The illustrator and his notes

An unreliable narratoreveryone knows what that is. But an unreliable letter writer? Unreliable not in that he doesnt write...

An unreliable narratoreveryone knows what that is. But an unreliable letter writer? Unreliable not in that he doesnt write,or takes too long to answer letters,but in that you dont know how far to believe him. Are the dates on his letters right? Is his advice sincere? Is he actually writing a letter at all?

R.O. Blechman is an illustrator with a notably tremulous line; he is also a filmmaker. He drew the book The Juggler of Our Lady in 1953. His 1967 commercial for Alka-Seltzer,in which a troubled stomach sits in a modernist swivel chair arguing with his host about the gut-wrenching foods his host eats,is in a class of its own.

This R.O.,whose R stands for Robert and O for Oscar,is now the author of DEAR JAMES: Letters to a Young Illustrator (Simon & Schuster,$21). The letters are plain-spoken,charming and earnest. But Blechman is not the letter writer he first appears to be,for as he notes at the end of his book,his pen pal,James Wetherington,who signs his drawings Jaz and who has a snoring girlfriend and a younger brother contemplating art school,is a figment of my imagination.

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Then whom did Blechman imagine writing to? And when? He dates the letters 1984,but in one he mentions that his son Nicholas is an art director,which happened over a decade later (Nicholas Blechman is now the art director of the Book Review). In another he shows an illustration from 2007. His likeliest imaginary pen pal is the cartoonist Nurit Karlin,who was once his student. After all,its her drawings (the ones signed Jaz) that he comments on. (The book also has drawings by Saul Steinberg,Peter Arno,William Gropper and Blechman himself.) But why not say so? Because these letters werent written for Karlin or anyone,but rather composed as a book at the suggestion of his other son,Max: Why dont you write something like Rilkes Letters to a Young Poet,but for illustrators?

Dear James is,thankfully,nothing like Rilkes book. Where Rilke,whom Blechman calls that ultimate dandy, constantly urges his pen pal poet to look deep within and shun outside opinion,Blechman advises young James to meet people and take all graphic work that comes his way: I look forward to your next letterand I want it written on Young & Rubicam letterhead. Funny.

Blechman pooh-poohs the Rilkean test Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: Must I write? and counters it by reeling off a list of artists who didnt give up their day jobs: Wallace Stevens,William Carlos Williams,Anton Chekhov,Peter Paul Rubens. Yes,even the liveliest spirit,Blechman says,can be killed by the grinding anxiety of worrying about when youll see your next check.

Or by the grinding anxiety of freedom. After the Renaissance but before the mid-1950s,Blechman notes,illustration was almost always handmaiden to the text. Then a new word entered the vocabulary of commercial artconcept, which brought its own set of hits and misses: We had become so many Charlie Parkers. Or would-be Charlie Parkers.

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Whats Blechmans poison prod? Boundaries. Tight deadlines. Little spaces. Before he does a spot drawing for a newspaper,he photocopies the whole page,leaving a blank space for his drawing. He likes the push and pull of terrible constraints.

And he says hes strangely attracted to Dr. Doolittles pushmi-pullyu. That may explain why he wrote this book as a series of letters,even though nobody was at the other end.