Roz Chast brings New Yorker cartoon humor to University of Puget Sound

In a cartoon that could have been penned since last week’s political events, Roz Chast draws a fierce, bearded man in long white robe bearing a sign, “The End is Near.” Next to him, an equally fierce robed man holds up, “You Wish.”

It’s that humor that has made Chast the standard bearer for her main gig, The New Yorker, and which will run through a talk and question-and-answer session by the acclaimed cartoonist at the University of Puget Sound on Feb. 9.

Described by a New Yorker editor as “the magazine’s only certifiable genius” and by Salon as “the first truly subversive New Yorker cartoonist,” Chast has also had hundreds of cartoons published in Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review and other magazines, as well as writing or illustrating more than a dozen books.

She grew up in Brooklyn, the only child of a school teacher and vice principal who, Chast revealed to NPR’s Terry Gross, would carry around a Saturday Review cartoon about not understanding the cartoons in The New Yorker.

In her cartoons, Chast explores the fine line between the funny and the deadly serious, teasing out the absurdities in human nature in ways that are unexpected, pointed and often bizarre. Her work has won her national awards for autobiography, nonfiction, humor and gag cartoons, among others.

Her most recent best-selling book is “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”, a black memoir about her efforts to cope alone with her elderly parents in the final years of their lives.

This story was originally published February 1, 2017 at 5:16 AM with the headline "Roz Chast brings New Yorker cartoon humor to University of Puget Sound."