he handed back to me. He explained how hard it was to get into the magazine and that he wasn't just looking for a good cartoon but someone who could be a "New Yorkercartoonist."

    曼考夫拿了两幅我的作品，作为下期的候选。我知道它们卖不出去，权当是他对我的一个小小的鼓励吧。剩下的他都还给我了。他解释道他们对于作品的要求十分严格，而且他们不只需要好的作品，更为需求的是能成为《纽约客》专属画家的人才。

Mankoff said so many submissions he looks at are not even in the neighborhood and that I was in the neighborhood but that I was going to have to figure out what my work was about, how it was distinct. I had to decide what would make it exceptional. He told me to keep submitting via e-mail each week.

    曼考夫说，他看过许多根本不着边际的作品，我的作品很有潜力但仍需深入挖掘作品的主题。我要找到它们的闪光点。他鼓励我每周继续邮件投稿。

“你不是说到这会你应该找好自己的房子了吗。”

My audience had lasted 12 minutes. Many of the other cartoonists who had already shown work were still there, waiting to go out for lunch—a long-standing Tuesday tradition that any cartoonist, published or not, could be part of.

    他接待我的时间长达12分钟。在我出来后，很多已经交过作品的画家还在那里，等着午饭时间——对于这些不管能不能顺利交稿的漫画家来说，这是周二传统雷打不动的一部分。

On the way to the restaurant, we passed giant banners of Charles Addams drawings hanging from the facade of the the Lunt Fontanne Theater. I wondered whether any of today's New Yorker cartoonists were exceptional enough to someday inspire a Broadway musical.

    回饭店的路上，我们路过正面挂着查尔斯·亚丹作品巨型横幅的伦特·佛坦那剧院。我在想现在的《纽约客》漫画家们是否足够优秀，能在将来的某一天给百老汇音乐剧带来新的启发。

At the restaurant a long table was already set up and glasses of red wine were served as soon as we took our seat. The conversation was more relaxed than at the office. I sat next to David Sipress, one of my favorite current New Yorkercartoonists, who told me he submitted for 25 years before he cracked the pages of The New Yorker. "If you are a gag cartoonist and after a while you are not in The New Yorker," he said, "you begin to feel like a failure."

    当我们在饭店里就座的时候，长桌已经铺好，红酒也已经倒满。比起在办公室，这里的交谈要轻松得多。我坐在大卫·斯普思旁边，他是我最喜爱的《纽约客》目前的漫画家之一，他曾告诉我他在成为《纽约客》漫画家之前曾经连续交稿25年。“如果你是一名漫画家而且混了一阵还没能进《纽约客》的话，”他说，“你会觉得很挫败。”

I didn't feel like a failure, but, listening to Sipress, I did suddenly feel like a fraud. This wasn't where I belonged as a cartoonist, and if by some miracle I were able to sell one of my 50 cartoons, I would be taking a slot away from someone more deserving. There would be no more submissions. I had already wasted enough of everyone's time.

    我并未感觉挫败，但听完斯普思的话，我霎时有种上当的感觉。作为一名漫画家这里并不适合我，而倘若奇迹发生令我的五十张卡通画大卖的话，我会将它们售给更懂得欣赏的人。我不会再给他们交稿了。我之前已经浪费了大家太多的时间。

I started the drawings for the right reasons, but in taking them to The New Yorker, I was looking for a feather for my cap. Mankoff was right: There wasn't anything unique and distinct about my gag work. I was in the neighborhood, just visiting, not willing to stay there long enough to become a full-time resident.

    我开始好好地画画而不作任何投机取巧，但如果要给《纽约客》交稿的话，我恐怕还得在帽子上加根羽毛才行。曼考夫是对的：我的漫画作品中没有任何的独特之处也没有深度。我只是擦肩而过的路人，并未打算长期居留。

At the end of the meal, each of us gave Sam Gross 20 bucks and headed our separate ways. I got my car out the garage and headed back to Vermont. My affair was over, and I was ready to go home.

    吃完饭后，我们为山姆·格罗斯各花了20块，然后各自回家。我从车库里取出我的车就直接回佛蒙特了。我忙完了我的事情，现在该回家了。

“嗯嗯……这个真不错”