Mort Walker on humor

Writing in his 1975 book, Backstage at the Strips (still probably the best book around about the life of a cartoonist), Walker discusses his attitude toward humor. He disagrees with Jules Feiffer, who says "you have to hate to be funny. Humor, Feiffer says, comes from dissatisfaction with things; you attack, ridicule, and destroy what you don't like with humor.' Some humorists do. But Walker says he's more comfortable with Leo Rosten's notion that "humor is an affectionate insight into the affairs of man. Affectionate is the word that won me," says Walker. "I like people. I like their absurdities, their aberrations, their pretensions. If you catch a guy exaggerating, you don't ridicule him: you understand him."