The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap

Each week The New Yorker receives more than 500 submissions from its regular cartoonists, who are all vying for one of the 20 coveted spots in the magazine. So what happens to the 75 percent of cartoons that don't make the cut? Some go back in a drawer, others go up on the refrigerator or into the filing cabinet ... but the very best of all the rejects can be found right here in these pages. The Rejection Collection Vol. 2: The Cream of the Crap is the ultimate scrap heap of creative misfires--from the lowbrow and the dirty to the politically incorrect and the weird, these rejects represent the best of the worst ... in the best possible sense of the word. Handpicked by editor Matthew Diffee, these hilarious cartoons are accompanied by handwritten questionnaires and photographed self-portraits, providing a rare glimpse into the minds of the artists behind the rejection. With appendices that explore the top ten reasons why cartoons are rejected and examine the solitary nature of the job of cartooning--plus a special bonus section of questions asked of and answered by cartoon editor Robert Mankoff--this sequel to The Rejection Collection offers even deeper in into the exercise in frustration, patience, and amusement that is being a New Yorker cartoonist. Warped, wicked, and wildly funny, The Rejection Collection Vol. 2 will appeal to every New Yorker fan--and everyone with a taste for the absurd. Amazon Exclusive A Cartoon from Matthew Diffee Here's a cartoon that's very different from the rest of mine. This one, unlike the others, has never been rejected by The New Yorker magazine. I did it especially for Amazon. Would it have been rejected if I had submitted it? I think I can safely say yes. That's not to say it isn't any good. It's just the mathematics involved. Like all the regular cartoonists in The New Yorker, 90 percent of my work gets rejected. Yep, it's sad, isn't it? We all do ten or more cartoons a week, pitch them to the magazine, and on a good week they'll take one of them. The rest disappear forever--at least they used to. Now we save our rejects up and put the best of them in The Rejection Collection. This is volume two, and just like the first one, it's full of cartoons that make the cartoonists laugh and the editors cringe. That's because, in most cases, these are wildly inappropriate for the pages of a sophisticated literary magazine. I think you'll see what I mean when you take a look. And if you ask me, just knowing that these gags were ever submitted to The New Yorker at all makes them a little bit funnier--maybe 6 percent. --Matthew Diffee

undefined