‘Trudeau & Doonesbury’ Examines a Comic Strip That Became Part of the National Discussion

‘Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News into Art’By Joshua Kendall Abrams Press, 352 pagesGarry Trudeau came of age as a Yale undergraduate drawing a cartoon strip with no political convictions to begin with but drawn to the quirkiness of males and females involved in Vietnam War protests and disgusted with the Watergate scandal. His strips were character-driven, and for cartoons surprisingly verbal with word counts of about twice what was expected in his line of work.Mr. Trudeau caught on very quickly, with fans among those whom he satirized, including, for example, Henry Kissinger, delighted with the attention even at its most unflattering. Mr. Trudeau, allowed his work to speak for itself, rarely granting interviews, and hardly ever defending himself when criticized for unfairness or even bad taste. He did, however, respond to Kissinger and other targets, sending them, at their request, originals of the strips.Mr. Trudeau, still active, has been fortunate in having syndicates that have backed him, sometimes talking down newspapers who threatened to cancel his controversial strip. He has also known when to back away, at one point insisting on more than a year away from Doonesbury, so that he could recalibrate, so to speak, and come back refreshed and undaunted.Joshua Kendall’s beautifully produced book is strewn with many of Mr. Trudeau’s strips, making it much easier on a biographer who does not have to spend pages describing what readers can see. Instead, he writes about the motive forces behind the strip, relying on interviews with Mr. Trudeau and a hundred or so others, friends and critics alike.‘Doonesbury: The Original Yale Cartoons’ published in 1971.The result is a stunning achievement, nearly as delightful and unpretentious as Mr. Trudeau himself. I especially enjoyed Mr. Kendall’s ability to draw his subject out with some nicely wry commentary on himself, even though in the past Mr. Trudeau has been very wary about becoming self-conscious by cooperating with journalists, let alone a biographer.In fact, something like fifteen years ago, another biographer, Steve Weinberg, wondered how much cooperation he would get for his own Garry Trudeau biography. Then Mr. Weinberg’s stroke made it impossible for him to deliver the biography, and after a long wait for another biographer to build on his work, Mr. Kendall showed up taking aboard Mr. Weinberg’s research material, and with a knack for getting people to talk to him and the skill to render a fascinating narrative.What I wish I knew, and perhaps Mr. Kendall wonders too, is why Mr. Trudeau cooperated with a biographer, even assisting him in navigating an extensive Garry Trudeau archive that might have been indecipherable otherwise, since even the subject sometimes has had trouble recovering what he originally intended.Perhaps the passage of time has made a difference, perhaps the fact that Mr. Trudeau’s wife, Jane Pauley, has published a memoir matters, and perhaps now Mr. Trudeau himself has the perspective on his body of work but no longer feels the pressure of those heady days when so many newspapers made him part of a national discussion.Often, Mr. Kendall points out, Mr. Trudeau has been prophetic — especially concerning Donald Trump, whom Mr. Trudeau began to draw in 1987, already suspecting that one day Mr. Trump would run for the presidency—although prophecy has its limits, and it is clear that Mr. Trudeau remains astonished that the man with “ubiquitous hair” — to use Mr. Kendall’s phrase — should actually have been elected. “Whenever I sit down to make sense of it,” Mr. Trudeau has said, “it never fails to engage. It’s an unknowable triumph of weaving, lacquering, and taxidermy, and I’ll never quite get it right.”Perhaps the mystery of the hair says it all as far as Mr. Trudeau is concerned: how that coiffure got its shape is a wonder, no doubt, and as good as any feature that a satirist can latch onto. Other presidents, like Barack Obama, Mr. Trudeau has not drawn, instead just posting those trademark all capitals messages emanating from a drawing of the White House.Do not suppose, however, that Mr. Trump is the only target. The animus against George W. Bush is quite personal; it comes from a Yalie who cannot stand a classmate, having observed in Mr. Bush a streak of cruelty that, in Trudeau’s strips, is a throughline to the second Iraq war.Also do not suppose that all the marks have been Republicans. There is plenty in Doonesbury about foolish leftwing types and presidents like Jimmy Carter, whose ineffectual cabinet includes Duane Delacourt as “secretary of symbolism.”Mr. Rollyson is the author of ‘American Biography.’

‘Trudeau & Doonesbury’ Examines a Comic Strip That Became Part of the National Discussion

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