Pat Bagley is this year’s winner of the Herblock Prize for
"distinguished examples of editorial cartooning that exemplify the
courageous standards” set by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Herb Block
during his seven-decade career. The Prize, funded by the Herb Block Foundation,
includes a $15,000 after-taxes cash award and a sterling silver trophy
manufactured by Tiffany. Both will be presented to Bagley at the Library of
Congress on April 2 by Ted Koppel, who will deliver the 2009 Herblock Lecture
at the ceremony. "I'm pretty jazzed,” Bagley said. “This is one of the highlights
of my life. Short of the Pulitzer, the Herblock Prize is the biggest one you
can get."
Bagley, 53,
has been cartooning for the Salt Lake
Tribune since 1979 but enjoyed no national visibility until he was
syndicated a couple of years ago by Cagle Cartoons. Then we started seeing his
cartoons everywhere, and I rejoiced: his work is always biting — and hilarious,
an important distinction.
Tribune Editor Nancy Conway, quoted in
her paper, called Bagley, a "remarkable person" and a "wonderful
artist" who holds Utah
up to itself for self-reflection.
"And he does that with affection, but with a critical eye as well.
He can make us laugh at ourselves and understand our own humanity. That is a
gift. Utah,
without him, would be less than it is.”
Bagley was
the unanimous choice of Herblock judges Garry
Trudeau, Doonesbury creator;
sometime Village Voice cartoonist Jules Feiffer; and John Sherffius, editorial cartoonist at the Boulder
Daily Camera in Colorado. Said Trudeau, quoted in a Herb Block Foundation press release: "If The New Yorker published political
cartoons, Bagley would he their main man. His drawings have the looseness of
back-of-the-envelope dispatches, yet the speedy strokes belie a rigorous
compositional discipline. These are good-looking cartoons," Trudeau said,
adding that Bagley's "takes on the passing parade are uniformly deft and
witty. With just the right balance of caricature, dialogue and labels, he puts
the reader away, lickity split, no fuss."
In addition
to his cartoons, Bagley has produced several books: 101 Ways to Survive Four More Years of George W. Bush and two
“Clueless George” volumes parodying the children's Curious George books.
Chimp-faced GeeDubya stars in the Bagley versions. Twenty years of Bagley’s
cartoons are surveyed in The Best of
Bagley (1998), in which we can watch as he abandoned the mannerisms of Pat
Oliphant and Ronald Searle and developed, his own distinctive style.
His most
recent book is Bagley’s Utah Survival
Guide, described as containing “more facts and near-facts” about Utah than any other
publication in captivity. For instance, after noting that the population of the
state is 70% Mormon, Bagley writes: "Far from being a refuge of radical
religionists — as originally intended — Utah 
today is probably the most American place in the world. Think: apple pie (or,
in this case, green Jell-O). Think: minivans full of kids unloading at a
megaplex theatre in a strip mall. Think: gorgeous multi-hued sunsets that could
only be the result of serious pollution. This place is about as American as you
can get.” No one, Bagley tells us, has ever explained why green Jell-O is the
most poplar snack in Utah.
But it is, he assures us. The book brims with Bagley drawings and occasional
photographs (like the one of Salt Lake City's LDS founder Brigham Young as a young man; startling). And we also come upon
such intelligence as this, about the oft scorned jackalope: “Irrefutable proof
that this member of the bunny family exists — and in large numbers — can be found
on postcard racks throughout the West.” In other words, Bagley’s Utah Survival
Guide is not just for visitors to Utah; you and I can enjoy it, too — Bagley’s
verbal as well as his visual wit.
I
interviewed Pat in 1991, while both of us were the merest broths of boys. The
entire interview is reprised in www.RCHarvey.com’s historical department, Harv’s
Hindsights; look for December 2007.)
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