The Unbearable Sweetness of Being

“Have I described to you, Dear Reader, the perfect, summer sweetness (that of a warm berry, fresh-picked from the bush, in July) of many of Addison’s cartoons? I believe it is the single most impossible (of a palette of impossibles) and ineffable component of the cartoonist’s art.”—Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

Addison

By Mark Addison Kershaw

ATLANTA Georgia—(Weekly Hubris)—1 July 2022—Editor’s Note: Have I described to you, Dear Reader, the perfect, summer sweetness (that of a warm berry, fresh-picked from the bush, in July) of many of Addison’s cartoons? I believe it is the single most impossible (of a palette of impossibles) and ineffable component of the cartoonist’s art. Vanishing few modern cartoonists possess the gift of “drawing” (and/or drawing out) human sweetness, but, in two of this month’s offerings, Addison turns water into something like St-Germain Elderflower. Two of my many/very favorite of this Atlanta-based (Atlanta-hovering?) cartoonist’s drawings are part of this July’s portfolio. In one, a pig and bear “hold up, and off,” the rain, protecting all life on earth from the deluge. In the other, a little girl addresses sunshine, and then works some metaphysics on our shared world of shadow. Cartoons are impossible (thank Heaven!) to parse or explicate: they simply are. But some melt upon the tongue . . . .