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The Squiggly,
Quirky World Of
Cartoonist Roz Chast
Or, what is a nice Jewish lady from
Brooklyn doing in the pages. of The
New Yorker? Drawing "enkers" and
"soods," that's what.
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
II
t's hard to remember that I met
Roz Chast on, the absolutely worst
day of the year. Buckets of snow
were coming down in New York.
Cabs were stuck in snow drifts.
Buses were stuck on Park Avenue.
Pedestrians were swathed in hoods, gloves,
parkas, galoshes. Sidewalk vendors were
selling cut-rate mittens and stocking hats
and umbrellas: An entire discount winter
wardrobe on every street corner.
After walking for a mile north of Penn
Station in search of a cab, I finally made
it to West 73rd Street, one block east of
Broadway, two blocks west of Central Park.
A modest neighborhood with immodest
rents. I took the elevator to a third-floor
apartment and knocked. A shortish,
youngish, blondish woman answered in a
red sweat shirt, gray turtleneck and gray
corduroy pants.
24
FRIDAY, OCT. 23, 1987
We exchanged the appropriate amen-
ities, and then, shivering from the outside
cold, I quickly shed my coat, shoes,
sweater. As I put my socks on the radiator
to dry, I heard a voice behind me say,
"Have some tea. Have some 'Sleepy Time'
tea. I l000000ve `Sleeeeeeppy Time' tea."
Then, her voice softening and veering
just this side of unctuous, the woman in
the red sweat shirt did some world-class
ahhing:
"Aaaaahh, tea."
"Make yourself a cup of tea."
"Aaaahh, teeeeeeeea:'
"Some people like chicken soup on a day
like this. Naaaah, chicken soup sounds like
a bad Neil Simon comedy. But teeeeeeeea.
Ahhhhhhh, teeeeea. It makes you get into
the cozy sort of mood where you think,
ahhhhhhhh, flannel."
Why, I thought, is this person swooning
over a cup of tea? And just what is her
hang-up .about flannel?
I soon found out.
Quicker than she could say "Sleepy
Time" tea, my sweat-shirted hostess made
a cup of tea for me. With one sip, I realized
she was right. Not only did I stop shiver-
ing, but thoughts of flannel — happy, cozy,
fuzzy, warm thoughts of flannel — danced
through my head.
With that flannel-lined sip of tea, I had
entered not only the apartment of Roz
Chast, New Yorker cartoonist and one of
the major, unsung giddy figures of our day.
I had also entered the world of Roz Chast,
a world of playful non sequiturs, gentle
satire, Yuppie harpoonery and pretension
deflating.
This is the world of a 33-year-old from
Brooklyn whose squiggly, tiny cartoons
have punctured the verbiage of "Overly
Polite Society" ("I simply did not know the
meaning of beauty until I saw your dress,"
.