Simultaneous situations - Tom Gauld

 

Tom Gauld "Food for Thought" September 6, 2021

Here's the "Cover Story" blog about this cover for the Food and Drink Issue.   Gauld gives us a glimpse of the whole range of tastes that city dwellers yearn for.

He describes how he came up with this idea:

I often go for walks around London when I’m thinking over ideas for cartoons. But often, around lunchtime, I would realize that I had been thinking more about food than cartoons—there are food possibilities everywhere in the city. To capture that feeling in the cover, I made lots of rough sketches of hungry people in different city scenes, and found that these micro-stories about people and food started to emerge.

I love the idea of "micro-stories" of many people at once.  Also, it reminds me of novels, like the George Perec book, where the stories of everyone in a single apartment building is told.  Or a movie like "Night On Earth."  All of these things tell of the simultaneous situation of people who are NOT interacting necessarily.  It's "this story and this story and this story."  That's typically not how narratives work!