(Click the thumbnails for larger images.)

I wrote then that he deserved to be back in print, in editions that didn't mar his work by splitting many of the drawings across two pages.

That Abner Dean is so thoroughly forgotten
is just another sad fact of our disposable culture
life. What Am I Doing Here was the rage in
smart circles for several years after its appearance. Its popularity tracked the post war
popularity of psychoanalysis. The chances were
that anyone on the couch had a copy within reach.

I was born in 1940, was 7 when the book came out
and was snapped up by my Freudophile father. I
was thrilled to see a bunch of nekkid people running about, but the depth of the humor and insight was not lost on me even at that age. His work fascinated me. His horrific caricature of a lunch counter (the one with huge funnels stuck in the mouths of the customers) still haunts me. What might have he had done with McDonalds? Well,
he did it, that's what, then and there.

A few years ago I found a copy of It's A Long Way
To Heaven, the contents of which are as strong as
the selections in the more famous book. Philosophers' Convention takes the cake, as does
Amnesia, The Consultation, The Eternal Optimist,
many others. It's a priceless possession for me,
whatever its worth on the out of print market.

The idea of getting back to the original plates
and reissuing them in a format that showcases Dean's extraordinary greyscale talent is a fine one. There are many certified great American artists who couldn't shine the man's shoes. His
drawings are unique, often beautiful in a way that
competes with the satirical content and kicks the
complexity up several notches because of that competition.

Don Zirulnik:

I collect Abner Dean. I think I have the largest private collection of Dean's work. I Would love to see some things republished. Abner Dean's Naked People is a nice collection and can, with patience, be found for a few bucks with a signed limited (5000) edition litho,

[after an email exchange]

My experiences parallel those of John's fairly closely. I have a couple of originals and am always looking for more.
"what am i doing here? " and "its a long way to heaven" contain some of his best work. He was born Abner Epstein, attended Darmouth from about 29- 31 and published some works under Epstein before switching to Dean.

Good to connect. Dartmouth has a lot of dean stuff squirreled away in special collections somewhere. You can get some more info on dean in his obit in the N.Y. times.junesomething 1982, I think. Tell me about the dean you have. I have a lot of obscure dean/ epstein prints as well as a portrait and a drawing of an elephant and the egg toss from abner deans naked people.

Karenkat:

oh yes, I absolutely agree. I was born in '42, and Mother snapped up "What Am I Doing Here" pretty quick when it came out when I was about 5 or so. I thought it was a cartoon book (well, it was, rofl) and pored over that thing like CRAZY quite a few times. I noticed as I got older that it made me think crazy things. Crazy but good.

Like the swooning Ophelias on the conveyer belt going over the cliff - middle sister was a swooning Ophelia type, so I got that one right away. And only Mother and I got the joke when I started calling middle sister 'Ophelia'. It was nice that no one else in the family liked the book. Father only read the sporting green, middle sister only read movie magazines, and brother only read sci fi.

So it was like Mother's and my little secret. She used to kid me just before serving dinner, "Have you set out the funnels?"

So bring on our Mr. Dean again !! There's a couple generations of folks out there who have NO IDEA what great art and philosophy can accomplish when combined !!! Get some Thurber out there again too. None of these modern people have the slightest idea of what a sense of humor is. Look at how "The Unicorn in the Garden" has faded into utter obscurity. Shame on all of them.

Jim Leonard:

Nice to stumble upon this site! Abner Dean has always been something of a mystery to me. I've found several of his books over the years, (It's a Long Way To Heaven, What Am I Doing Here, And On the Eighth Day, Come As You Are, & Cave Drawings for the Future) all of them invariably marked down drastically and languishing on a shelf for what I can only assume is lack of interest. Silly people...
I've always been fascinated by his stuff, but have felt that his style sort of sits in a nexus between Steig (specifically 'About people' & 'The Lonely Ones'), Steinberg, and maybe Artzybasheff. Not knowing much about the man, I've then made the assumption by the timing of his books that he was following in the wake of those other artists, perhaps 'jumping on the bandwagon'. Though much of what he does is unique, I'd have to say many elements seem a bit derivative. Still, fascinating books to treasure!
Speaking of that crowd & those following in their wake, can anyone tell me anything about Jane Eakin? I've just found her book from '46, 'I Do All the Work Around Here', and again - - fascinating, a little derivative, and something of a puzzle...

Kirk Brooks:

I discovered Abner Dean some years ago. My parents had several of his books; Come as you are, long way to heavan, and on the eighth day and some others. Aparently my parents bought them when they came out. I recall looking at them from time to time as I was growing up and having no idea what they were about.

When I rediscovered them as an adult I was blown away. I also realized how many of those images had taken root in my consciousness at a deep level. "The wonder of you" was an image that I have always thought amusing and salient. "What am I doing here" is a question that pops up often in my own work.

I will add my own voice to those for whom Dean is a treasured possesion.

"Koran (9:11) - 'For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.'"

If any Qu'ranic verse had been even remotely close to that we wouldn't be hearing the end of it. There's no such verse at 9:11, 11:9, or anywhere else, and it's doubtful that the Meccan air was thick with eagles. At least there aren't any in the text, according to a keyword search at one of the online versions.
The lesson is clear. Khalil Gibran never died. He went into international politics, serving the Secret Masters.

