The Best of the Rejection Collection: 293 Cartoons That Were Too Dumb, Too Dark, or Too Naughty for the New Yorker

It’s the best of the worst: 293 of the funniest cartoons rejected by The New Yorker but luckily for us, now in paperback and available to enjoy. The Rejection Collection brings together some of The New Yorker’s brightest talents—Roz Chast, Gahan Wilson, Sam Gross, Jack Zeigler, David Sipress, and more—and reveals their other side. Their dark side. Their juvenile side. Their sick side. Their naughty side. Their outrageous side.

And what a treat. Ventriloquist dummy cartoons. Operating room cartoons. Bring your daughter to work day cartoons (the stripper, the prison guard on death row). Lots of couples in bed, quite a few coffins, wise-cracking animals—an obsessive’s plumbing of the weird, the scary, the off-the-wall, and done so without restraint.

Every week The New Yorker receives 500 cartoon submissions, and rejects a great majority—mostly, of course, for not being funny enough. There’s no question why these were rejected, and it’s not for lack of laughs. One can almost hear Eustace Tilley sniffing, We are not amused.

Diffee, a cartoonist who contributes to The New Yorker, collects 293 cartoons that were rejected from the magazine. He begins with ten possible reasons why cartoons get rejected, with examples, then profiles New Yorker cartoonists--including Robert Leighton, Jack Zeigler, Roz Chast, Leo Culum, and J.C. Duffy--with examples from their rejected oeuvre, and an interview with each and their ready and very game replies. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Matthew Diffee has been contributing cartoons to The New Yorker since 1999, and to date has had more than 200 cartoons published in the magazine. He is the author of The Rejection Collection and The Rejection Collection, Vol. 2, and lives in Brooklyn, New York.