Harry Bliss is ready to retire. At least, he might be. Maybe. Sitting across from a crackling woodstove in the cluttered but cozy wood-paneled living room of his Cornish, N.H., cottage, the 58-year-old New Yorker cartoonist and part-time Vermonter turned reflective as a reporter peppered him with questions about his life and career.
Behind a Harry Bliss infinity cover is a … well it’s too long for a profile yet too short for a biography … let’s call it A Narrative of the Adventures of the Cartoonist.
“I do not like working. I really don’t,” Bliss confessed.
He still gets up each morning to draw the syndicated daily comic, “Bliss,” that he’s produced since 2005 — more than 5,000 cartoons in all. The single-panel gag appears weekly in this newspaper, for which Bliss also contributes an occasional cover. A much greater claim to fame are the 25 New Yorker covers he’s illustrated and the exponentially more cartoons for the magazine he’s drawn since 1998.
He has also illustrated more than 20 children’s books … [and] … Since 2018, he’s collaborated with entertainer Steve Martin on “Bliss” cartoons. That partnership has produced two books, A Wealth of Pigeons in 2020 and Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions, published last month.
Seven Days hands over eight full tabloid pages to Dan Bolles interviewing Harry Bliss about his days of troubled childhood to his adventurous young adult years to developing a career as a cartoonist to the current happy life in his very own hermitage.
