The Book, Cat, & Cat Book Lovers Almanac

of historical trivia regarding books, cats, and other animals. Actually this blog has evolved so that it is described better as a blog about cats in history and culture. And we take as a theme the advice of Aldous Huxley: If you want to be a writer, get some cats. Don't forget to see the archived articles linked at the bottom of the page.

January 6, 2014

January 6, 2003

January 6, 2003, is the date of a New Yorker cover, one of many J-J Sempé has done for that magazine.

The magazine seems to like the meme of different scenes in different windows of residential buildings in the city. So you see a variety of glimpses of lives held together by the rigid geometry of a grid of windows. We see this used on the cover for this issue. Against a set of small windows, with various scenes, we have over all the city lights of an urban horizon. On the right an interior is drawn in beige, a woman looking out of her window at this building across the way from her own. She is not smiling, and she might be wistful about some of the hectic party scenes she sees. But the artist is 
Sempé, the cartoonist of mysticism. So you look again and see it: in one lit window: there is a tiger jumping through a hoop held high.

Typical Sempe in that there is no caption, though his drawing tells  a dramatic, and often subtle and joyous story. Typical too in that there is a feline detail.

Jean-Jacques Sempé  in 1978 produced his first cover for the New Yorker. This child of French poverty has succeeded in his art to the extent that he is world famous and lives in an apartment in Montparnasse. 
Sempé was born August 17, 1932.

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