Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

This is the inside story by an investigative journalist who played a major role in exposing the story of the sexual harassment, sexual abuse, assault and rapes by Hollywood Mogul, Harvey Weinstein against a significant number of women who were working as his underlings as well as aspiring actresses. It also tells how many people including network executives at NBC as well as attorneys and even a private investigation agency known as “Black Cube” modeled after the Israeli Mossad which included experienced undercover agents, tried to undermine his reporting. The author gives his firsthand experience describing how several executives at NBC ultimately put the “cabash” on his story which led to him ultimately presenting it in New Yorker magazine.

By coincidence during that time period that I was reading this book, Harvey Weinstein was on trial and a jury ultimately convicted him of crimes against women which will lead to him being in jail. This made the book extremely relevant. On this journey, we learn that other big names used their positions of authority and fame to abuse women. Matt Lauer, NBC anchor and Les Moonves, the CBS head were two such people.

It cannot escape the reader’s attention that Ronan Farrow, the author of this book, well-known as an esteemed journalist, was also witness to the tragedy of his family where his father, Woody Allen  was known to have molested, Ronan’s sister Dylan, daughter of Nia Farrow.  These tragic circumstances were touched upon in this book, but not elaborated upon.

While the subject matter of this book was not only interesting, if not, eye opening, the style of writing in my opinion left much to be desired. The reader was introduced to numerous names of network executives, producers, assistant producers, attorneys, public relations personnel, agents, private detectives, editors, assistant editors, fact checkers, anchorman, celebrities and little-known people and, of course, the well-known accusers and the not so well-known accusers. After being briefly introduced to all these people, they were frequently brought up again later in the book by name, without any reminder of who they were and their significance. In my opinion, this made the book a difficult one to follow although I do appreciate value of bringing all these people and the story to the public view.

How About Never Is Never Good For You: My Life in Cartoon by Bob Mankoff- I have always enjoyed cartoons, especially those in The New Yorker Magazine. Although I must admit that for some reason we haven’t subscribed to it for the past few years. However, I try to catch up in a visit to doctor or dentist’s office. When I learned about the weekly cartoon caption contest that the New Yorker magazine holds each week, I started entering it online most weeks. In fact I must have been very close to being a finalist a few times as my caption was almost the same as one of the top three, differing by just a word or two. This introduction leads up to why my wife bought me this book as a present.

Bob Mankoff is the current cartoon editor of the New Yorker Magazine and the guy in charge of the caption contest as well. In this book he traces his growing up up in New York and the development of his interest in humor and cartoons. As a psychiatrist I do appreciate his insight into himself as best summed up in this paragraph:

My mother wasn’t logical or knowledable. What she was, was intuitive. She wasn’t really an audience for my jokes, she was a target. And, as my therapist would tell you, still is. Yet I’ve gotten a lot from her, including a mother lode of material, some of which I’m unloading here. Although my relationshiship with my mother was less than ideal from a relationship standpoint, from a development of humor standpoint it worked very well. Humor thrives in conflict”

He attended high school in New York at “Music and Art’ which is known for attracting creative and talented students. He then went to Syracuse University, which in my day was very strong in journalism. He went on to a couple of graduate schools and came up just short of a PhD in psychology. Humor and cartooning was his clear goal. It appears that he put his sights on becoming a cartoonist for New Yorker Magazine.

This book is filled with his cartoons and  those of some of the great cartoonists whom he admired. We learn all about various styles of cartoons as Mankofff develops his own. Should it be dots, block style or whatever? Mankoff’s story is really a lesson in fortitude and persistence, You certainly have to be able to handle rejection if you want to be a cartoonist because it does seem that you would be able to paper your walls with rejection slips. Mankoff does succeed.  Not only does he get published in the New Yorker numerous times but he eventually becomes the prestigious cartoon editor of this magazine. Now he supervises the handing out of rejection slips and the process of choosing cartoons for publication. He is also in charge of the Cartoon Bank which offers cartoons for sale.

Then there was the book chapter that I was waiting for, Chapter 13, How to Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.  I learn that Mankoff’s trusted assistant does the first screening of all the entries. He looks at thousands of submissions and makes a short list of 50 of the best of them broken down into categories representing different comic themes. Now the New Yorker Cartoon Editor (currently Mr. Mankoff) chooses what he believes are the ten best. He then shows these to the various New Yorker editors and staff members asking them to rate each one as either, Unfunny, Somewhat Funny or Funny. Then the best three cartoons are chosen and the following week, the readership of the magazine will vote and chose the best one.

Mankoff gives suggestion how to approach the caption contest, advising the contestants to “free associate” and then “verbalize”, “conceptualize”, “topicalize” and finally “socialize”. Putting all these approaches together, he believes will help you come up with a caption for the cartoon that week. Still, I like just free-associating and trying to have an emotional reaction to the cartoon. Maybe his advice to be as brief as possible, novel and occasionally topical will help me. So while I didn’t learn too much about how to do well in the contest, I did enjoy seeing the different styles and appreciating the creativity of both the amateurs and the professionals in putting together the various cartoons that Mankoff showed in his book.

I thought that occasionally the cartoons and some of the print size of the illustrations was a little too small to comfortably read all the details (It may be my age but a younger reader did agree with me). The overall journey through this book was worth the ride. I always look forward to the cartoons that have been chosen to be shown in the magazine and I can’t wait to try my luck in the next cartoon caption contest.