The concept is fun and the cartoons range from the eye-rollingly lame to the run-into-the-other-room-brandishing-the-book hilarious. There are a lot of "typical" New Yorker cartoons, of course. It's well worth picking up and leafing through, though I don't think I'd read it more than once. ( )

A brutally funny collection of over 200 cartoons penned by The New Yorker’s cartooning couple, Liza Donnelly and Michael Maslin, Cartoon Marriage is its authors’ candid celebration of twenty years of matrimony, in twelve chapters. Armed with wits shining like sharp knives—from “I Do?” to “Hearth Happenings,” and everything in between (“The Little Darlin’s,” “Ex-Whatevers,” “Obsessions and Possessions,” “Friends Furry,” and so on)—Donnelly and Maslin cut straight to the nature of desire (“It won’t work if I tell you what I want, because if I tell you what I want I won’t want it anymore”), and the order of romance (“I’d like you to consider changing your morning routine of patting me and kissing the dog goodbye”), with a pinch of self-mockery and a good dose of uproarious truth along the way.

While thoroughly gratifying the natural voyeur, the book is also must-have for historians of The New Yorker, who will appreciate the frequent references to fellow funnyfolk Richard Cline, Jack Ziegler, Mick Stevens, Peter Steiner, Roz Chast, and of course, the venerated James Thurber.
I also can’t help but mention Random House’s timely January ’09 release: Cartoon Marriage knocks every Valentine’s Day card out of the block.

[Review appearing in AboutTown TK.] ( )

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