Totally Tom Toro
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Behind a small window cutout in the front door of the Northeast Portland home sits a furry guard to this New Yorker cartoonist’s upstairs studio.
Upon entry, a chair dons a curved sag in its plush cushion, suited for the fluffy multicolored feline, Pumpkin, who, too, makes art in the form of scratch posts.
Through the hallway, art lines the walls from colleagues Bruce Eric Kaplan and Frank Cotham.
“I’ve embraced the brand of the West Coast New Yorker cartoonist,” Tom Toro said, sitting in his quaint Rose City home.
One of my current favorite cartoonists is interviewed by his hometown paper in anticipation of the forthcoming first collection of Tom Toro cartoons.
“In his Portland home, a cartoonist crafts jokes for The New Yorker” – Hannah Seibold at The Portland Tribune.
Directionless, he returned to his family’s modest little bungalow.
“I like to call it my second adolescence,” Toro said, laughing.
Back in his teenage bedroom as a college graduate, he started cartooning again.
“Obviously, the first thing you do after a long stint off is start submitting to the New Yorker,” he said.
This is what Toro did about five months after getting back into cartooning. And, hey, it only took 610 submissions for him to get accepted.
“We have this sort of fetish for rejection,” Toro explained of cartoonists.
Even being a decades-long established cartoonist, about 95% won’t be accepted. Toro said if you sell one out of 10 cartoons a week, that’s great. Rejection is the name of the game.
At 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 10, Toro will be at Powell’s City of Books on West Burnside Street for a book signing and Q&A for his book, “And to Think We Started as a Book Club…”
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