Because HIV infection is not a venereal disease. Intravenous gonorrhea transmission is uncommon, and so a new term had to be invented which would support the broadly true, but nonspecific and very misleading, "AIDS is spread through sex". Throughout the whole "education" campaign, in the Congressional hearings, in the pronouncements of Surgeon General Koop, one question never got asked much: what is the extent of third party infection? But that was the one that would have given the game away, and there would have been no way to talk around it had "VD" still been the term. First things first. So now we have "Sexually Transmitted Diseases", a category which includes both blood-borne and mucosal contact infections. I'm no doctor, but I doubt if confusing the two would earn an A in Epidemology class. Of course, when the public has to be--helped--to make the right decisions, those who catch on are tacitly supposed to understand the reason for the deception and keep their traps shut. To do otherwise plays into the wrong hands.

And now "Judeo-Christian" is coming under the gun so that Islam won't be left out. "Abrahamic Religions" is now with us to prepare the way to a properly defined discussion, just as "Sexually Transmitted Diseases" did, and "Psychological Addiction" before that, and it's just as politically motivated and intellectually dishonest.

But if the existence of common primary texts is the basis for the term "Judeo-Christian", then how can Islam get inside those quotation marks? Why, it's simple. Just introduce a new phrase, "Abrahamic Religions", that does away with that inconvenient concept of even a possible common court of Scriptural appeal. None necessary any more. In fact, one of the ARs can dismiss the Bibles of the other two as unreliable and superseded, insist that its portrayals of Moses and Jesus are the only true ones, have no supporting documents within a millenium and a half of Abraham, practice violence against converts to the other two according to to a present-tense and first-person-plural Book all its own, believe that the said Book was handed down directly fron On High, and still be a full-fledged member.

"Abrahamic Religions," like "STD," lets us move on to that Higher Ground where what ought to be merges with what is. We're going to be reading and hearing more and more about the ARs.

In the mid-eighties I got a pickup job at a language school to one-on-one tutor a Saudi diplomat four hours a day, four days a week. The consulate was in the same highrise. I was the third one hired to try it, and the first man. The head of the school, a woman, thought that maybe the total lack of result heretofore was the--student's--alternatively cultured attitude towards females, which was a perfectly reasonable assumption. My two predecessors had quit.

If you've spent any kind of time in front of a classroom you understand the distinction between "unteachable" and "cretinous." There aren't many people who can't learn something, even if it's way under the minimum standard. To be truly unteachable takes a grit which Mr...let's call him, oh, Mr. Al-Bugr...had, big time. It was obvious after five minutes that cousin Achmed had gotten him the job so he wouldn't embarrass the family at home. I'm not exaggerating to be amusing. He was one of the most unspeakably stupid people I've ever even met, let alone had to be cooped up with. He had no idea that it was any part of his job as a member of the consular staff to get to know anybody local, join something, go anywhere, socialize, play soccer, do any damn thing at all except stamp visas. (The consulate no longer exists.)

Anyway, the actual "teaching" part was like having flaming bamboo shoots hammered under my fingernails.

This futility went on for several weeks, and beyond just the teeth-grinding exasperation of accomplishing nothing...I've repeated "What's this? It's a cup!" till I was hoarse in L.A. night school, and this was indescribably worse...there was the question of the ethics of my taking a paycheck for a job I wasn't really doing, even though that wasn't my fault. I'd just about had it, and then one night we bombed Libya.

The next morning when I went in, Mr. Al-Bugr fixed his wet, stupid little eyes on me, and said, "WY YOU DO DEES! WY YOU DO DEES!" And I told him. "We did this because when we had a president who would not have done it, the Ayatollah Khomeini drove him from office. That's why we did it." (Come to think of it, maybe that got the use of "would" across.) I like to think that maybe he actually thought for a minute, like a Buddhist having a first taste of Nirvana, but probably not. I did quit a few days later.

Fast forward a few years to Munich. I was in a bar near the Bahnhof and there was only one other guy in there. He spoke very good English, but no German, and I gave him some kind of language help. We started talking, and he was in town from guess where. Not a princeling, just an upper middle class businessman, probably with family connections, but not idle rich. He was in import-export, providing the goods the shiekdom is incapable of manufacturing. His sister was in another city for medical treatment and he was in Germany as her chaperon, his word.

We wandered on to another, nicer place, and he started asking me where the girls were. I suppose he'd expected the whorehouses to be near the railroad station the way they are in Frankfurt, the main airport. (The big one wasn't close, and I didn't take him, but I imagine he found the place okay). He was keeping up just fine beer for beer, and finally I simply asked, "How in the hell do you cope with living in Saudi Arabia? I'd either be insane or executed."

He didn't bat an eye, and I'll never forget the answer: "I work my ass off ten months out of the year and then get out and go party like hell for two."

And that's my contribution to the discussion of the internal social battles in Saudi Arabia. Not that everybody doesn't already know that the regime stays in place by buying the potential opposition off.