I rode the subway down there, found the building, and walked right in.
But I eventually found it: 20 West Forty-third Street. I can’t remember if I called The New Yorker and asked for their address, or if it was actually listed in the White Pages. So, as one did back then, I opened up the phone book. The next step was finding out where the offices of The New Yorker were located. It looked like an elementary school homework assignment, and somehow I convinced myself that this was an acceptable way to present my work to one of the greatest magazines of all time. I stuffed the tear sheets into the folder, and I wrote my name, phone number, and fax number on the front with a Sharpie. (It didn’t occur to me that I might be able to retrieve the portfolio after submitting it.) So instead I went to a stationery store and bought a glossy, white, two-pocket school folder. I had heard that some people presented their work in real portfolios-like, leather satchels with handles and flippable display pages-but when I went to the art store and saw how much they cost, I decided against that. The first step was assembling this so-called “portfolio.” I had brought a stack of tear sheets (samples of published work, typically from magazines), but no portfolio. But I had the cocky self-assurance of a 25-year-old who had already received some over-inflated approbation for his work, and that was only bolstered by the “what have I got to lose?” attitude that comes from being in a big city far from home for a few days.
#Luscious jackson historian how to
I had read about artists doing that in the old days, but I wasn’t sure if it was something that people still did, and I had absolutely no idea how to go about doing it. In 1999, I was living in Berkeley, California, and I had been working professionally as a cartoonist and illustrator for a few years, but mostly at a level that could be best described as “niche.” It was around this time that I traveled to New York to visit a friend and spontaneously decided to “submit my portfolio” to The New Yorker. And naturally, being the deluded, arrogant, ambitious striver that I was, I immediately thought, “I think I’d like to be a part of that!” But I soon became obsessed with the magazine, both in it’s present-day form and as a historical record of art and writing by a seemingly infinite roster of geniuses. Salinger, Charles Addams, and Peter Arno-and it was probably several years later before I actually started reading it. (We were more of a Nichi Bei Times and Sunset family.) I only became aware of The New Yorker in my teens and early twenties-mostly through my budding interest in people like J.D. Surprisingly, it wasn’t exactly ubiquitous at the time in Fresno or Sacramento, and it certainly wasn’t a fixture on my family’s coffee table. I didn’t grow up with any connection to The New Yorker. So please take this anecdote as a quaint glimpse of both my hubris and a bygone era, and not as any kind of guide to getting work at the magazine in the present day. Also, I was an idiot who got a lucky break, and there’s no way to be instructive in that regard. The reason for this is that I started working for the magazine a long time ago, and almost every aspect of this story is now anachronistic, obsolete, or basically impossible. I’m happy to respond to this one, but I’m afraid my answer will contain very little in the way of useful information for someone hoping to find employment with The New Yorker now. Q: Can I ask how you got started at The New Yorker ? I’m a long-time reader and have always been curious how one gets their work onto those pages.
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