Cartoon editor of the New Yorker speaks at Penn

By Chasen Shao 04/18/16 1:36am

“Only amateurs love their jobs,” Bob Mankoff said as he began his talk as a part of the Positive Psychology Center Colloquia Series at Penn.

Recounting his experience as the cartoon editor of the New Yorker since 1997, Mankoff created a humorous setting throughout his presentation while sharing his experiences as a cartoonist.

Penn’s Positive Psychology Center Colloquia Series has primarily focused on bringing a wide range of expertise to a local community that includes researchers and graduate students. Speakers are invited from all over the nation to bring the most advanced research and ideas about, among other things, brain activity, the stimulation of emotion and advances in plasticity research in relation to addiction.

Mankoff found his true passions in college, he said. He told the story — intertwined with his descriptions of the cartooning business — of how he found that he enjoyed the audience his humor catered to in college, but didn’t want to fully abandon his academia.

After abandoning his Ph.D. work, Mankoff decided to capitalize on his talents in humor and cartooning and began submitting work to various magazines and newspapers around his beloved New York. Despite facing rejection, Mankoff eventually found a haven at the New Yorker and within weeks of first accepting his work, the magazine made Mankoff a regular contributor. He said felt a great calling to his work as a cartoonist despite having to sacrifice academia.

In the midst of recounting his past experiences, Mankoff shared his views on humor and the architecture of a cartoon by digging into the philosophy of laughter.

“Laughter is rather peculiar,” began Mankoff. He added that most view laughter as the result of a joke, but that he disagreed with this belief. “Laughter ends the comedic event,” he said. He added that the audience is the nod of approval for any comedian — for him, without this response, there is no joke.

After opening a general discussion following his talk, Mankoff shared tips on working in humor, especially how he maintains his stoic expression while reviewing comics, which brought out much laughter from the audience. When asked about standup comedy, Mankoff said, “standup extracts parts of personality via exaggeration,” and further expanded on the mutual respect he holds for standup comedians.

For the past thirty years, Mankoff said he has created an office that welcomes new and upcoming cartoonists while maintaining the constant supply of incoming cartoons, and has opened up his office to welcome their authentic ideas.

In 2005, Mankoff began a now-famous captioning contest for the New Yorker, in which contestants submitted potential captions for a given cartoon. Mankoff also is a regular lecturer on humor, and seeks not to inspire others but continue to make them laugh, too.

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