Rejected New Yorker Cartoons

By Mark Kaufman
Here’s a book I am going to go and get pronto. So far the selections that I have seen are funny. This one is from Pat Byrnes. The book The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker, is edited by Matthew Diffee, published by Simon & Shuster. Now there are many, many reasons why a publication will reject a cartoon, an idea for an illustration or cover. The New Yorker does have standards and a middle brow audience to uphold, but funny is funny. Collecting these rejects for a book is a brilliant way to push the envelope and stamp the New Yorker brand on "naughty" cartoons, without having to print them in the magazine and incur the wrath of English lit professors from Vermont to La Jolla.