The New Yorker is famous for its cartoons. And rightly so. In the issue of August 6, 2007, there is a cartoon that caught my attention at once. The drawing is simply awful, which only makes it so much more compelling. There is a woman talking to two policemen, who are staring at a man smothered by a smoldering meteorite. Only his legs are sticking out from under a pockmarked boulder. There are tall buildings all around. A large crowd is cordoned off in the distance. The pavement around the meteorite is cracked. Of course, much of the city would be gone if a meteorite this size would hit it, but this only makes the drawing so much more attractive. The caption is breathtaking: “I begged him to get help.” To the credit of the cartoonist, whose name scratched in one corner is Paul Noth, the drawing captures the gist of the human condition. Help, what help?

Addendum (August 28, 2016)

Not surprisingly, the first thing that crosses my mind when I read this piece is my book about climate change, which appeared in print a couple of years ago. Although I did not expect it to become very popular, let alone a bestseller, I sincerely hoped that it would attract a little bit of attention in the English-speaking world. This was not the case, though. As a matter of fact, the book fell flat on its face. It attracted not a single review in any of the major newspapers often cited in its pages. Thus I can imagine my own likeness in some cartoon showing a smoldering planet with many a skeleton strewn about. And the caption is in line with that from The New Yorker: “I begged them to help themselves.” This is what my book about climate change is actually about, too. Returning to Paul Noth, he strikes me as the best cartoonist for my purposes. The gist of the human condition…