Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography, by Joshua Kendall, was released this week by Abrams Press. It's a thoroughly researched biography of cartoonist Garry Trudeau and his epic, massively influential comic strip "Doonesbury."
As revered as "Doonesbury" is, I still think it's underappreciated as a masterpiece of of American art. More than a half-century running, it's a chronicle of the country's late 20th century, early 21st century social, cultural, and political life, read and cherished by hundreds of millions of people, and celebrated and/or feared by the nation's power elite.
Because it's a sprawling narrative with a complex web of characters weaving in and out of tales grappling with the time's social/political morality, "Doonesbury" has been called Dickensian in nature and scope. But at an speaking event celebrating the book's publication this week at the 92nd Street Y in NYC, Trudeau suggested an alternative literary analogy.
Author Kendall mentioned a turning point in the comic strip, occurring in 1972, when for the first time, a real-life person, Henry Kissinger, appeared in the strip, interacting one of with Trudeau's characters, Mark. Trudeau said:
"I think that was around the time I had read Ragtime [the novel by E.L. Doctorow]. And I had never read historical fiction before, at least not that I remember. And I thought, 'This is so interesting. He's putting words in the mouth of real people,' right?"
Of course, "Doonesbury" would go on to include fictional versions of so many real-life people in its strips, including every president, many politicians and celebrities, and even a blowhard New York City real estate developer. So because real figures of the time appear as additional characters among "Doonesbury's" fictional cast of characters, maybe the comic strip is better seen as sweeping historical fiction, rendered in real time, day by day and week by week, while history is taking place.
The book is a fascinating look at the life of Trudeau, full of revelations and insights.
Trudeau, unique among his cartoonist peers, has done a lot of research to inform his writing. A notable example is in 2004, when "Doonesbury's" football/military hero character B.D. lost a leg in the Iraq War. In order to give the sequence verisimilitude, and to honor the trauma real soldiers were going through, Trudeau spent time visiting and talking to injured troops recovering at Walter Reed; in fact, he spent so much time there, one patient called him "the archangel of Walter Reed."
Kendall suggests that the patience, care, and interest he showed with these wounded soldiers echos a story Trudeau tells about his father. As a young man, Frank Trudeau was not sure he wanted to follow his father and grandfather footsteps and become a physician. He was considering instead a career in the State Department. But while serving in the Navy during World War II, his knee was injured, and he was so moved by the care that doctors gave him and other soldiers in a Morocco hospital, he decided to become a physician after all.
At the event, Kendall presented Trudeau with his speculation that his father's experience was on his mind when he was so kind and attentive to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed. Trudeau was not having it.
"No. Yeah, I wish I could say it was. I mean, only in the sense that I that I certainly admired my father, for many things. But among them, his patience, when I picture him in my mind, he's being thoughtful. … So maybe I inherited some of that from him. I don't know. I mean, it's certainly nice to think about maybe I'm doing something useful, which was not apparent to my parents."
I think this is a great example of a biography subject possibly having less insight than the biographer. Even if not in the front of his mind, it's hard to believe that this formative story about his father's war injury determining the course of his life did not at least subconsciously inform his experience at the bedside of wounded soldiers.
But it's also a great example of Trudeau's grace and humility in spite of his massive achievements and good works.
The biography contains so many amazing aspects of Trudeau's life. He launched his nationally syndicated comic strip, while still a senior at Yale, juggling his classwork with the incredible demands of drawing a daily comic. The first strip:
Trudeau's college years at Yale University were unusually formative, furnishing connections and preoccupations that would last his entire career. Long before he devoted over eight years of satire and criticism to President George W. Bush, Trudeau had already crossed paths with him as fellow students attending Yale, illustrating a hazing controversy involving Bush's fraternity in one of his first college comics.
"On November 3, 1967, The Yale Daily News published an expose about the initiation rites of various fraternities…. Bush's frat, DKE, came in for particular scorn because it used a branding iron to imprint a small delta on the backside of each pledge. The feature was was illustrated by two of Trudeau's cartoons — his first published work in The Yale Daily News."
"On November 8, the New Haven dustup went national when The New York Times ran a brief story, "Branding Rite Laid To Yale Fraternity." The newspaper of record quoted the DKE president, George W. Bush, who defended his frat. Noting that the branding was actually done with a coat hanger, Bush minimized the potential harm, saying that the wound is only 'a cigarette burn.' As Trudeau told The New York Times in 2014, Bush's 'first interview in the national media was in defense of torture.'"
You can purchase Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography here.
