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423. I Join the Type Writer Party, AI vs. Friction, & The Metropolitan Review
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423. I Join the Type Writer Party, AI vs. Friction, & The Metropolitan Review

+ Puzzling Laugh Lines, Waking Up Sketchbook & Morris gets up close and personal

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Jason Chatfield
Feb 04, 2025
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New York Cartoons
New York Cartoons
423. I Join the Type Writer Party, AI vs. Friction, & The Metropolitan Review
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Welcome to Issue #423 of New York Cartoons!

Whew, what a year January was. Trying to write cartoons about this administration has been like drinking from a fire hydrant— but instead of water, it’s a torrent of dog feces. I looked back at some of the cartoons I did for the New Yorker in the first Trump administration to see if things were quite as unhinged as they are now— I’m sad to say, they were. There’s nothing new about the relentless weirdness in this sequel, aside, perhaps, from the inclusion of new cast members from the tech community.

Scott and I discussed coming up with jokes about the new regime administration in our latest episode of “Is There Something In This?” which you can watch/listen to here:

Is There Something In This?
Loose Bees, Superbowl Cartoons & Caricaturist Protests
Subscribe, rate, and please leave us a funny ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review wherever you listen to podcasts…
Listen now
3 months ago · 2 likes · Is There Something In This? and Jason Chatfield

My friend Ethan is leaving New York, and in packing everything up has gifted me a ton of fountain pens and inks, and one of his most prized possessions— a 1960 Royal Royalite vintage typewriter. I’ve been tapping away on this thing for hours and realising how sometimes things we think are anachronistic are actually more useful than we thought— like writing by hand, typing on a typewriter slows down your thoughts, it makes you more deliberate about your words, and flab-nabbit, it just feels so good to tap those keys!

Don’t worry; I won’t be lugging it into any pretentious Brooklyn cafés anytime soon. But It did come with a carry case…

I wrote on Process Junkie this week about how AI might feel magical in its frictionlessness, but (human) writing—like walking—is valuable because of the friction. The use of a typewriter or a pen on paper might be harder than using a computer keyboard or a stylus, but if you find that part more fun— double down on that part. Unless you’re just churning out stuff for the sake of hitting deadlines, there’s a real chance you can actually have a good time making things by digging down into the process. Read more here.

Process Junkie
"The end of a melody is not its goal."
"The end of a melody is not its goal…
Read more
3 months ago · 10 likes · Jason Chatfield

One last thing— Thank you to everyone who came to the show at Union Hall on Saturday night. It was our first for the year, and we sold out! Always a nice feeling. I enjoyed meeting some of you after the show, and I hope you get to catch the next one on 3/22 @ 10pm!

—And with that, let’s get on with this week’s issue!
See you in the comments…

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Photo © Copyright 2025, Nick Dove - @ManAboveTown

Turning the Page in Literary Criticism: The Launch of the Metropolitan Review.

The thing about being at a literary magazine launch in 2025 is that it feels both wildly anachronistic and somehow right on time, like finding a perfectly preserved speakeasy just when you've gotten tired of craft cocktails served in Mason jars. In an era when peoples’ attention spans are shrinking to the size of Trump’s pinky, it seems optimistic to be investing in something that requires people to read more than nine words before switching tabs.

And yet, on Friday night in Murray Hill, while finance bros in vests were doing Fireball shots at street level, I found myself 23 floors up, perched in the back of a dimly lit art deco apartment eavesdrawing the launch party for The Metropolitan Review, a new publication determined to prove that literature isn't dead, it's just been forced to read too many celebrity BookTok picks. (Please tell me you haven’t switched tabs already.)

The founders—Lou Bahet,Ross Barkan, and Sam Kahn—have taken the stance that perhaps, just perhaps, we shouldn't let algorithms and marketing departments decide the future of literature. That what is needed is a literary Special Forces unit - dropping into the culture to rescue overlooked masterpieces while taking precisely aimed shots at overhyped mediocrity. They’re honest brokers, telling you plainly whether the engineered hype offers a semblance of truth or if it’s all dross dressed up in superlatives.

TMR Co-Founder, Ross Barkan

Here is a group of writers and editors who have looked at the wasteland of modern criticism and decided to plant a flag. They aren’t just starting a magazine; they’re staging an intervention for American letters. The Metropolitan Review isn’t trying to be the next New Yorker; they’re trying to be the first whatever-comes-next.

