Here is a confession by Leunig who is IMO the best Australian cartoonist around.
I have to confess that I have always found myself genuinely laughing at his stuff over a period of nearly 40 years even though I don’t always understand him. I have to confess that I may be laughing at a joke that isn’t really there and missed the real and bigger joke that everyone else gets.
I confess I need your help if you please …
So here is one - a cartoon for a winter month from a Leunig calendar.
Its hilarious and yet I do not know why and not that I need to unless
someone can discern a discursive thread in it somewhere. Let me know.
ten things to do in winter he says with a little sketch
then there are five drawings that follow
the first one shows a fat nosed man smiling and lying prone in his single bed with blue blanket and blue pillow. he has rubbish scattered on him. the caption reads:
Go to bed with
some compost.
Spread a good book
on the garden.
Go to bed with
some compost.
Spread a good book
on the garden.
The poem is good, and by your description it seems that the cartoon pic tries to illustrate it.
I like the analogies of bed = garden and good book = compost.
In winter nothing grows in the garden,
so you can retire to bed and be fertilised/inspired by a good book.
So you get this internal growth in winter time.
Anyway, that’s what the poem says to me.
So the joke seems to be that the good book is depicted as compost (hard to draw, and you called it rubbish), mixing the elements of the analogy, same in the illustration as in the poem.
Oh, and the additional joke is that only going to bed with a book is illustrated, not spreading compost in the garden. The scattering of a book is left to your imagination…
But it is summer over here, no time for books in bed!
I haven’t even looked at the cartoons yet, but I loved his essay as much as anything I can think of.
In the wake of this drawing I at once began to express my most personal self with less embarrassment; to play with my ideas more freely; to bring warmth into my work; to focus on modest, everyday situations and nature as sources of imagery and to see my work as nourishing rather than mocking or hurtful.
I think I’m going to marry this guy. Probably too late for that.
I think I’ve done my push-ups with the dark cloud, so it’s time to move on to chin-ups on the moon.
As for the cartoon you cite Tal, I think Hans is on the right track.
But I think over analysis is unnecessary. When it’s time for that winter nap, all systems are down and off-guard regarding whether the book or the compost are applied to the proper substrates. So, part of the point (if there is one,) imho is simply “let it go, get it backwards, inside-out, upside down…we can’t always be linear.”
My cats prefer doing CPR as opposed to laps.
Thanks for the lovely comments.
The next two Leunig things to do for winter go like this
I’ll try to describe the drawing if you wish.
He’s just tweaking our imaginations and making us smile.