Literary Lives Review

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Literary Lives ReviewEdward Sorel has always annoyed me because most of his stuff is political, and his politics are predictable. (I never liked Jules Feiffer, for the same reason.) But Sorel's inimitable line and color--ah! This is a guy whose aim is to produce the appearance of doodle-book spontaneity, and he's willing to redraw something a hundred times to get that effect.
So I love his art but hate his potted, derivative opinions. But this is a different kettle of beans.
Turns out he's got a very original wit, once you get him away from politics. His low-down anger and meanness skewer Ayn Rand, Sartre, Proust, Jung, Lillian Hellman and others, with a viciousness I've never seen displayed in by a--how you say?--purely typographical critic.
The seeming randomness of the selection itself borders on genius. Making fun of Sartre and Hellman--okay, fish in a barrel, right? But Proust, Tolstoy, Yeats, Jung? It's like satire planned by a nutritionist.
Most of these little illustrated bios were first printed in The Atlantic Monthly, where I saw one or two. Stitching a number of them together like this enhances rather than dilutes the effect of each one. You get the definite sense of a clear point-of-view, rather than a one-off ha-ha at the expense of a someone far grander than the lowly cartoonist.
I suppose he's getting on in years now, Sorel; he was doing political caricatures in Esquire when I was a little girl in the 60s. But I hope this Stracheyesque satire is the herald of a new career phrase, rather than just a small but gorgeous valedictory.
(POSTSCRIPT: I was trying to damn with faint praise when I wrote this, I think. Actually I'm a huge Sorel fan and chagrined to know he read my condescending words. I know he read them because he sent me a postcard of thanks (oof!) to my New York address. I am not fit to fill his inkwell. Thanks, Ed...and I'll let my foregoing embarrassment stand as mute testimony to my capacity for blather. Speaking of which, I've been looking over the old Esquire stuff, and it holds up very well.)
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