The Metropolitan Review
Welcome to The Metropolitan Review
We are a quarter of the way through the new century, and the state of high culture is not what it should be. Individuals are no less brilliant, but there is a clear institutional lack. It’s as if the great publishers, film producers, and record labels can no longer provide us the artistic nourishmen…
Read more
4 months ago · 463 likes · 74 comments · The Metropolitan Review, Ross Barkan, Lou Bahet, and Sam Kahn

Their plan is refreshingly simple: launch both a Substack and a website, then culminate in a print edition, as if to say, "Yes, we believe in the power of digital, but also in tangible things you can tear out and pin above your desk. And possibly throw across a room." The Substack element feels particularly important - In a world where most traditional publications treat their online presence like a necessary evil, here was one treating digital spaces as an essential frontier for good writing.

Continue reading:

Sketchbook: The Launch of The Metropolitan Review

Jason Chatfield
·
Feb 4
Sketchbook: The Launch of The Metropolitan Review

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This week’s Sketchbook is a portrait I drew:

Writing as a Practice

I got to illustrate the very interesting Natalie Goldberg for Sam Harris’ Waking Up app— In Writing as Practice, a new conversation, Sam speaks with the author, writing coach, and Zen practitioner.

They discuss the enduring influence of her first book, Writing Down the Bones; her “very deep awakening experience”; her editing and revision process; overcoming one’s inner critic; writing fiction vs. nonfiction; longhand composition vs. typing; the prospect of full awakening; persistence in one’s writing practice; the importance of listening; impermanence as inspiration; the benefits of therapy and being in nature; psychedelics; loneliness; writer’s block; and other topics.

Listen Now

A Puzzling Development for New Yorker Cartoons

From the New Yorker:

There are those who believe that laughter is timeless: that the things we find funny today would have similarly amused our grandparents’ grandparents, and vice-versa. In support of this theory, look at Oscar Wilde’s quips or Lucille Ball’s pratfalls, which still get laughs after all these years. As counter-evidence, look at, say, Punch, the popular Victorian weekly, whose cartoons lampooning the fad for bicycle suits or the incompetence of the first Pan-Anglican Synod don’t pack quite the same punch today.

Naturally, some jokes have longer shelf lives than others; political satire doesn’t tend to age as well as a good old pie to the face. But even the most transcendent comedy is a product of its time. For the cultural anthropologist, then, a joke can be a fascinating artifact, full of information about the world from whence it came.

Enter Laugh Lines, our new weekly game that challenges you to guess when cartoons from The New Yorker’s hundred-year archive were originally published. To do this successfully, you’ll need to search for context clues in images and captions: the way people dress and speak, the technologies they use, the pop-culture icons and world events that preoccupy them. We don’t expect you to pinpoint the cartoons’ exact dates; instead, your goal is to place them relative to one another on a timeline.

For a demonstration and some tips on strategy, watch this video starring Jesse Eisenberg, The New Yorker’s official (according to him) joke historian.

Let me know what you think of this game.

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Spilling Ink at the Hotel Chelsea

Jason Chatfield
·
September 9, 2024
Spilling Ink at the Hotel Chelsea

June 27, 2024

Read full story

He took this selfie.

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423. I Join the Type Writer Party, AI vs. Friction, & The Metropolitan Review
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Don Kelly's avatar
Don Kelly
Feb 6

The Laugh Lines game is fun once I got the hang of it. Had trouble with all the elements loading on my phone.

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Alex Hallatt
Feb 5

OMG, Morris!

One of my favourite sounds is someone using a typewriter in a room next door. A rare thing now. But I hope your neighbours appreciate it!

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4 more comments...
I hid these cards around New York and got the weirdest emails back.
How a real-world experiment to 'find my rat people' resulted in some of the craziest responses from Real New Yorkers.
Aug 4, 2024 • 
Jason Chatfield
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New York Cartoons
I hid these cards around New York and got the weirdest emails back.
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Silencing the Court Jesters.
10 years ago, cartoonists were murdered for drawing offensive things. Things have not been getting better since.
Jan 5 • 
Jason Chatfield
357

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New York Cartoons
Silencing the Court Jesters.
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Sketchbook: Live Drawing the 2025 Westminster Dog Show in New York
So many good boys and good girls. So many.
Feb 16 • 
Jason Chatfield
58

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Sketchbook: Live Drawing the 2025 Westminster Dog Show in New York
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