About this title: Featuring many of "The New Yorkers" most talented cartoonists, this wicked collection is designed to amuse, inspire, and scintillate anyone obsessed with the perennially compelling topics of old age, retirement, and yes, death.
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Description: Fine; Collectible. Excellent condition. First scribner hardcover edition. Appears unread. No writings/underlines/highlights. Pages are very nice and clean. Free track! Satisfaction guarenteed! Fast ing! read more
Edition: First Printing
Binding: Cloth-backed Boards
Publisher: Scribner, NY
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9781416551003ISBN:141655100X
Description: Gerberg, George Booth, Roz Chast, Gahan Wilson & Others. Fine. Fine Dj. 4to. 26 New Yorker Magazine cartoonists have contributed their witty cartoons about the "Golden Years" of life and beyond. In the last section of the books, the cartoonists have responded to a set of questions by Gerberg in their unique ways. Very funny indeed. read more
"Though not especially mood-lightening, Death has has a long history of black humour associated with it. Parodies of the black-cowled figure remain in abundance, as do the steps leading up to His Eminent Arrival (Just take a look at the garish joke books and tacky birthday cards aimed at the 40+ and 50+ crowds). So upon the release of Last Laughs, a compilation of mostly-unpublished cartoons poking fun at retirement, illness, death, and the afterlife edited by The New Yorker's Mort Gerberg, there would appear to be very little left to satirize.
This assumption, however, would be (pardon it) dead wrong.
A few of these cartoons have appeared previously in the pages of The New Yorker magazine (primarily Lee Lorenz's and Mort Gerberg's installments), but the bulk of them were published for the first time in this volume. Several retain the ambiance of The Rejection Collection (cartoons printed in book form which had been rejected by The New Yorker); "Before I go over your test results," an apathetic doctor tells a nervous patient sitting in his underwear on the examination table, "can we agree no one lives forever?" Another cartoon displays a dying elderly woman in bed, announcing to her attending Priest and family members, "I should've made that sex tape." Other cartoons feel even looser, as if culled from The New Yorker's Cartoon Caption Contest, written by naifs based on the image proffered: Aged rock 'n' rollers state that "This next tune is called 'Too Old to Party, but Too Young to Die.'" Or the haggard spouse of a bedridden old man, shouting into the bedroom: "Stanley, you son of a bitch, are you dead?"
But in the words of Groucho Mark: They can't all be winners, folks. The majority of the cartoons are not only clever - they're actually funny. Bleak, dark, and macabre, indeed... but legitimately funny. It takes a lot to laugh at Death's impervious face - and many of these experienced (read: older) cartoonists have had plenty of time in which to do so.
A section devoted to cartoonist biographies are compiled toward the end of the book, and perhaps goes on for too long (a page or three for each of the twenty-six artists included in this compendium). Had Gerberg followed suit with The Rejection Collection and injected each bio following that artist's particular works, then the effect would have been less daunting. The result would be, of course, a more stilted format than the mixed-up end result (retiree cartoons mingling with terminal illness gags, flirting between a smattering of funerals and Boomer jokes). However, this would not necessarily be a bad thing...
For all of The New Yorker's inspiration, this book does not fit in with the seminal magazine's own line of cartoon books. It stands alone, much as we all do in that gaping maw of The Great Beyond. It provides some amusing, ofttimes funny, distraction to fill in the time between now and that final gasping breath - though you might want to bring another book along just in case that takes longer than expected."
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