THE TWO SADDEST KITCHENS

There’s no expiration date on this timeless humor.

In her latest book, Chast (Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, 2014) pairs up with fellow New Yorker cartoonist Katzenstein to “kvetch about kitchens.” Like many, Chast occasionally wishes she had a better kitchen. Then again, she writes, “Sometimes when I think about super-fancy, Martha-Stewartized kitchens with their giant stoves and refrigerators…I start to feel upset! I can hear the voices of my lefty grandfathers.” One of them is seen angrily wagging his finger: “Ziss is capitalism run amok! Nobody should hev a hunderd deeshtowlz when some pipple do not hev one deeshtowl!” The other grandfather, a look of worry on his face, chimes in: “Oy, so true.” Katzenstein adds: “Admittedly I’m a thirty-four-year-old man who lives alone, but I do think I could probably splurge on having more than three bowls, zero plates, and one cheap scary pan.” Among the “fun” quirks of his kitchen: a freezer door that opens when he closes the fridge door. “Days later, when I open the freezer, I find what looks like the faces of Indiana Jones’ enemies who looked directly at the Ark.” His renderings of skull-like formations, mouths agape, prove it. Every page of the cartoonists’ colorful work is full of funny observations, including an “undersink cabinet of doom” topped by the words “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” There’s the Museum of Too Many Teas (with a Beige Horizons flavor), the Tragic Pantry (and its Forgotten Poet Sardines), and a drawing that shows the “archaeology of a sink” (the oldest layer is “Precambrian dishes”). Chast imagines Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre bickering over chores. De Beauvoir: “Is there a specific reason you stack the dishes the way you do?” Sartre: “Oui.” And, of course, there’s mismatched Tupperware. Katzenstein likens missing lids to missing socks. He draws a lid with an arm wrapped around a sock as they admire a sunset. “Wherever they all are,” he writes, “I wish them well.”

Every kitchen should be stocked with this hilarious book—provided readers can make room amid the mess.