Lawrence Wood, 5-time New Yorker Caption Contest winner and reigning champion, took me to task recently for my comments on the nature of cartoon caption contests (“Cartoon Caption Contest February 16, 2014 – July 26, 2014“).
In my last blog post, while referring to the New Yorker caption contest, I blithely stated: “The results rarely, if ever, rise to the level of actual New Yorker cartoons. The winners of caption contests come off as very clever responses to the drawing – nothing more.” This based on having seen only a handful of winners. To be honest, I had never paid much attention to the caption contest, my focus being on my competition in the interior of the magazine. Lawrence Wood, on the other hand, has had a great deal of experience with The New Yorker’s caption contest, including what seems to be an encyclopedic knowledge of past winners.
In Mr. Wood’s good-natured rebuttal, he included a list of 50 or so of the best caption contest winners going all the way back to contest #10 from the August 8, 2005 issue. Here’s how Mr. Wood put it:
I have to disagree with your comment about The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. You wrote, “The results rarely, if ever, rise to the level of actual New Yorker cartoons. The winners of caption contests come off as very clever responses to the drawing – nothing more.” That’s certainly true of some—and of most of the ones I submit (including the ones that have been selected as finalists)—but I think many of the winning captions “rise to the level of actual New Yorker cartoons,” and some, I would argue, are among the best The New Yorker has ever published. Here’s my evidence …
And here he lists his top ten caption contest winners, followed by a list of about 40 other great winners all from various issues over the past 9 years or so. Without further ado, here is 5-time New Yorker Caption Contest winner Lawrence Wood’s top ten winners of the New Yorker Caption Contest:
August 8, 2005:
September 19, 2005:
October 10, 2005:
February 6, 2006:
March 26, 2007:
May 12, 2008:
May 26, 2008:
February 2, 2009:
April 20, 2009:
And last, but not least, November 15, 2010:
3 Response Comments
I’m at a loss to understand why being “very clever responses to the drawing–[and] nothing more” categorically excludes New Yorker caption contest winners from the level of “actual” New Yorker cartoons. To begin, do not paid New Yorker cartoonists always attempt, at least, to make their drawings and their captions match in cleverness? And think of the myriad times when the magazine’s professionals have utterly failed in achieving even this basic goal. (If you need some examples of undeniable failures, see Peter McGraw’s “Why Aren’t The New Yorker’s Cartoon’s Funnier?” online.) By contrast, absolutely every contest winner (not to mention hundreds of also-rans) has succeeded in the cleverness department. Finally, if your basic premise is that every “actual” New Yorker cartoon is both clever and in some way an “important” statement, you’re just plain wrong. If that is really your thinking, then it would appear you’ve read as few of the magazine’s “actual” cartoons as you have its contest winners. All you’d have to do is read all the cartoons of any issue of The New Yorker to know that most of them are not of any great moment at all; they’re just fun, like all the ones that win the contest. Some constructive advice: If you’re going to write a blog, know what you’re talking about–or at least try to look like you do.
Brien, thank you for your comment, but I wonder if you actually read this post. Since I am saying in this post that my earlier argument was, as you put it, “plain wrong”. It was! And Lawrence Wood did a wonderful job of taking me to task for that, but managed to do it in a good-natured way that was also very entertaining.