EPISODE 945: VALE MICHAEL LEUNIG, THE CARTOONIST OF PRAYERS
"It's all so shiny, it's all so fragile."
The thing that gets us traveling, I think, is often a desire to see or experience life in a certain place. In Paris, it might be the Eiffel Tower, the Musée d’Orsay and the Lourve, or just the experience of having a cup of coffee and watching the world go by in a French café (which is so good). In China it might be the Great Wall, or Shanghai’s futuristic Pudong district, or the night markets.
But one of the surprisingly coolest parts about traveling is the other stuff to gain, things you can take home with you. Like new favorite foods: When I first came to Australia in 2008, our community superior would bring out bars of Cadbury’s dark chocolate and port each night after dinner. I’d never had port and never thought of chocolate as an after-dinner snack, and I grew to adore both of them. In fact, even many years later they became a way for me to travel back to that time in my life and to be with those people, particularly the superior, who was (and is) like a what if PG Wodehouse had created a hero who was a parish priest and scripture scholar.
One of my favorite versions of this is discovering new authors and public figures. Last week I mentioned Paul Keating, the former prime minister of Australia who combined the sharpest of wits with an actual belief in and dream for the country. He was no angel; he could be vicious, and still can be. But something about him, I think his underlying idealism has always really spoken to me.
Another Australian figure that has been like that for me is the cartoonist Michael Leunig, who died last weekend. Leunig was a Melbourne kid who worked after finishing school in an abattoir. He would later say that the experience was kind of his art school. “If working in this way brutalizes some people, it sensitizes others. It certainly sensitized me.”
He became a cartoonist, eventually one of great renown. For a time his work became a regular part of the conversation of life in Australia. Unlike Garry Trudeau or Bill Watterson in the States, Leunig’s work did not have an ongoing story line or much of a real set of characters.
Like Gary Larson, each one-panel cartoon was its own little comment or joke. And yet where Larson’s work on The Far Side was intent on weirdness and the absurdity of life, Leunig’s cartoons tended to have both more whimsy and at times a quiet sadness. Melbourne’s The Age columnist Karl Quinn noted this weekend that Leunig had said that his work was often created out of a posture of feeling lost and alone, and there is something to that. Whether they’re happy or sad, his characters are so often more or less on their own.
And the world around them, sometimes absurd and sometimes simply severe, often only reemphasizes that feeling.
Leunig could be fierce in his critiques of society or government, and was unafraid of pissing people off. This cartoon about parenting infuriated some readers.
But for as melancholy as some of his work could be, there was something greater underlying his work as a whole, a sense of laughter about the human experience that was gentle and loving rather than acerbic.
I first found Leunig’s work in a used bookstore in Melbourne. Australia has a rich tradition of used bookstores. (When just a new paperback book can cost your $25 or more, used books make a lot of sense!) Being interested in Australian culture, I spent hours wandering store aisles, looking for treasures. What I found was a little green book called The Travelling Leunig. In many ways its cover captures what I would grow to love about Leunig.
The man is naked in the bush, with nothing to his name but a sack on a stick and, randomly, a teapot on his head. (Leunig regularly drew his characters with teapots and birds on their head. It became almost his shorthand for the absurdity of the human condition.)
The man is alone but for a duck. And yet he looks happy. He could be a fool, a buffoon, but Leunig’s art doesn’t seem to suggest that. His happiness seems genuine.
There’s something similar in his cartoon “Life’s Amazing Journey.”
As readers we stand very much in the position of the character, looking upon this endlessly cyclical map, wondering what to make of it and maybe feeling like it’s a darker take on life than we would like.
But then to the side of the man is that same duck, looking at a flower. And another flower grows on the other side of this otherwise barren land. And somehow that changes the work entirely. The cycle doesn’t matter, in a sense, and nor does the sparseness of the landscape. There’s life!
It’s interesting, the barren environment actually makes those flowers stand out that more. Had that sign been standing in the midst of a lush garden, I think it actually might have felt far darker. You think life is great? Well, take a look up here, because it’s a lot harsher than that.
Leunig was a spiritual person. He occasionally wrote cartoons styled as prayers, and sometimes just prayers, too. Here’s a great one.
Leunig’s prayer
God, help me to live slowly
To move simply
To look softly
To allow emptiness
And to let the heart create for us.
AMEN
In a collection of cartoons called “A Common Prayer: A cartoonist talks to God,” Leunig wrote that he had created these cartoon prayers for the newspaper as a kind of balm for the news that readers might otherwise find in the newspaper. “It seemed to me that newspapers might carry some small spiritual message of consolation as a tiny reparation for the enormous anxiety and distress I believe they can create.”
The prayers are really something.
On his website Leunig acknowledged that reading things about God in the newspaper might make some uncomfortable. He suggests a different way of thinking about God that I find really interesting.
I use the word 'God' conscious of the fact that there are many who may find it objectionable – and others who may find my casual use of the word too irreverent or shallow. For all sorts of reasons people can be very touchy about this word; in my view they seem either too earnest, too proprietorial, too fanatical, too averse, too phobic... There is however no ultimate authority or definition. The word is yours or mine to make of it and hold or discard it as we will…"God" as a sort of shorthand password, an inconclusive folk word, a signpost, a catalyst, a spark, a stepping stone, a simple makeshift handle ... A simple robust word used lightly and loosely or as devoutly and deeply as we might feel – a bridge, and a way to break free from this material world for a moment or two, a day or two... or for what's left of a lifetime.
To me it seems a propos that Michael Leunig would die near Christmas, as over the years he did a lot of really wonderful cartoons about Christmas.
Some could get dark.
“Oh Dear” indeed!
But even here, there are things that complicate the bleakness. The poem may be about pain and weeping, and yet the Holy Family is still so clearly grateful and at peace. And as alone as the guy on Christmas seems—“A bottle of whatever” is such a dark line—still, the tree is pretty. And to call the lights “so shiny but so fragile” somehow makes them more meaningful rather than less. And such an accurate depiction of life.
There are two about the seeming foolishness of Christmas that I really adore.
This guy thinks he’s following something special, but it’s all fake. There is no star. And yet, you look at the happiness on his face and also the intentness of the three animals, and I wonder, does it matter if it’s real? If it’s giving them the same happiness and purpose that a real star would, maybe it is real?
Then there’s this one, which I can’t stop thinking about.
It seems such a hymn to foolishness. But I don’t know, I keep thinking it’s actually hopeful. The reality of the star doesn’t prevent bad things from happening to us, or us making mistakes. But its presence tells us that life has more than all of that to it, that there is beauty and majesty in the world.
At some point we’re all going to take a drop down a cliff of one kind or another and die. But would you rather spend what time you have thinking about that, or with your eyes open to all that the world has to offer, darkness and light?
Michael Leunig clearly chose to spend his life with his eyes open. And I’m grateful for his strange little beatific visions, and that he chose to share them with us.
One note: It’s come to my attention that Substack decided during the Christmas season to try and push more people to subscribe by adding its own sales pitch at the start of its newsletters. That was not coming from me, and I’ve now turned that “feature” off.
I love having people subscribe, as putting this together each week takes a lot of work. But I abhor the idea of people feeling pestered for cash. So apologies to one and all.
I’ll be back on Christmas Day with something special about gravy!
I hope you all have lovely holidays. Thanks for reading.
Thanks for introducing me to this cartoonist. Such an inadequate word for his art.
Lovely and thought provoking.