Mike Peters’ caricature of one of political cartooning’s
pantheon, the longtime Washington Post
editoonist Herbert Block (Herblock),
is hilarious almost beyond description. I don’t know when or why Peters drew
this picture, but it speaks volumes. First, it clearly states Herblock’s
opinion of Richard M. Nixon: Nixon is a prick. I hesitated, at first, going
beyond that in interpreting the image. At first blush, it seems to portray
Herblock as a flasher, taking great pride in his genitals — implying, thereby,
that Herblock’s reputation is built on his relentless ridicule of Nixon. I
think that may sell Herblock a little short: he was a great editorial
cartoonist before Nixon took office — and long after Nixon left. But to see
Herblock as a flasher applies the psychology of such perversions too literally.
Herblock is not “flashing”: he’s “exposing” himself — or, more precisely, he’s
exposing Nixon for what he really is, a prick. The imagery here connects
Herblock to his unfaltering assault on Nixon in a way that deftly characterizes Nixon and the relationship between the
cartoonist and his target.
Peters’
picture is canny enough that it could well serve as the cover of the new
biography, Herblock: The Life and Work of
the Greatest Political Cartoonist by Haymes Johnson and Harry Katz (304
9x11-inch pages, b/w; Norton hardcover, $35), which volume does, indeed, have
on its cover a caricature of Nixon, one of Herblock’s. As Herblock’s nemesis,
Nixon is now so frequently associated with the thrice-winning Pulitzer
cartoonist that they have become, in the history of political cartooning, a
pair, a set, neither half of which can appear as effectively without the other.
But the book at hand, spanning Herblock’s 73-year career, happily reduces the
part played by Nixon to a realistic proportion of the whole.
The volume
was produced in connection with an exhibition of 100 of Herblock’s cartoons at
the Library of Congress last year. Intended, doubtless, as a tribute to the
cartoonist, the book falls considerably short of being a suitable memorial. The
reproduction of the cartoons, for instance, is uneven: some of the drawings
look smudged and the linework is sometimes clogged and blotchy-looking — as if
the scanner didn’t have enough pixels or, perhaps, the cartoon is reproduced
from a version printed on newsprint rather than from original art. Herblock’s
message, always powerful and succinct, survives, but no thanks to the editors
or publishers of this tome.
Johnson, a
Pulitzer winner himself, writes an introductory segment about Herblock, with
whom he was a long-time colleague at the Washington
Post. Considering the presumed length of their association, the essay is
almost entirely devoid of the kind of insightful office anecdotes that would
help us to know the cartoonist. Katz, curator of the Herb Block Foundation’s
collection of Herblock cartoons and a former curator in the Prints and
Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, writes about the cartoonist’s
place in the history of American editorial cartooning; he does a somewhat
better job at his assignment than Johnson does at his, but the brevity of his
essay, necessarily cursory but adequate to its purpose, skimps the subject.
Given the
book’s shortcomings, we might well ask why the volume was produced at all.
Except for the invaluable DVD that accompanies this book — wherein over 18,000 of
Herblock’s cartoons can be found, in chronological order, beginning with his
earliest efforts in 1928 as “Bert Block” (the only reason to buy the book) — the
book offers nothing that cannot be found better displayed or developed in one
of Herblock’s own periodic collections of cartoons (ten volumes, starting with The Herblock Book in 1952, each fully
annotated by the cartoonist’s narrative text) or in his autobiography, Herblock: A Cartoonist’s Life (from
which we learn Herblock feels indebted for the advice once given by Blondie’s Chic Young: “(1) You can tell
if the ink on a drawing is still wet by rubbing your hand over it; and (2) If
you spill drawing ink on the carpet, it can be removed with a pair of
scissors”).
Still, we
can glean an occasional gem from this new tome. From a section quoting
Herblock, there’s this capsule on the function of the editoonist: “Cartooning
is an irreverent form of expression, and one particularly suited to scoffing at
the high and the mighty. If the prime role of a free press is to serve as
critic of government, cartooning is often the cutting edge of that criticism.”
And that,
perhaps, is enough — except for Herblock himself, all 18,000 of his cartoons
worth, all on a handy DVD for your future perusal.
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