New Book Examines Humor in the New Yorker

Contact: Judith Yaross Lee, (740) 593-4844, jlee1@ohio.edu

Attention editors, reporters: A photo of Judith Yaross Lee is available for download (at 200 dpi) at www.ohiou.edu/researchnews/pix/LEE_JUDITH.JPG. For press copies of the book, contact Steve Yates at (601) 432-6459 or SYates@ihl.state.ms.us.

ATHENS, Ohio (April 19, 2000) -- The New Yorker magazine's founding staff used a new brand of ironic humor to make social waves when the publication debuted in 1925. Humor in the New Yorker style -- irreverent cartoons coupled with witty punch lines -- has left a lasting mark on America's funny bone, the impact of which is explored in a new book on the magazine's early years.

"Defining New Yorker Humor," published by the University Press of Mississippi, is an in-depth look at the magazine's first five years, 1925 to 1930, when it was under the helm of founding editor Harold W. Ross and brimming with new talents such as James Thurber. The book debuts as the magazine celebrates its 75th anniversary and prepares for The New Yorker Festival: A Literary and Arts Celebration May 5-7 in New York City.

"What I tried to do in the book is correct many of the misunderstandings of what the New Yorker was in the 1920s," says author Judith Yaross Lee, an associate professor of interpersonal communication at Ohio University who studies humor in society.

"It was not the work of a lucky but inept editor, but an immensely talented editorial visionary. It was not misogynist but actually reached out to women. It gave not only men's views of the battle between the sexes but also women's. There was more continuity between 19th century and 20th century humor than previously recognized."

Ross launched the New Yorker in 1925, tapping into an affluent, educated audience in a city fast gaining international prominence. As the magazine was produced by and for young urban professionals, there was a misconception that New Yorker humor welled from a small clique of writers and cartoonists, Lee says.

"There were hundreds and hundreds of people who contributed," she says. "It was quite open to new talent."

But in-jokes about the Big Apple, Paris, theater and modern fads dominated the magazine's pages, appealing to New Yorkers as well as to those who aspired to a cosmopolitan lifestyle.

"There was a lot of inside humor that was very much a part of creating this aura that the magazine was for a particular kind of sophisticate," Lee says.

"The New Yorker also participated in the urbanization of humor," she adds.

"It was able to bridge high literary concerns with a more popular form of storytelling, so that it was whimsical without being self-important."

This isn't the first time Lee has explored humor. She previously authored "Garrison Keillor: A Voice of America" and now is researching early political humor and cartoons in Ohio. Recovering and studying classic cartoons was a significant component of her New Yorker project.

The New Yorker, with help from rising artists and writers such as Thurber and Peter Arno, established a new style of visual humor, she says. New Yorker cartoonists created comic images with devastating punch lines.

"The New Yorker's style of cartoon is now standard," Lee says. "It just pushed aside everything else once people realized that the visual jokes mattered very much."

As many of those early cartoons and writings never were anthologized, modern recollections of the New Yorker's formative days are riddled with inaccuracies, she says. Lee, aided by the New York Public Library's opening of New Yorker archives to scholars in the mid-1990s, combed through hundreds of pages to pin down the magazine's comic identity.

"In the 1920s, the New Yorker was a humor magazine," Lee says. "Every aspect of the magazine was touched by humor, including the news."

Though the magazine has since shifted focus to more investigative reporting, coverage of social issues and serious poetry and fiction, Lee says, its sense of humor lives on in its cartoons and writing.

"Ross joked about the New Yorker in 1925 as a great magazine for people who cannot read and it still is," Lee says. "Now the writing is great while the cartoons remain immensely important."

Lee holds an appointment in the College of Communication.