Bruce McCall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bruce McCall (b. 1935) is a Canadian author and illustrator, best known for his frequent contributions to The New Yorker.
Born and raised in Simcoe, Ontario, he was always fascinated by comic books and showed an early aptitude for drawing fantastical flying machines, blimps, bulbous-nosed muscle cars and futuristic dioramas.
While his older brothers were outside playing hockey on the local ice rink, McCall stayed locked indoors, his boyhood imagination soaring with dreams of becoming a famous illustrator.
In his best-selling memoir, Thin Ice (1997), McCall admitted that he was never good at physical activity as a boy, but could count on his mother to encourage his youthful creativity. But like all families, the McCall's had secrets, as he reveals in the book. Bruce's father T.C. was imperious and unemotional, and left his wife, Peg, a struggling alcoholic, without the kind of attention she desparetely needed and deserved. T.C. turned her into a golf widow and he seemed to enjoy the company of his country club cronies rather than the warmth of the family hearth. Peg and his children tried to strike an attachment to him, but his stormy moods frequently pushed them aside.
Such a dysfunctional household and lonely childhood appear to be a clue to McCall's reliance on humour as a way of providing him with the means of self-expression that uplifted his spirit during dark and depressing times.
But McCall's life, as he tells it, isn't so distressful. His ability to sketch wonderful cartoons on everything he put his hand to seemed like a gift from God.
Without any serious technical training, McCall began his illustration career drawing cars for Ford Motor Company in Toronto in the 1950s, but after several decades in the advertising business, he sought opportunities in other branches of the publishing industry.
Before long, he high-tailed it for New York City, where he landed work with National Lampoon and quickly made a name for himself as an artist with an intelligent and whimsical funny bone.
His magazine covers, regularly appearing in The New Yorker and other magazines, are highly distinctive; perhaps no illustrator in the United States is as recognizable as McCall's work, both for its ability to story-tell and its art-deco styling, with a brilliant use of colour. He has been a contributor to the magazine since 1979.
But McCall is also a skilled humourist, and has wordsmithed essays upon some of the funniest social ironies of modern life. He writes frequently for the "Shouts & Murmurs" section of The New Yorker and has a large following of fans.
McCall lives on the Upper West Side of New York near Central Park.
[edit] Books
- (1982) Zany Afternoons ISBN 0-394-42683-5
- (1997) Thin Ice ISBN 0-679-76959-5 (memoir)
- (2001) The Last Dream-o-Rama ISBN 0-609-60801-0
- (2003) All Meat Looks Like South America ISBN 0-609-60802-9
