I have always had a weird affinity for the cartoonist Jack Ziegler, whom I first encountered in The New Yorker. He’s not their most prolific contributor — these days, you might find his work once in every three or four issues. Time was, though, when he put in an appearance weekly. And for whatever reason, I found myself drawn (ho ho) to his eccentric view of modern civilization, to the point that I picked up a couple of his anthologies over the years.
His 1978 collection, Hamburger Madness, includes several fine depictions of writers’ dilemmas. The first, the title cartoon, isn’t really about writing per se. But the mind of its protagonist will be familiar to anyone who has been given three months, a month, a week, a few hours to finish a manuscript. Or, of course, has suddenly found himself in the throes of writing passionately, goosed by The Muse:
The second example, though, will really hit home.
